The combined Tory/Reform share at the election was 39% compared to 47% for Tory/Brexit Party at the previous election. Not a huge drop, but the number of seats they won fell from 365 to 126.
The combined Tory/Reform share at the election was 39% compared to 47% for Tory/Brexit Party at the previous election. Not a huge drop, but the number of seats they won fell from 365 to 126.
If the Tories wanted a proportional voting system they have been in power for over two thirds of my lifetime and have persistently called it a bad idea during that whole duration. I wonder why some are starting to be converted now?
Rod Crosby, who used to be one of the main posters on this site, came up with a system called PR^2 which he thought was better than anything proposed so far.
The combined Tory/Reform share at the election was 39% compared to 47% for Tory/Brexit Party at the previous election. Not a huge drop, but the number of seats they won dropped from 365 to 126.
A little misleading as the split in 2019 in England was 47% Conservative and 2% Brexit while in July it was 26% Conservative and 15% Reform and given the parties were in competition, it's little surprise what happened.
25% of the 2019 Conservative vote (roughly 12% of the total electorate) claimed to have voted Reform this time so Reform must have got votes from sources other than the Conservatives (though it seems about 80% of Reform voters were 2019 Conservative voters).
On the other side, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green also polled 49% in 2019 but this time got 55% but given the vagaries of tactical voting were able to make best use of that share to win Conservative seats.
The split in England in July was 55.5% Lab/LD/Green, 41.5% Con/Ref and 3% Independent/Workers Party.
Laying the ground for declaring the result in November invalid.
OK, he is going to claim the result is not valid (again) but i still don't see the path from there to "so I get to be President"
What are the missing steps?
1) The MAGA Republicans in the election system hold up the results for states that Harris wins on the grounds they are “wrong”. They even try to send electors for Trump… 2) Trump demands that the EC meets on the date specified. With an incomplete set of EC electors. 3) MAGA Mob Part Deux appears on Capitol Hill…
Rod Crosby, who used to be one of the main posters on this site, came up with a system called PR^2 which he thought was better than anything proposed so far.
If this happens JohnO and I have already said we’re leaving the party, we won’t be the only ones.
Four in 10 Tory members would support a merger of the Conservative Party with Reform UK, a new poll has revealed.
Asked whether Nigel Farage’s party should merge with the Tories, a total of 42 per cent of Conservative members supported such a move.
The survey, conducted by YouGov, found that slightly more members opposed a Tory-Reform merger, at 51 per cent.
The Tories saw a draining of support to Reform at the general election, with 25 per cent of 2019 Conservative voters switching allegiance, according to YouGov.
Half of Tory members believed a merger would improve their chances of winning the next election.
In practice it wouldn't be a merger. Farage would just accept the Conservative whip.
I can't see why Farage would accept those terms.
Ambition. Would need the next leader to be failing and open to Farage.
If Farage wanted to be in the Conservative Party, he could join the Conservative Party. He currently has far more leverage than a random Conservative backbench MP. If he's to agree to a merger, he'll want more. Like he takes over as leader, or at least he gets a senior Shadow Cabinet position.
Farage is a disrupter, not a Conservative. Like Rupert Murdoch he hates the establishment, despises many of the institutions, and is in love with the less responsible elements of the media. He's right-wing but he ain't a Tory.
The Tory party are full of establishment types who hate "the establishment" and blame it for all and sundry and enjoy flirting with silly media. And as the Johnson and Truss governments have shown, the opposite of conservative, openly trying to weaken our institutions including judiciary.
Margaret Thatcher couldn't stand the Blob, long before Michael Gove coined the phrase. She didn't mind the police and the judiciary, but disliked the senior Civil Service, the BBC, much of the Church of England, the educational establishment, etc. etc. Ted Heath didn't much care for it either.
Modern government has a heavy inbuilt bias towards change. People identify an issue then lazily call on the government to solve it, even if it is very poorly equipped to do so. If by conservative you mean somebody who is opposed to all but the most obviously necessary change, I'm not sure when the last conservative Conservative Party leader was. Alec Douglas-Home? Stanley Baldwin? Lord Salisbury?
I thought Sunak's election campaign and result was poor, but bloody Nora imagine having to campaign for re-election on the back of scrapping cancer treatment! It might have had an outcome like the Canadian 1993 federal election where the Conservatives went from 156 to 2 seats.
Has anyone read The Machine Stops by EM Forster? I haven't but it sounds interesting.
"The Machine Stops,” a 1909 short story by E. M. Forster, uncannily imagines our technology-dependent world—and what might happen when the tech breaks down. Theodore Dalrymple"
The 'impossibility' of democracy will depend on what you are trying to achieve and the modesty of your aims.
If your aims are abundant, you are doomed to disappointment. Too many people want too many different things, and change their minds whenever they like not only about what they want in the future, but also what they wanted in the past.
What democracy can deliver, and it's big, are these two things. A known in advance and peaceful framework for achieving power which cannot be achieved by anyone without really substantial support.
And a limitation on that power (even more important) whereby whoever it is can be peacefully replaced by others on the same basis.
That's all really. It's magic. It's the big secret difference between us and North Korea. It seems simple, but the evidence is that a lot of people in the USA don't quite get it.
Sounds unlikely. Probably something floated (if your NAV is over £100m you should not get free prescriptions or something) which was then shelved. To be raked over and reanimated now for book sales.
City AM, or as I refer to it, the Daily Express for those with Money, have managed to bring two of our current topics together in this morning's paper.
On prospective tax rises in the forthcoming Budget, increasing Capital Gains Tax from 26% to 45% would apparently raise nearly £17 billion but as usual the Lafferites have warned it'll raise nothing like that as it will be a hinderance to the business of wealth creation.
In addition, James Reed, the CEO of the Reed Group, had an opinion piece where he mentioned a planning application for a barn he had submitted and had not received "a sensible reply" from the local Planning department in over a year.
There's a truth here about Planning - it's NOT just about 5,000 home developments on the Green Belt or 25-story blocks of flats on a brownfield site. It's much more about extensions, changes to shop fascias, barns on land and that kind of thing. This sort of application doesn't or shouldn't go near Councillors but can be dealt with Officers under delegated powers but the problem is Planning departments are hugely over worked and simply don't have the capacity to handle all this kind of small scale application.
In addition, their workload is compounded by enforcement work - unapproved dwellings in back gardens, encroachment from land agreed for commercial/industrial use on to land reserved for non-commercial activities. Enforcement is a huge part of the Planning process and extremely time consuming.
It's not helped by developers and private individuals putting in applications completely out of tune with the agreed Local Plan in terms of densities, heights and other aspects which are quite clearly cited as within the limits of development in a particular area.
I can see the argument for allowing individuals more latitude and Mr Reed's barn may be quite uncontentious but extensions can cause issues for neighbours as can unapproved dwellings (when a garden shed suddenly becomes a living space). It can't be a complete free-for-all even at the lowest level - there has to be some protection whose lives will be inconvenienced by their neighbour's action.
If this happens JohnO and I have already said we’re leaving the party, we won’t be the only ones.
Four in 10 Tory members would support a merger of the Conservative Party with Reform UK, a new poll has revealed.
Asked whether Nigel Farage’s party should merge with the Tories, a total of 42 per cent of Conservative members supported such a move.
The survey, conducted by YouGov, found that slightly more members opposed a Tory-Reform merger, at 51 per cent.
The Tories saw a draining of support to Reform at the general election, with 25 per cent of 2019 Conservative voters switching allegiance, according to YouGov.
Half of Tory members believed a merger would improve their chances of winning the next election.
In practice it wouldn't be a merger. Farage would just accept the Conservative whip.
I can't see why Farage would accept those terms.
Ambition. Would need the next leader to be failing and open to Farage.
If Farage wanted to be in the Conservative Party, he could join the Conservative Party. He currently has far more leverage than a random Conservative backbench MP. If he's to agree to a merger, he'll want more. Like he takes over as leader, or at least he gets a senior Shadow Cabinet position.
Farage is a disrupter, not a Conservative. Like Rupert Murdoch he hates the establishment, despises many of the institutions, and is in love with the less responsible elements of the media. He's right-wing but he ain't a Tory.
The Tory party are full of establishment types who hate "the establishment" and blame it for all and sundry and enjoy flirting with silly media. And as the Johnson and Truss governments have shown, the opposite of conservative, openly trying to weaken our institutions including judiciary.
Margaret Thatcher couldn't stand the Blob, long before Michael Gove coined the phrase. She didn't mind the police and the judiciary, but disliked the senior Civil Service, the BBC, much of the Church of England, the educational establishment, etc. etc. Ted Heath didn't much care for it either.
Modern government has a heavy inbuilt bias towards change. People identify an issue then lazily call on the government to solve it, even if it is very poorly equipped to do so. If by conservative you mean somebody who is opposed to all but the most obviously necessary change, I'm not sure when the last conservative Conservative Party leader was. Alec Douglas-Home? Stanley Baldwin? Lord Salisbury?
Personally I think it is hard to be politically conservative with a small c and not value law and order. The Conservative party of Thatcher certainly did, to the extent where the relationship was too cosy. The animity of the Conservative party to law, courts and judges is a new thing, mostly last ten years and to make it worse coincided with the legacy of austerity cuts in that sector too.
If this happens JohnO and I have already said we’re leaving the party, we won’t be the only ones.
Four in 10 Tory members would support a merger of the Conservative Party with Reform UK, a new poll has revealed.
Asked whether Nigel Farage’s party should merge with the Tories, a total of 42 per cent of Conservative members supported such a move.
The survey, conducted by YouGov, found that slightly more members opposed a Tory-Reform merger, at 51 per cent.
The Tories saw a draining of support to Reform at the general election, with 25 per cent of 2019 Conservative voters switching allegiance, according to YouGov.
Half of Tory members believed a merger would improve their chances of winning the next election.
In practice it wouldn't be a merger. Farage would just accept the Conservative whip.
I can't see why Farage would accept those terms.
Ambition. Would need the next leader to be failing and open to Farage.
If Farage wanted to be in the Conservative Party, he could join the Conservative Party. He currently has far more leverage than a random Conservative backbench MP. If he's to agree to a merger, he'll want more. Like he takes over as leader, or at least he gets a senior Shadow Cabinet position.
Farage is a disrupter, not a Conservative. Like Rupert Murdoch he hates the establishment, despises many of the institutions, and is in love with the less responsible elements of the media. He's right-wing but he ain't a Tory.
The Tory party are full of establishment types who hate "the establishment" and blame it for all and sundry and enjoy flirting with silly media. And as the Johnson and Truss governments have shown, the opposite of conservative, openly trying to weaken our institutions including judiciary.
Margaret Thatcher couldn't stand the Blob, long before Michael Gove coined the phrase. She didn't mind the police and the judiciary, but disliked the senior Civil Service, the BBC, much of the Church of England, the educational establishment, etc. etc. Ted Heath didn't much care for it either.
Modern government has a heavy inbuilt bias towards change. People identify an issue then lazily call on the government to solve it, even if it is very poorly equipped to do so. If by conservative you mean somebody who is opposed to all but the most obviously necessary change, I'm not sure when the last conservative Conservative Party leader was. Alec Douglas-Home? Stanley Baldwin? Lord Salisbury?
Margaret Thatcher's attitude to the senior (especially) Civil Service, and criticism of people wanting to become aspirants for such position was very critical. You could argue it's why we're in such a mess now!
The combined Tory/Reform share at the election was 39% compared to 47% for Tory/Brexit Party at the previous election. Not a huge drop, but the number of seats they won fell from 365 to 126.
It just doesn't make sense to treat Conservative/Reform as a single block, with each the second choice of the other.
As a "for example" look at the 2019 Tory seats where Reform didn't stand. You just didn't see a pattern where the Tories did appreciably better than elsewhere in the country due to Reform not peeling off:
Earley & Woodley - Labour gain on a slightly smaller than typical swing East Grinstead - Tory hold, but with vote down slightly more than the national average Epping Forest - Ditto Hexham - Labour gain on a pretty typical swing Maidenhead - Lib Dem gain on a big swing (albeit partly May standing down) MiDoNoPo - Lib Dem gain on pretty typical swing Middlesborough South - Labour gain on slightly smaller than typical swing (and unusual one as Rod Liddle was SDP but with a nod from Reform) West Dorset - Lib Dem gain on a large swing
Some people who would have voted Reform in those areas probably went Tory - but it's pretty clear quite a lot opted for another anti-Tory candidate or stayed at home. It didn't help them in any very clear way.
Sort of on topic, the real savings are probably in the types of treatment and care than extend, say, the life of a 85 year old in poor health by 18-24 months in slightly less poor health but with chronic conditions and in some pain, before they diminish again and die. And that won't be just cancer treatment, and nor will it be cheap.
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.
Isn't this what the Quality Adjusted Life Year metric is supposed to address? The QA part accounts for that year in pain with chronic conditions being different from a year where a younger adult is in remission and doesn't have those extra conditions, and the LY part rates "we cured a child's cancer and they got an extra 60 years" as worth sixty times more than "an elderly person got another year". Medicine has to prioritise, because we can't give it infinite resources.
Yes, but I believe with two caveats.
Firstly, the politicians have meddled with this, and overridden the system, with regard to certain cancer drugs in particular, as it happens. Often in response to newspaper campaigns.
Secondly, it operates in relation to elective treatments and interventions, and not to acute emergency care. If an old person is brought to A&E after falling and breaking a hip, there isn't a situation where the NHS will tell them that patching them up doesn't earn enough QALYs to be worth their while and turns them away. They will be admitted to hospital and the best done for them, and their broken hip, at great expense.
Not sure I'd want an old person to be put down in that scenario, but it is an example of where the QALY calculation doesn't apply.
That’s not a great example. A hip replacement operation is not hugely expensive and has a good QALY return. You want to pick something more chronic, like dementia or heart disease.
FWIW, my 97-year-old uncle is thriving after a cataract operation on his one good eye, and my son's 94-year-old granny-in-law is getting both eyes done soon.
If this happens JohnO and I have already said we’re leaving the party, we won’t be the only ones.
Four in 10 Tory members would support a merger of the Conservative Party with Reform UK, a new poll has revealed.
Asked whether Nigel Farage’s party should merge with the Tories, a total of 42 per cent of Conservative members supported such a move.
The survey, conducted by YouGov, found that slightly more members opposed a Tory-Reform merger, at 51 per cent.
The Tories saw a draining of support to Reform at the general election, with 25 per cent of 2019 Conservative voters switching allegiance, according to YouGov.
Half of Tory members believed a merger would improve their chances of winning the next election.
In practice it wouldn't be a merger. Farage would just accept the Conservative whip.
I can't see why Farage would accept those terms.
Ambition. Would need the next leader to be failing and open to Farage.
If Farage wanted to be in the Conservative Party, he could join the Conservative Party. He currently has far more leverage than a random Conservative backbench MP. If he's to agree to a merger, he'll want more. Like he takes over as leader, or at least he gets a senior Shadow Cabinet position.
Farage is a disrupter, not a Conservative. Like Rupert Murdoch he hates the establishment, despises many of the institutions, and is in love with the less responsible elements of the media. He's right-wing but he ain't a Tory.
The Tory party are full of establishment types who hate "the establishment" and blame it for all and sundry and enjoy flirting with silly media. And as the Johnson and Truss governments have shown, the opposite of conservative, openly trying to weaken our institutions including judiciary.
Margaret Thatcher couldn't stand the Blob, long before Michael Gove coined the phrase. She didn't mind the police and the judiciary, but disliked the senior Civil Service, the BBC, much of the Church of England, the educational establishment, etc. etc. Ted Heath didn't much care for it either.
Modern government has a heavy inbuilt bias towards change. People identify an issue then lazily call on the government to solve it, even if it is very poorly equipped to do so. If by conservative you mean somebody who is opposed to all but the most obviously necessary change, I'm not sure when the last conservative Conservative Party leader was. Alec Douglas-Home? Stanley Baldwin? Lord Salisbury?
Margaret Thatcher's attitude to the senior (especially) Civil Service, and criticism of people wanting to become aspirants for such position was very critical. You could argue it's why we're in such a mess now!
You’ve only to read the minutes of the Sir Jasper Quigleys of her time to see she had a point. Legends in their own minds who confused The Department Policy with The Only Possible Policy.
City AM, or as I refer to it, the Daily Express for those with Money, have managed to bring two of our current topics together in this morning's paper.
On prospective tax rises in the forthcoming Budget, increasing Capital Gains Tax from 26% to 45% would apparently raise nearly £17 billion but as usual the Lafferites have warned it'll raise nothing like that as it will be a hinderance to the business of wealth creation.
In addition, James Reed, the CEO of the Reed Group, had an opinion piece where he mentioned a planning application for a barn he had submitted and had not received "a sensible reply" from the local Planning department in over a year.
There's a truth here about Planning - it's NOT just about 5,000 home developments on the Green Belt or 25-story blocks of flats on a brownfield site. It's much more about extensions, changes to shop fascias, barns on land and that kind of thing. This sort of application doesn't or shouldn't go near Councillors but can be dealt with Officers under delegated powers but the problem is Planning departments are hugely over worked and simply don't have the capacity to handle all this kind of small scale application.
In addition, their workload is compounded by enforcement work - unapproved dwellings in back gardens, encroachment from land agreed for commercial/industrial use on to land reserved for non-commercial activities. Enforcement is a huge part of the Planning process and extremely time consuming.
It's not helped by developers and private individuals putting in applications completely out of tune with the agreed Local Plan in terms of densities, heights and other aspects which are quite clearly cited as within the limits of development in a particular area.
I can see the argument for allowing individuals more latitude and Mr Reed's barn may be quite uncontentious but extensions can cause issues for neighbours as can unapproved dwellings (when a garden shed suddenly becomes a living space). It can't be a complete free-for-all even at the lowest level - there has to be some protection whose lives will be inconvenienced by their neighbour's action.
Planning is done by local councils. Local councils had their budgets cut by ~40% in austerity. It is not a surprise that council services are now poor.
This is the problem with a bonfire of regulations housebuilding scheme. We can't even enforce standards as they are and it's ruining the finances and living conditions of young people desperate to get on the housing ladder.
It's mad that I've had fewer issues in a 150 year old tenement, built to house dockers in what was the seediest part of Edinburgh.
Turning this round - wouldn't it be better to have a modest quantity of regulations actually enforced, rather than millions of them ignored by everyone?
Did this sort of nonsense happen before ? These sorts of issues seem much more prevalent on new build estates compared to previous times.
Shoddy building work has been around since Ug moved out of his cave. Larger developers have also always tended to be the most shoddy - small time builders who trade on their reputations have much more incentive to get stuff right first time around.
The main issue is that the rapidly growing burden of regulation is imposing substantial costs on smaller builders, so squeezing them out in favour of the bigger (and generally worse) players.
Rewinding building regs to those in force in say 2000 would have much more effect on the cost of housing than Barty's preferred abolition of planning permission.
Though it is the requirement for planning permission that is giving permission to the big developers to build 100s of homes in estates, while preventing small developers from getting permission to build small quantities of homes.
If small developers didn't need permission to build, they'd be able to do so.
Did you actually read what I wrote?
I don't particularly disagree with you about a lot of the evils of the planning system, but simply abolishing planning won't reduce house prices much, not least because of massive compliance costs on smaller developers from building regs.
When building a nice 4 bed costs the thick end of 300k without considering land or planning costs, that sets a floor for the price even if there was no planning and land was free. The only route I can see to reduced build costs is a reduction in the scope of building regs.
City AM, or as I refer to it, the Daily Express for those with Money, have managed to bring two of our current topics together in this morning's paper.
On prospective tax rises in the forthcoming Budget, increasing Capital Gains Tax from 26% to 45% would apparently raise nearly £17 billion but as usual the Lafferites have warned it'll raise nothing like that as it will be a hinderance to the business of wealth creation.
In addition, James Reed, the CEO of the Reed Group, had an opinion piece where he mentioned a planning application for a barn he had submitted and had not received "a sensible reply" from the local Planning department in over a year.
There's a truth here about Planning - it's NOT just about 5,000 home developments on the Green Belt or 25-story blocks of flats on a brownfield site. It's much more about extensions, changes to shop fascias, barns on land and that kind of thing. This sort of application doesn't or shouldn't go near Councillors but can be dealt with Officers under delegated powers but the problem is Planning departments are hugely over worked and simply don't have the capacity to handle all this kind of small scale application.
In addition, their workload is compounded by enforcement work - unapproved dwellings in back gardens, encroachment from land agreed for commercial/industrial use on to land reserved for non-commercial activities. Enforcement is a huge part of the Planning process and extremely time consuming.
It's not helped by developers and private individuals putting in applications completely out of tune with the agreed Local Plan in terms of densities, heights and other aspects which are quite clearly cited as within the limits of development in a particular area.
I can see the argument for allowing individuals more latitude and Mr Reed's barn may be quite uncontentious but extensions can cause issues for neighbours as can unapproved dwellings (when a garden shed suddenly becomes a living space). It can't be a complete free-for-all even at the lowest level - there has to be some protection whose lives will be inconvenienced by their neighbour's action.
Planning is done by local councils. Local councils had their budgets cut by ~40% in austerity. It is not a surprise that council services are now poor.
But I suspect Reed doesn't want to pay more tax!
Also worth noting nearly one million local Government jobs have gone since 2010 though headcounts have been pretty stable since 2019 (unlike central Government and the NHS).
City AM, or as I refer to it, the Daily Express for those with Money, have managed to bring two of our current topics together in this morning's paper.
On prospective tax rises in the forthcoming Budget, increasing Capital Gains Tax from 26% to 45% would apparently raise nearly £17 billion but as usual the Lafferites have warned it'll raise nothing like that as it will be a hinderance to the business of wealth creation.
In addition, James Reed, the CEO of the Reed Group, had an opinion piece where he mentioned a planning application for a barn he had submitted and had not received "a sensible reply" from the local Planning department in over a year.
There's a truth here about Planning - it's NOT just about 5,000 home developments on the Green Belt or 25-story blocks of flats on a brownfield site. It's much more about extensions, changes to shop fascias, barns on land and that kind of thing. This sort of application doesn't or shouldn't go near Councillors but can be dealt with Officers under delegated powers but the problem is Planning departments are hugely over worked and simply don't have the capacity to handle all this kind of small scale application.
In addition, their workload is compounded by enforcement work - unapproved dwellings in back gardens, encroachment from land agreed for commercial/industrial use on to land reserved for non-commercial activities. Enforcement is a huge part of the Planning process and extremely time consuming.
It's not helped by developers and private individuals putting in applications completely out of tune with the agreed Local Plan in terms of densities, heights and other aspects which are quite clearly cited as within the limits of development in a particular area.
I can see the argument for allowing individuals more latitude and Mr Reed's barn may be quite uncontentious but extensions can cause issues for neighbours as can unapproved dwellings (when a garden shed suddenly becomes a living space). It can't be a complete free-for-all even at the lowest level - there has to be some protection whose lives will be inconvenienced by their neighbour's action.
This:
"had not received "a sensible reply" from the local Planning department in over a year"
usually translates as:
"They did not do exactly what I want, which violates policy, but asked sensible questions instead."
Applications for extensions etc routinely do not go anywhere near Councillors, unless the applicant is trying to pull a fast one.
Sort of on topic, the real savings are probably in the types of treatment and care than extend, say, the life of a 85 year old in poor health by 18-24 months in slightly less poor health but with chronic conditions and in some pain, before they diminish again and die. And that won't be just cancer treatment, and nor will it be cheap.
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.
Isn't this what the Quality Adjusted Life Year metric is supposed to address? The QA part accounts for that year in pain with chronic conditions being different from a year where a younger adult is in remission and doesn't have those extra conditions, and the LY part rates "we cured a child's cancer and they got an extra 60 years" as worth sixty times more than "an elderly person got another year". Medicine has to prioritise, because we can't give it infinite resources.
Yes, but I believe with two caveats.
Firstly, the politicians have meddled with this, and overridden the system, with regard to certain cancer drugs in particular, as it happens. Often in response to newspaper campaigns.
Secondly, it operates in relation to elective treatments and interventions, and not to acute emergency care. If an old person is brought to A&E after falling and breaking a hip, there isn't a situation where the NHS will tell them that patching them up doesn't earn enough QALYs to be worth their while and turns them away. They will be admitted to hospital and the best done for them, and their broken hip, at great expense.
Not sure I'd want an old person to be put down in that scenario, but it is an example of where the QALY calculation doesn't apply.
That’s not a great example. A hip replacement operation is not hugely expensive and has a good QALY return. You want to pick something more chronic, like dementia or heart disease.
FWIW, my 97-year-old uncle is thriving after a cataract operation on his one good eye, and my son's 94-year-old granny-in-law is getting both eyes done soon.
I trust you have a good pension plan in place .
An 80+ friend of my wife's has just had her cataracts done, but now wants them back! She can now see, when she looks in the mirror, wrinkles and lines which before were just blurs.
John Stepek @John_Stepek Have to say the audacity of this Fabian pensions report is breathtaking. The whole thing is about making defined contribution pensions less generous, then it tosses this point in about DB (largely public sector) pensions:
Pension tax reform should encourage high quality pensions - and at least 'do no harm' to existing provision. If reforms risk seriously undermining existing pensions - especially defined benefit schemes - they should not proceed, or exemptions should be created.
This is the problem with a bonfire of regulations housebuilding scheme. We can't even enforce standards as they are and it's ruining the finances and living conditions of young people desperate to get on the housing ladder.
It's mad that I've had fewer issues in a 150 year old tenement, built to house dockers in what was the seediest part of Edinburgh.
Turning this round - wouldn't it be better to have a modest quantity of regulations actually enforced, rather than millions of them ignored by everyone?
Did this sort of nonsense happen before ? These sorts of issues seem much more prevalent on new build estates compared to previous times.
Shoddy building work has been around since Ug moved out of his cave. Larger developers have also always tended to be the most shoddy - small time builders who trade on their reputations have much more incentive to get stuff right first time around.
The main issue is that the rapidly growing burden of regulation is imposing substantial costs on smaller builders, so squeezing them out in favour of the bigger (and generally worse) players.
Rewinding building regs to those in force in say 2000 would have much more effect on the cost of housing than Barty's preferred abolition of planning permission.
Though it is the requirement for planning permission that is giving permission to the big developers to build 100s of homes in estates, while preventing small developers from getting permission to build small quantities of homes.
If small developers didn't need permission to build, they'd be able to do so.
Did you actually read what I wrote?
I don't particularly disagree with you about a lot of the evils of the planning system, but simply abolishing planning won't reduce house prices much, not least because of massive compliance costs on smaller developers from building regs.
When building a nice 4 bed costs the thick end of 300k without considering land or planning costs, that sets a floor for the price even if there was no planning and land was free. The only route I can see to reduced build costs is a reduction in the scope of building regs.
But given building regs are routinely ignored now, any such relaxation is not going to result in a fall in costs.
If you want loads of high quality, medium density housing that maximises the number of dwellings (rather than profit), you have to tax or borrow your way to council housing. That's the experience of previous material expansions in the housing stock.
The other is heavy industry investing in the accomodation for their workforces, but that doesn't really exist now outside the Armed Forces (and even then, the lack of decent accomodation is part of the reason they are struggling to recruit people into bases in Scotland).
The combined Tory/Reform share at the election was 39% compared to 47% for Tory/Brexit Party at the previous election. Not a huge drop, but the number of seats they won fell from 365 to 126.
It just doesn't make sense to treat Conservative/Reform as a single block, with each the second choice of the other.
As a "for example" look at the 2019 Tory seats where Reform didn't stand. You just didn't see a pattern where the Tories did appreciably better than elsewhere in the country due to Reform not peeling off:
Earley & Woodley - Labour gain on a slightly smaller than typical swing East Grinstead - Tory hold, but with vote down slightly more than the national average Epping Forest - Ditto Hexham - Labour gain on a pretty typical swing Maidenhead - Lib Dem gain on a big swing (albeit partly May standing down) MiDoNoPo - Lib Dem gain on pretty typical swing Middlesborough South - Labour gain on slightly smaller than typical swing (and unusual one as Rod Liddle was SDP but with a nod from Reform) West Dorset - Lib Dem gain on a large swing
Some people who would have voted Reform in those areas probably went Tory - but it's pretty clear quite a lot opted for another anti-Tory candidate or stayed at home. It didn't help them in any very clear way.
I agree it doesn't, although people do the same sort of thing with the Lab/LD/Green block. But two wrongs don't make a right of course.
Laying the ground for declaring the result in November invalid.
OK, he is going to claim the result is not valid (again) but i still don't see the path from there to "so I get to be President"
What are the missing steps?
Indeed. Who cares if he does declare the result invalid?
It's an important principle of democratic politics that both sides respect the process and accept the result.
Things start to break down in various ways when that stops happening. Even if it doesn't create a route for Trump to usurp power, it corrodes the body politic as a whole.
Also if he can get 'his' officials to refuse to certify the election goes to the States and there are more Republican States than Democrat States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwxkSYHB7zU
We heard exactly the same stuff last time.
Yes but a lot of the people (Like Pence) who refused to go along and did their duty the last time have been replaced by those willing to follow Trump's lead. This is already leading to litigation in Georgia, for example.
Pence has been replaced by Harris, who I suspect is rather LESS likely to follow Trump's lead...
People here are underestimating the significance of the Electoral Count Reform & Presidential Transition Improvement Act 2022. This makes it a good deal harder to steal the election - and, in reality, Trump didn't get close to doing so last time under the old rules.
It's true that a tight election in a close state COULD turn on number of early voting locations in Democrat cities. That's the fine margins that exist and you see why both parties battle hard on that stuff. But a wholesale "steal" is even less realistic than it was in 2020.
Indeed, although that won’t stop a certain stripe of PBer luxuriating publicly in the idea.
They'll go from having no seats in the Landtag now to having no seats after the next election. Some may call that a victory, I'm not sure.
The CDU and AfD aren't far off where they were last time when the CDU polled 32% and AfD 27.5%. INSA has the AfD ahead 32-30, other pollsters have the CDU ahead by 1-4 points.
Wagenknecht's BSW are set to poll 12-15% which will put Linke out of the Landtag, reduce the already small SPD contingent still further and threaten the Green presence.
It may be only the CDU, AfD and BSW will get over the 5% threshold to be in the next Landtag though I suspect the SPD will just get over the line.
Kretschmer needs the Greens to get over the line (I think) to keep the coalition intact - he has 67 seats in the 120 seat Landtag. If it's just the CDU and the SPD I think he'll be short of a majority. He could, I suppose, carry on as a minority as neither AfD nor BSW look like coalition partners.
City AM, or as I refer to it, the Daily Express for those with Money, have managed to bring two of our current topics together in this morning's paper.
On prospective tax rises in the forthcoming Budget, increasing Capital Gains Tax from 26% to 45% would apparently raise nearly £17 billion but as usual the Lafferites have warned it'll raise nothing like that as it will be a hinderance to the business of wealth creation.
In addition, James Reed, the CEO of the Reed Group, had an opinion piece where he mentioned a planning application for a barn he had submitted and had not received "a sensible reply" from the local Planning department in over a year.
There's a truth here about Planning - it's NOT just about 5,000 home developments on the Green Belt or 25-story blocks of flats on a brownfield site. It's much more about extensions, changes to shop fascias, barns on land and that kind of thing. This sort of application doesn't or shouldn't go near Councillors but can be dealt with Officers under delegated powers but the problem is Planning departments are hugely over worked and simply don't have the capacity to handle all this kind of small scale application.
In addition, their workload is compounded by enforcement work - unapproved dwellings in back gardens, encroachment from land agreed for commercial/industrial use on to land reserved for non-commercial activities. Enforcement is a huge part of the Planning process and extremely time consuming.
It's not helped by developers and private individuals putting in applications completely out of tune with the agreed Local Plan in terms of densities, heights and other aspects which are quite clearly cited as within the limits of development in a particular area.
I can see the argument for allowing individuals more latitude and Mr Reed's barn may be quite uncontentious but extensions can cause issues for neighbours as can unapproved dwellings (when a garden shed suddenly becomes a living space). It can't be a complete free-for-all even at the lowest level - there has to be some protection whose lives will be inconvenienced by their neighbour's action.
This:
"had not received "a sensible reply" from the local Planning department in over a year"
usually translates as:
"They did not do exactly what I want, which violates policy, but asked sensible questions instead."
Applications for extensions etc routinely do not go anywhere near Councillors, unless the applicant is trying to pull a fast one.
I'd be interested in the piece.
Found it. Just a para, so conclusions are difficult to draw.
If this happens JohnO and I have already said we’re leaving the party, we won’t be the only ones.
Lib Dem or Labour?
Neither, I am a fiscally dry free market Thatcherite, my principles haven’t changed.
Enough of you might change the LibDems...
You could be the right wing of the new centre party, which finally achieves a Parliamentary majority for PR.
If I joined the Lib Dems they’d kick me out within in a month.
Why? I have been a member since the year dot and they haven't found me out yet. Even allowed me to do stuff like be a constituency chair, agent and serve on the regional executive. I got away with it for decades.
They'll go from having no seats in the Landtag now to having no seats after the next election. Some may call that a victory, I'm not sure.
The CDU and AfD aren't far off where they were last time when the CDU polled 32% and AfD 27.5%. INSA has the AfD ahead 32-30, other pollsters have the CDU ahead by 1-4 points.
Wagenknecht's BSW are set to poll 12-15% which will put Linke out of the Landtag, reduce the already small SPD contingent still further and threaten the Green presence.
It may be only the CDU, AfD and BSW will get over the 5% threshold to be in the next Landtag though I suspect the SPD will just get over the line.
Kretschmer needs the Greens to get over the line (I think) to keep the coalition intact - he has 67 seats in the 120 seat Landtag. If it's just the CDU and the SPD I think he'll be short of a majority. He could, I suppose, carry on as a minority as neither AfD nor BSW look like coalition partners.
I would vote for the Free Democrats if I lived in Saxony (or anywhere else in Germany). All the other parties are anti-Liberal in one way or another.
This is the problem with a bonfire of regulations housebuilding scheme. We can't even enforce standards as they are and it's ruining the finances and living conditions of young people desperate to get on the housing ladder.
It's mad that I've had fewer issues in a 150 year old tenement, built to house dockers in what was the seediest part of Edinburgh.
Turning this round - wouldn't it be better to have a modest quantity of regulations actually enforced, rather than millions of them ignored by everyone?
Did this sort of nonsense happen before ? These sorts of issues seem much more prevalent on new build estates compared to previous times.
Shoddy building work has been around since Ug moved out of his cave. Larger developers have also always tended to be the most shoddy - small time builders who trade on their reputations have much more incentive to get stuff right first time around.
The main issue is that the rapidly growing burden of regulation is imposing substantial costs on smaller builders, so squeezing them out in favour of the bigger (and generally worse) players.
Rewinding building regs to those in force in say 2000 would have much more effect on the cost of housing than Barty's preferred abolition of planning permission.
Though it is the requirement for planning permission that is giving permission to the big developers to build 100s of homes in estates, while preventing small developers from getting permission to build small quantities of homes.
If small developers didn't need permission to build, they'd be able to do so.
Did you actually read what I wrote?
I don't particularly disagree with you about a lot of the evils of the planning system, but simply abolishing planning won't reduce house prices much, not least because of massive compliance costs on smaller developers from building regs.
When building a nice 4 bed costs the thick end of 300k without considering land or planning costs, that sets a floor for the price even if there was no planning and land was free. The only route I can see to reduced build costs is a reduction in the scope of building regs.
But given building regs are routinely ignored now, any such relaxation is not going to result in a fall in costs.
If you want loads of high quality, medium density housing that maximises the number of dwellings (rather than profit), you have to tax or borrow your way to council housing. That's the experience of previous material expansions in the housing stock.
The other is heavy industry investing in the accomodation for their workforces, but that doesn't really exist now outside the Armed Forces (and even then, the lack of decent accomodation is part of the reason they are struggling to recruit people into bases in Scotland).
Except that building regs aren't ignored now, they are just useless. Rooms full of expensively pointless paperwork exists to satisfy them, whilst simultaneously they are of little benefit in stopping large housebuilds building shoddily.
If this happens JohnO and I have already said we’re leaving the party, we won’t be the only ones.
Lib Dem or Labour?
Neither, I am a fiscally dry free market Thatcherite, my principles haven’t changed.
Enough of you might change the LibDems...
You could be the right wing of the new centre party, which finally achieves a Parliamentary majority for PR.
If I joined the Lib Dems they’d kick me out within in a month.
Why? I have been a member since the year dot and they haven't found me out yet. Even allowed me to do stuff like be a constituency chair, agent and serve on the regional executive. I got away with it for decades.
I think they wouldn’t like me putting up photos of Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron.
This is the problem with a bonfire of regulations housebuilding scheme. We can't even enforce standards as they are and it's ruining the finances and living conditions of young people desperate to get on the housing ladder.
It's mad that I've had fewer issues in a 150 year old tenement, built to house dockers in what was the seediest part of Edinburgh.
Turning this round - wouldn't it be better to have a modest quantity of regulations actually enforced, rather than millions of them ignored by everyone?
Did this sort of nonsense happen before ? These sorts of issues seem much more prevalent on new build estates compared to previous times.
Shoddy building work has been around since Ug moved out of his cave. Larger developers have also always tended to be the most shoddy - small time builders who trade on their reputations have much more incentive to get stuff right first time around.
The main issue is that the rapidly growing burden of regulation is imposing substantial costs on smaller builders, so squeezing them out in favour of the bigger (and generally worse) players.
Rewinding building regs to those in force in say 2000 would have much more effect on the cost of housing than Barty's preferred abolition of planning permission.
Though it is the requirement for planning permission that is giving permission to the big developers to build 100s of homes in estates, while preventing small developers from getting permission to build small quantities of homes.
If small developers didn't need permission to build, they'd be able to do so.
Did you actually read what I wrote?
I don't particularly disagree with you about a lot of the evils of the planning system, but simply abolishing planning won't reduce house prices much, not least because of massive compliance costs on smaller developers from building regs.
When building a nice 4 bed costs the thick end of 300k without considering land or planning costs, that sets a floor for the price even if there was no planning and land was free. The only route I can see to reduced build costs is a reduction in the scope of building regs.
But given building regs are routinely ignored now, any such relaxation is not going to result in a fall in costs.
If you want loads of high quality, medium density housing that maximises the number of dwellings (rather than profit), you have to tax or borrow your way to council housing. That's the experience of previous material expansions in the housing stock.
The other is heavy industry investing in the accomodation for their workforces, but that doesn't really exist now outside the Armed Forces (and even then, the lack of decent accomodation is part of the reason they are struggling to recruit people into bases in Scotland).
Except that building regs aren't ignored now, they are just useless. Rooms full of expensively pointless paperwork exists to satisfy them, whilst simultaneously they are of little benefit in stopping large housebuilds building shoddily.
This is like when people say 20mph limits are useless because no one abides by them.
Other countries enforce their laws and regulations. The UK is odd because we simply shrug when someone behaves like an arsehole. Even the Americans, with all their freedom, don't piss around with regs and environmental standards like we do.
This is the problem with a bonfire of regulations housebuilding scheme. We can't even enforce standards as they are and it's ruining the finances and living conditions of young people desperate to get on the housing ladder.
It's mad that I've had fewer issues in a 150 year old tenement, built to house dockers in what was the seediest part of Edinburgh.
Turning this round - wouldn't it be better to have a modest quantity of regulations actually enforced, rather than millions of them ignored by everyone?
Did this sort of nonsense happen before ? These sorts of issues seem much more prevalent on new build estates compared to previous times.
Shoddy building work has been around since Ug moved out of his cave. Larger developers have also always tended to be the most shoddy - small time builders who trade on their reputations have much more incentive to get stuff right first time around.
The main issue is that the rapidly growing burden of regulation is imposing substantial costs on smaller builders, so squeezing them out in favour of the bigger (and generally worse) players.
Rewinding building regs to those in force in say 2000 would have much more effect on the cost of housing than Barty's preferred abolition of planning permission.
Though it is the requirement for planning permission that is giving permission to the big developers to build 100s of homes in estates, while preventing small developers from getting permission to build small quantities of homes.
If small developers didn't need permission to build, they'd be able to do so.
Did you actually read what I wrote?
I don't particularly disagree with you about a lot of the evils of the planning system, but simply abolishing planning won't reduce house prices much, not least because of massive compliance costs on smaller developers from building regs.
When building a nice 4 bed costs the thick end of 300k without considering land or planning costs, that sets a floor for the price even if there was no planning and land was free. The only route I can see to reduced build costs is a reduction in the scope of building regs.
A very very bad idea. We already have homes for poor people being built in ex commercial property that have no windows. And grenfell. We need constant iteration of improving standards. Quality matters.
If you want to know how to deal with housing I’ll tell you, and it’s supported by the Local Government Association.
Let councils charge council tax on the stalled homes sitting unstarted unbuilt in land banks and uncompleted developments.
There are 1.5million plots with planning permission. Stalled. Tax that and all of a sudden the chance of us getting some houses built is going to improve.
Has anyone read The Machine Stops by EM Forster? I haven't but it sounds interesting.
"The Machine Stops,” a 1909 short story by E. M. Forster, uncannily imagines our technology-dependent world—and what might happen when the tech breaks down. Theodore Dalrymple"
If this happens JohnO and I have already said we’re leaving the party, we won’t be the only ones.
Lib Dem or Labour?
Neither, I am a fiscally dry free market Thatcherite, my principles haven’t changed.
Same problem as per mainstream Republicans after MAGA takeover. Only real answer is to stay and fight, as happened with Labour. Eventually an opportunity arises to ditch the nutters. But it requires stamina and a slightly longer-time horizon.
Is that the only route? A moderate Republican could quite easily decide that, as much as they may dislike The Squad, they could slip in nicely as a Blue Dog Democrat.
There are potentially substantial difference between current MAGA and the Corbynista Labour. Firstly, Corbyn never was PM and slipped pretty quickly into obscurity on defeat in 2019. Secondly, the Parliamentary Party were never keen - Corbynists were quite strong on the NEC at one point, but MAGA has been the Republican brand for several electoral cycles now and the takeover is pretty comprehensive. A moderate Republican could, realistically, be looking at a VERY long time horizon to wrestle back control.
"We've been told that..." is hearsay, not evidence. Much as I dislike Truss it is difficult to believe she would consider such a thing. But I am looking forward to reading the book to find out.
To be fair to @Luckyguy1983 we don't know how serious Liz Truss was about cutting cancer care despite credible reporting she did discuss it. I suspect not very serious. But she seems to have been very serious about suddenly and drastically cutting public expenditure. The suggested cancer care cuts illustrate the impossibility of doing this without severe consequences. Truss never seems to have accepted this consequence, as evidenced by her comments since.
There is zero credible reporting that she discussed it. Her 'co-discussor' in these discussions has denied the conversation. The rest is third-hand (it may even be fourth hand) accounts of it being 'thought of'.
Comments
https://youtu.be/qf7ws2DF-zk?si=FWXW0LAN0IQY3KDj
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/05/10/as-pr-becomes-centre-stage-what-about-this/
"@Labour4PR
Poll of Labour members: Should Labour support changing the voting system for general elections to a form of proportional representation?
Should: 83% (+7)
Should not: 10% (-2)
Don't know: 7% (-5)
Via @YouGox, 22 June - 1 July, (+/- since Dec 2019)"
https://x.com/Labour4PR/status/1417016924534358017
25% of the 2019 Conservative vote (roughly 12% of the total electorate) claimed to have voted Reform this time so Reform must have got votes from sources other than the Conservatives (though it seems about 80% of Reform voters were 2019 Conservative voters).
On the other side, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green also polled 49% in 2019 but this time got 55% but given the vagaries of tactical voting were able to make best use of that share to win Conservative seats.
The split in England in July was 55.5% Lab/LD/Green, 41.5% Con/Ref and 3% Independent/Workers Party.
No thanks.
His comments on the existing systems were, and remain sensible.
Modern government has a heavy inbuilt bias towards change. People identify an issue then lazily call on the government to solve it, even if it is very poorly equipped to do so. If by conservative you mean somebody who is opposed to all but the most obviously necessary change, I'm not sure when the last conservative Conservative Party leader was. Alec Douglas-Home? Stanley Baldwin? Lord Salisbury?
"The Machine Stops,” a 1909 short story by E. M. Forster, uncannily imagines our technology-dependent world—and what might happen when the tech breaks down.
Theodore Dalrymple"
https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-passage-to-doomsday
If your aims are abundant, you are doomed to disappointment. Too many people want too many different things, and change their minds whenever they like not only about what they want in the future, but also what they wanted in the past.
What democracy can deliver, and it's big, are these two things. A known in advance and peaceful framework for achieving power which cannot be achieved by anyone without really substantial support.
And a limitation on that power (even more important) whereby whoever it is can be peacefully replaced by others on the same basis.
That's all really. It's magic. It's the big secret difference between us and North Korea. It seems simple, but the evidence is that a lot of people in the USA don't quite get it.
Sounds unlikely. Probably something floated (if your NAV is over £100m you should not get free prescriptions or something) which was then shelved. To be raked over and reanimated now for book sales.
City AM, or as I refer to it, the Daily Express for those with Money, have managed to bring two of our current topics together in this morning's paper.
On prospective tax rises in the forthcoming Budget, increasing Capital Gains Tax from 26% to 45% would apparently raise nearly £17 billion but as usual the Lafferites have warned it'll raise nothing like that as it will be a hinderance to the business of wealth creation.
In addition, James Reed, the CEO of the Reed Group, had an opinion piece where he mentioned a planning application for a barn he had submitted and had not received "a sensible reply" from the local Planning department in over a year.
There's a truth here about Planning - it's NOT just about 5,000 home developments on the Green Belt or 25-story blocks of flats on a brownfield site. It's much more about extensions, changes to shop fascias, barns on land and that kind of thing. This sort of application doesn't or shouldn't go near Councillors but can be dealt with Officers under delegated powers but the problem is Planning departments are hugely over worked and simply don't have the capacity to handle all this kind of small scale application.
In addition, their workload is compounded by enforcement work - unapproved dwellings in back gardens, encroachment from land agreed for commercial/industrial use on to land reserved for non-commercial activities. Enforcement is a huge part of the Planning process and extremely time consuming.
It's not helped by developers and private individuals putting in applications completely out of tune with the agreed Local Plan in terms of densities, heights and other aspects which are quite clearly cited as within the limits of development in a particular area.
I can see the argument for allowing individuals more latitude and Mr Reed's barn may be quite uncontentious but extensions can cause issues for neighbours as can unapproved dwellings (when a garden shed suddenly becomes a living space). It can't be a complete free-for-all even at the lowest level - there has to be some protection whose lives will be inconvenienced by their neighbour's action.
You could argue it's why we're in such a mess now!
As a "for example" look at the 2019 Tory seats where Reform didn't stand. You just didn't see a pattern where the Tories did appreciably better than elsewhere in the country due to Reform not peeling off:
Earley & Woodley - Labour gain on a slightly smaller than typical swing
East Grinstead - Tory hold, but with vote down slightly more than the national average
Epping Forest - Ditto
Hexham - Labour gain on a pretty typical swing
Maidenhead - Lib Dem gain on a big swing (albeit partly May standing down)
MiDoNoPo - Lib Dem gain on pretty typical swing
Middlesborough South - Labour gain on slightly smaller than typical swing (and unusual one as Rod Liddle was SDP but with a nod from Reform)
West Dorset - Lib Dem gain on a large swing
Some people who would have voted Reform in those areas probably went Tory - but it's pretty clear quite a lot opted for another anti-Tory candidate or stayed at home. It didn't help them in any very clear way.
But I suspect Reed doesn't want to pay more tax!
I don't particularly disagree with you about a lot of the evils of the planning system, but simply abolishing planning won't reduce house prices much, not least because of massive compliance costs on smaller developers from building regs.
When building a nice 4 bed costs the thick end of 300k without considering land or planning costs, that sets a floor for the price even if there was no planning and land was free. The only route I can see to reduced build costs is a reduction in the scope of building regs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Saxony_state_election#Party_polling
"had not received "a sensible reply" from the local Planning department in over a year"
usually translates as:
"They did not do exactly what I want, which violates policy, but asked sensible questions instead."
Applications for extensions etc routinely do not go anywhere near Councillors, unless the applicant is trying to pull a fast one.
I'd be interested in the piece.
John Stepek
@John_Stepek
Have to say the audacity of this Fabian pensions report is breathtaking. The whole thing is about making defined contribution pensions less generous, then it tosses this point in about DB (largely public sector) pensions:
Pension tax reform should encourage high quality pensions - and at least 'do no harm' to existing provision. If reforms risk seriously undermining existing pensions - especially defined benefit schemes - they should not proceed, or exemptions should be created.
If you want loads of high quality, medium density housing that maximises the number of dwellings (rather than profit), you have to tax or borrow your way to council housing. That's the experience of previous material expansions in the housing stock.
The other is heavy industry investing in the accomodation for their workforces, but that doesn't really exist now outside the Armed Forces (and even then, the lack of decent accomodation is part of the reason they are struggling to recruit people into bases in Scotland).
The CDU and AfD aren't far off where they were last time when the CDU polled 32% and AfD 27.5%. INSA has the AfD ahead 32-30, other pollsters have the CDU ahead by 1-4 points.
Wagenknecht's BSW are set to poll 12-15% which will put Linke out of the Landtag, reduce the already small SPD contingent still further and threaten the Green presence.
It may be only the CDU, AfD and BSW will get over the 5% threshold to be in the next Landtag though I suspect the SPD will just get over the line.
Kretschmer needs the Greens to get over the line (I think) to keep the coalition intact - he has 67 seats in the 120 seat Landtag. If it's just the CDU and the SPD I think he'll be short of a majority. He could, I suppose, carry on as a minority as neither AfD nor BSW look like coalition partners.
He may be tangled up with an AONB if it is Wiltshire, but a barn to store straw should not be very contentious unless it looks whiffy.
https://www.cityam.com/james-reed-my-advice-for-the-next-generation-forget-grades-and-go-for-skills/
Support: 66%
Oppose: 20%
Angus Reid / Aug 23, 2024 / n=2002
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1828644900704817532
Other countries enforce their laws and regulations. The UK is odd because we simply shrug when someone behaves like an arsehole. Even the Americans, with all their freedom, don't piss around with regs and environmental standards like we do.
NEW THREAD
If you want to know how to deal with housing I’ll tell you, and it’s supported by the Local Government Association.
Let councils charge council tax on the stalled
homes sitting unstarted unbuilt in land banks and uncompleted developments.
There are 1.5million plots with planning permission. Stalled. Tax that and all of a sudden the chance of us getting some houses built is going to improve.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blackout-Marc-Elsberg/dp/1784161896
There are potentially substantial difference between current MAGA and the Corbynista Labour. Firstly, Corbyn never was PM and slipped pretty quickly into obscurity on defeat in 2019. Secondly, the Parliamentary Party were never keen - Corbynists were quite strong on the NEC at one point, but MAGA has been the Republican brand for several electoral cycles now and the takeover is pretty comprehensive. A moderate Republican could, realistically, be looking at a VERY long time horizon to wrestle back control.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Health_Service
As does the system run by the VA.
This is unprecedented as far as I know, and must be marked by this PB version of a blue plaque.