Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
I'd find it quite insulting if someone offered to buy me a suit.
Indeed and even worse for a man to offer to buy your wife's dresses
I have a theory (which is probably bollocks) that Alli probably had a fling with Lady Vicky, and is just buying her silence.
I suggest you do some rudimentary research on Lord Alli before posting this nonsense.
From LV's perspective though, from the rumours it could be a "spite shag".
Oh come on, I dislike Starmer loads, don’t like Labour at all but we surely aren’t going here with twisted gossip about politicians wives who cannot defend themselves and frankly shouldn’t have this sort of shot thrown around about them.
Grim stuff.
Particularly when Lord Alli is gay.
Some of the nudge nudge wink wink stuff has been pretty distasteful.
As if people can't compute the possibility that someone can just support a cause and want its standard-bearers to be the best and most effective they can be.
There have been plenty of money scandals where that hasn't been the case, but without any other evidence, it's the place to start.
Are you saying this lot are the best he could afford?
The theoretical advantage - if it could be made to work reliably on a large scale - is much cheaper (another order of magnitude or so) cost to get mass into orbit.
- The payload is very, very limited. - And has to not mind 30,000g - And if you want to got to orbit, requires building a rocket motor into the projectile. - A rocket engine that doesn’t mind 30,000g
Then end result is system that can send very small quantities of something very, very tough (like water). By the time you are building high performance rocket engines into the projectiles, it’s not cheap anymore.
Useful for range testing of defences against very high speed missiles, possibly, though
See SpinLaunch…
Whilst true, Rocket-Assisted Projectiles (see Excalibur) already can withstand 10=15,000 G forces when launched form a conventional artillery piece. Yes, the scale is not the same, but it shows that rockets ad electronics can be made to withstand vast g-forces.
Sure - Bull was firing rocket assisted projectiles into space in the 50s. The problem is that by the time you are looking at an orbital capable projectile, most of your payload is rocket motor. And then the payload has to be resistant to the forces.
The Babylon Gun was going to have payload to LEO of maybe 50kg
There are no 10,000G forces involved.
...Multi-injection guns like Longshot’s current prototype spread the acceleration of the projectile out over time, but have a similar top speed to a traditional cannon. The speed is limited by the top speed of the gas, which is determined by the gas composition and temperature. For room temperature nitrogen, this is a maximum of just over Mach 4 - about one sixth the speed needed for space launch.
By moving the system to the desert, Longshot can use hydrogen as the accelerant gas. By extending the length of the barrel to 500+ meters and adding more boosters, Longshot will be able to accelerate payloads of up to 100 KG to Mach 5+ at acceleration loads that your cell phone can survive, and at prices significantly lower than current rocket-based accelerators systems...
Note, this is a technology development project. If it's possible to scale up, it could be used to launch raw materials into orbit at low cost. That could make near earth space manufacturing an economically interesting idea.
Mach 5 in 500 metres = 3000g
That’s still pretty fruity for most payloads. Sure, you can pot electronics to survive that. But it’s limiting.
Orbital speed is Mach 25. So you need to find 20 Mach (yes, I know, non existent unit) which means most of your projectile will be rocket engine and fuel. Plus you need to circularise.
So you are really talking about shooting high performance rockets out of a gun. Which provides a bit of starting velocity.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
Interesting. This shows the strength of the notion of "fairness" which did for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng.
We know "gifts" to senior politicians have bene going on for years but now it's reached the limit of public acceptance just as proposals for cutting taxes for the very wealthy did a couple of years ago.
People want a level playing field and are tired of the "one rule for us, one rule for you" style of public life. Making politicans have the same rules as senior civil servants seems a way forward. If you want to go to a Taylor Swift concert, fine, pay for a ticket like everyone else. If you get an invite to go to Doncaster Races, fine, but declare it and ensure there's a transparent and accountable line.
Governing fairly is goign to be the challenge going forward - NOT having policies overtly favouring the people who voted for you or who support you and indeed being prepared to have policies which antagonise those groups in order to achieve something positive for the whole country.
Openness is not enough. The point of our sort of democracy is that government and parliament exist to be the servants of the poorest and least powerful to exactly the same extent as they are the servants of the well connected and wealthy, neither more nor less. It isn't possible to receive gifts more than trivial ones without incurring some sort of obligation, however unconscious.
The powerful and wealthy - I have no problem with their existence which is essential and inevitable - already have loads of help in getting their point across to government and parliament, just as they have access to the courts unlike ordinary people.
This ends up in all sorts of bad stuff, like the wealthy and well connected being protected (a late owner of Harrods comes to mind) and their victims being both legitimately afraid to speak out - the state is very powerful - and ignored when they do.
OK, but who pays the bills then? Who pays for political parties to function, for candidates to campaign? What is the alternative to donations?
Leaving aside the question of do we really need political parties for democracy to function*, it would clearly be better and cheaper to fund the parties through the state than fulfil the quids for the quos of the elite donations.
How many years of funding could we have had just from not paying £200m to Michelle Mone?
* I would say they can help but less party influence than we have now would be beneficial and in the US they have got to the stage that losing them would be a massive improvement.
For the year ending 2019, political parties reported expenditure of £169,103,000, according to the Electoral Commission. So Mone's £200m would pay for a year and a bit of party spending. Getting rid of parties wouldn't change this: candidates running as independents would still have the same costs.
I'm not aware of any Western democracy that has come up with a sensible way for the state to fund parties instead of donations, but I'm open to suggestions. (Some state funding occurs in most, of course.) How do you decide what parties (or candidates) get what? Can anyone just set up a party and ask for public funds? If you decide based on past electoral results, you favour established parties and build in a certain psephological conservatism. The Green Party were a significant upstart force at the recent general election and I note all of the elected Green MPs have declared substantial donations to their campaigns. I suspect these facts are related. A free market in donations means the system can track changing views, whereas any public funding will tend to be less responsive.
People here have been suggesting banning donations to individual candidates and just allowing them to parties. That would give parties more influence. If we want parties to have less influence, we presumably need to allow donations to individual candidates.
All this effort to save a golf course, a golf course, from being turned into tennis courts. Wimbledon Park is less than 800m from the vast expanse of Wimbledon Common.
Has anyone pointed out that they don’t actually own the view?
Are you volunteering to do so?
I will do so.
As a former boss said of me ‘He’s very good at drowning kittens.’ which I am assured was a compliment.
I'd take that to HR for a second opinion...
It's an expression you don't hear much now for a certain sort of management ruthlessness, not coined by TSE's chum and not literally connected to pussy cats.
All this effort to save a golf course, a golf course, from being turned into tennis courts. Wimbledon Park is less than 800m from the vast expanse of Wimbledon Common.
Has anyone pointed out that they don’t actually own the view?
Are you volunteering to do so?
I will do so.
As a former boss said of me ‘He’s very good at drowning kittens.’ which I am assured was a compliment.
I'm equally happy to do so as I did when a group of flat owners in a recently built block decide that the 1600 century pub they were next to was too noisy so has to close.
For that one I happily stood up at planning committee and explained how too faced their were...
What exactly is being said with blackface. I suppose it is that black people are, in and of themselves, comic objects or objects of derision. Plus the juxtaposition of someone white being something they're not.
But why is that inherently a) funny; or b) insulting.
If she had turned up as Viv Richards would that have been better or worse? What about Thor or the Black Panther.
I think the convention is that it is insulting and I am happy to go along with that but it probably needs some unpicking.
Quite. A party entitled "Come as your favourite cricketer" would seem that dressing as Sir Viv, putting on make up to try to look like him ought to be reasonable. As would be a black cricketer adopting white make up and a huge beard to be WG Grace.
If the person is pretending to be black as an insult its a different thing.
Culture moves on and what is generally accepted moves on. I am not a fan of judging historical events and people by the mores of today, be that an 18th C trader whose portfolio included the triangular trade or a cricketer at a party 10 years ago.
10 years ago is today, in cultural terms.
I don't think it is. Consider, for example, the example of Dara O'Briain having to apologise for a joke he made ten years ago on Mock the Week which no eyelid was batted about at the time.
The position of the conservative side of the culture wars isn't an attempt to go back to the 1950s. It's an attempt to go back to the early 2010s.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
I'd find it quite insulting if someone offered to buy me a suit.
Indeed and even worse for a man to offer to buy your wife's dresses
I have a theory (which is probably bollocks) that Alli probably had a fling with Lady Vicky, and is just buying her silence.
I suggest you do some rudimentary research on Lord Alli before posting this nonsense.
From LV's perspective though, from the rumours it could be a "spite shag".
Oh come on, I dislike Starmer loads, don’t like Labour at all but we surely aren’t going here with twisted gossip about politicians wives who cannot defend themselves and frankly shouldn’t have this sort of shot thrown around about them.
Grim stuff.
Particularly when Lord Alli is gay.
Some of the nudge nudge wink wink stuff has been pretty distasteful.
As if people can't compute the possibility that someone can just support a cause and want its standard-bearers to be the best and most effective they can be.
There have been plenty of money scandals where that hasn't been the case, but without any other evidence, it's the place to start.
Any actual examples of these utterly disinterested benefactors?
I think he's shopping for something and given his background, history and links with pressure groups I think that something is probably pro trans legislation. It is 2024 FFS, there's nothing nudge nudge or distasteful in stating this as a possibility.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
Interesting. This shows the strength of the notion of "fairness" which did for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng.
We know "gifts" to senior politicians have bene going on for years but now it's reached the limit of public acceptance just as proposals for cutting taxes for the very wealthy did a couple of years ago.
People want a level playing field and are tired of the "one rule for us, one rule for you" style of public life. Making politicans have the same rules as senior civil servants seems a way forward. If you want to go to a Taylor Swift concert, fine, pay for a ticket like everyone else. If you get an invite to go to Doncaster Races, fine, but declare it and ensure there's a transparent and accountable line.
Governing fairly is goign to be the challenge going forward - NOT having policies overtly favouring the people who voted for you or who support you and indeed being prepared to have policies which antagonise those groups in order to achieve something positive for the whole country.
Openness is not enough. The point of our sort of democracy is that government and parliament exist to be the servants of the poorest and least powerful to exactly the same extent as they are the servants of the well connected and wealthy, neither more nor less. It isn't possible to receive gifts more than trivial ones without incurring some sort of obligation, however unconscious.
The powerful and wealthy - I have no problem with their existence which is essential and inevitable - already have loads of help in getting their point across to government and parliament, just as they have access to the courts unlike ordinary people.
This ends up in all sorts of bad stuff, like the wealthy and well connected being protected (a late owner of Harrods comes to mind) and their victims being both legitimately afraid to speak out - the state is very powerful - and ignored when they do.
OK, but who pays the bills then? Who pays for political parties to function, for candidates to campaign? What is the alternative to donations?
Leaving aside the question of do we really need political parties for democracy to function*, it would clearly be better and cheaper to fund the parties through the state than fulfil the quids for the quos of the elite donations.
How many years of funding could we have had just from not paying £200m to Michelle Mone?
* I would say they can help but less party influence than we have now would be beneficial and in the US they have got to the stage that losing them would be a massive improvement.
That does lead to the problem that the people working out how much political parties get are MPs though...
My solution is a low limit (so three figures) on the maximum any one person or organisation can donate to any political party, and very strict limits on campaign spending so they don't need that much anyway. If they can get volunteers to go out and talk to people or put leaflets through doors then that is sort of point...
So if I were a Lib Dem party member and wanted to donate £1000 to the Party, I couldn't? No, this is nonsense.
Political parties in the modern age, just like any other "business", need money to exist. There's only so much volunteers can do and that's more about the on-ground campaigning.
The parties aren't the problem - if the only people who could run for office were the wealthy who could afford to, we'd have a pretty unrepresentative democracy. We need to make it much easier for people with low amounts of time and money to get involved in the political process.
£999 is plenty.
If I am reading the electoral commission correctly there were only 748 donors (of which 330 individuals) donating more than £500 in 2022. So it is fine for more than 99.99% of the population already.
What proportion of the donors above £1k really don't want any extra influence on policy or decisions in exchange for their donation? Why should the rest of us allow them that influence?
On topic, the British Museum Silk Road exhibition introduced me to this long lost civilisation. Iranian influence goes back a long way.
..Sogdia or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, and in present-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemenid Empire, and listed on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great. Sogdiana was first conquered by Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, and then was annexed by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 328 BC. It would continue to change hands under the Seleucid Empire, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, the Kushan Empire, the Sasanian Empire, the Hephthalite Empire, the Western Turkic Khaganate and the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana.
The Sogdian city-states, although never politically united, were centered on the city of Samarkand. Sogdian, an Eastern Iranian language, is no longer spoken. However, a descendant of one of its dialects, Yaghnobi, is still spoken by the Yaghnobis of Tajikistan. It was widely spoken in Central Asia as a lingua franca and served as one of the First Turkic Khaganate's court languages for writing documents... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogdia
I find that part of the world fascinating, not least because it seems so inhospitable a spot for a civilisation. The Nile, the Fertile Crescent, the Indus Valley, the Yangtze - all seem obvious cradles for great empires. Fertile, massive agricultural surpluses, dense populations... The impression I get of Persia and Central Asia is of a hot, dry, mountainous desert. I've never been, and I'm sure there are nuances here - but whenever I see it it doesn't look a sustaining landscape. Yet clearly it is, at least to some extent.
I think there’s also been a bit of climate change in the intervening thousands of years.
Indeed there has
When the people that built Gobekli Tepe were building Gobekli Tepe (and the Tas Tepeler) the surrounding country was Edenic. Rolling green hills with woodlands and rivers and abundant fauna, including many delicious creatures of the chase
Now it is a bleak semi desert
It has been suggested that mankind himself did this, by chopping down the trees and ploughing the meadows, and that the shame that overcame the first farmers led to them burying those temples, as an act of propitiation, like a Celtic chieftain hurling his sword in the Thames
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
I'd find it quite insulting if someone offered to buy me a suit.
Indeed and even worse for a man to offer to buy your wife's dresses
I have a theory (which is probably bollocks) that Alli probably had a fling with Lady Vicky, and is just buying her silence.
I suggest you do some rudimentary research on Lord Alli before posting this nonsense.
From LV's perspective though, from the rumours it could be a "spite shag".
Oh come on, I dislike Starmer loads, don’t like Labour at all but we surely aren’t going here with twisted gossip about politicians wives who cannot defend themselves and frankly shouldn’t have this sort of shot thrown around about them.
Grim stuff.
Particularly when Lord Alli is gay.
Some of the nudge nudge wink wink stuff has been pretty distasteful.
As if people can't compute the possibility that someone can just support a cause and want its standard-bearers to be the best and most effective they can be.
There have been plenty of money scandals where that hasn't been the case, but without any other evidence, it's the place to start.
Any actual examples of these utterly disinterested benefactors?
I think he's shopping for something and given his background, history and links with pressure groups I think that something is probably pro trans legislation. It is 2024 FFS, there's nothing nudge nudge or distasteful in stating this as a possibility.
What exactly is being said with blackface. I suppose it is that black people are, in and of themselves, comic objects or objects of derision. Plus the juxtaposition of someone white being something they're not.
But why is that inherently a) funny; or b) insulting.
If she had turned up as Viv Richards would that have been better or worse? What about Thor or the Black Panther.
I think the convention is that it is insulting and I am happy to go along with that but it probably needs some unpicking.
Quite. A party entitled "Come as your favourite cricketer" would seem that dressing as Sir Viv, putting on make up to try to look like him ought to be reasonable. As would be a black cricketer adopting white make up and a huge beard to be WG Grace.
If the person is pretending to be black as an insult its a different thing.
Culture moves on and what is generally accepted moves on. I am not a fan of judging historical events and people by the mores of today, be that an 18th C trader whose portfolio included the triangular trade or a cricketer at a party 10 years ago.
10 years ago is today, in cultural terms.
I don't think it is. Consider, for example, the example of Dara O'Briain having to apologise for a joke he made ten years ago on Mock the Week which no eyelid was batted about at the time.
The position of the conservative side of the culture wars isn't an attempt to go back to the 1950s. It's an attempt to go back to the early 2010s.
Is it ? Roe v Wade was "settled law" back then, for example.
Admittedly, we've not approached the culture war heights scaled by the US, but I doubt some of the right's culture warriors in this country would be happy with status quo 2010. See Europe, and freedom of movement, for example.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
I'd find it quite insulting if someone offered to buy me a suit.
Indeed and even worse for a man to offer to buy your wife's dresses
I have a theory (which is probably bollocks) that Alli probably had a fling with Lady Vicky, and is just buying her silence.
I suggest you do some rudimentary research on Lord Alli before posting this nonsense.
From LV's perspective though, from the rumours it could be a "spite shag".
Oh come on, I dislike Starmer loads, don’t like Labour at all but we surely aren’t going here with twisted gossip about politicians wives who cannot defend themselves and frankly shouldn’t have this sort of shot thrown around about them.
Grim stuff.
Particularly when Lord Alli is gay.
Some of the nudge nudge wink wink stuff has been pretty distasteful.
As if people can't compute the possibility that someone can just support a cause and want its standard-bearers to be the best and most effective they can be.
There have been plenty of money scandals where that hasn't been the case, but without any other evidence, it's the place to start.
Any actual examples of these utterly disinterested benefactors?
I think he's shopping for something and given his background, history and links with pressure groups I think that something is probably pro trans legislation. It is 2024 FFS, there's nothing nudge nudge or distasteful in stating this as a possibility.
Often suggested but I've seen no evidence of that. My guess is Lord Alli just likes being part of the in-crowd. Remember too that for him, the amounts are trivial.
ETA: you ask for other examples. I've not checked but off the top of my head, maybe Lady Bamford and Boris.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
Interesting. This shows the strength of the notion of "fairness" which did for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng.
We know "gifts" to senior politicians have bene going on for years but now it's reached the limit of public acceptance just as proposals for cutting taxes for the very wealthy did a couple of years ago.
People want a level playing field and are tired of the "one rule for us, one rule for you" style of public life. Making politicans have the same rules as senior civil servants seems a way forward. If you want to go to a Taylor Swift concert, fine, pay for a ticket like everyone else. If you get an invite to go to Doncaster Races, fine, but declare it and ensure there's a transparent and accountable line.
Governing fairly is goign to be the challenge going forward - NOT having policies overtly favouring the people who voted for you or who support you and indeed being prepared to have policies which antagonise those groups in order to achieve something positive for the whole country.
Openness is not enough. The point of our sort of democracy is that government and parliament exist to be the servants of the poorest and least powerful to exactly the same extent as they are the servants of the well connected and wealthy, neither more nor less. It isn't possible to receive gifts more than trivial ones without incurring some sort of obligation, however unconscious.
The powerful and wealthy - I have no problem with their existence which is essential and inevitable - already have loads of help in getting their point across to government and parliament, just as they have access to the courts unlike ordinary people.
This ends up in all sorts of bad stuff, like the wealthy and well connected being protected (a late owner of Harrods comes to mind) and their victims being both legitimately afraid to speak out - the state is very powerful - and ignored when they do.
OK, but who pays the bills then? Who pays for political parties to function, for candidates to campaign? What is the alternative to donations?
I agree this question is difficult. The actual problem I was addressing is that of individual enrichment rather than party coffers. To that second question the first answer I have is the one no-one thinks can be done: The return to individual mass membership of parties.
Until that day, the second best is absolute transparency about donations to parties and a culture which takes for granted that general political support is morally unrelated to personal enrichment whether it is a business, a union or an individual.
We have pretty good transparency about donations. The entire kerfuffle around donations we currently have is based on public declarations of those donations. There's not been much journalism that's gone beyond reading through the register of interests!
I take your point about personal enrichment, but it still seems odd to say you can't accept a gift worth a small amount that personally benefits you (tickets to a football match) but you can accept a gift that is 20 times larger for your campaign. But, sure, we could have different rules here.
I am also sympathetic to the point that some of the contentious donations really are about campaigning costs. Here's a Hello magazine article about Mrs Starmer's clothes, https://www.hellomagazine.com/fashion/celebrity-style/702212/keir-starmers-wife-victoria-best-outfits/ Or think back to the numerous press pieces about the Starmers going to see Taylor Swift perform. That's all good publicity for the party, makes them seem approachable and competent without anyone asking difficult questions about income tax rises.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
Interesting. This shows the strength of the notion of "fairness" which did for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng.
We know "gifts" to senior politicians have bene going on for years but now it's reached the limit of public acceptance just as proposals for cutting taxes for the very wealthy did a couple of years ago.
People want a level playing field and are tired of the "one rule for us, one rule for you" style of public life. Making politicans have the same rules as senior civil servants seems a way forward. If you want to go to a Taylor Swift concert, fine, pay for a ticket like everyone else. If you get an invite to go to Doncaster Races, fine, but declare it and ensure there's a transparent and accountable line.
Governing fairly is goign to be the challenge going forward - NOT having policies overtly favouring the people who voted for you or who support you and indeed being prepared to have policies which antagonise those groups in order to achieve something positive for the whole country.
Openness is not enough. The point of our sort of democracy is that government and parliament exist to be the servants of the poorest and least powerful to exactly the same extent as they are the servants of the well connected and wealthy, neither more nor less. It isn't possible to receive gifts more than trivial ones without incurring some sort of obligation, however unconscious.
The powerful and wealthy - I have no problem with their existence which is essential and inevitable - already have loads of help in getting their point across to government and parliament, just as they have access to the courts unlike ordinary people.
This ends up in all sorts of bad stuff, like the wealthy and well connected being protected (a late owner of Harrods comes to mind) and their victims being both legitimately afraid to speak out - the state is very powerful - and ignored when they do.
OK, but who pays the bills then? Who pays for political parties to function, for candidates to campaign? What is the alternative to donations?
Leaving aside the question of do we really need political parties for democracy to function*, it would clearly be better and cheaper to fund the parties through the state than fulfil the quids for the quos of the elite donations.
How many years of funding could we have had just from not paying £200m to Michelle Mone?
* I would say they can help but less party influence than we have now would be beneficial and in the US they have got to the stage that losing them would be a massive improvement.
That does lead to the problem that the people working out how much political parties get are MPs though...
My solution is a low limit (so three figures) on the maximum any one person or organisation can donate to any political party, and very strict limits on campaign spending so they don't need that much anyway. If they can get volunteers to go out and talk to people or put leaflets through doors then that is sort of point...
So if I were a Lib Dem party member and wanted to donate £1000 to the Party, I couldn't? No, this is nonsense.
Political parties in the modern age, just like any other "business", need money to exist. There's only so much volunteers can do and that's more about the on-ground campaigning.
The parties aren't the problem - if the only people who could run for office were the wealthy who could afford to, we'd have a pretty unrepresentative democracy. We need to make it much easier for people with low amounts of time and money to get involved in the political process.
£999 is plenty.
If I am reading the electoral commission correctly there were only 748 donors (of which 330 individuals) donating more than £500 in 2022. So it is fine for more than 99.99% of the population already.
What proportion of the donors above £1k really don't want any extra influence on policy or decisions in exchange for their donation? Why should the rest of us allow them that influence?
18-29 year olds going for Harris 2:1 - 64%-32% (Harvard Kennedy School poll)
In April, it was Biden 56 Trump 37.
I'm betting the polling models aren't making adequate allowance for the spike in voter registrations within this age group that are happening this year. :
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
I'd find it quite insulting if someone offered to buy me a suit.
Indeed and even worse for a man to offer to buy your wife's dresses
I have a theory (which is probably bollocks) that Alli probably had a fling with Lady Vicky, and is just buying her silence.
I suggest you do some rudimentary research on Lord Alli before posting this nonsense.
From LV's perspective though, from the rumours it could be a "spite shag".
Oh come on, I dislike Starmer loads, don’t like Labour at all but we surely aren’t going here with twisted gossip about politicians wives who cannot defend themselves and frankly shouldn’t have this sort of shot thrown around about them.
Grim stuff.
It seems rather bizarre to accuse Lord Alli, who is famously gay, of having an affair with a woman.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
The kinder progressive left in action.
Me? Thank you. I do try to shun the 'bombastic bruiser' approach to surfing the river of debate.
I think that there is a difference between a donation to a party, organisation, individual for campaigning purposes and a donation/gift in cash or kind for personal purposes.
We gift to charities, campaigning organisations that might not be charities, to benefit their activities. That is seen to be ok (although you can debate the worthiness of gifts to certain organisations).
But a personal gift to an individual could be seen as a bribe or at least compromising. This could be limited.
As said lots of professionals will have significant restrictions on the latter.
There is a gray area which could be both activity and personal. You could apply tax law as to what is wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the activity (eg clothing in the main would be personal).
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Unsarcastically, you might want to watch this:
"Shattered Nation: how to save Britain from becoming a failed state" (2023), Danny Dorling. A lecture at the David Hume Institute, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCUfqIND8mQ , 92mins.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Good luck. Keen to hear your report later.
Positive so far. Watford Gap as good as ever.
I presume you mean the service station, rather than the pleasant but slightly dull gap itself.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard. It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
I'd find it quite insulting if someone offered to buy me a suit.
Indeed and even worse for a man to offer to buy your wife's dresses
I have a theory (which is probably bollocks) that Alli probably had a fling with Lady Vicky, and is just buying her silence.
I suggest you do some rudimentary research on Lord Alli before posting this nonsense.
From LV's perspective though, from the rumours it could be a "spite shag".
Oh come on, I dislike Starmer loads, don’t like Labour at all but we surely aren’t going here with twisted gossip about politicians wives who cannot defend themselves and frankly shouldn’t have this sort of shot thrown around about them.
Grim stuff.
It seems rather bizarre to accuse Lord Alli, who is famously gay, of having an affair with a woman.
More bizarre that there was not even a tangential link to any of AI, lab leaks, pizza restaurants, aliens or Jewish space lasers. Surely everyone knows that at least one of those is required for a mad conspiracy story?
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
Interesting. This shows the strength of the notion of "fairness" which did for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng.
We know "gifts" to senior politicians have bene going on for years but now it's reached the limit of public acceptance just as proposals for cutting taxes for the very wealthy did a couple of years ago.
People want a level playing field and are tired of the "one rule for us, one rule for you" style of public life. Making politicans have the same rules as senior civil servants seems a way forward. If you want to go to a Taylor Swift concert, fine, pay for a ticket like everyone else. If you get an invite to go to Doncaster Races, fine, but declare it and ensure there's a transparent and accountable line.
Governing fairly is goign to be the challenge going forward - NOT having policies overtly favouring the people who voted for you or who support you and indeed being prepared to have policies which antagonise those groups in order to achieve something positive for the whole country.
Openness is not enough. The point of our sort of democracy is that government and parliament exist to be the servants of the poorest and least powerful to exactly the same extent as they are the servants of the well connected and wealthy, neither more nor less. It isn't possible to receive gifts more than trivial ones without incurring some sort of obligation, however unconscious.
The powerful and wealthy - I have no problem with their existence which is essential and inevitable - already have loads of help in getting their point across to government and parliament, just as they have access to the courts unlike ordinary people.
This ends up in all sorts of bad stuff, like the wealthy and well connected being protected (a late owner of Harrods comes to mind) and their victims being both legitimately afraid to speak out - the state is very powerful - and ignored when they do.
OK, but who pays the bills then? Who pays for political parties to function, for candidates to campaign? What is the alternative to donations?
Leaving aside the question of do we really need political parties for democracy to function*, it would clearly be better and cheaper to fund the parties through the state than fulfil the quids for the quos of the elite donations.
How many years of funding could we have had just from not paying £200m to Michelle Mone?
* I would say they can help but less party influence than we have now would be beneficial and in the US they have got to the stage that losing them would be a massive improvement.
For the year ending 2019, political parties reported expenditure of £169,103,000, according to the Electoral Commission. So Mone's £200m would pay for a year and a bit of party spending. Getting rid of parties wouldn't change this: candidates running as independents would still have the same costs.
I'm not aware of any Western democracy that has come up with a sensible way for the state to fund parties instead of donations, but I'm open to suggestions. (Some state funding occurs in most, of course.) How do you decide what parties (or candidates) get what? Can anyone just set up a party and ask for public funds? If you decide based on past electoral results, you favour established parties and build in a certain psephological conservatism. The Green Party were a significant upstart force at the recent general election and I note all of the elected Green MPs have declared substantial donations to their campaigns. I suspect these facts are related. A free market in donations means the system can track changing views, whereas any public funding will tend to be less responsive.
People here have been suggesting banning donations to individual candidates and just allowing them to parties. That would give parties more influence. If we want parties to have less influence, we presumably need to allow donations to individual candidates.
You should be able to make donations to “the office of the MP” - if you want to help an individual. It’s the gifting of personal items and entertainment that looks D A F.
I'm on a Teams call with various public sector types from various organisations. The conversation keeps drifting off topic to mock the Labour Party.
I'm vaguely astonished. For the last 30 years, in the circles I've moved in, nobody has mocked the Labour Party. I had put it down to an inherent left-wing lean among the types of people I interacted with - young (well, this was true 20 years ago), urban, public sector/public sector adjacent, northern types simply didn't mock the Labour party unless they knew each other very well - it was only one step away from admitting support for the Conservative Party. This was true whether Labour or Conservatives were in power. I do remember one rather good joke from my brother-in-law about Gordon Brown 15 years ago, but that was notable more for its rarity.
Yet two months into a Labour government they are already the subject of ridicule. Even Boris got more leeway than this at the start.
I'm not for a moment claiming that people are clamouring for the return of Rishi. But as TSE noted yesterday, I've never known a PM take over to such a lack of enthusiasm. Even Liz Truss got a bit of early credit for the way she handled Lizzydeath (though obviously spaffed away what little political credit she had with the minibudget, and SKS has already outlasted her).
Ooh, update, a brief joke about Liz Truss. And now more eyerolling about Labour "maybe if we bung them a pair of glasses they might be convinced".
My father (lifelong social democrat, ex labour councillor & party member) is livid.
Deeply unimpressed doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
I'd find it quite insulting if someone offered to buy me a suit.
Indeed and even worse for a man to offer to buy your wife's dresses
I have a theory (which is probably bollocks) that Alli probably had a fling with Lady Vicky, and is just buying her silence.
I suggest you do some rudimentary research on Lord Alli before posting this nonsense.
From LV's perspective though, from the rumours it could be a "spite shag".
Oh come on, I dislike Starmer loads, don’t like Labour at all but we surely aren’t going here with twisted gossip about politicians wives who cannot defend themselves and frankly shouldn’t have this sort of shot thrown around about them.
Grim stuff.
Particularly when Lord Alli is gay.
Some of the nudge nudge wink wink stuff has been pretty distasteful.
As if people can't compute the possibility that someone can just support a cause and want its standard-bearers to be the best and most effective they can be.
There have been plenty of money scandals where that hasn't been the case, but without any other evidence, it's the place to start.
Any actual examples of these utterly disinterested benefactors?
I think he's shopping for something and given his background, history and links with pressure groups I think that something is probably pro trans legislation. It is 2024 FFS, there's nothing nudge nudge or distasteful in stating this as a possibility.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Good luck. Keen to hear your report later.
Positive so far. Watford Gap as good as ever.
I presume you mean the service station, rather than the pleasant but slightly dull gap itself.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard. It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
Just listing service stations makes me feel like I'm on holiday.
* I don't recognise Stafford services. ** Always called South Gloucester in our family. I don't know why. Gloucester (which I think is its actual name) would be much less poetic. *** Bridgwater is poetic if a) you know nothing about the town, and b) you enjoy the slightly quirky lack of an 'e'. ****Taunton Deane is wonderful. "Where is Taunton Deane?" "Taunton" "So why not just call it Taunton?" "Because it's a British service station."
After Cullompton I consider myself on holiday. Just say it. "Cullompton." It has an air of finality to it - you've arrived. Let's not trouble ourselves with Exeter services, which is lazily named and which, unsatisfyingly, you arrive at through a regular junction on a motorway, and which we really don't need to trouble ourselves with unless someone really needs a wee.
It's the same coming home, with each successive service station building the anticipation of home, so by the time you see Knutsford you're almost giddy with the joy of your own bed at last and seeing the cats again.
I defy any red-blooded Brit not to be a tiny bit moved by the names of service stations.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Good luck. Keen to hear your report later.
Positive so far. Watford Gap as good as ever.
I presume you mean the service station, rather than the pleasant but slightly dull gap itself.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard. It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
Just listing service stations makes me feel like I'm on holiday.
* I don't recognise Stafford services. ** Always called South Gloucester in our family. I don't know why. Gloucester (which I think is its actual name) would be much less poetic. *** Bridgwater is poetic if a) you know nothing about the town, and b) you enjoy the slightly quirky lack of an 'e'. ****Taunton Deane is wonderful. "Where is Taunton Deane?" "Taunton" "So why not just call it Taunton?" "Because it's a British service station."
After Cullompton I consider myself on holiday. Just say it. "Cullompton." It has an air of finality to it - you've arrived. Let's not trouble ourselves with Exeter services, which is lazily named and which, unsatisfyingly, you arrive at through a regular junction on a motorway, and which we really don't need to trouble ourselves with unless someone really needs a wee.
It's the same coming home, with each successive service station building the anticipation of home, so by the time you see Knutsford you're almost giddy with the joy of your own bed at last and seeing the cats again.
I defy any red-blooded Brit not to be a tiny bit moved by the names of service stations.
I see that the unfortunate Mr Starmer has a new nickname
"No Beer Kier"
Another one that will stick. He really does himself no favours
I have noticed that cartoonists have a real spring in their step since this new Government came in. There was nothing new to do with the Rishi government. Now they can really get the barbs away.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Good luck. Keen to hear your report later.
Positive so far. Watford Gap as good as ever.
I presume you mean the service station, rather than the pleasant but slightly dull gap itself.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard. It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
Just listing service stations makes me feel like I'm on holiday.
* I don't recognise Stafford services. ** Always called South Gloucester in our family. I don't know why. Gloucester (which I think is its actual name) would be much less poetic. *** Bridgwater is poetic if a) you know nothing about the town, and b) you enjoy the slightly quirky lack of an 'e'. ****Taunton Deane is wonderful. "Where is Taunton Deane?" "Taunton" "So why not just call it Taunton?" "Because it's a British service station."
After Cullompton I consider myself on holiday. Just say it. "Cullompton." It has an air of finality to it - you've arrived. Let's not trouble ourselves with Exeter services, which is lazily named and which, unsatisfyingly, you arrive at through a regular junction on a motorway, and which we really don't need to trouble ourselves with unless someone really needs a wee.
It's the same coming home, with each successive service station building the anticipation of home, so by the time you see Knutsford you're almost giddy with the joy of your own bed at last and seeing the cats again.
I defy any red-blooded Brit not to be a tiny bit moved by the names of service stations.
If you don’t know this song I think you will enjoy it!
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Good luck. Keen to hear your report later.
Positive so far. Watford Gap as good as ever.
I presume you mean the service station, rather than the pleasant but slightly dull gap itself.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard. It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
Just listing service stations makes me feel like I'm on holiday.
* I don't recognise Stafford services. ** Always called South Gloucester in our family. I don't know why. Gloucester (which I think is its actual name) would be much less poetic. *** Bridgwater is poetic if a) you know nothing about the town, and b) you enjoy the slightly quirky lack of an 'e'. ****Taunton Deane is wonderful. "Where is Taunton Deane?" "Taunton" "So why not just call it Taunton?" "Because it's a British service station."
After Cullompton I consider myself on holiday. Just say it. "Cullompton." It has an air of finality to it - you've arrived. Let's not trouble ourselves with Exeter services, which is lazily named and which, unsatisfyingly, you arrive at through a regular junction on a motorway, and which we really don't need to trouble ourselves with unless someone really needs a wee.
It's the same coming home, with each successive service station building the anticipation of home, so by the time you see Knutsford you're almost giddy with the joy of your own bed at last and seeing the cats again.
I defy any red-blooded Brit not to be a tiny bit moved by the names of service stations.
Does "House of Bruar" count?
I would guess they must include a fuel stop.
Bruar makes the farm shop at Gloucester Services look reasonably priced. Nice smoked venison tho'.
Not sure the tone is right here? If people are criticising me it’s water off a ducks back, is noisy politics/populism and I’m just ignoring it, is a bit of a weird stance.
I see that the unfortunate Mr Starmer has a new nickname
"No Beer Kier"
Another one that will stick. He really does himself no favours
Yup, for all of the denial from lefties around the nicknames, they are sticking. I can see it on Instagram, "Two Tier Kier" makes an appearance any time there's anything about politics on Instagram and this is among mostly politically unengaged people. Closing the pubs early has also made it to Instagram and I saw "No Beer Kier" as well so all of this is sticking to him.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Good luck. Keen to hear your report later.
Positive so far. Watford Gap as good as ever.
I presume you mean the service station, rather than the pleasant but slightly dull gap itself.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard. It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
Just listing service stations makes me feel like I'm on holiday.
* I don't recognise Stafford services. ** Always called South Gloucester in our family. I don't know why. Gloucester (which I think is its actual name) would be much less poetic. *** Bridgwater is poetic if a) you know nothing about the town, and b) you enjoy the slightly quirky lack of an 'e'. ****Taunton Deane is wonderful. "Where is Taunton Deane?" "Taunton" "So why not just call it Taunton?" "Because it's a British service station."
After Cullompton I consider myself on holiday. Just say it. "Cullompton." It has an air of finality to it - you've arrived. Let's not trouble ourselves with Exeter services, which is lazily named and which, unsatisfyingly, you arrive at through a regular junction on a motorway, and which we really don't need to trouble ourselves with unless someone really needs a wee.
It's the same coming home, with each successive service station building the anticipation of home, so by the time you see Knutsford you're almost giddy with the joy of your own bed at last and seeing the cats again.
I defy any red-blooded Brit not to be a tiny bit moved by the names of service stations.
If you don’t know this song I think you will enjoy it!
Thanks! I was aware of it, but I don't think I've ever listened to it all the way through, and not at all for a good 30 years. I was expecting it to be someone had made a song out of service station names in the idiom of Jay Foreman's tube station song ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jPyg2pK11M ). But of course it wasn't that, it was Flanders and Swann's incomparable 'The Slow Train'. It gave me the tingle. And also brought forth unbidden tears. The combined emotional power of music (which is hardwired), comedy (because it lowers your defences) and trains. All mixed with the poetry of British place names.
Worth adding that happily you can now go from St. Erth to St. Ives, and also that Chorlton cum Hardy is now accessible by tram. I think F&S would take some small happiness from that at least.
What exactly is being said with blackface. I suppose it is that black people are, in and of themselves, comic objects or objects of derision. Plus the juxtaposition of someone white being something they're not.
But why is that inherently a) funny; or b) insulting.
If she had turned up as Viv Richards would that have been better or worse? What about Thor or the Black Panther.
I think the convention is that it is insulting and I am happy to go along with that but it probably needs some unpicking.
Quite. A party entitled "Come as your favourite cricketer" would seem that dressing as Sir Viv, putting on make up to try to look like him ought to be reasonable. As would be a black cricketer adopting white make up and a huge beard to be WG Grace.
If the person is pretending to be black as an insult its a different thing.
Culture moves on and what is generally accepted moves on. I am not a fan of judging historical events and people by the mores of today, be that an 18th C trader whose portfolio included the triangular trade or a cricketer at a party 10 years ago.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Good luck. Keen to hear your report later.
Positive so far. Watford Gap as good as ever.
I presume you mean the service station, rather than the pleasant but slightly dull gap itself.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard. It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
Just listing service stations makes me feel like I'm on holiday.
* I don't recognise Stafford services. ** Always called South Gloucester in our family. I don't know why. Gloucester (which I think is its actual name) would be much less poetic. *** Bridgwater is poetic if a) you know nothing about the town, and b) you enjoy the slightly quirky lack of an 'e'. ****Taunton Deane is wonderful. "Where is Taunton Deane?" "Taunton" "So why not just call it Taunton?" "Because it's a British service station."
After Cullompton I consider myself on holiday. Just say it. "Cullompton." It has an air of finality to it - you've arrived. Let's not trouble ourselves with Exeter services, which is lazily named and which, unsatisfyingly, you arrive at through a regular junction on a motorway, and which we really don't need to trouble ourselves with unless someone really needs a wee.
It's the same coming home, with each successive service station building the anticipation of home, so by the time you see Knutsford you're almost giddy with the joy of your own bed at last and seeing the cats again.
I defy any red-blooded Brit not to be a tiny bit moved by the names of service stations.
Does "House of Bruar" count?
I would guess they must include a fuel stop.
Bruar makes the farm shop at Gloucester Services look reasonably priced. Nice smoked venison tho'.
It buys from the local Netherend Farm and therefore offers Netherend butter, which cyclists will find entertaining.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile Tweeted this yesterday and then a load of people pointed out they do have a problem with the gifts themselves, because MPs legislated/regulated to ban huge swathes of workers like them from accepting such gifts, due to the risk of corruption. Which is a fair point.
Robert Colvile @rcolvile · 2h ‘It is deeply wrong for a banker/civil servant to accept dinner from a client but my Taylor Swift tickets are just fine’ does have a certain inconsistency.
Interesting. This shows the strength of the notion of "fairness" which did for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng.
We know "gifts" to senior politicians have bene going on for years but now it's reached the limit of public acceptance just as proposals for cutting taxes for the very wealthy did a couple of years ago.
People want a level playing field and are tired of the "one rule for us, one rule for you" style of public life. Making politicans have the same rules as senior civil servants seems a way forward. If you want to go to a Taylor Swift concert, fine, pay for a ticket like everyone else. If you get an invite to go to Doncaster Races, fine, but declare it and ensure there's a transparent and accountable line.
Governing fairly is goign to be the challenge going forward - NOT having policies overtly favouring the people who voted for you or who support you and indeed being prepared to have policies which antagonise those groups in order to achieve something positive for the whole country.
Openness is not enough. The point of our sort of democracy is that government and parliament exist to be the servants of the poorest and least powerful to exactly the same extent as they are the servants of the well connected and wealthy, neither more nor less. It isn't possible to receive gifts more than trivial ones without incurring some sort of obligation, however unconscious.
The powerful and wealthy - I have no problem with their existence which is essential and inevitable - already have loads of help in getting their point across to government and parliament, just as they have access to the courts unlike ordinary people.
This ends up in all sorts of bad stuff, like the wealthy and well connected being protected (a late owner of Harrods comes to mind) and their victims being both legitimately afraid to speak out - the state is very powerful - and ignored when they do.
That's a coherent position of course once we've defined "trivial". There are instances where the Head of Government, rather than the Head of State, participates in events as part of that role and I presume you've no objection to those. An example the Chancellor gives the Mansion House Speech and presumably gets dinner, do they accept that as a "gift" or as part of the function of their duties? The latter, I believe.
Your last two paragraphs are very close to my view on this and why we need more than free speech, we need fair speech. The problem looking at it the other way is it also enables false accusations or allegations to be made with reputational and emotional damage to the innocent party.
Yes. As head of government, ministers etc they get all sorts of duties, some irksome, some pleasant. That runs with the job, though not every invitation is appropriate to accept.
It is an essential difference between the UK now and our own pre-Victorian history, and much of the world in abroadland, that public servants are servants not masters, and they are remunerated by salary etc, not by private perks (for example Samuel Pepys made himself wealthy on what we would call corruption, but was then normal), and that the job is its own reward, with additionally the reputation and skill they can bring to the market place after that phase of their career.
As to trivial, as chair of governors for many years of a school with a turnover of 6-7 million, I did once get given a jar of jam and a packet of biscuits at Christmas.
We had a chair of governors who was C something O at a Big company: he used to provide small gifts to staff (bottles of something sparkling at Christmas etc.) rather than expecting to be given anything.
There was an organisation that I am only indirectly involved in now, it was a care home run as a charity. The board all used to get turkeys at christmas, the accounting was regularly that a new set of curtains and televisions were of greater numbers than actually ended up in the homes. The board was made of appointed councillors from the local county council.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Good luck. Keen to hear your report later.
Positive so far. Watford Gap as good as ever.
I presume you mean the service station, rather than the pleasant but slightly dull gap itself.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard. It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
Just listing service stations makes me feel like I'm on holiday.
* I don't recognise Stafford services. ** Always called South Gloucester in our family. I don't know why. Gloucester (which I think is its actual name) would be much less poetic. *** Bridgwater is poetic if a) you know nothing about the town, and b) you enjoy the slightly quirky lack of an 'e'. ****Taunton Deane is wonderful. "Where is Taunton Deane?" "Taunton" "So why not just call it Taunton?" "Because it's a British service station."
After Cullompton I consider myself on holiday. Just say it. "Cullompton." It has an air of finality to it - you've arrived. Let's not trouble ourselves with Exeter services, which is lazily named and which, unsatisfyingly, you arrive at through a regular junction on a motorway, and which we really don't need to trouble ourselves with unless someone really needs a wee.
It's the same coming home, with each successive service station building the anticipation of home, so by the time you see Knutsford you're almost giddy with the joy of your own bed at last and seeing the cats again.
I defy any red-blooded Brit not to be a tiny bit moved by the names of service stations.
Does "House of Bruar" count?
I would guess they must include a fuel stop.
Sure, why not? Doesn't have fuel but it has a poetic name. Unlike Stafford.
I see that the unfortunate Mr Starmer has a new nickname
"No Beer Kier"
Another one that will stick. He really does himself no favours
Yup, for all of the denial from lefties around the nicknames, they are sticking. I can see it on Instagram, "Two Tier Kier" makes an appearance any time there's anything about politics on Instagram and this is among mostly politically unengaged people. Closing the pubs early has also made it to Instagram and I saw "No Beer Kier" as well so all of this is sticking to him.
Maybe people finally waking up from Covid-era censoriousness.
On topic; if the 'Civil War' or 'Revolution' scenarios play out then the West needs to ensure that a bunch of Iranian Hardliners don't end up being granted asylum and protection by the nations they hate. We need to be ok with Ceaușescu-like outcomes.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Good luck. Keen to hear your report later.
Positive so far. Watford Gap as good as ever.
I presume you mean the service station, rather than the pleasant but slightly dull gap itself.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard. It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
Just listing service stations makes me feel like I'm on holiday.
* I don't recognise Stafford services. ** Always called South Gloucester in our family. I don't know why. Gloucester (which I think is its actual name) would be much less poetic. *** Bridgwater is poetic if a) you know nothing about the town, and b) you enjoy the slightly quirky lack of an 'e'. ****Taunton Deane is wonderful. "Where is Taunton Deane?" "Taunton" "So why not just call it Taunton?" "Because it's a British service station."
After Cullompton I consider myself on holiday. Just say it. "Cullompton." It has an air of finality to it - you've arrived. Let's not trouble ourselves with Exeter services, which is lazily named and which, unsatisfyingly, you arrive at through a regular junction on a motorway, and which we really don't need to trouble ourselves with unless someone really needs a wee.
It's the same coming home, with each successive service station building the anticipation of home, so by the time you see Knutsford you're almost giddy with the joy of your own bed at last and seeing the cats again.
I defy any red-blooded Brit not to be a tiny bit moved by the names of service stations.
Does "House of Bruar" count?
I would guess they must include a fuel stop.
Sure, why not? Doesn't have fuel but it has a poetic name. Unlike Stafford.
I can provide a comprehensive guide to food stops on the A9 next time someone heads up there. Bruar is good for pies and clean toilets.
I see that the unfortunate Mr Starmer has a new nickname
"No Beer Kier"
Another one that will stick. He really does himself no favours
Yup, for all of the denial from lefties around the nicknames, they are sticking. I can see it on Instagram, "Two Tier Kier" makes an appearance any time there's anything about politics on Instagram and this is among mostly politically unengaged people. Closing the pubs early has also made it to Instagram and I saw "No Beer Kier" as well so all of this is sticking to him.
Giving Dodgy Dave nicknames worked out well for the left in the 2015 general election.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Unsarcastically, you might want to watch this:
"Shattered Nation: how to save Britain from becoming a failed state" (2023), Danny Dorling. A lecture at the David Hume Institute, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCUfqIND8mQ , 92mins.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Good luck. Keen to hear your report later.
Positive so far. Watford Gap as good as ever.
I presume you mean the service station, rather than the pleasant but slightly dull gap itself.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard. It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
Just listing service stations makes me feel like I'm on holiday.
* I don't recognise Stafford services. ** Always called South Gloucester in our family. I don't know why. Gloucester (which I think is its actual name) would be much less poetic. *** Bridgwater is poetic if a) you know nothing about the town, and b) you enjoy the slightly quirky lack of an 'e'. ****Taunton Deane is wonderful. "Where is Taunton Deane?" "Taunton" "So why not just call it Taunton?" "Because it's a British service station."
After Cullompton I consider myself on holiday. Just say it. "Cullompton." It has an air of finality to it - you've arrived. Let's not trouble ourselves with Exeter services, which is lazily named and which, unsatisfyingly, you arrive at through a regular junction on a motorway, and which we really don't need to trouble ourselves with unless someone really needs a wee.
It's the same coming home, with each successive service station building the anticipation of home, so by the time you see Knutsford you're almost giddy with the joy of your own bed at last and seeing the cats again.
I defy any red-blooded Brit not to be a tiny bit moved by the names of service stations.
Does "House of Bruar" count?
I would guess they must include a fuel stop.
Sure, why not? Doesn't have fuel but it has a poetic name. Unlike Stafford.
Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden vowed to table an emergency resolution at his party's conference to halt any alleged change to venue licensing times "if that's on the agenda".
Fair enough that McFadden is desperate to intervene and stop this madness, but it does smack of a rearguard action, and what if he's not successful?
The Mail story answers it's own question in the final paragraph. The answer in "no".
You can't deny that all this fake news from the Telegraph and the Mail propagated on here by Leon, Urquhart and many more is damaging Starmer. It is cutting through.
The Mail story answers it's own question in the final paragraph. The answer in "no".
You can't deny that all this fake news from the Telegraph and the Mail propagated on here by Leon, Urquhart and many more is damaging Starmer. It is cutting through.
Water off a duck's back says Sir Keir. Liked that line.
The Mail story answers it's own question in the final paragraph. The answer in "no".
You can't deny that all this fake news from the Telegraph and the Mail propagated on here by Leon, Urquhart and many more is damaging Starmer. It is cutting through.
Well it wasn't really fake news. It was reporting something that Andrew Gwynne actually said. I mean it's good news that it's bollocks, but the only reason the story started is because there were elements in government who were keen to hint it might happen.
Sgheir Toolmakyrsson looked out On the Feast of Stephen When the snow lay 'round about Deep and crisp and even Brightly shone the moon that night Though the frost was cruel When a poor man came in sight Gath'ring winter fuel
"Hither, page, and stand by me If thou know'st it, telling Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?" "Sire, he is a pensioner But just above the breadline" "Take his fuel" says good Sir Keir "Never mind the headlines."
...
Therefore, Christian men, be sure Wealth or rank possessing Ye who now dress Lady S Shall yourselves find blessing.
The Mail story answers it's own question in the final paragraph. The answer in "no".
You can't deny that all this fake news from the Telegraph and the Mail propagated on here by Leon, Urquhart and many more is damaging Starmer. It is cutting through.
Well it wasn't really fake news. It was reporting something that Andrew Gwynne actually said. I mean it's good news that it's bollocks, but the only reason the story started is because there were elements in government who were keen to hint it might happen.
Did you read the actual full quote from Gwynne last night, or just the clips in the Trashygraph?
Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden vowed to table an emergency resolution at his party's conference to halt any alleged change to venue licensing times "if that's on the agenda".
Fair enough that McFadden is desperate to intervene and stop this madness, but it does smack of a rearguard action, and what if he's not successful?
It ain't a policy, never was, and ain't happening.
The Mail story answers it's own question in the final paragraph. The answer in "no".
You can't deny that all this fake news from the Telegraph and the Mail propagated on here by Leon, Urquhart and many more is damaging Starmer. It is cutting through.
Well it wasn't really fake news. It was reporting something that Andrew Gwynne actually said. I mean it's good news that it's bollocks, but the only reason the story started is because there were elements in government who were keen to hint it might happen.
Not just the government, this idea has been around for ages coming from the Chris Whitty types who see elected politicians as an obstacle to their perfect technocratic utopia. I wouldn't be surprised if he (or one of his cronies) was involved with briefing this out just after the 2/3rds pint stories.
I see that the unfortunate Mr Starmer has a new nickname
"No Beer Kier"
Another one that will stick. He really does himself no favours
Yup, for all of the denial from lefties around the nicknames, they are sticking. I can see it on Instagram, "Two Tier Kier" makes an appearance any time there's anything about politics on Instagram and this is among mostly politically unengaged people. Closing the pubs early has also made it to Instagram and I saw "No Beer Kier" as well so all of this is sticking to him.
Giving Dodgy Dave nicknames worked out well for the left in the 2015 general election.
David Chameleon was a classic of the genre, even better than the seminal Tony Bliar.
Nationwide - The new deals will enable a couple earning £50,000 between them to borrow £300,000.
6 * joint salary is absolute madness lol.
If they have steady jobs and can afford the monthly payments what’s the problem? Better than paying the same/more in rent and paying off someone else’s home loan
That is the exact mentality that led to 2008
If they have steady jobs - what happens if one of them loses their job? Or has to give it up to care for a family member? Or gets sick?
They can afford the monthly payments - interest rates are still very low, historically. What happens if they go up? In the next 20 years.
I got a 100% mortgage in the mid-00s. It worked me and my wife, so I'm loathe to moralise about others. The alternative is paying someone else's home loan at probably greater expense.
It’s not about moralising. It’s about risk management.
To a large extent, house prices are a function of what you can borrow. Increasing borrowing, like this, just allows house prices to rise further.
And creates an increased vulnerability for the people borrowing and the financial system.
That's a matter for the lender(s). I'm saying that if I were part of a young couple in those circumstances, I'd almost certainly go for it. Who can blame them? It's a better deal for them than renting.
It's good for the lender in the short term (More money lent = more customers, more income) and good for the couple (Can get on the ladder) - but it creates major issues and systemic risk long term as @Malmesbury and @LostPassword have pointed out. The next lever I guess that banks might pull is never actually worrying about the capital of a mortgage to be paid off for owner occupiers once a certain LTV is reached (This might already be the case, it's something I personally won't be looking at when I remortgage shortly though !)
The banks could perhaps parcel up their high risk property finance book and sell it off as bonds, rinse and repeat, thus freeing up capacity to make ever more and ever more riskier loans. Those bonds could then be hedged for credit risk in the CDS market so that investors are protected against default. And the income stream from the sellers of the CDSs could in turn be securitized and offered as bonds, which could in turn be hedged via CDS, kind of derivative upon derivative, meaning each £1 of original retail mortgage finance ends up supporting lots of capital markets activity and numerous assets and liabilities on many many balance sheets across the sector. Everyone a winner.
Ah, thank god for “The Big Short” allowing everyone to sound seemingly intelligent about the sub prime crisis.
Oi, snide little twat. I was in the thick of it. It's one of the few things I know more than the average bear about.
Haha! Sorry Kinabalu, so it was all your fault?
Yup. And before that I had a specialism in facilitating PFI contracts. My hands are as dirty as they come.
That's one of the reasons I'm on here busting a gut to win hearts and minds for the progressive left. Trying to balance up the ledger.
Well yes, and good for you. Unfortunately you are doing it by advocating for an authoritarian cheese-paring curtain-twitching government
Hmm, ok, noted. But I do think we should wait for a few policies and outcomes before writing the book.
Anyway, off to the Red Wall now. I might be some time.
Good luck. Keen to hear your report later.
Positive so far. Watford Gap as good as ever.
I presume you mean the service station, rather than the pleasant but slightly dull gap itself.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard. It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
Just listing service stations makes me feel like I'm on holiday.
* I don't recognise Stafford services. ** Always called South Gloucester in our family. I don't know why. Gloucester (which I think is its actual name) would be much less poetic. *** Bridgwater is poetic if a) you know nothing about the town, and b) you enjoy the slightly quirky lack of an 'e'. ****Taunton Deane is wonderful. "Where is Taunton Deane?" "Taunton" "So why not just call it Taunton?" "Because it's a British service station."
After Cullompton I consider myself on holiday. Just say it. "Cullompton." It has an air of finality to it - you've arrived. Let's not trouble ourselves with Exeter services, which is lazily named and which, unsatisfyingly, you arrive at through a regular junction on a motorway, and which we really don't need to trouble ourselves with unless someone really needs a wee.
It's the same coming home, with each successive service station building the anticipation of home, so by the time you see Knutsford you're almost giddy with the joy of your own bed at last and seeing the cats again.
I defy any red-blooded Brit not to be a tiny bit moved by the names of service stations.
South Mimms Skelton Lake Woolley Edge
But then you end up at somewhere like Scotch Corner, which sounds like it should be glorious but is an absolute shit hole.
Does anyone have fond memories of the early 1990s?
First girlfriend? Does that count?
It was my favourite period musically. My most listened-to musical period is still 1990-1992. The Pixies and the Wedding Present were still extant and baggy was in its heyday.
Actually, ages 14-17 were a really good period of my life - I was starting to interact with girls and alcoholic drinks and other things I could do with my emerging freedom. It wasn't that the times were better than they are now, objectively; it was that the trajectory with which each year was better than the last was so good. And that, my friends, is the real key to happiness.
Does anyone have fond memories of the early 1990s?
First girlfriend? Does that count?
It was my favourite period musically. My most listened-to musical period is still 1990-1992. The Pixies and the Wedding Present were still extant and baggy was in its heyday.
Actually, ages 14-17 were a really good period of my life - I was starting to interact with girls and alcoholic drinks and other things I could do with my emerging freedom. It wasn't that the times were better than they are now, objectively; it was that the trajectory with which each year was better than the last was so good. And that, my friends, is the real key to happiness.
So you're saying Starmer is establishing a very low baseline on purpose?
Comments
That’s still pretty fruity for most payloads. Sure, you can pot electronics to survive that. But it’s limiting.
Orbital speed is Mach 25. So you need to find 20 Mach (yes, I know, non existent unit) which means most of your projectile will be rocket engine and fuel. Plus you need to circularise.
So you are really talking about shooting high performance rockets out of a gun. Which provides a bit of starting velocity.
This has all been looked at before.
I'm not aware of any Western democracy that has come up with a sensible way for the state to fund parties instead of donations, but I'm open to suggestions. (Some state funding occurs in most, of course.) How do you decide what parties (or candidates) get what? Can anyone just set up a party and ask for public funds? If you decide based on past electoral results, you favour established parties and build in a certain psephological conservatism. The Green Party were a significant upstart force at the recent general election and I note all of the elected Green MPs have declared substantial donations to their campaigns. I suspect these facts are related. A free market in donations means the system can track changing views, whereas any public funding will tend to be less responsive.
People here have been suggesting banning donations to individual candidates and just allowing them to parties. That would give parties more influence. If we want parties to have less influence, we presumably need to allow donations to individual candidates.
For that one I happily stood up at planning committee and explained how too faced their were...
The position of the conservative side of the culture wars isn't an attempt to go back to the 1950s. It's an attempt to go back to the early 2010s.
I think he's shopping for something and given his background, history and links with pressure groups I think that something is probably pro trans legislation. It is 2024 FFS, there's nothing nudge nudge or distasteful in stating this as a possibility.
If I am reading the electoral commission correctly there were only 748 donors (of which 330 individuals) donating more than £500 in 2022. So it is fine for more than 99.99% of the population already.
What proportion of the donors above £1k really don't want any extra influence on policy or decisions in exchange for their donation? Why should the rest of us allow them that influence?
When the people that built Gobekli Tepe were building Gobekli Tepe (and the Tas Tepeler) the surrounding country was Edenic. Rolling green hills with woodlands and rivers and abundant fauna, including many delicious creatures of the chase
Now it is a bleak semi desert
It has been suggested that mankind himself did this, by chopping down the trees and ploughing the meadows, and that the shame that overcame the first farmers led to them burying those temples, as an act of propitiation, like a Celtic chieftain hurling his sword in the Thames
Let's see what happens.
Roe v Wade was "settled law" back then, for example.
Admittedly, we've not approached the culture war heights scaled by the US, but I doubt some of the right's culture warriors in this country would be happy with status quo 2010. See Europe, and freedom of movement, for example.
ETA: you ask for other examples. I've not checked but off the top of my head, maybe Lady Bamford and Boris.
I take your point about personal enrichment, but it still seems odd to say you can't accept a gift worth a small amount that personally benefits you (tickets to a football match) but you can accept a gift that is 20 times larger for your campaign. But, sure, we could have different rules here.
I am also sympathetic to the point that some of the contentious donations really are about campaigning costs. Here's a Hello magazine article about Mrs Starmer's clothes, https://www.hellomagazine.com/fashion/celebrity-style/702212/keir-starmers-wife-victoria-best-outfits/ Or think back to the numerous press pieces about the Starmers going to see Taylor Swift perform. That's all good publicity for the party, makes them seem approachable and competent without anyone asking difficult questions about income tax rises.
2811 donors of which 1210 individuals.
My point remains.
In April, it was Biden 56 Trump 37.
I'm betting the polling models aren't making adequate allowance for the spike in voter registrations within this age group that are happening this year. :
I don't remember much else about that time. Maybe the two are linked?
I certainly do.
We gift to charities, campaigning organisations that might not be charities, to benefit their activities. That is seen to be ok (although you can debate the worthiness of gifts to certain organisations).
But a personal gift to an individual could be seen as a bribe or at least compromising. This could be limited.
As said lots of professionals will have significant restrictions on the latter.
There is a gray area which could be both activity and personal. You could apply tax law as to what is wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the activity (eg clothing in the main would be personal).
"Shattered Nation: how to save Britain from becoming a failed state" (2023), Danny Dorling. A lecture at the David Hume Institute, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCUfqIND8mQ , 92mins.
I love service stations. Even crappy ones. A sense of excitement of the journey, of existing outside the normal rules. Yes kids, we will stop for a KFC! Because we're on a road trip.
I also love that they are named after such tiny bits of geography. Watford Gap. Leicester Forest East. Trowell. Tibshelf. Woolley Edge. Birch. Charnock Richard.
It's found poetry.
We used to do that with airports. Ringway. Speke. Dyce. No longer, sadly, apart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Happy that we are bloody-mindedly sticking with those at any rate, rather than follow the global trend of naming them after politicians or other notables.
"No Beer Kier"
Another one that will stick. He really does himself no favours
Deeply unimpressed doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Like a wet dream for the right.
Knutsford. Sandbach. Keele. *. Hilton Park. Frankley. Strensham. South Gloucester**. Michaelwood. Gordano. Sedgemoor. Bridgwater***. Taunton Deane****. Cullompton.
* I don't recognise Stafford services.
** Always called South Gloucester in our family. I don't know why. Gloucester (which I think is its actual name) would be much less poetic.
*** Bridgwater is poetic if a) you know nothing about the town, and b) you enjoy the slightly quirky lack of an 'e'.
****Taunton Deane is wonderful. "Where is Taunton Deane?" "Taunton" "So why not just call it Taunton?" "Because it's a British service station."
After Cullompton I consider myself on holiday. Just say it. "Cullompton." It has an air of finality to it - you've arrived. Let's not trouble ourselves with Exeter services, which is lazily named and which, unsatisfyingly, you arrive at through a regular junction on a motorway, and which we really don't need to trouble ourselves with unless someone really needs a wee.
It's the same coming home, with each successive service station building the anticipation of home, so by the time you see Knutsford you're almost giddy with the joy of your own bed at last and seeing the cats again.
I defy any red-blooded Brit not to be a tiny bit moved by the names of service stations.
No doubt filed alongside "Big queer Kier", "one year Kier" and "Kier the sneer".
Sounding like Trump flailing about for Komrade Kambala
I would guess they must include a fuel stop.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U6OHD2uCpfU
There's a strong lobby in favour of it.
https://alcoholchange.org.uk/blog/mup-in-england-myths-and-facts
I was expecting it to be someone had made a song out of service station names in the idiom of Jay Foreman's tube station song ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jPyg2pK11M ). But of course it wasn't that, it was Flanders and Swann's incomparable 'The Slow Train'.
It gave me the tingle. And also brought forth unbidden tears. The combined emotional power of music (which is hardwired), comedy (because it lowers your defences) and trains. All mixed with the poetry of British place names.
Worth adding that happily you can now go from St. Erth to St. Ives, and also that Chorlton cum Hardy is now accessible by tram. I think F&S would take some small happiness from that at least.
I found Ed Davey's speech much more interesting and entertaining.
https://news.sky.com/story/pubs-are-great-part-of-british-life-and-labour-wont-change-opening-hours-minister-says-13221170
Trowell
Leicester Forest East
Ugh.
Fair enough that McFadden is desperate to intervene and stop this madness, but it does smack of a rearguard action, and what if he's not successful?
You can't deny that all this fake news from the Telegraph and the Mail propagated on here by Leon, Urquhart and many more is damaging Starmer. It is cutting through.
Sausage?! SAUSAGE?! Argh, blast your eyes!
"I call, again, for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The return of the sausages. The hostages."
I could almost have sworn he also called for a "two steak solution"
ETA: Never give a speech on an empty stomach?
Good afternoon, everybody.
I mean it's good news that it's bollocks, but the only reason the story started is because there were elements in government who were keen to hint it might happen.
On the Feast of Stephen
When the snow lay 'round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gath'ring winter fuel
"Hither, page, and stand by me
If thou know'st it, telling
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?"
"Sire, he is a pensioner
But just above the breadline"
"Take his fuel" says good Sir Keir
"Never mind the headlines."
...
Therefore, Christian men, be sure
Wealth or rank possessing
Ye who now dress Lady S
Shall yourselves find blessing.
Take it from me.
Though she didn't sleep through the night for two and a half years...
Some other notable monikers:
Theresa MayDay
Bozo Johnson
'Liz' TRUSS
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-labour-conference-speech-ftc0b6hvx
And goodness, granting of asylum!
He's pitching for Casino's vote.
Skelton Lake
Woolley Edge
But then you end up at somewhere like Scotch Corner, which sounds like it should be glorious but is an absolute shit hole.
Actually, ages 14-17 were a really good period of my life - I was starting to interact with girls and alcoholic drinks and other things I could do with my emerging freedom. It wasn't that the times were better than they are now, objectively; it was that the trajectory with which each year was better than the last was so good. And that, my friends, is the real key to happiness.
Alternatively, fix the benefits system, so people are less inclined to not declare work.