Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
The helpful political news for them is that at least in numbers terms absolute net migration is inevitably going to come down over the next couple of years, purely as a function of maths.
Possible that small boat crossings decline too, as it doesn't seem to have a particularly big summer in the Med this year so the pipeline for next summer might be down. Certainly the numbers in the latter part of this season have been substantially down on earlier in the year. I doubt that has anything to do with the change of government, but it's optically convenient.
Question is whether anti-elite populism keeps surging regardless. It's not all about immigration after all. Partly that is in Labour's gift: they need to give people hope and a bit of optimism.
The real objection of the far right is not only to immigration present and future, it is to migration that has already happened. Once migration slows down (if it does) then the question of whether the far right turns its attention to migration past is important.
“Remigration” is the term the Far Right uses, for this
I reckon this ugly idea is going to enter the mainstream of politics, via the rise of the Far Right parties across Europe. eg Austria yesterday. Once these parties start actually winning elections, the dam breaks
The far right gets about 35% of the vote across Europe. This is probably a ceiling for the moment. In normal politics people would be forming coalitions with them (NL the exception ) but left \centrists\ soft right are having a boycott.
In Saxony we have the odd spectacle of the CDU refusing to go in to coalition with "the heirs to Hitler" but quite content to fom a government with "the heirs to Stalin". Who of course murdered many more people.
How long this will continue who knows. But we are getting to elections where something will have to break.
Alcohol prices up in Scotland today due to MUP up to 65p
Well done SNP, a winning policy. Even though alcohol related deaths increased when they promised the introduction of MUP would see them fall the policy is a winner as its advocates have said.
Doesn't higher supermarket alcohol prices in Scotland mean that the supermarkets can keep their prices lower in England.
IIRC wine prices haven't increased for over a decade (if you use the regular 25% discount for six) and its not difficult to buy 500ml beer for £1.
The minimum alcohol price increase won’t affect the price of a decent bottle of wine, or a pint of beer in the pub, which, hopefully, will encourage people to go to the pub instead of drinking at home. I’m not bothered if it makes multipacks of piss like Tennents or Bud Lite dearer. The initial minimum price law practically wiped out sales of stuff like White Lightning in Scotland. I don’t see that as a bad thing. Where I disagree with the policy is that the supermarkets benefit from the higher margins, not the Government.
Look at how benzo (valium and related drugs) use - and deaths from said drugs - rocketed in Scotland in the aftermath of minimum unit pricing.
A £2.50 can of spesh, or a 20p knock off pill.
Plus, as they both affect the same receptors in the brain, they potentiate each other, i.e. you can have one 20p pill and it will make the effects of a single can £2.50 can much stronger.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
Forget any ideas of a coalition with Reform.
A rabble of malcontents is incapable of doing any form of governing.
Any attempt would fall apart quicker that the Truss government.
If Badenoch or Jenrick are elected Tory leader a Reform and Tory deal is very likely, if Tugendhat or Cleverly are elected it isn't. Regardless of what such a government may look like
Then you should be praying for Ms Enoch or Jenrique
Neutralising Reform is essential for the Tories
Yet they can't regain a majority without taking a big chunk of new home counties yellow wall.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
If the LDs went into coalition with either Reform or the DUP I would be off tout de suite.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
I honestly just don't see what was wrong with her thoughts on maternity pay. Are we saying this is a policy area where no one can question the costs or the length of time or the regulations on business?
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
She’s not totally wrong, but as ever the bigger issue is the cost of housing that makes it impossible for many couples to live on one salary while they have pre-school children.
Or alternatively it is both couples doing paid work that has had an impact on increasing house prices so much
That’s a factor, but the largest factors are a shortage of housing and the willingness of banks to lend ever-higher salary multiples.
There was a discussion here last week about a bank lending 6x joint salary, which with current interest rates would result in mortgage payments of half their combined take-home pay.
I did like the suggestion that a couple spending half their take home pay on housing was just fine.
If anything goes slightly wrong, they can live on fresh air, I presume.
It would be an absolutely terrifying position to be in, only needs a tick up in interest rates, redundancy, sickness, divorce, or even maternity, to be totally upside-down on your monthly finances.
Even a general recession or an increase in local housebuilding, could leave you upside-down despite keeping your jobs.
Look at the extreme volatility of the last five years, and think how that might have affected a couple so overloaded with debt. It’s irresponsible lending, and the banks are only doing it to prop up the housing market in general.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
Forget any ideas of a coalition with Reform.
A rabble of malcontents is incapable of doing any form of governing.
Any attempt would fall apart quicker that the Truss government.
If Badenoch or Jenrick are elected Tory leader a Reform and Tory deal is very likely, if Tugendhat or Cleverly are elected it isn't. Regardless of what such a government may look like
Then you should be praying for Ms Enoch or Jenrique
Neutralising Reform is essential for the Tories
To ensure the Tories remain main opposition and are not overtaken by Reform yes, to have any chance of winning a majority again the Tories need to win back centrist voters lost to Labour and the LDs too
The only Conservative post-2016 who has proven he has the ability to create an election-winning coalition is Boris Johnson.
A temporary and fragile coalition, as it turned out. Though it's notable that not a few of the members interviewed at their conference brought up the idea of bringing him back as leader. Which arguably shows how much work the party has to sort itself out.
sundersays.bsky.social @sundersays.bsky.social · 1h It is hard to appeal to Reform voters and swing voters at the same time - because Reform voters are simply massive outliers in public attitudes to immigration, in contrast to Conservatives, never mind Con/LD and Con/Lab swing voters
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
Forget any ideas of a coalition with Reform.
A rabble of malcontents is incapable of doing any form of governing.
Any attempt would fall apart quicker that the Truss government.
If Badenoch or Jenrick are elected Tory leader a Reform and Tory deal is very likely, if Tugendhat or Cleverly are elected it isn't. Regardless of what such a government may look like
So Badenoch Jenrick = chance of getting back in to government Cleverly Tugendhat = hello wilderness
Badenoch or Jenrick's only chance of getting back in to government would be on Farage's terms, it would be Farage dictating terms to them for his support.
Cleverly and Tugendhat however could get back into government on their own terms, as they could win an overall majority if Starmer's government is unpopular enough
Why did Kemi even get involved in the maternity pay thing?
Seems an odd and random subject to raise in the middle of a leadership campaign? Perhaps she doesn't really want to become LOTO?
She’s not very good, I did warn you, she’s like Corbyn, apparently it is a smear to use her own words against her.
She’s a mix of interesting and lightweight
Question for Tories is: would she grow in the job, gain some wisdom, or be a cute black William Hague (elevated far too young)
I suspect the latter, unfortunately. But if the Tories fancy a gamble, that might just pay off: she’s the one
It's kind of easy for you or me to say this, as we have no particular stake in the party. I can see that if you were a member to whom the Conservative Party was a Precious Thing you might be rather keener to go for a low risk option who probably wouldn't break the party but also who probably wouldn't get you more than a moderately sized step back towards a majority at the next election. But for what? What is the Conservative Party actually for, if not governing. (Or more to the point, for stopping a Labour government.) She's the only one with a chance of a change in the Conservative Party fortunes in the short term (not least because she's the only one who's unapologetically conservative).
I suspect that Badenoch has -probably- missed out on the final two now. Slight chance she squeezes in at the expense of Cleverly / Tugendhat.
This one might be a good contest to lose though.
I have posted before that imho she's not yet ready for prime time. Maybe yesterday confirm this.
Lose gracefully now and be available in two years when Jenrick is ousted.
FWIW I think she'd be an interesting LOTO but she wont lead them back to office.
Badenoch is 44 years old and acts like a not particularly mature teenager. When do you think she will be ready for prime time?
I do agree assumptions behind policies should be challenged and changed when they don't deliver the best balance of outcomes. There's a good example of that with Winter Fuel Payment. Maternity pay needs to balance costs for business against making childcare and employment work for mothers.
I see she's ditched the specs (presumably for contacts) which shows that she's put some not particulalry deep thought into how she comes over.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly, a tragedy waiting to happen.
They were supposed to be fixing 13/14 at Piccadilly two decades ago, when I was a regular visitor to Manchester for work and play. It was horrifically overcrowded at peak times way back then.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
At Euston they’ve replaced the main departure boards with adverts and the new departure boards are unreadable unless you’re stood in front of them.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
I honestly just don't see what was wrong with her thoughts on maternity pay. Are we saying this is a policy area where no one can question the costs or the length of time or the regulations on business?
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
She’s not totally wrong, but as ever the bigger issue is the cost of housing that makes it impossible for many couples to live on one salary while they have pre-school children.
Or alternatively it is both couples doing paid work that has had an impact on increasing house prices so much
It's both. House prices have risen with the existence of many more dual incomes, and we have far more duel income families than we used to because house prices have risen so much. But all of that is only because housing demand is very inelastic and supply very tightly constrained.
If we did what we can to reduce demand (net zero migration) and un-constrain supply (make planning permission far less difficult to get, dial back building regs so build costs aren't so sky high), then house prices would drop (at least in real terms), and thus the pressure on couples to earn two fulltime wages would fall too. Which in turn would almost certainly do more to encourage people to have kids than more maternity pay.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
If the LDs went into coalition with either Reform or the DUP I would be off tout de suite.
Purely as a thought experiment, what if it were purely to legislate in PR, and then hold an immediate election ? There are, of course, plenty of practical reasons why that might not be a workable idea, but in principle ?
Alcohol prices up in Scotland today due to MUP up to 65p
Well done SNP, a winning policy. Even though alcohol related deaths increased when they promised the introduction of MUP would see them fall the policy is a winner as its advocates have said.
Doesn't higher supermarket alcohol prices in Scotland mean that the supermarkets can keep their prices lower in England.
IIRC wine prices haven't increased for over a decade (if you use the regular 25% discount for six) and its not difficult to buy 500ml beer for £1.
The recent changes to alcohol duty have has an unfortunate side effect - to keep wine down to £5 (say, big cheap brand like Isla Negra) or £5.50 (say, my previous daily drinker Waitrose Italian Red), the alcoholic strength has been reduced from 12.5% to 10.5%. Fine as far as it goes, but to make up for the lack of body that results, they've been increasing the residual sugar levels.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
I honestly just don't see what was wrong with her thoughts on maternity pay. Are we saying this is a policy area where no one can question the costs or the length of time or the regulations on business?
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
She’s not totally wrong, but as ever the bigger issue is the cost of housing that makes it impossible for many couples to live on one salary while they have pre-school children.
Or alternatively it is both couples doing paid work that has had an impact on increasing house prices so much
It's both. House prices have risen with the existence of many more dual incomes, and we have far more duel income families than we used to because house prices have risen so much. But all of that is only because housing demand is very inelastic and supply very tightly constrained.
If we did what we can to reduce demand (net zero migration) and un-constrain supply (make planning permission far less difficult to get, dial back building regs so build costs aren't so sky high), then house prices would drop (at least in real terms), and thus the pressure on couples to earn two fulltime wages would fall too. Which in turn would almost certainly do more to encourage people to have kids than more maternity pay.
And there would be follow on economic effects from people having money to spend (or even invest!!!!!!) on other things than housing.....
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
The helpful political news for them is that at least in numbers terms absolute net migration is inevitably going to come down over the next couple of years, purely as a function of maths.
Possible that small boat crossings decline too, as it doesn't seem to have a particularly big summer in the Med this year so the pipeline for next summer might be down. Certainly the numbers in the latter part of this season have been substantially down on earlier in the year. I doubt that has anything to do with the change of government, but it's optically convenient.
Question is whether anti-elite populism keeps surging regardless. It's not all about immigration after all. Partly that is in Labour's gift: they need to give people hope and a bit of optimism.
The real objection of the far right is not only to immigration present and future, it is to migration that has already happened. Once migration slows down (if it does) then the question of whether the far right turns its attention to migration past is important.
“Remigration” is the term the Far Right uses, for this
I reckon this ugly idea is going to enter the mainstream of politics, via the rise of the Far Right parties across Europe. eg Austria yesterday. Once these parties start actually winning elections, the dam breaks
The far right gets about 35% of the vote across Europe. This is probably a ceiling for the moment. In normal politics people would be forming coalitions with them (NL the exception ) but left \centrists\ soft right are having a boycott.
In Saxony we have the odd spectacle of the CDU refusing to go in to coalition with "the heirs to Hitler" but quite content to fom a government with "the heirs to Stalin". Who of course murdered many more people.
How long this will continue who knows. But we are getting to elections where something will have to break.
Merz is more rightwing than Merkel as CDU Federal leader, he may do a deal with the SPD or Greens over the AfD (even if his preferred coalition partner would be the FDP). I suspect he would draw the line at doing a deal including Linke or the BSW over the AfD
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
I find some of the tube stations in London pretty scary too, sardines right up to the platform edge.
In today's 'elf and safety, kinda astonishing it's allowed to happen.
Nigel Farage telling the Conservative Party no matter how much you pander, I will out-pander you every time.
That's probably right. Unless I have him completely wrong Farage is never going to place himself in a position where he has to take some responsibility for governing the country.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
If the LDs went into coalition with either Reform or the DUP I would be off tout de suite.
Purely as a thought experiment, what if it were purely to legislate in PR, and then hold an immediate election ? There are, of course, plenty of practical reasons why that might not be a workable idea, but in principle ?
Yep I am ok with that in principle. But as you say it is probably not workable due to the time they would have to govern as a coalition.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
If the LDs went into coalition with either Reform or the DUP I would be off tout de suite.
We need to keep an eye on the figures for SPLORG. If they go over 50% it will be interesting. SF/DUP/LD/Reform coaltion here we come.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
If the LDs went into coalition with either Reform or the DUP I would be off tout de suite.
Purely as a thought experiment, what if it were purely to legislate in PR, and then hold an immediate election ? There are, of course, plenty of practical reasons why that might not be a workable idea, but in principle ?
Yep I am ok with that in principle. But as you say it is probably not workable due to the time they would have to govern as a coalition.
If PR is ever to happen, of course, something at least analogous to that will need to happen - and you also need to think about what the immediate aftermath of its introduction is likely to be like.
Torys need to decide if they want to defeat the extreme/populist right or become the extreme/populist right.
Which policies of Reform would you classify as extreme right?
There are none. Reform is populist, not extreme. The dangers of populism are more subtle than the dangers of overt extremes, since populism relies on the attractiveness of simple solutions to complex realities. (To be fair to the hard pressed new government, useless though they have been, they did not rely on populism). Extremeists wait in the wings.
Shrivelling (the number rather than the members of course) in Scotland. I read that in the 90s the SCons had a membership of over 30k, mind-blowing in a decade when they returned zero MPs.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly, a tragedy waiting to happen.
In both cases, it needs multiple passenger complaints to HSE with requests for an investigation. It will probably only happen after someone is killed. 😟
F1: while my race bets have been poor (not helped by all the bad luck I avoided in flukey 2023 arriving to this season), the season bets have been rather better. I backed Norris at 29 for the title, can be hedged at 2.5, and the 4 on McLaren for the title has fallen to 1.05 (which might still be worth backing although I loathe odds that short).
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
If the LDs went into coalition with either Reform or the DUP I would be off tout de suite.
Purely as a thought experiment, what if it were purely to legislate in PR, and then hold an immediate election ? There are, of course, plenty of practical reasons why that might not be a workable idea, but in principle ?
Yep I am ok with that in principle. But as you say it is probably not workable due to the time they would have to govern as a coalition.
If PR is ever to happen, of course, something at least analogous to that will need to happen - and you also need to think about what the immediate aftermath of its introduction is likely to be like.
Most likely an electorate that votes hard against those imposing the change and a second election.
Leading to the likes of Tommy Robinson and George Galloway sitting as MPs, alongside dozens of their fellow travellers on the political extremes. We’d have a Just Stop Oil Party, a Proud Boys Party, and a Gaza First Party.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
If the LDs went into coalition with either Reform or the DUP I would be off tout de suite.
Purely as a thought experiment, what if it were purely to legislate in PR, and then hold an immediate election ? There are, of course, plenty of practical reasons why that might not be a workable idea, but in principle ?
Yep I am ok with that in principle. But as you say it is probably not workable due to the time they would have to govern as a coalition.
If PR is ever to happen, of course, something at least analogous to that will need to happen - and you also need to think about what the immediate aftermath of its introduction is likely to be like.
Good point as the aftermath is likely to be dramatic in terms of the parties that will evolve from it, but that will take time I think, so I suspect the first election will have parties as now if called soon after the change, but I suspect that after that the parties will all breakup and new parties formed along the lines of Communist, Socialist, Social Democrat, Liberal, Centre Right, Popularist, Green, Fascist. Maybe not Communist or Fascist.
Alcohol prices up in Scotland today due to MUP up to 65p
Well done SNP, a winning policy. Even though alcohol related deaths increased when they promised the introduction of MUP would see them fall the policy is a winner as its advocates have said.
Doesn't higher supermarket alcohol prices in Scotland mean that the supermarkets can keep their prices lower in England.
IIRC wine prices haven't increased for over a decade (if you use the regular 25% discount for six) and its not difficult to buy 500ml beer for £1.
The minimum alcohol price increase won’t affect the price of a decent bottle of wine, or a pint of beer in the pub, which, hopefully, will encourage people to go to the pub instead of drinking at home. I’m not bothered if it makes multipacks of piss like Tennents or Bud Lite dearer. The initial minimum price law practically wiped out sales of stuff like White Lightning in Scotland. I don’t see that as a bad thing. Where I disagree with the policy is that the supermarkets benefit from the higher margins, not the Government.
Exactly , teh money should have been ringfenced to help the alkies or their families.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
Forget any ideas of a coalition with Reform.
A rabble of malcontents is incapable of doing any form of governing.
Any attempt would fall apart quicker that the Truss government.
If Badenoch or Jenrick are elected Tory leader a Reform and Tory deal is very likely, if Tugendhat or Cleverly are elected it isn't. Regardless of what such a government may look like
So Badenoch Jenrick = chance of getting back in to government Cleverly Tugendhat = hello wilderness
Badenoch or Jenrick's only chance of getting back in to government would be on Farage's terms, it would be Farage dictating terms to them for his support.
Cleverly and Tugendhat however could get back into government on their own terms, as they could win an overall majority if Starmer's government is unpopular enough
Super weird "Most Read" section of the BBC website. Everything gets its own story apart from Badenoch and Israel.
I lolled. Even the most insane CiF articles would struggle to conflate the two.
Duh, it's the summary of newspaper front pages - are they supposed to make a separate web page per newspaper?
Yes, we've been through this already and Topping has already fallen out with Nigel about it. It was nothing more than an odd headline - I didn't click on it (it was an image) and I don't think we need to read anything into it - I accept that there is a reason for it. But the apparent juxtaposition made me laugh. I'd suggest 'newspaper headlines' might be a more helpful link label.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Yes, and Manchester is very much in favour of this being an underground solution (DfT originally opposed an underground station in Manchester for high speed rail, but had made 'well, perhaps' noises of late in relation to NPR).
Even this though will not address the current issues relating to Central Manchester capacity on the existing network - which in the absence of doubling the Castlefield Corridor requires another underground alignment (separate from HS2/NPR).
Alcohol prices up in Scotland today due to MUP up to 65p
Well done SNP, a winning policy. Even though alcohol related deaths increased when they promised the introduction of MUP would see them fall the policy is a winner as its advocates have said.
Doesn't higher supermarket alcohol prices in Scotland mean that the supermarkets can keep their prices lower in England.
IIRC wine prices haven't increased for over a decade (if you use the regular 25% discount for six) and its not difficult to buy 500ml beer for £1.
The minimum alcohol price increase won’t affect the price of a decent bottle of wine, or a pint of beer in the pub, which, hopefully, will encourage people to go to the pub instead of drinking at home. I’m not bothered if it makes multipacks of piss like Tennents or Bud Lite dearer. The initial minimum price law practically wiped out sales of stuff like White Lightning in Scotland. I don’t see that as a bad thing. Where I disagree with the policy is that the supermarkets benefit from the higher margins, not the Government.
Look at how benzo (valium and related drugs) use - and deaths from said drugs - rocketed in Scotland in the aftermath of minimum unit pricing.
A £2.50 can of spesh, or a 20p knock off pill.
Plus, as they both affect the same receptors in the brain, they potentiate each other, i.e. you can have one 20p pill and it will make the effects of a single can £2.50 can much stronger.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
If the LDs went into coalition with either Reform or the DUP I would be off tout de suite.
Purely as a thought experiment, what if it were purely to legislate in PR, and then hold an immediate election ? There are, of course, plenty of practical reasons why that might not be a workable idea, but in principle ?
Yep I am ok with that in principle. But as you say it is probably not workable due to the time they would have to govern as a coalition.
If PR is ever to happen, of course, something at least analogous to that will need to happen - and you also need to think about what the immediate aftermath of its introduction is likely to be like.
Good point as the aftermath is likely to be dramatic in terms of the parties that will evolve from it, but that will take time I think, so I suspect the first election will have parties as now if called soon after the change, but I suspect that after that the parties will all breakup and new parties formed along the lines of Communist, Socialist, Social Democrat, Liberal, Centre Right, Popularist, Green, Fascist. Maybe not Communist or Fascist.
I think it would be the other way around. Over time things would settle down, but in the immediate aftermath millions will take the opportunity to vote for communists and fascists.
Look to the UKGE in Scotland 2015 for an example, where in the aftermath of the referendum there was a very sharp swing to the SNP.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
The helpful political news for them is that at least in numbers terms absolute net migration is inevitably going to come down over the next couple of years, purely as a function of maths.
Possible that small boat crossings decline too, as it doesn't seem to have a particularly big summer in the Med this year so the pipeline for next summer might be down. Certainly the numbers in the latter part of this season have been substantially down on earlier in the year. I doubt that has anything to do with the change of government, but it's optically convenient.
Question is whether anti-elite populism keeps surging regardless. It's not all about immigration after all. Partly that is in Labour's gift: they need to give people hope and a bit of optimism.
The real objection of the far right is not only to immigration present and future, it is to migration that has already happened. Once migration slows down (if it does) then the question of whether the far right turns its attention to migration past is important.
“Remigration” is the term the Far Right uses, for this
I reckon this ugly idea is going to enter the mainstream of politics, via the rise of the Far Right parties across Europe. eg Austria yesterday. Once these parties start actually winning elections, the dam breaks
The far right gets about 35% of the vote across Europe. This is probably a ceiling for the moment. In normal politics people would be forming coalitions with them (NL the exception ) but left \centrists\ soft right are having a boycott.
In Saxony we have the odd spectacle of the CDU refusing to go in to coalition with "the heirs to Hitler" but quite content to fom a government with "the heirs to Stalin". Who of course murdered many more people.
How long this will continue who knows. But we are getting to elections where something will have to break.
Merz is more rightwing than Merkel as CDU Federal leader, he may do a deal with the SPD or Greens over the AfD (even if his preferred coalition partner would be the FDP). I suspect he would draw the line at doing a deal including Linke or the BSW over the AfD
What kind of government can he form ? It all comes down to the electoral arithmetic. Merz will crack and do a deal with the BSW if he has to. A conservative communist alliance. Its insane.
S Korea's new bunker buster missile is enormous. Likely designed to make the rocket man realise he wouldn't survive a first strike, without S Korea having to go nuclear.
Hyunmoo-V was fully revealed along with other new variants of Hyunmoo series missiles just before the parade. This almost ICBM class bizarre ballistic missile that most destructive conventional missile ever created is 36tons of total weight and equipped with 8~9tons of specially designed warhead.. https://x.com/mason_8718/status/1840652747428987265
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Yes, and Manchester is very much in favour of this being an underground solution (DfT originally opposed an underground station in Manchester for high speed rail, but had made 'well, perhaps' noises of late in relation to NPR).
Even this though will not address the current issues relating to Central Manchester capacity on the existing network - which in the absence of doubling the Castlefield Corridor requires another underground alignment (separate from HS2/NPR).
I really wouldn't want multiple alignments underground in Manchester because that would probably scupper any chance of a proper metro long term.
Best to have a single cross city route and then solve the connection issues at a ground level outside of Manchester.
S Korea's new bunker buster missile is enormous. Likely designed to make the rocket man realise he wouldn't survive a first strike, without S Korea having to go nuclear.
Hyunmoo-V was fully revealed along with other new variants of Hyunmoo series missiles just before the parade. This almost ICBM class bizarre ballistic missile that most destructive conventional missile ever created is 36tons of total weight and equipped with 8~9tons of specially designed warhead.. https://x.com/mason_8718/status/1840652747428987265
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
If the LDs went into coalition with either Reform or the DUP I would be off tout de suite.
I think almost all of us would.... So we can discount that possibility.
Why did Kemi even get involved in the maternity pay thing?
Seems an odd and random subject to raise in the middle of a leadership campaign? Perhaps she doesn't really want to become LOTO?
She’s not very good, I did warn you, she’s like Corbyn, apparently it is a smear to use her own words against her.
She’s a mix of interesting and lightweight
Question for Tories is: would she grow in the job, gain some wisdom, or be a cute black William Hague (elevated far too young)
I suspect the latter, unfortunately. But if the Tories fancy a gamble, that might just pay off: she’s the one
A total DUD
Nah. That's Jenrick.
She's a risk. Could work. Might not. She'll certainly make an impact one way or the other.
The much safer choices are, of course, Cleverly and Tugendhat. But they don't appear to have a chance in a face-off with Jenrick. So the "sensible" course would be Kemi.
UNLESS the party conference throws things, as it did in 2005, with Cameron emerging on the basis of his walkabout.
Failing that, the main talking point is whether the Tug/Cleverly MP supporters prefer to keep backing their men, or whether stopping Jenrick is the priority, in which case they transfer to Kemi. We'll see.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Absolutely. The Manchester tunnel is justified by the both Northern Powerhouse and HS2 using it. Which is why I would prioritise it over the Euston link. Accept Old Oak Common will be the terminus station for London for the next twenty to thirty years. Add extra platforms at that station (there's space for them) and put more capacity onto the Elizabeth Line
S Korea's new bunker buster missile is enormous. Likely designed to make the rocket man realise he wouldn't survive a first strike, without S Korea having to go nuclear.
Hyunmoo-V was fully revealed along with other new variants of Hyunmoo series missiles just before the parade. This almost ICBM class bizarre ballistic missile that most destructive conventional missile ever created is 36tons of total weight and equipped with 8~9tons of specially designed warhead.. https://x.com/mason_8718/status/1840652747428987265
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Absolutely. The Manchester tunnel is justified by the both Northern Powerhouse and HS2 using it. Which is why I would prioritise it over the Euston link. Accept Old Oak Common will be the terminus station for London for the next twenty to thirty years. Add extra platforms at that station (there's space for them) and put more capacity onto the Elizabeth Line
My prediction is that "add platforms at OOC and increase Liz line capacity", i.e. bugger about with the scope and plans yet again, would cost more and take longer than just doing the thing we planned to do from the start.
Why did Kemi even get involved in the maternity pay thing?
Seems an odd and random subject to raise in the middle of a leadership campaign? Perhaps she doesn't really want to become LOTO?
She’s not very good, I did warn you, she’s like Corbyn, apparently it is a smear to use her own words against her.
She’s a mix of interesting and lightweight
Question for Tories is: would she grow in the job, gain some wisdom, or be a cute black William Hague (elevated far too young)
I suspect the latter, unfortunately. But if the Tories fancy a gamble, that might just pay off: she’s the one
A total DUD
Nah. That's Jenrick.
She's a risk. Could work. Might not. She'll certainly make an impact one way or the other.
The much safer choices are, of course, Cleverly and Tugendhat. But they don't appear to have a chance in a face-off with Jenrick. So the "sensible" course would be Kemi.
UNLESS the party conference throws things, as it did in 2005, with Cameron emerging on the basis of his walkabout.
Failing that, the main talking point is whether the Tug/Cleverly MP supporters prefer to keep backing their men, or whether stopping Jenrick is the priority, in which case they transfer to Kemi. We'll see.
Whoever will be a stopgap fro sure , none have any charisma or talent. Tories need to find a new Messiah in the desert.
S Korea's new bunker buster missile is enormous. Likely designed to make the rocket man realise he wouldn't survive a first strike, without S Korea having to go nuclear.
Hyunmoo-V was fully revealed along with other new variants of Hyunmoo series missiles just before the parade. This almost ICBM class bizarre ballistic missile that most destructive conventional missile ever created is 36tons of total weight and equipped with 8~9tons of specially designed warhead.. https://x.com/mason_8718/status/1840652747428987265
Rocket man could face the same fate as those in the Beirut bunker - they survived the blast, but the air circulation system didn't and they died of asphyxiation....
Listening to the 'member question time' at the Tory Conference, a decent range of contributions, but the response from the platform is a speech largely ignoring the responses afaics.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Absolutely. The Manchester tunnel is justified by the both Northern Powerhouse and HS2 using it. Which is why I would prioritise it over the Euston link. Accept Old Oak Common will be the terminus station for London for the next twenty to thirty years. Add extra platforms at that station (there's space for them) and put more capacity onto the Elizabeth Line
Except - there is no spare capacity on the Lizzie Line, especially not for the amount required. (believe me I've already checked that in the past)..
But this does emphasis the mess we are in,
Euston needs improvements for capacity reasons at both the mainline and tfl levels. The Tfl work was attached to Crossrail 2, the mainline work attached to HS2 but it really should have been separate projects.
Manchesters HS2 design was a dead end - as I think all of us who talk about it on here agree HS2 and NPR should be being considered together and designed so that both projects can occur.
Worth saying Tottenham Court Road's Lizzie Line took so long because all the ground work for Crossrail 2 was done as part of the CR1 project as it was known to be the main interchange point.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Absolutely. The Manchester tunnel is justified by the both Northern Powerhouse and HS2 using it. Which is why I would prioritise it over the Euston link. Accept Old Oak Common will be the terminus station for London for the next twenty to thirty years. Add extra platforms at that station (there's space for them) and put more capacity onto the Elizabeth Line
My prediction is that "add platforms at OOC and increase Liz line capacity", i.e. bugger about with the scope and plans yet again, would cost more and take longer than just doing the thing we planned to do from the start.
Worth noting that, although Euston station is on hold, tunnelling between OOC and Euston is to commence shortly:
sundersays.bsky.social @sundersays.bsky.social · 1h It is hard to appeal to Reform voters and swing voters at the same time - because Reform voters are simply massive outliers in public attitudes to immigration, in contrast to Conservatives, never mind Con/LD and Con/Lab swing voters
I think there are two ways to bridge that sort of divide.
1. Actually change a substantial number of people's views, so that the divide is not too large. Two ways of doing that, either change Reform voters into more moderate centre-right voters, or vice versa (which is what Trump achieved in the US).
2. Face an opponent/issue against which both sets of voters have so much antipathy that they will bury their differences temporarily (again Trump benefited from this facing Hilary Clinton in 2016, as did Johnson twice over in 2019 against Corbyn and the second voters).
Badenoch told the BBC last night that she has had "maternity leave" three times.
Yet according to Guardian blog yesterday Ashcroft's memoire of her says when she was at Spectator and had second child she resigned rather than take maternity leave.
"She told me she thought it would be unfair to ask us to keep her job open while she was on maternity leave,” Fraser Nelson, the Spectator editor, is quoted in the book as saying."
True. Throwing valuable objects (particularly metal) into water is old, old magic. And the oldest Gods live in the water (particularly springs - hence, I suppose, the fountain connection.) Archaeological (is it archaeological if you dive rather than dig?) evidence shows that goes back to pre-Roman Britain at least. An echo of this can be found in the return of excalibur to the water.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Absolutely. The Manchester tunnel is justified by the both Northern Powerhouse and HS2 using it. Which is why I would prioritise it over the Euston link. Accept Old Oak Common will be the terminus station for London for the next twenty to thirty years. Add extra platforms at that station (there's space for them) and put more capacity onto the Elizabeth Line
My prediction is that "add platforms at OOC and increase Liz line capacity", i.e. bugger about with the scope and plans yet again, would cost more and take longer than just doing the thing we planned to do from the start.
Compared with a now unachievable original business case it does add cost. This a question of what is higher priority? Sorting out a chronic lack of railway capacity in the Manchester area or improving connections in London? With no dog either way, I would definitely go for Manchester.
One good thing about Old Oak Common is there is space for more platforms. It shouldn't cost too much in the scheme of things.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Absolutely. The Manchester tunnel is justified by the both Northern Powerhouse and HS2 using it. Which is why I would prioritise it over the Euston link. Accept Old Oak Common will be the terminus station for London for the next twenty to thirty years. Add extra platforms at that station (there's space for them) and put more capacity onto the Elizabeth Line
Except - there is no spare capacity on the Lizzie Line, especially not for the amount required. (believe me I've already checked that in the past)..
But this does emphasis the mess we are in,
Euston needs improvements for capacity reasons at both the mainline and tfl levels. The Tfl work was attached to Crossrail 2, the mainline work attached to HS2 but it really should have been separate projects.
Manchesters HS2 design was a dead end - as I think all of us who talk about it on here agree HS2 and NPR should be being considered together and designed so that both projects can occur.
Worth saying Tottenham Court Road's Lizzie Line took so long because all the ground work for Crossrail 2 was done as part of the CR1 project as it was known to be the main interchange point.
They have the option of buying more trainsets for the Elizabeth Line. They should take that option.
We think it’s for fun or luck or whatever, but actually it’s a distant relative of human/animal sacrifice: an offering to the Gods, of something precious
Consider Celtic warrior chieftains, they found it near impossible to pass by a river without chucking in a valuable sword or a beautiful shield
Strange how these welfare payments have developed into sacred cows. First, winter fuel allowance, now matenrity pay, the slightest suggestion they are either unnecessary or in need of reform and a bucketload of ordure falls on the person making a suggestion.
Yet we are happy to continue running a deficit and borrowing at least £100 billion per year which we know is unsupportable. It will have to be substantial tax rises because there is clearly no public stomach for any spending cuts.
Mr. Leon, numerous kings, perhaps most famously Attila*, were buried with treasures in temporarily dried riverbeds before the water was allowed to resume its course over them.
True. Throwing valuable objects (particularly metal) into water is old, old magic. And the oldest Gods live in the water (particularly springs - hence, I suppose, the fountain connection.) Archaeological (is it archaeological if you dive rather than dig?) evidence shows that goes back to pre-Roman Britain at least. An echo of this can be found in the return of excalibur to the water.
It’s remarkable that we still have these deep, primitive, reflexive religious drives
Circumcision is just human sacrifice somewhat attenuated with bogus explanations. The Aztecs were much more honest: they used to pierce their penises with maguey thorns. Then offer the bloodied thorns to the Gods of Tenochtitlan
We think it’s for fun or luck or whatever, but actually it’s a distant relative of human/animal sacrifice: an offering to the Gods, of something precious
Consider Celtic warrior chieftains, they found it near impossible to pass by a river without chucking in a valuable sword or a beautiful shield
We think it’s for fun or luck or whatever, but actually it’s a distant relative of human/animal sacrifice: an offering to the Gods, of something precious
Consider Celtic warrior chieftains, they found it near impossible to pass by a river without chucking in a valuable sword or a beautiful shield
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Absolutely. The Manchester tunnel is justified by the both Northern Powerhouse and HS2 using it. Which is why I would prioritise it over the Euston link. Accept Old Oak Common will be the terminus station for London for the next twenty to thirty years. Add extra platforms at that station (there's space for them) and put more capacity onto the Elizabeth Line
My prediction is that "add platforms at OOC and increase Liz line capacity", i.e. bugger about with the scope and plans yet again, would cost more and take longer than just doing the thing we planned to do from the start.
Compared with a now unachievable original business case it does add cost. This a question of what is higher priority? Sorting out a chronic lack of railway capacity in the Manchester area or improving connections in London? With no dog either way, I would definitely go for Manchester.
One good thing about Old Oak Common is there is space for more platforms. It shouldn't cost too much in the scheme of things.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Absolutely. The Manchester tunnel is justified by the both Northern Powerhouse and HS2 using it. Which is why I would prioritise it over the Euston link. Accept Old Oak Common will be the terminus station for London for the next twenty to thirty years. Add extra platforms at that station (there's space for them) and put more capacity onto the Elizabeth Line
Except - there is no spare capacity on the Lizzie Line, especially not for the amount required. (believe me I've already checked that in the past)..
But this does emphasis the mess we are in,
Euston needs improvements for capacity reasons at both the mainline and tfl levels. The Tfl work was attached to Crossrail 2, the mainline work attached to HS2 but it really should have been separate projects.
Manchesters HS2 design was a dead end - as I think all of us who talk about it on here agree HS2 and NPR should be being considered together and designed so that both projects can occur.
Worth saying Tottenham Court Road's Lizzie Line took so long because all the ground work for Crossrail 2 was done as part of the CR1 project as it was known to be the main interchange point.
They have the option of buying more trainsets for the Elizabeth Line. They should take that option.
Does that help? If at peak times you can handle say 1 train every 3 mins through the route, and you are already achieving that, ordering further rolling stock is of very little use.
Mr. Leon, numerous kings, perhaps most famously Attila*, were buried with treasures in temporarily dried riverbeds before the water was allowed to resume its course over them.
Edited: *if memory serves.
Also buried with multiple concubines and servants. Some buried alive, IIRC
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
The helpful political news for them is that at least in numbers terms absolute net migration is inevitably going to come down over the next couple of years, purely as a function of maths.
Possible that small boat crossings decline too, as it doesn't seem to have a particularly big summer in the Med this year so the pipeline for next summer might be down. Certainly the numbers in the latter part of this season have been substantially down on earlier in the year. I doubt that has anything to do with the change of government, but it's optically convenient.
Question is whether anti-elite populism keeps surging regardless. It's not all about immigration after all. Partly that is in Labour's gift: they need to give people hope and a bit of optimism.
The real objection of the far right is not only to immigration present and future, it is to migration that has already happened. Once migration slows down (if it does) then the question of whether the far right turns its attention to migration past is important.
“Remigration” is the term the Far Right uses, for this
I reckon this ugly idea is going to enter the mainstream of politics, via the rise of the Far Right parties across Europe. eg Austria yesterday. Once these parties start actually winning elections, the dam breaks
The far right gets about 35% of the vote across Europe. This is probably a ceiling for the moment. In normal politics people would be forming coalitions with them (NL the exception ) but left \centrists\ soft right are having a boycott.
In Saxony we have the odd spectacle of the CDU refusing to go in to coalition with "the heirs to Hitler" but quite content to fom a government with "the heirs to Stalin". Who of course murdered many more people.
How long this will continue who knows. But we are getting to elections where something will have to break.
Merz is more rightwing than Merkel as CDU Federal leader, he may do a deal with the SPD or Greens over the AfD (even if his preferred coalition partner would be the FDP). I suspect he would draw the line at doing a deal including Linke or the BSW over the AfD
As the CDU's own rules forbid them from going into coalition with the AfD or the Left, neither of those will happen. And there is no question of the CDU working with any of AfD BSW or the Left at the federal level. But at the state level the CDU has already shown that it is willing to work with both the BSW and the Left, but not the AfD. So I would say you are definitely wrong, at least as far as this and the next parliament are concerned.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
At Euston they’ve replaced the main departure boards with adverts and the new departure boards are unreadable unless you’re stood in front of them.
That's for health and safety reasons - For "reasons" I'm currently awaiting a FOI request about health and safety at Euston and the justification for not providing the details is Terrorism.
forcing people to crowd around screens to find out what platform their train is on doesn't seem a great plan if you are concerned about terrorism..
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Absolutely. The Manchester tunnel is justified by the both Northern Powerhouse and HS2 using it. Which is why I would prioritise it over the Euston link. Accept Old Oak Common will be the terminus station for London for the next twenty to thirty years. Add extra platforms at that station (there's space for them) and put more capacity onto the Elizabeth Line
My prediction is that "add platforms at OOC and increase Liz line capacity", i.e. bugger about with the scope and plans yet again, would cost more and take longer than just doing the thing we planned to do from the start.
Compared with a now unachievable original business case it does add cost. This a question of what is higher priority? Sorting out a chronic lack of railway capacity in the Manchester area or improving connections in London? With no dog either way, I would definitely go for Manchester.
One good thing about Old Oak Common is there is space for more platforms. It shouldn't cost too much in the scheme of things.
One day there is going to be a political party in this country that isn't run by loons, crooks and which takes women's rights seriously.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
It’s the same as platforms 13/14 at Manchester Piccadilly.
The issue with both Euston and those platforms is roughly same. Euston was designed at a time when the station only had 1/6th of the current number of trains / passengers..
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
There was a reasonably-far-through-the-sausage-machine plan on the table to four-track the Castlefield Corridor (the section from Piccadilly through Oxford Road and Deansgate to South West Manchester), adding a platform 15 and 16 at Piccadilly. This is, if memory serves, the most congested two-track section in the country. Unfortunately heels were dragged and where there was ample space 15 years ago, after Manchester's recent building boom there are now a lot of skyscrapers right up against the railway, and no space to do it.
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
I cut a bit out of my original reply where I said that the actual approach for Manchester is going to have to be a through Tunnel (ala Bologna and elsewhere) with multiple underground platforms at Manchester for through services.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Absolutely. The Manchester tunnel is justified by the both Northern Powerhouse and HS2 using it. Which is why I would prioritise it over the Euston link. Accept Old Oak Common will be the terminus station for London for the next twenty to thirty years. Add extra platforms at that station (there's space for them) and put more capacity onto the Elizabeth Line
Except - there is no spare capacity on the Lizzie Line, especially not for the amount required. (believe me I've already checked that in the past)..
But this does emphasis the mess we are in,
Euston needs improvements for capacity reasons at both the mainline and tfl levels. The Tfl work was attached to Crossrail 2, the mainline work attached to HS2 but it really should have been separate projects.
Manchesters HS2 design was a dead end - as I think all of us who talk about it on here agree HS2 and NPR should be being considered together and designed so that both projects can occur.
Worth saying Tottenham Court Road's Lizzie Line took so long because all the ground work for Crossrail 2 was done as part of the CR1 project as it was known to be the main interchange point.
They have the option of buying more trainsets for the Elizabeth Line. They should take that option.
Does that help? If at peak times you can handle say 1 train every 3 mins through the route, and you are already achieving that, ordering further rolling stock is of very little use.
There's a bit of potential there. At the moment, most of the trains from the Shenfield/Romford branch only go as far west as Paddington. I think lack of trains is the only thing stopping them going a bit further west.
But yes, the Elizabeth line is pretty full these days.
We think it’s for fun or luck or whatever, but actually it’s a distant relative of human/animal sacrifice: an offering to the Gods, of something precious
Consider Celtic warrior chieftains, they found it near impossible to pass by a river without chucking in a valuable sword or a beautiful shield
Sacrificing precious metal in water: like hurling coins in fountains
Hope the Gods take shopping trollies round my bit.
Hah. But actually that MIGHT be the same instinct at work… throwing metal in water…
We paid a visit to Hollywood Cemetery yesterday, and someone had put a penny on the statue of the iron dog. The cemetery had one of the few remaining statues of Jefferson Davis there, tastefully installed on the middle of a mini roundabout. No-one had put a penny on his head.
We think it’s for fun or luck or whatever, but actually it’s a distant relative of human/animal sacrifice: an offering to the Gods, of something precious
Consider Celtic warrior chieftains, they found it near impossible to pass by a river without chucking in a valuable sword or a beautiful shield
Comments
but left \centrists\ soft right are having a boycott.
In Saxony we have the odd spectacle of the CDU refusing to go in to coalition with "the heirs to Hitler" but quite content to fom a government with "the heirs to Stalin". Who of course murdered many more people.
How long this will continue who knows. But we are getting to elections where something will have to break.
Sadly, we don't yet have that in this country.
Meanwhile WTF is going on at Euston station?!? That is a tragedy just waiting to happen.
I think more data is needed.
Even a general recession or an increase in local housebuilding, could leave you upside-down despite keeping your jobs.
Look at the extreme volatility of the last five years, and think how that might have affected a couple so overloaded with debt. It’s irresponsible lending, and the banks are only doing it to prop up the housing market in general.
I’d remind you all that when he left office his ratings were sub Corbyn at GE2019.
Though it's notable that not a few of the members interviewed at their conference brought up the idea of bringing him back as leader. Which arguably shows how much work the party has to sort itself out.
·
1h
It is hard to appeal to Reform voters and swing voters at the same time - because Reform voters are simply massive outliers in public attitudes to immigration, in contrast to Conservatives, never mind Con/LD and Con/Lab swing voters
https://bsky.app/profile/sundersays.bsky.social/post/3l5ecjjf7fd2s
Cleverly and Tugendhat however could get back into government on their own terms, as they could win an overall majority if Starmer's government is unpopular enough
As I've said multiple times previously HS2 was badly sold, the speed is a side effect of the capacity improvements but it's the capacity improvements that are essential..
If we did what we can to reduce demand (net zero migration) and un-constrain supply (make planning permission far less difficult to get, dial back building regs so build costs aren't so sky high), then house prices would drop (at least in real terms), and thus the pressure on couples to earn two fulltime wages would fall too. Which in turn would almost certainly do more to encourage people to have kids than more maternity pay.
There are, of course, plenty of practical reasons why that might not be a workable idea, but in principle ?
Which shows the point of doing the thing while you can, because it never gets easier and the solution in the future is always both harder and more urgent than the solution in the present *cough HS2*.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/90bnrC4IhKU
In today's 'elf and safety, kinda astonishing it's allowed to happen.
ETA activists too. PB threads used to be dominated by posters comparing notes on which polls they'd just completed.
Manchester basically needs a combined plan for HS2 and NPR because both are unavoidable projects if we want to fix the economy...
Leading to the likes of Tommy Robinson and George Galloway sitting as MPs, alongside dozens of their fellow travellers on the political extremes. We’d have a Just Stop Oil Party, a Proud Boys Party, and a Gaza First Party.
Even this though will not address the current issues relating to Central Manchester capacity on the existing network - which in the absence of doubling the Castlefield Corridor requires another underground alignment (separate from HS2/NPR).
Look to the UKGE in Scotland 2015 for an example, where in the aftermath of the referendum there was a very sharp swing to the SNP.
Likely designed to make the rocket man realise he wouldn't survive a first strike, without S Korea having to go nuclear.
Hyunmoo-V was fully revealed along with other new variants of Hyunmoo series missiles just before the parade.
This almost ICBM class bizarre ballistic missile that most destructive conventional missile ever created is 36tons of total weight and equipped with 8~9tons of specially designed warhead..
https://x.com/mason_8718/status/1840652747428987265
Best to have a single cross city route and then solve the connection issues at a ground level outside of Manchester.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_MOAB
She's a risk. Could work. Might not. She'll certainly make an impact one way or the other.
The much safer choices are, of course, Cleverly and Tugendhat. But they don't appear to have a chance in a face-off with Jenrick. So the "sensible" course would be Kemi.
UNLESS the party conference throws things, as it did in 2005, with Cameron emerging on the basis of his walkabout.
Failing that, the main talking point is whether the Tug/Cleverly MP supporters prefer to keep backing their men, or whether stopping Jenrick is the priority, in which case they transfer to Kemi. We'll see.
Most of the warhead is likely heavy metal, designed to penetrate very deep underground.
But this does emphasis the mess we are in,
Euston needs improvements for capacity reasons at both the mainline and tfl levels. The Tfl work was attached to Crossrail 2, the mainline work attached to HS2 but it really should have been separate projects.
Manchesters HS2 design was a dead end - as I think all of us who talk about it on here agree HS2 and NPR should be being considered together and designed so that both projects can occur.
Worth saying Tottenham Court Road's Lizzie Line took so long because all the ground work for Crossrail 2 was done as part of the CR1 project as it was known to be the main interchange point.
https://www.hs2.org.uk/building-hs2/tunnels/tunnel-drives/euston-tunnel/
1. Actually change a substantial number of people's views, so that the divide is not too large. Two ways of doing that, either change Reform voters into more moderate centre-right voters, or vice versa (which is what Trump achieved in the US).
2. Face an opponent/issue against which both sets of voters have so much antipathy that they will bury their differences temporarily (again Trump benefited from this facing Hilary Clinton in 2016, as did Johnson twice over in 2019 against Corbyn and the second voters).
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047580/
...and cash aversion.
Also Roman.
https://www.romanbaths.co.uk/news/making-offering-goddess-21st-century
Yet according to Guardian blog yesterday Ashcroft's memoire of her says when she was at Spectator and had second child she resigned rather than take maternity leave.
"She told me she thought it would be unfair to ask us to keep her job open while she was on maternity leave,” Fraser Nelson, the Spectator editor, is quoted in the book as saying."
https://x.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1840424758975824099
One good thing about Old Oak Common is there is space for more platforms. It shouldn't cost too much in the scheme of things. They have the option of buying more trainsets for the Elizabeth Line. They should take that option.
We think it’s for fun or luck or whatever, but actually it’s a distant relative of human/animal sacrifice: an offering to the Gods, of something precious
Consider Celtic warrior chieftains, they found it near impossible to pass by a river without chucking in a valuable sword or a beautiful shield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battersea_Shield
Sacrificing precious metal in water: like hurling coins in fountains
Strange how these welfare payments have developed into sacred cows. First, winter fuel allowance, now matenrity pay, the slightest suggestion they are either unnecessary or in need of reform and a bucketload of ordure falls on the person making a suggestion.
Yet we are happy to continue running a deficit and borrowing at least £100 billion per year which we know is unsupportable. It will have to be substantial tax rises because there is clearly no public stomach for any spending cuts.
Edited: *if memory serves.
Circumcision is just human sacrifice somewhat attenuated with bogus explanations. The Aztecs were much more honest: they used to pierce their penises with maguey thorns. Then offer the bloodied thorns to the Gods of Tenochtitlan
Scarification, body piercing, tattoos…?
A total of 45,020537 mail ballots have been requested so far .
Total early votes 426, 298 .
Of that 213,620 in person early votes .
212,708 mail in ballots .
There’s limited data re party registration so far .
So far and covering just under 80,000 votes :
Dem 64%
Rep 19.5%
None or minor party 16.5%
Brrrr
IIRC Salisbury cathedral installed a rather trendy font and then discovered people kept throwing coins into it.
forcing people to crowd around screens to find out what platform their train is on doesn't seem a great plan if you are concerned about terrorism..
But yes, the Elizabeth line is pretty full these days.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45753455