They are as I have been saying for over 3 years as bad as each other under SKS
BJO is still affiliated to Socialists for Boris.
No I am in the Green Party. Plenty of Socialists there too.
You are a fully fledged red Tory
Own it
You supported Boris and therefore more Tory than I’ve ever been.
I have never voted Tory ever
You did it 2 months ago
You’re on record repeatedly supporting a Tory PM. You loved a bit of Boris. Whilst I’m sure you regret that like a summer fling, it does somewhat disqualify you from credibly calling out anyone else as a Tory. Ever.
No PB legend it may have become.
Its not true. Never voted Tory, never voted Boris
I only ever said I thought Boris's levelling up in my local Community was an excellent thing and had produced more benefits than 20 years of Labour councillors. Which still remains true despite SKS fans expectations
I also said thousands of times SKS was a horrible human being and a Tory that was no better than Boris and i thank PM SKS for proving me correct both in terms of freebie greed and Tory policies.
Enjoy your 5 years of Red Tory shite then a lifetime of regrets.
IMO this will be the last ever LAB (in name only obvs) Government ever.
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
I get about one new follower a day, always a bot. Musk's claim he wanted to stop the bots (subtly different from Sunak's "stop the boats") proved also to be a lie.
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
Graduates aren't the key swing voters; they are the most important voting demographic period. The video makes the point that it gets increasingly hard for the Conservatives to win without swinging graduates.
Graduates are large in number and efficiently distributed. This is the killer combo under FPTP.
They are distributed across cities, suburbs, the countryside and increasingly into post industrial northern towns, the so called Red Wall.
Since Brexit they have mostly voted Labour and rarely Conservative. They vote more than non graduates.
Except they aren't, if they were Corbyn would now be PM as most graduates voted for him.
As I said the key swing voters are lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters who voted for Boris then Starmer or Farage NOT graduates.
Graduates voted 42% Labour, 18% Conservative, 15% Liberal Democrat, 9% Green and 8% Reform in July. As might be expected, the strongest groups for Labour, the LDs and Greens, the weakest for Conservative and Reform.
Whether that's an example of education or political indoctrination at Universities is a matter for debate of course and I'm sure everyone has a view (or perhaps not).
Cameron won graduates but since they have voted Labour mostly, however Boris won without graduates as did May
According to Yougov Labour was also at >40% with high earners, 50-100k bracket.
Pre tax rises, though Boris did best with average earners not high earners and it is average earners who decide elections.
Only 10% of voters earn more than £50k and the LDs percentage wise get the highest percentage of their voters from high earners now not Labour or the Tories
So according to Yougov, the largest cohort is Labour voting, that LDs get a smaller cohort overall but that it makes up a larger % of their total vote ... shrugs I'm a bit dubious about how accurate the Yougov sub setting is tbh, they're filtering very finely from a relatively small sample. Others might have more knowledgeable insight.
Look at the poshest home counties seats now Esher and Walton, Epsom and Ewell, St Albans, Winchester, Henley, Maidenhead, Tunbridge Wells, Chesham and Amersham etc all now have LD MPs. As do some of the wealthiest parts of London like Wimbledon, Richmond Park and Twickenham
Gails = LD
Even Epping now has LD councillors mostly and a Gail's
Decades ago, when my son was young, we decided to try and grow a peanut bush, so we bought a bag or (unroasted) peanuts and gave it a go. Not only did it grow (in his bedroom) we actually got a few fully grown peanuts when we dug it up.
Completely failed with a pineapple top, but I still consider that a success for making a young lad's day.
Do you remember (prob not, too young) the harebrained Labour (Attlee/Strachey) groundnut scheme for Tanganyika? Jimmy C did it better in deepest Georgia
I actually sold an MP on reviving the scheme to make biofuel from the nuts, to go zero emissions.
Oh, what did you suggest for tractors instead of old war surplus Shermans? Not zero emissions if new, tbf.
I didn’t that detailed. Just ground nuts in East Africa for biofuel.
He’d annoyed me by claiming that the problem was that the government didn’t boldly invest big money in new ideas. As opposed to seed money for test projects, back the ones that work etc….
My photo quota today is a Britain First activist called Andrew Edge, suited and booted for a demo in Belfast that apparently drew 23 people (that number could have been ironic, meaning "flop").
Who is the jowly chap in the photo on the wall. I think I recognise it - I was wondering if it was a Monday Club character or someone like John Tyndall. Any ideas?
Qtwtain in any case. Next trousers bunched up over yer ankles!!
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
What actual completed investments has the state made over the past 30 years though ?
Crossrail & I can't think of much else. Plenty on repairs and maintenance, but actual new completed big projects... ??
Eurostar first public service November 1994 so just squeaks in. Will be plenty of schools, hospitals, telecoms, water and roads, just not enough.
Chunnel was completed 6 May 1994 so I wasn't counting that in the 30 year band. Schools, hospitals, Telecoms, water & roads are repairs maintenance & upgrades to keep pace with our rising population (Or not ) (And heavier cars) to my mind. Our power generation capacity has decreased from the previous 30 years though and that's a first order approximation to industrial capacity. Offshore wind replacing coal is a modal shift in power generation so that might count. On a slight tangent I have no idea how we get to net zero for power generation by 2030 is it. I mean I can see how we get 70 +, 80 or even 90% there but there's just not the storage for stillish & gloomy winter conditions to get to 100% to my mind.
Presumably you could (theoretically at least) get to Net Zero by generating 105% and exporting the excess, then generating 5% from Gas when really needed...
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
Graduates aren't the key swing voters; they are the most important voting demographic period. The video makes the point that it gets increasingly hard for the Conservatives to win without swinging graduates.
Graduates are large in number and efficiently distributed. This is the killer combo under FPTP.
They are distributed across cities, suburbs, the countryside and increasingly into post industrial northern towns, the so called Red Wall.
Since Brexit they have mostly voted Labour and rarely Conservative. They vote more than non graduates.
Except they aren't, if they were Corbyn would now be PM as most graduates voted for him.
As I said the key swing voters are lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters who voted for Boris then Starmer or Farage NOT graduates.
Graduates voted 42% Labour, 18% Conservative, 15% Liberal Democrat, 9% Green and 8% Reform in July. As might be expected, the strongest groups for Labour, the LDs and Greens, the weakest for Conservative and Reform.
Whether that's an example of education or political indoctrination at Universities is a matter for debate of course and I'm sure everyone has a view (or perhaps not).
Cameron won graduates but since they have voted Labour mostly, however Boris won without graduates as did May
According to Yougov Labour was also at >40% with high earners, 50-100k bracket.
Pre tax rises, though Boris did best with average earners not high earners and it is average earners who decide elections.
Only 10% of voters earn more than £50k and the LDs percentage wise get the highest percentage of their voters from high earners now not Labour or the Tories
So according to Yougov, the largest cohort is Labour voting, that LDs get a smaller cohort overall but that it makes up a larger % of their total vote ... shrugs I'm a bit dubious about how accurate the Yougov sub setting is tbh, they're filtering very finely from a relatively small sample. Others might have more knowledgeable insight.
Look at the poshest home counties seats now Esher and Walton, Epsom and Ewell, St Albans, Winchester, Henley, Maidenhead, Tunbridge Wells, Chesham and Amersham etc all now have LD MPs. As do some of the wealthiest parts of London like Wimbledon, Richmond Park and Twickenham
Gails = LD
Indeed, so affluent, Remain, centre-right blue wall home counties. Might hold their nose to vote Jenrick / Badenoch if they're feeling particularly exercised about their tax rates but would really prefer not to vote for a racist, little Englander, Reform aping Conservative party. Probably lost to the LDs unless there's another Cameron-like leader.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
What actual completed investments has the state made over the past 30 years though ?
Crossrail & I can't think of much else. Plenty on repairs and maintenance, but actual new completed big projects... ??
Queensferry Crossing & Borders Railway, both opened by QEII so must be REALLY important.
Bathgate electrification through to the Wild West.
Edit: I won't suggest the electrification of the London-Bristol main line as that was so badly screwed up.
Sone big chunks of the A9 have been dualled, tbf. Fochabers bypass. A few new rail stations and realignments in the north (all incredibly ugly). Leven link.
I'd have guessed offshore wind is probably the most significant investment though, enabled by the state. Will reach 20gw in the few years - 30 by 2030.
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
The date of birth thing? I thought I'd given them my standard fake birth date for organisations with no business knowing it, but I still get asked, so maybe I didn't. But I can simply close the prompt by clicking the cross and it doesn't seem to stop me doing anything.
Still, being off Twitter may still be a net improvement I only really use it for two things, professionally as mainly a broadcast medium (publicising research outputs, calling for participants etc) and following links posted on here (for the latter, the need to be logged in to see any context beyond the immediately linked tweet does bug me).
Come to BlueSky instead. That's increasingly where academic discussion is moving. Although the best place for publicising research outputs I find is probably LinkedIn.
It’s an interesting thought experiment what happens if the Left depose Mr Ming Vase. As many on Twitter without fear of libel law seem to be predicting.
It would be pretty easy for any competent Conservative in the next 20 years to make the argument that Labour can never be trusted in office, even if their leader appears like a relatively soft left metro type.
In turn perhaps this should be a consideration in the next PM market. There’s not a precedent for a contested labour leadership process while in office. Are the left able to force a members process, knowing their candidate (Raynor?) wins? Or is there a cabinet stitch up and a coalescing around perhaps Streeting?
It's virtually impossible to depose a sitting Labour leader. 20% of the PLP have to nominate a rival, and no sign of that happening, not least because the usual subjects are not taking the Labour whip at present.
There are lots of folk on Twitter who believe too much on Twitter.
Starmer is rubbish at retail politics, but very good at consolidating power.
I agree - that's why he'll resign. He'll have to. There's really no way back I don't think.
Yes this is right isn’t it. But what then.
Personally I think the best candidate in the Labour Party is Andy Burnham, but he's not in Parliament, and if there were a byelection to get him in, Reform would fancy their chances of an upset. So it looks like Reeves or Cooper, neither of whom have covered themselves in glory since Labour have come to power.
What’s the mechanism for that, when there’s a huge new intake of MPs that are potentially quite fringey in their political views and who might not want a cabinet stitch up in favour of those two? Perhaps it’s going to be done US style. A cabinet nominee who assumes PM, a vote of confidence in the house and a total bypassing of the usual labour leadership rules?
I would love to have what you are having.
It simply isn't possible unless
1) SKS resigns 2) only one candidate puts their name forward.
And so far we have a few stories about receiving gifts and a very dodgy super injection story that even I know is a pile of kack..
It's copium on the right.
It's not easy to dump a PM mid-term and rightly so. Major survived Black Wednesday, Blair survived Iraq.
For the Conservatives to have lost two PMs in quick succession was unprecedented. Until the party has a good story for how they screwed up so much twice in a row, they aren't a serious party of government. And the only one that really works is "I wasn't around then".
So any current Conservative who wants their exile to be less than a decade has to normalise the idea that both sides are equally bad at choosing suitable PMs.
Trouble is, that even if Starmer does turn out to be a Johnsonesque sleazeball (I rather doubt it), he needs to be followed by a nutter who only lasts seven weeks.
Unlikely.
I shouldn't be finding all this so funny, but I'll be honest, I am.
Well yes. This rather mundane speculation of how/if Sir Keir will be given his marching orders after the man just won a humongous majority is, to say the least, unexpected. Maybe it's an early squall and things will move on, but collapse in support this early and to this degree is so unprecedented we just don't know. This could already be terminal.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
One thing I do not understand is why our governments (which can borrow at lower rates than commercial companies) have not insisted on taking large stakes in offshore wind developments. They clearly provide a predictable profit stream, a fair proportion of which goes overseas.
If we are indeed overpaying for renewable electricity, couldn't more of the money at least go back into the exchequer ?
What's the flaw in this reasoning ?
AIU it appears to go back to failed investments in industry from the sixties and seventies such that investment has become a bad thing for a couple of generations of politicians.
But government was pretty well guaranteeing a return, by setting a guaranteed price for the electricity.
UK gov makes consistently terrible investment decisions and this doesn't change much by party. I think the main reasons are previous examples of failure and the positive pay offs happen after the politicians are judged.
It is much harder to be criticised for something you never did, than something you championed which ended up over budget or somehow went wrong.
When I was younger and more ignorant, I actually tried selling the DARPA idea to various MPs.
I eventually noticed that, while they claimed to like the idea, they actually wanted to “improve” it by
1) picking the winners 2) throw big money into 1)
As in, the complete reverse of the DARPA idea. Which is small amounts of seed money to a range of ideas in a space, see which ones actually work…
Slightly more to it than that - one program director with almost dictatorial powers, but a limited term of office. And no political decision making, of course.
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
I get about one new follower a day, always a bot. Musk's claim he wanted to stop the bots (subtly different from Sunak's "stop the boats") proved also to be a lie.
I'm always astonished by the number of nubile young lady followers I get with an apparent strong interest in epidemiology
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
One thing I do not understand is why our governments (which can borrow at lower rates than commercial companies) have not insisted on taking large stakes in offshore wind developments. They clearly provide a predictable profit stream, a fair proportion of which goes overseas.
If we are indeed overpaying for renewable electricity, couldn't more of the money at least go back into the exchequer ?
What's the flaw in this reasoning ?
The flaw in the reasoning is that we don't have the capacity to borrow the money and that we structured the deals so that the builders of the wind farms bid on the price at which they electricity was sold - we couldn't have done that if the government was (part) building the farms.
We do though. The market gets spooked when governments borrow for current spending without any consideration for servicing or paying it back; just unjustified assertions as the tax cuts paying for themselves. Genuine investment will be viewed more favourably. Likewise, large but one-off spending will be tolerated by lenders as long as there's a recognition that the largesse will end and normality resume once the emergency is over.
My photo quota today is a Britain First activist called Andrew Edge, suited and booted for a demo in Belfast that apparently drew 23 people (that number could have been ironic, meaning "flop").
Who is the jowly chap in the photo on the wall. I think I recognise it - I was wondering if it was a Monday Club character or someone like John Tyndall. Any ideas?
Qtwtain in any case. Next trousers bunched up over yer ankles!!
BBC radio (File On Four) is taking the Letby thing seriously. I think this may be the first time the BBC has waded in, and this particular programme should be interesting. Details and long intro here:
Medical evidence is complicated, which is a challenge for juries. But the examples there all look similar to previous ones, trying to pick holes here and there, while ignoring key evidence or, indeed, that these matters were discussed in the trial.
My photo quota today is a Britain First activist called Andrew Edge, suited and booted for a demo in Belfast that apparently drew 23 people (that number could have been ironic, meaning "flop").
Who is the jowly chap in the photo on the wall. I think I recognise it - I was wondering if it was a Monday Club character or someone like John Tyndall. Any ideas?
Qtwtain in any case. Next trousers bunched up over yer ankles!!
He’s somebody in need of Lord Alli’s money.
I don't think it's a suit either. The jacket looks darker than the trousers.
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
The date of birth thing? I thought I'd given them my standard fake birth date for organisations with no business knowing it, but I still get asked, so maybe I didn't. But I can simply close the prompt by clicking the cross and it doesn't seem to stop me doing anything.
Still, being off Twitter may still be a net improvement I only really use it for two things, professionally as mainly a broadcast medium (publicising research outputs, calling for participants etc) and following links posted on here (for the latter, the need to be logged in to see any context beyond the immediately linked tweet does bug me).
Come to BlueSky instead. That's increasingly where academic discussion is moving. Although the best place for publicising research outputs I find is probably LinkedIn.
I do have a bluesky account and repost there, but in my niche Twitter still reins supreme. LinkedIn is pretty dead for us, at least for wider engagement - the academics are on there, but not many of the clinicians/third sector partners - again, in my field.
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
The date of birth thing? I thought I'd given them my standard fake birth date for organisations with no business knowing it, but I still get asked, so maybe I didn't. But I can simply close the prompt by clicking the cross and it doesn't seem to stop me doing anything.
Still, being off Twitter may still be a net improvement I only really use it for two things, professionally as mainly a broadcast medium (publicising research outputs, calling for participants etc) and following links posted on here (for the latter, the need to be logged in to see any context beyond the immediately linked tweet does bug me).
Come to BlueSky instead. That's increasingly where academic discussion is moving. Although the best place for publicising research outputs I find is probably LinkedIn.
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
Graduates aren't the key swing voters; they are the most important voting demographic period. The video makes the point that it gets increasingly hard for the Conservatives to win without swinging graduates.
Graduates are large in number and efficiently distributed. This is the killer combo under FPTP.
They are distributed across cities, suburbs, the countryside and increasingly into post industrial northern towns, the so called Red Wall.
Since Brexit they have mostly voted Labour and rarely Conservative. They vote more than non graduates.
Except they aren't, if they were Corbyn would now be PM as most graduates voted for him.
As I said the key swing voters are lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters who voted for Boris then Starmer or Farage NOT graduates.
Graduates voted 42% Labour, 18% Conservative, 15% Liberal Democrat, 9% Green and 8% Reform in July. As might be expected, the strongest groups for Labour, the LDs and Greens, the weakest for Conservative and Reform.
Whether that's an example of education or political indoctrination at Universities is a matter for debate of course and I'm sure everyone has a view (or perhaps not).
University students are encouraged to weigh up the arguments for and against, and make a reasoned decision, as opposed to just believing everything they read. No doubt a similar poll of regular newspaper readers would show the opposite effect.
Note that anything citing 'graduates' as a characteristic is likely to be to a large extent a proxy for age groups.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
One thing I do not understand is why our governments (which can borrow at lower rates than commercial companies) have not insisted on taking large stakes in offshore wind developments. They clearly provide a predictable profit stream, a fair proportion of which goes overseas.
If we are indeed overpaying for renewable electricity, couldn't more of the money at least go back into the exchequer ?
What's the flaw in this reasoning ?
AIU it appears to go back to failed investments in industry from the sixties and seventies such that investment has become a bad thing for a couple of generations of politicians.
But government was pretty well guaranteeing a return, by setting a guaranteed price for the electricity.
UK gov makes consistently terrible investment decisions and this doesn't change much by party. I think the main reasons are previous examples of failure and the positive pay offs happen after the politicians are judged.
It is much harder to be criticised for something you never did, than something you championed which ended up over budget or somehow went wrong.
Had we applied that approach to the water industry, the consumer would probably still have been ripped off, but at least half of the revenue would have stayed in the UK, rather than disappearing overseas. Macquarie made a lot of their money effectively borrowing from themselves to gear up the industry. So they took out dividends in the equity and got paid interest on what was effectively government guaranteed borrowing (at rates more expensive than government could itself have borrowed).
Privatised monopolies don't work in the public interest.
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
Graduates aren't the key swing voters; they are the most important voting demographic period. The video makes the point that it gets increasingly hard for the Conservatives to win without swinging graduates.
Graduates are large in number and efficiently distributed. This is the killer combo under FPTP.
They are distributed across cities, suburbs, the countryside and increasingly into post industrial northern towns, the so called Red Wall.
Since Brexit they have mostly voted Labour and rarely Conservative. They vote more than non graduates.
Except they aren't, if they were Corbyn would now be PM as most graduates voted for him.
As I said the key swing voters are lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters who voted for Boris then Starmer or Farage NOT graduates.
Graduates voted 42% Labour, 18% Conservative, 15% Liberal Democrat, 9% Green and 8% Reform in July. As might be expected, the strongest groups for Labour, the LDs and Greens, the weakest for Conservative and Reform.
Whether that's an example of education or political indoctrination at Universities is a matter for debate of course and I'm sure everyone has a view (or perhaps not).
Cameron won graduates but since they have voted Labour mostly, however Boris won without graduates as did May
According to Yougov Labour was also at >40% with high earners, 50-100k bracket.
Pre tax rises, though Boris did best with average earners not high earners and it is average earners who decide elections.
Only 10% of voters earn more than £50k and the LDs percentage wise get the highest percentage of their voters from high earners now not Labour or the Tories
So according to Yougov, the largest cohort is Labour voting, that LDs get a smaller cohort overall but that it makes up a larger % of their total vote ... shrugs I'm a bit dubious about how accurate the Yougov sub setting is tbh, they're filtering very finely from a relatively small sample. Others might have more knowledgeable insight.
Look at the poshest home counties seats now Esher and Walton, Epsom and Ewell, St Albans, Winchester, Henley, Maidenhead, Tunbridge Wells, Chesham and Amersham etc all now have LD MPs. As do some of the wealthiest parts of London like Wimbledon, Richmond Park and Twickenham
Gails = LD
Even Epping now has LD councillors mostly and a Gail's
You need to move to somewhere more, shall we say, ‘down market’, so you will fit in.
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
Graduates aren't the key swing voters; they are the most important voting demographic period. The video makes the point that it gets increasingly hard for the Conservatives to win without swinging graduates.
Graduates are large in number and efficiently distributed. This is the killer combo under FPTP.
They are distributed across cities, suburbs, the countryside and increasingly into post industrial northern towns, the so called Red Wall.
Since Brexit they have mostly voted Labour and rarely Conservative. They vote more than non graduates.
Except they aren't, if they were Corbyn would now be PM as most graduates voted for him.
As I said the key swing voters are lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters who voted for Boris then Starmer or Farage NOT graduates.
Graduates voted 42% Labour, 18% Conservative, 15% Liberal Democrat, 9% Green and 8% Reform in July. As might be expected, the strongest groups for Labour, the LDs and Greens, the weakest for Conservative and Reform.
Whether that's an example of education or political indoctrination at Universities is a matter for debate of course and I'm sure everyone has a view (or perhaps not).
University students are encouraged to weigh up the arguments for and against, and make a reasoned decision, as opposed to just believing everything they read. No doubt a similar poll of regular newspaper readers would show the opposite effect.
Note that anything citing 'graduates' as a characteristic is likely to be to a large extent a proxy for age groups.
Which takes us straight to the relative death rates for graduates and non-graduates…
The Tories are fishing in a shrinking pond, and buying a longer fishing rod isn’t the answer.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
One thing I do not understand is why our governments (which can borrow at lower rates than commercial companies) have not insisted on taking large stakes in offshore wind developments. They clearly provide a predictable profit stream, a fair proportion of which goes overseas.
If we are indeed overpaying for renewable electricity, couldn't more of the money at least go back into the exchequer ?
What's the flaw in this reasoning ?
AIU it appears to go back to failed investments in industry from the sixties and seventies such that investment has become a bad thing for a couple of generations of politicians.
But government was pretty well guaranteeing a return, by setting a guaranteed price for the electricity.
UK gov makes consistently terrible investment decisions and this doesn't change much by party. I think the main reasons are previous examples of failure and the positive pay offs happen after the politicians are judged.
It is much harder to be criticised for something you never did, than something you championed which ended up over budget or somehow went wrong.
When I was younger and more ignorant, I actually tried selling the DARPA idea to various MPs.
I eventually noticed that, while they claimed to like the idea, they actually wanted to “improve” it by
1) picking the winners 2) throw big money into 1)
As in, the complete reverse of the DARPA idea. Which is small amounts of seed money to a range of ideas in a space, see which ones actually work…
Slightly more to it than that - one program director with almost dictatorial powers, but a limited term of office. And no political decision making, of course.
You can't not have decision-making though. Ultimately, the politicians have to be accountable, which means they have to have some degree of power. In an ideal world, they just pick highly capable people who then run things independently but civil servants and bureaucrats can also suffer from group-think and ignore ideas out of their reference zone. Perhaps a new organisation might not suffer from those problems, if staffed with people from outside that culture but I wouldn't bet on it. To take a practical example, Churchill's direct interventions could be a time-wasting pain in the backside for the military and civil chiefs at times (quite a lot of times) but on the other hand they were also critical in, for example, giving the work at Bletchley Park the priority it needed and deserved.
What's needed is a proactive culture without fear of failure. Neither of these tend to sit very comfortably in the public sector (or, indeed, within the private sector and in particular large, established organisations).
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
What actual completed investments has the state made over the past 30 years though ?
Crossrail & I can't think of much else. Plenty on repairs and maintenance, but actual new completed big projects... ??
Queensferry Crossing & Borders Railway, both opened by QEII so must be REALLY important.
Bathgate electrification through to the Wild West.
Edit: I won't suggest the electrification of the London-Bristol main line as that was so badly screwed up.
Sone big chunks of the A9 have been dualled, tbf. Fochabers bypass. A few new rail stations and realignments in the north (all incredibly ugly). Leven link.
I'd have guessed offshore wind is probably the most significant investment though, enabled by the state. Will reach 20gw in the few years - 30 by 2030.
A lot of these investments have indirect benefits (economic growth and tax revenue) but nothing direct, because government is not investing in income generating assets. That’s where roads are a problem - unless they are toll roads. The cost hits the treasury P&L and there’s no offsetting income.
That’s where railways, or road pricing, or direct investment in power generation could help. Then government has an income stream so the treasury numbers and there’s case for borrowing can better add up.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
One thing I do not understand is why our governments (which can borrow at lower rates than commercial companies) have not insisted on taking large stakes in offshore wind developments. They clearly provide a predictable profit stream, a fair proportion of which goes overseas.
If we are indeed overpaying for renewable electricity, couldn't more of the money at least go back into the exchequer ?
What's the flaw in this reasoning ?
The flaw in the reasoning is that we don't have the capacity to borrow the money and that we structured the deals so that the builders of the wind farms bid on the price at which they electricity was sold - we couldn't have done that if the government was (part) building the farms.
We do though. The market gets spooked when governments borrow for current spending without any consideration for servicing or paying it back; just unjustified assertions as the tax cuts paying for themselves. Genuine investment will be viewed more favourably. Likewise, large but one-off spending will be tolerated by lenders as long as there's a recognition that the largesse will end and normality resume once the emergency is over.
Counterpoint - HS2
If we can't build the capacity our railway needs to meet demand we definitely don't have the money to invest in wind turbines which the private sector are willing to invest in... Yes the public may be paying a slightly higher price for energy but it's small relative to other screwups..
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
Graduates aren't the key swing voters; they are the most important voting demographic period. The video makes the point that it gets increasingly hard for the Conservatives to win without swinging graduates.
Graduates are large in number and efficiently distributed. This is the killer combo under FPTP.
They are distributed across cities, suburbs, the countryside and increasingly into post industrial northern towns, the so called Red Wall.
Since Brexit they have mostly voted Labour and rarely Conservative. They vote more than non graduates.
Except they aren't, if they were Corbyn would now be PM as most graduates voted for him.
As I said the key swing voters are lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters who voted for Boris then Starmer or Farage NOT graduates.
Graduates voted 42% Labour, 18% Conservative, 15% Liberal Democrat, 9% Green and 8% Reform in July. As might be expected, the strongest groups for Labour, the LDs and Greens, the weakest for Conservative and Reform.
Whether that's an example of education or political indoctrination at Universities is a matter for debate of course and I'm sure everyone has a view (or perhaps not).
Cameron won graduates but since they have voted Labour mostly, however Boris won without graduates as did May
According to Yougov Labour was also at >40% with high earners, 50-100k bracket.
Pre tax rises, though Boris did best with average earners not high earners and it is average earners who decide elections.
Only 10% of voters earn more than £50k and the LDs percentage wise get the highest percentage of their voters from high earners now not Labour or the Tories
So according to Yougov, the largest cohort is Labour voting, that LDs get a smaller cohort overall but that it makes up a larger % of their total vote ... shrugs I'm a bit dubious about how accurate the Yougov sub setting is tbh, they're filtering very finely from a relatively small sample. Others might have more knowledgeable insight.
Look at the poshest home counties seats now Esher and Walton, Epsom and Ewell, St Albans, Winchester, Henley, Maidenhead, Tunbridge Wells, Chesham and Amersham etc all now have LD MPs. As do some of the wealthiest parts of London like Wimbledon, Richmond Park and Twickenham
They'll all return to the blues when the LibDems can do sod all about them getting taxed until the pips squeak...
But what are you Conservatives going to do about it over the next five years? You are impotent.
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
Graduates aren't the key swing voters; they are the most important voting demographic period. The video makes the point that it gets increasingly hard for the Conservatives to win without swinging graduates.
Graduates are large in number and efficiently distributed. This is the killer combo under FPTP.
They are distributed across cities, suburbs, the countryside and increasingly into post industrial northern towns, the so called Red Wall.
Since Brexit they have mostly voted Labour and rarely Conservative. They vote more than non graduates.
Except they aren't, if they were Corbyn would now be PM as most graduates voted for him.
As I said the key swing voters are lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters who voted for Boris then Starmer or Farage NOT graduates.
Graduates voted 42% Labour, 18% Conservative, 15% Liberal Democrat, 9% Green and 8% Reform in July. As might be expected, the strongest groups for Labour, the LDs and Greens, the weakest for Conservative and Reform.
Whether that's an example of education or political indoctrination at Universities is a matter for debate of course and I'm sure everyone has a view (or perhaps not).
Cameron won graduates but since they have voted Labour mostly, however Boris won without graduates as did May
According to Yougov Labour was also at >40% with high earners, 50-100k bracket.
Pre tax rises, though Boris did best with average earners not high earners and it is average earners who decide elections.
Only 10% of voters earn more than £50k and the LDs percentage wise get the highest percentage of their voters from high earners now not Labour or the Tories
So according to Yougov, the largest cohort is Labour voting, that LDs get a smaller cohort overall but that it makes up a larger % of their total vote ... shrugs I'm a bit dubious about how accurate the Yougov sub setting is tbh, they're filtering very finely from a relatively small sample. Others might have more knowledgeable insight.
Look at the poshest home counties seats now Esher and Walton, Epsom and Ewell, St Albans, Winchester, Henley, Maidenhead, Tunbridge Wells, Chesham and Amersham etc all now have LD MPs. As do some of the wealthiest parts of London like Wimbledon, Richmond Park and Twickenham
Gails = LD
Indeed, so affluent, Remain, centre-right blue wall home counties. Might hold their nose to vote Jenrick / Badenoch if they're feeling particularly exercised about their tax rates but would really prefer not to vote for a racist, little Englander, Reform aping Conservative party. Probably lost to the LDs unless there's another Cameron-like leader.
"In 2024, a successful economically liberal graduate in their early thirties was about as likely to vote Conservative as they were to vote Green...
...So, the Tories’ difficulties with mid-career voters aren’t just an electoral disaster — they are a major problem for their talent pipeline...
...Almost by definition, when your 30- and 40-something politicians are drawn from a narrow slice of the electorate, they tend to be pretty eccentric."
Anyway just to cheer us up this year is predicted to have a cold winter.
Sir Victor Meldrew and Reckless Reeves will be telling us all to turn the thermostats down.
For those with an oil boiler, good job the Saudis are promising a wall of supply then.
Oil price is down quite a bit in the last couple of months. Obviously Binken’s call to MBS eventually got through.
Just about the best thing for the world economy in the coming months, would be a repeat of the Saudis’ willy-waving competition with Putin that we saw at the start of the pandemic.
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
Graduates aren't the key swing voters; they are the most important voting demographic period. The video makes the point that it gets increasingly hard for the Conservatives to win without swinging graduates.
Graduates are large in number and efficiently distributed. This is the killer combo under FPTP.
They are distributed across cities, suburbs, the countryside and increasingly into post industrial northern towns, the so called Red Wall.
Since Brexit they have mostly voted Labour and rarely Conservative. They vote more than non graduates.
Except they aren't, if they were Corbyn would now be PM as most graduates voted for him.
As I said the key swing voters are lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters who voted for Boris then Starmer or Farage NOT graduates.
Graduates voted 42% Labour, 18% Conservative, 15% Liberal Democrat, 9% Green and 8% Reform in July. As might be expected, the strongest groups for Labour, the LDs and Greens, the weakest for Conservative and Reform.
Whether that's an example of education or political indoctrination at Universities is a matter for debate of course and I'm sure everyone has a view (or perhaps not).
Cameron won graduates but since they have voted Labour mostly, however Boris won without graduates as did May
According to Yougov Labour was also at >40% with high earners, 50-100k bracket.
Pre tax rises, though Boris did best with average earners not high earners and it is average earners who decide elections.
Only 10% of voters earn more than £50k and the LDs percentage wise get the highest percentage of their voters from high earners now not Labour or the Tories
So according to Yougov, the largest cohort is Labour voting, that LDs get a smaller cohort overall but that it makes up a larger % of their total vote ... shrugs I'm a bit dubious about how accurate the Yougov sub setting is tbh, they're filtering very finely from a relatively small sample. Others might have more knowledgeable insight.
Look at the poshest home counties seats now Esher and Walton, Epsom and Ewell, St Albans, Winchester, Henley, Maidenhead, Tunbridge Wells, Chesham and Amersham etc all now have LD MPs. As do some of the wealthiest parts of London like Wimbledon, Richmond Park and Twickenham
They'll all return to the blues when the LibDems can do sod all about them getting taxed until the pips squeak...
But what are you Conservatives going to do about it over the next five years? You are impotent.
I think the argument goes that the Tories will look like they may get into power so voting for the Lib Dems may keep the Tories in.
The counter argument is that the Lib Dem vote is efficient while the Tory vote isn't and with Reform sat where it is the tories may lose even more seats at the next election.
At best the Tories best hope of winning them is that they come first in a three horse races between Tory / Labour / Reform in seats Labour currently hold.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
One thing I do not understand is why our governments (which can borrow at lower rates than commercial companies) have not insisted on taking large stakes in offshore wind developments. They clearly provide a predictable profit stream, a fair proportion of which goes overseas.
If we are indeed overpaying for renewable electricity, couldn't more of the money at least go back into the exchequer ?
What's the flaw in this reasoning ?
The flaw in the reasoning is that we don't have the capacity to borrow the money and that we structured the deals so that the builders of the wind farms bid on the price at which they electricity was sold - we couldn't have done that if the government was (part) building the farms.
We do though. The market gets spooked when governments borrow for current spending without any consideration for servicing or paying it back; just unjustified assertions as the tax cuts paying for themselves. Genuine investment will be viewed more favourably. Likewise, large but one-off spending will be tolerated by lenders as long as there's a recognition that the largesse will end and normality resume once the emergency is over.
Counterpoint - HS2
If we can't build the capacity our railway needs to meet demand we definitely don't have the money to invest in wind turbines which the private sector are willing to invest in... Yes the public may be paying a slightly higher price for energy but it's small relative to other screwups..
That was cancelled because: 1. Stupidly high costs coming from a gold-plated scheme, political demands for unnecessary tunnels and the general expensiveness of land. 2. Political choices over how to use the money it would have cost.
Neither of these were because the market wouldn't fund it; it was down to political priorities and, in particular, appeasing Nimbys.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
What actual completed investments has the state made over the past 30 years though ?
Crossrail & I can't think of much else. Plenty on repairs and maintenance, but actual new completed big projects... ??
Queensferry Crossing & Borders Railway, both opened by QEII so must be REALLY important.
Bathgate electrification through to the Wild West.
Edit: I won't suggest the electrification of the London-Bristol main line as that was so badly screwed up.
Sone big chunks of the A9 have been dualled, tbf. Fochabers bypass. A few new rail stations and realignments in the north (all incredibly ugly). Leven link.
I'd have guessed offshore wind is probably the most significant investment though, enabled by the state. Will reach 20gw in the few years - 30 by 2030.
A lot of these investments have indirect benefits (economic growth and tax revenue) but nothing direct, because government is not investing in income generating assets. That’s where roads are a problem - unless they are toll roads. The cost hits the treasury P&L and there’s no offsetting income.
That’s where railways, or road pricing, or direct investment in power generation could help. Then government has an income stream so the treasury numbers and there’s case for borrowing can better add up.
There is offsetting income, it just does not have a row in the treasury spreadsheet as it is very indirect.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
One thing I do not understand is why our governments (which can borrow at lower rates than commercial companies) have not insisted on taking large stakes in offshore wind developments. They clearly provide a predictable profit stream, a fair proportion of which goes overseas.
If we are indeed overpaying for renewable electricity, couldn't more of the money at least go back into the exchequer ?
What's the flaw in this reasoning ?
AIU it appears to go back to failed investments in industry from the sixties and seventies such that investment has become a bad thing for a couple of generations of politicians.
But government was pretty well guaranteeing a return, by setting a guaranteed price for the electricity.
UK gov makes consistently terrible investment decisions and this doesn't change much by party. I think the main reasons are previous examples of failure and the positive pay offs happen after the politicians are judged.
It is much harder to be criticised for something you never did, than something you championed which ended up over budget or somehow went wrong.
Had we applied that approach to the water industry, the consumer would probably still have been ripped off, but at least half of the revenue would have stayed in the UK, rather than disappearing overseas. Macquarie made a lot of their money effectively borrowing from themselves to gear up the industry. So they took out dividends in the equity and got paid interest on what was effectively government guaranteed borrowing (at rates more expensive than government could itself have borrowed).
Privatised monopolies don't work in the public interest.
That's a question of regulation. Ofwat has been captured by the water companies.
If you link caps on dividends and executive bonuses and salaries to pollution levels then you'd almost certainly see the latter coming down.
The state, to repeat a point made multiple times already, tends to be dreadful at investment. For boring stuff like water networks, that's less because it makes bad investment choices of X over Y and more because political pressure is to keep bills down, and the easiest way to do that is to cut the investment budget which has little immediate adverse effect. It's no coincidence that both water quality and leak rates under the nationalised water boards were dreadful.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
What actual completed investments has the state made over the past 30 years though ?
Crossrail & I can't think of much else. Plenty on repairs and maintenance, but actual new completed big projects... ??
Eurostar first public service November 1994 so just squeaks in. Will be plenty of schools, hospitals, telecoms, water and roads, just not enough.
Chunnel was completed 6 May 1994 so I wasn't counting that in the 30 year band. Schools, hospitals, Telecoms, water & roads are repairs maintenance & upgrades to keep pace with our rising population (Or not ) (And heavier cars) to my mind. Our power generation capacity has decreased from the previous 30 years though and that's a first order approximation to industrial capacity. Offshore wind replacing coal is a modal shift in power generation so that might count. On a slight tangent I have no idea how we get to net zero for power generation by 2030 is it. I mean I can see how we get 70 +, 80 or even 90% there but there's just not the storage for stillish & gloomy winter conditions to get to 100% to my mind.
Presumably you could (theoretically at least) get to Net Zero by generating 105% and exporting the excess, then generating 5% from Gas when really needed...
That particular equation is going the wrong way. In the past year we've generated 88.1% of our leccy - down from 94% since 2012. One benefit of more wind capacity should be that we export more than we import (With the exception of Denmark) as Norway is hydro, France, Netherlands and Belgium mainly nuclear & fossil still.. Currently we're importing from everywhere except Ireland with whom we share a single electricity market anyway.
To give an example, the people who pipe bombed ULEZ camera could be charged with causing an explosion (terrorism). The facts would suggest A3 category of offence under the charging guidelines. Which starts at 16 years in prison. Range is 12-20 years.
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
Graduates aren't the key swing voters; they are the most important voting demographic period. The video makes the point that it gets increasingly hard for the Conservatives to win without swinging graduates.
Graduates are large in number and efficiently distributed. This is the killer combo under FPTP.
They are distributed across cities, suburbs, the countryside and increasingly into post industrial northern towns, the so called Red Wall.
Since Brexit they have mostly voted Labour and rarely Conservative. They vote more than non graduates.
Except they aren't, if they were Corbyn would now be PM as most graduates voted for him.
As I said the key swing voters are lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters who voted for Boris then Starmer or Farage NOT graduates.
Graduates voted 42% Labour, 18% Conservative, 15% Liberal Democrat, 9% Green and 8% Reform in July. As might be expected, the strongest groups for Labour, the LDs and Greens, the weakest for Conservative and Reform.
Whether that's an example of education or political indoctrination at Universities is a matter for debate of course and I'm sure everyone has a view (or perhaps not).
Cameron won graduates but since they have voted Labour mostly, however Boris won without graduates as did May
According to Yougov Labour was also at >40% with high earners, 50-100k bracket.
Pre tax rises, though Boris did best with average earners not high earners and it is average earners who decide elections.
Only 10% of voters earn more than £50k and the LDs percentage wise get the highest percentage of their voters from high earners now not Labour or the Tories
So according to Yougov, the largest cohort is Labour voting, that LDs get a smaller cohort overall but that it makes up a larger % of their total vote ... shrugs I'm a bit dubious about how accurate the Yougov sub setting is tbh, they're filtering very finely from a relatively small sample. Others might have more knowledgeable insight.
Look at the poshest home counties seats now Esher and Walton, Epsom and Ewell, St Albans, Winchester, Henley, Maidenhead, Tunbridge Wells, Chesham and Amersham etc all now have LD MPs. As do some of the wealthiest parts of London like Wimbledon, Richmond Park and Twickenham
Gails = LD
Even Epping now has LD councillors mostly and a Gail's
Gail's was a complete mystery to me other than seeing it mentioned on here and then I saw my first one on my one and only visit to Epping a month ago and mentioned the conversations we have here to my wife. She was all knowing. Apparently we have one in Guildford (news to me) and her nephew (who has to have everything that is fashionable) is beside himself that one is opening in Henley. My wife thinks they are pretty average.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
What actual completed investments has the state made over the past 30 years though ?
Crossrail & I can't think of much else. Plenty on repairs and maintenance, but actual new completed big projects... ??
Eurostar first public service November 1994 so just squeaks in. Will be plenty of schools, hospitals, telecoms, water and roads, just not enough.
Chunnel was completed 6 May 1994 so I wasn't counting that in the 30 year band. Schools, hospitals, Telecoms, water & roads are repairs maintenance & upgrades to keep pace with our rising population (Or not ) (And heavier cars) to my mind. Our power generation capacity has decreased from the previous 30 years though and that's a first order approximation to industrial capacity. Offshore wind replacing coal is a modal shift in power generation so that might count. On a slight tangent I have no idea how we get to net zero for power generation by 2030 is it. I mean I can see how we get 70 +, 80 or even 90% there but there's just not the storage for stillish & gloomy winter conditions to get to 100% to my mind.
Presumably you could (theoretically at least) get to Net Zero by generating 105% and exporting the excess, then generating 5% from Gas when really needed...
There are opportunities like that everywhere, such as houses which are carbon positive (I'm not quite there yet with my extended 1930s bungalow, but I'm not far off), and materials that capture more carbon than they take to process.
But lots of definitional questions.
I'm interested watching my MP demanding that Radcliffe-on-Soar should not be closed.
Interesting video on what's gone wrong for the Conservatives electorally. As with much else it's all the fault of Brexit. That's when they lost the graduates, who are the key demographic in Britain now. Talk in the video about how the Tories can work their way back with an offer to graduates but it feels hypothetical.
Even Corbyn won graduates, they aren't the key swing voters now, the key swing voters now are white lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters with a mortgage who voted for Boris in 2019 but for Starmer or Farage this time. Mostly living in the Midlands and North and Essex and Kent.
Graduate swing voters are Remainers primarily in the South who voted for Cameron but LD in July however they are not enough on their own to win a general election
Graduates aren't the key swing voters; they are the most important voting demographic period. The video makes the point that it gets increasingly hard for the Conservatives to win without swinging graduates.
Graduates are large in number and efficiently distributed. This is the killer combo under FPTP.
They are distributed across cities, suburbs, the countryside and increasingly into post industrial northern towns, the so called Red Wall.
Since Brexit they have mostly voted Labour and rarely Conservative. They vote more than non graduates.
Except they aren't, if they were Corbyn would now be PM as most graduates voted for him.
As I said the key swing voters are lower middle class and skilled working class middle aged voters who voted for Boris then Starmer or Farage NOT graduates.
Graduates voted 42% Labour, 18% Conservative, 15% Liberal Democrat, 9% Green and 8% Reform in July. As might be expected, the strongest groups for Labour, the LDs and Greens, the weakest for Conservative and Reform.
Whether that's an example of education or political indoctrination at Universities is a matter for debate of course and I'm sure everyone has a view (or perhaps not).
Cameron won graduates but since they have voted Labour mostly, however Boris won without graduates as did May
According to Yougov Labour was also at >40% with high earners, 50-100k bracket.
Pre tax rises, though Boris did best with average earners not high earners and it is average earners who decide elections.
Only 10% of voters earn more than £50k and the LDs percentage wise get the highest percentage of their voters from high earners now not Labour or the Tories
So according to Yougov, the largest cohort is Labour voting, that LDs get a smaller cohort overall but that it makes up a larger % of their total vote ... shrugs I'm a bit dubious about how accurate the Yougov sub setting is tbh, they're filtering very finely from a relatively small sample. Others might have more knowledgeable insight.
Look at the poshest home counties seats now Esher and Walton, Epsom and Ewell, St Albans, Winchester, Henley, Maidenhead, Tunbridge Wells, Chesham and Amersham etc all now have LD MPs. As do some of the wealthiest parts of London like Wimbledon, Richmond Park and Twickenham
Gails = LD
Even Epping now has LD councillors mostly and a Gail's
Gail's was a complete mystery to me other than seeing it mentioned on here and then I saw my first one on my one and only visit to Epping a month ago and mentioned the conversations we have here to my wife. She was all knowing. Apparently we have one in Guildford (news to me) and her nephew (who has to have everything that is fashionable) is beside himself that one is opening in Henley. My wife thinks they are pretty average.
If everything was a quarter the price it would be great. At the prices, meh.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
One thing I do not understand is why our governments (which can borrow at lower rates than commercial companies) have not insisted on taking large stakes in offshore wind developments. They clearly provide a predictable profit stream, a fair proportion of which goes overseas.
If we are indeed overpaying for renewable electricity, couldn't more of the money at least go back into the exchequer ?
What's the flaw in this reasoning ?
AIU it appears to go back to failed investments in industry from the sixties and seventies such that investment has become a bad thing for a couple of generations of politicians.
But government was pretty well guaranteeing a return, by setting a guaranteed price for the electricity.
UK gov makes consistently terrible investment decisions and this doesn't change much by party. I think the main reasons are previous examples of failure and the positive pay offs happen after the politicians are judged.
It is much harder to be criticised for something you never did, than something you championed which ended up over budget or somehow went wrong.
Had we applied that approach to the water industry, the consumer would probably still have been ripped off, but at least half of the revenue would have stayed in the UK, rather than disappearing overseas. Macquarie made a lot of their money effectively borrowing from themselves to gear up the industry. So they took out dividends in the equity and got paid interest on what was effectively government guaranteed borrowing (at rates more expensive than government could itself have borrowed).
Privatised monopolies don't work in the public interest.
That's a question of regulation. Ofwat has been captured by the water companies.
If you link caps on dividends and executive bonuses and salaries to pollution levels then you'd almost certainly see the latter coming down.
The state, to repeat a point made multiple times already, tends to be dreadful at investment. For boring stuff like water networks, that's less because it makes bad investment choices of X over Y and more because political pressure is to keep bills down, and the easiest way to do that is to cut the investment budget which has little immediate adverse effect. It's no coincidence that both water quality and leak rates under the nationalised water boards were dreadful.
My first post-graduation job was for a Statutory Water Company. I like the model they had, but they got stiffed by the creation of the big water companies because Thatcher's government didn't believe in "level playing fields".
The basic financial model was this - they had shareholders like a private company, but there were two major constraints 1) Dividends were capped, but you could get a steady safe income from owning their shares, and 2) increasing the company's borrowing limit required government approval (by a statutory instrument I think)
So increasing debt purely to pay yourself a big dividend would have been a non-starter, though borrowing to e.g. build a new reservoir would have been fine.
SWCs historically owed their existence to under-investment in water infrastructure by the old Urban District, Rural District and Borough councils.
It’s an interesting thought experiment what happens if the Left depose Mr Ming Vase. As many on Twitter without fear of libel law seem to be predicting.
It would be pretty easy for any competent Conservative in the next 20 years to make the argument that Labour can never be trusted in office, even if their leader appears like a relatively soft left metro type.
In turn perhaps this should be a consideration in the next PM market. There’s not a precedent for a contested labour leadership process while in office. Are the left able to force a members process, knowing their candidate (Raynor?) wins? Or is there a cabinet stitch up and a coalescing around perhaps Streeting?
It's virtually impossible to depose a sitting Labour leader. 20% of the PLP have to nominate a rival, and no sign of that happening, not least because the usual subjects are not taking the Labour whip at present.
There are lots of folk on Twitter who believe too much on Twitter.
Starmer is rubbish at retail politics, but very good at consolidating power.
I agree - that's why he'll resign. He'll have to. There's really no way back I don't think.
Yes this is right isn’t it. But what then.
Personally I think the best candidate in the Labour Party is Andy Burnham, but he's not in Parliament, and if there were a byelection to get him in, Reform would fancy their chances of an upset. So it looks like Reeves or Cooper, neither of whom have covered themselves in glory since Labour have come to power.
What’s the mechanism for that, when there’s a huge new intake of MPs that are potentially quite fringey in their political views and who might not want a cabinet stitch up in favour of those two? Perhaps it’s going to be done US style. A cabinet nominee who assumes PM, a vote of confidence in the house and a total bypassing of the usual labour leadership rules?
I would love to have what you are having.
It simply isn't possible unless
1) SKS resigns 2) only one candidate puts their name forward.
And so far we have a few stories about receiving gifts and a very dodgy super injection story that even I know is a pile of kack..
It's copium on the right.
It's not easy to dump a PM mid-term and rightly so. Major survived Black Wednesday, Blair survived Iraq.
For the Conservatives to have lost two PMs in quick succession was unprecedented. Until the party has a good story for how they screwed up so much twice in a row, they aren't a serious party of government. And the only one that really works is "I wasn't around then".
So any current Conservative who wants their exile to be less than a decade has to normalise the idea that both sides are equally bad at choosing suitable PMs.
Trouble is, that even if Starmer does turn out to be a Johnsonesque sleazeball (I rather doubt it), he needs to be followed by a nutter who only lasts seven weeks.
Unlikely.
Very unlikely - because Labour MPs won't be stupid enough to let just their membership pick the next PM - so you would see a stitch up like 2007, or at most, 2 centrist candidates getting nominated.
What you won't see is a left wing candidate getting enough nominations to stand after Corbyn...
I'm still trying to grasp how Tory MPs thought Truss was a suitable candidate..
Relatedly: heretofore unseen levels of Cope on display by the Truss on the deep state that evicted her from her Prime Ministerial post: https://x.com/PoliticoForYou/status/1840723236499137012 Liz Truss claims “Underground transgender mafia” were plotting against her and brought her leadership to an end.
“They’re the ones really running this country.”
Amazing.
As pointed out upthread thats a "parody" account
Dammit. I’m out of the edit window too.
A reminder to check twice before posting...
TBH They don't need to parody her. She is beyond parody.
- more than every Labour leader put together since 1997
- despite being in the top 1% of earners
- refuses to stop taking them despite the damage it’s inflicted on Labour
What’s the explanation other than that he’s greedy
He believes the Lawyer’s Dictum
1) I wish to do something 2) It is legal 3) Therefore it is my moral duty to do it. Any opposition to this is grotesquely immoral, since it is legal. To oppose it is to defy the law.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
One thing I do not understand is why our governments (which can borrow at lower rates than commercial companies) have not insisted on taking large stakes in offshore wind developments. They clearly provide a predictable profit stream, a fair proportion of which goes overseas.
If we are indeed overpaying for renewable electricity, couldn't more of the money at least go back into the exchequer ?
What's the flaw in this reasoning ?
The flaw in the reasoning is that we don't have the capacity to borrow the money and that we structured the deals so that the builders of the wind farms bid on the price at which they electricity was sold - we couldn't have done that if the government was (part) building the farms.
We do though. The market gets spooked when governments borrow for current spending without any consideration for servicing or paying it back; just unjustified assertions as the tax cuts paying for themselves. Genuine investment will be viewed more favourably. Likewise, large but one-off spending will be tolerated by lenders as long as there's a recognition that the largesse will end and normality resume once the emergency is over.
The difficulty here for the jaded observer is that WRT excess borrowing to fund current state expenditure lifestyle the 'emergency' has now lasted without a break since 2008, we plan to reduce debt at a % of GDP by continuing to borrow lots more, and the treasury seems to be planning an even more bogus measure of fiscal probity than the current bogus one so that we can borrow more still, and there is no plan for paying a farthing of it back.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
One thing I do not understand is why our governments (which can borrow at lower rates than commercial companies) have not insisted on taking large stakes in offshore wind developments. They clearly provide a predictable profit stream, a fair proportion of which goes overseas.
If we are indeed overpaying for renewable electricity, couldn't more of the money at least go back into the exchequer ?
What's the flaw in this reasoning ?
AIU it appears to go back to failed investments in industry from the sixties and seventies such that investment has become a bad thing for a couple of generations of politicians.
But government was pretty well guaranteeing a return, by setting a guaranteed price for the electricity.
UK gov makes consistently terrible investment decisions and this doesn't change much by party. I think the main reasons are previous examples of failure and the positive pay offs happen after the politicians are judged.
It is much harder to be criticised for something you never did, than something you championed which ended up over budget or somehow went wrong.
When I was younger and more ignorant, I actually tried selling the DARPA idea to various MPs.
I eventually noticed that, while they claimed to like the idea, they actually wanted to “improve” it by
1) picking the winners 2) throw big money into 1)
As in, the complete reverse of the DARPA idea. Which is small amounts of seed money to a range of ideas in a space, see which ones actually work…
Slightly more to it than that - one program director with almost dictatorial powers, but a limited term of office. And no political decision making, of course.
You can't not have decision-making though. Ultimately, the politicians have to be accountable, which means they have to have some degree of power. In an ideal world, they just pick highly capable people who then run things independently but civil servants and bureaucrats can also suffer from group-think and ignore ideas out of their reference zone. Perhaps a new organisation might not suffer from those problems, if staffed with people from outside that culture but I wouldn't bet on it. To take a practical example, Churchill's direct interventions could be a time-wasting pain in the backside for the military and civil chiefs at times (quite a lot of times) but on the other hand they were also critical in, for example, giving the work at Bletchley Park the priority it needed and deserved.
What's needed is a proactive culture without fear of failure. Neither of these tend to sit very comfortably in the public sector (or, indeed, within the private sector and in particular large, established organisations).
For the DARPA model the politicians set policy goals, and award a tranche of funding - that's it. The reason it works is that they appoint expert program directors on very limited (c. 2 years) terms. During that time they have (in their small sphere) unchecked power to award (relatively small( grants for short term</>, high risk projects.
They get to try ideas without fear of failure (the expectation is that many will fail), and if it works, it's then someone else's to take further.
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
The date of birth thing? I thought I'd given them my standard fake birth date for organisations with no business knowing it, but I still get asked, so maybe I didn't. But I can simply close the prompt by clicking the cross and it doesn't seem to stop me doing anything.
Still, being off Twitter may still be a net improvement I only really use it for two things, professionally as mainly a broadcast medium (publicising research outputs, calling for participants etc) and following links posted on here (for the latter, the need to be logged in to see any context beyond the immediately linked tweet does bug me).
Come to BlueSky instead. That's increasingly where academic discussion is moving. Although the best place for publicising research outputs I find is probably LinkedIn.
So far I've stuck with Twitter because it would be quite hard work to rebuild such an interesting community - mine has developed since 2008 and has a lot of interesting people in it.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
What actual completed investments has the state made over the past 30 years though ?
Crossrail & I can't think of much else. Plenty on repairs and maintenance, but actual new completed big projects... ??
Queensferry Crossing & Borders Railway, both opened by QEII so must be REALLY important.
Bathgate electrification through to the Wild West.
Edit: I won't suggest the electrification of the London-Bristol main line as that was so badly screwed up.
Sone big chunks of the A9 have been dualled, tbf. Fochabers bypass. A few new rail stations and realignments in the north (all incredibly ugly). Leven link.
I'd have guessed offshore wind is probably the most significant investment though, enabled by the state. Will reach 20gw in the few years - 30 by 2030.
And that reminds me that some of the delays to the A9 etc were down to the Tories, Slab etc. via the chaos caused by diversion of moneys to the Edinburgh trams - which themselves count as a major investment project, of course. I'd add the Greens to that list but delays to the A9 would be a feature not a bug for them.
Mr. Pioneers, aye. Even if the timing couldn't be altered, they've used that gap to cut planned investment and create an atmosphere of doom and gloom that just makes a bad situation worse, which, as you say, then becomes a legitimate economic line with which to attack Labour.
It's dumb both politically and economically.
I think Nigel Lawson had it spot on when he said in his memoirs that saying how bad the situation is after you've just won an election is damaging because it undermines confidence and it's also pointless because you don't have to face the voters for some years.
Of course it's especially stupid when you've made up transparent lies like saying this is the worst situation for an incoming government since the war, when 2010 was several degrees worse, or that there is a huge hole in the public finances, while there is enough money to waste on pay rises for unreformed public sector unions and pointless and unpopular foreign aid or that things are way worse than you thought, when the figures are public.
And finally it's most staggeringly stupid when you've clearly got no convincing plan to fix anything except the tiniest of tinkering.
2010 wasnt worse for the state of public services, accumulative impact of lack of investment or economic asperations of young people. It is not all about budget finances.
It is if you're Labour, whose only answer for any problem is to waste (or "invest" as Brown called it) other people's money.
Most people who get rich make their money partly through earnings but a very substantial share comes from investments too. It is the same with countries.
One thing I do not understand is why our governments (which can borrow at lower rates than commercial companies) have not insisted on taking large stakes in offshore wind developments. They clearly provide a predictable profit stream, a fair proportion of which goes overseas.
If we are indeed overpaying for renewable electricity, couldn't more of the money at least go back into the exchequer ?
What's the flaw in this reasoning ?
AIU it appears to go back to failed investments in industry from the sixties and seventies such that investment has become a bad thing for a couple of generations of politicians.
But government was pretty well guaranteeing a return, by setting a guaranteed price for the electricity.
UK gov makes consistently terrible investment decisions and this doesn't change much by party. I think the main reasons are previous examples of failure and the positive pay offs happen after the politicians are judged.
It is much harder to be criticised for something you never did, than something you championed which ended up over budget or somehow went wrong.
Had we applied that approach to the water industry, the consumer would probably still have been ripped off, but at least half of the revenue would have stayed in the UK, rather than disappearing overseas. Macquarie made a lot of their money effectively borrowing from themselves to gear up the industry. So they took out dividends in the equity and got paid interest on what was effectively government guaranteed borrowing (at rates more expensive than government could itself have borrowed).
Privatised monopolies don't work in the public interest.
That's a question of regulation. Ofwat has been captured by the water companies.
If you link caps on dividends and executive bonuses and salaries to pollution levels then you'd almost certainly see the latter coming down.
The state, to repeat a point made multiple times already, tends to be dreadful at investment. For boring stuff like water networks, that's less because it makes bad investment choices of X over Y and more because political pressure is to keep bills down, and the easiest way to do that is to cut the investment budget which has little immediate adverse effect. It's no coincidence that both water quality and leak rates under the nationalised water boards were dreadful.
The state could have been - in my suggestion - a sleeping partner, except in extremis. I've nothing against private finance, or private management for utilities; I just don't like the country getting ripped off.
Also "a question of regulation" amounts to the same thing as state management. By retaining actual ownership rights, the state at least benefits, if the consumer gets ripped off. As it is, we had the worst of both worlds.
It’s an interesting thought experiment what happens if the Left depose Mr Ming Vase. As many on Twitter without fear of libel law seem to be predicting.
It would be pretty easy for any competent Conservative in the next 20 years to make the argument that Labour can never be trusted in office, even if their leader appears like a relatively soft left metro type.
In turn perhaps this should be a consideration in the next PM market. There’s not a precedent for a contested labour leadership process while in office. Are the left able to force a members process, knowing their candidate (Raynor?) wins? Or is there a cabinet stitch up and a coalescing around perhaps Streeting?
It's virtually impossible to depose a sitting Labour leader. 20% of the PLP have to nominate a rival, and no sign of that happening, not least because the usual subjects are not taking the Labour whip at present.
There are lots of folk on Twitter who believe too much on Twitter.
Starmer is rubbish at retail politics, but very good at consolidating power.
I agree - that's why he'll resign. He'll have to. There's really no way back I don't think.
Yes this is right isn’t it. But what then.
Personally I think the best candidate in the Labour Party is Andy Burnham, but he's not in Parliament, and if there were a byelection to get him in, Reform would fancy their chances of an upset. So it looks like Reeves or Cooper, neither of whom have covered themselves in glory since Labour have come to power.
What’s the mechanism for that, when there’s a huge new intake of MPs that are potentially quite fringey in their political views and who might not want a cabinet stitch up in favour of those two? Perhaps it’s going to be done US style. A cabinet nominee who assumes PM, a vote of confidence in the house and a total bypassing of the usual labour leadership rules?
I would love to have what you are having.
It simply isn't possible unless
1) SKS resigns 2) only one candidate puts their name forward.
And so far we have a few stories about receiving gifts and a very dodgy super injection story that even I know is a pile of kack..
It's copium on the right.
It's not easy to dump a PM mid-term and rightly so. Major survived Black Wednesday, Blair survived Iraq.
For the Conservatives to have lost two PMs in quick succession was unprecedented. Until the party has a good story for how they screwed up so much twice in a row, they aren't a serious party of government. And the only one that really works is "I wasn't around then".
So any current Conservative who wants their exile to be less than a decade has to normalise the idea that both sides are equally bad at choosing suitable PMs.
Trouble is, that even if Starmer does turn out to be a Johnsonesque sleazeball (I rather doubt it), he needs to be followed by a nutter who only lasts seven weeks.
Unlikely.
Very unlikely - because Labour MPs won't be stupid enough to let just their membership pick the next PM - so you would see a stitch up like 2007, or at most, 2 centrist candidates getting nominated.
What you won't see is a left wing candidate getting enough nominations to stand after Corbyn...
I'm still trying to grasp how Tory MPs thought Truss was a suitable candidate..
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
The date of birth thing? I thought I'd given them my standard fake birth date for organisations with no business knowing it, but I still get asked, so maybe I didn't. But I can simply close the prompt by clicking the cross and it doesn't seem to stop me doing anything.
Still, being off Twitter may still be a net improvement I only really use it for two things, professionally as mainly a broadcast medium (publicising research outputs, calling for participants etc) and following links posted on here (for the latter, the need to be logged in to see any context beyond the immediately linked tweet does bug me).
Come to BlueSky instead. That's increasingly where academic discussion is moving. Although the best place for publicising research outputs I find is probably LinkedIn.
So far I've stuck with Twitter because it would be quite hard work to rebuild such an interesting community - mine has developed since 2008 and has a lot of interesting people in it.
Saying - however subtly - that you are on Bluesky is going to become the marker of the worst type of vain lefty wanker. The social media equivalent of "oh, I only go to Gails, for my bread, lovely sourdough", "or no, actually, I'm a vegan, I can't even LOOK at meat"
Bluesky is full of lefty twats congratulating each other for being on Bluesky
My photo quota today is a Britain First activist called Andrew Edge, suited and booted for a demo in Belfast that apparently drew 23 people (that number could have been ironic, meaning "flop").
Who is the jowly chap in the photo on the wall. I think I recognise it - I was wondering if it was a Monday Club character or someone like John Tyndall. Any ideas?
Qtwtain in any case. Next trousers bunched up over yer ankles!!
It's John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.
By the way, what is it with that George Osborne/Theresa May power pose that all the silly twats do?
- more than every Labour leader put together since 1997
- despite being in the top 1% of earners
- refuses to stop taking them despite the damage it’s inflicted on Labour
What’s the explanation other than that he’s greedy
This is silly. SKS has not taken £100k worth of freebies because no-one would pay £100k at open market prices for the things he was granted.
The problem is a single person apparently acting as sugar daddy for half the cabinet, not the £ amounts.
Lack of political nous and awareness an issue as well. But those who dont seem worked up by Frank Hester pumping in £15m to the Tories seem awfully concerned about Starmer's son using a friends flat or Starmer watching Arsenal.
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
The date of birth thing? I thought I'd given them my standard fake birth date for organisations with no business knowing it, but I still get asked, so maybe I didn't. But I can simply close the prompt by clicking the cross and it doesn't seem to stop me doing anything.
Still, being off Twitter may still be a net improvement I only really use it for two things, professionally as mainly a broadcast medium (publicising research outputs, calling for participants etc) and following links posted on here (for the latter, the need to be logged in to see any context beyond the immediately linked tweet does bug me).
Come to BlueSky instead. That's increasingly where academic discussion is moving. Although the best place for publicising research outputs I find is probably LinkedIn.
So far I've stuck with Twitter because it would be quite hard work to rebuild such an interesting community - mine has developed since 2008 and has a lot of interesting people in it.
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
The date of birth thing? I thought I'd given them my standard fake birth date for organisations with no business knowing it, but I still get asked, so maybe I didn't. But I can simply close the prompt by clicking the cross and it doesn't seem to stop me doing anything.
Still, being off Twitter may still be a net improvement I only really use it for two things, professionally as mainly a broadcast medium (publicising research outputs, calling for participants etc) and following links posted on here (for the latter, the need to be logged in to see any context beyond the immediately linked tweet does bug me).
Come to BlueSky instead. That's increasingly where academic discussion is moving. Although the best place for publicising research outputs I find is probably LinkedIn.
So far I've stuck with Twitter because it would be quite hard work to rebuild such an interesting community - mine has developed since 2008 and has a lot of interesting people in it.
Bought our bi-lingual Welsh RNLI Christmas cards and first of the family's Christmas presents this morning
Far better than watching the conservative conference, but I would just quietly suggest that those who are writing off the party may be a wee bit premature no matter who the next leader is as while they seem a poor choice they are not talking to anyone at present other than to objectively capture some Reform voters
The electorate are very volatile across the western world and the rise of the right is a warning shot not to be ignored
Indeed who on earth could have predicted the fall in Starmer's ratings and his government's popularity, so much so that last nights poll actually put Sunak's ahead
Gail's was a complete mystery to me other than seeing it mentioned on here and then I saw my first one on my one and only visit to Epping a month ago and mentioned the conversations we have here to my wife. She was all knowing. Apparently we have one in Guildford (news to me) and her nephew (who has to have everything that is fashionable) is beside himself that one is opening in Henley. My wife thinks they are pretty average.
They have made it as far North as Stratford-Upon-Avon
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
The date of birth thing? I thought I'd given them my standard fake birth date for organisations with no business knowing it, but I still get asked, so maybe I didn't. But I can simply close the prompt by clicking the cross and it doesn't seem to stop me doing anything.
Still, being off Twitter may still be a net improvement I only really use it for two things, professionally as mainly a broadcast medium (publicising research outputs, calling for participants etc) and following links posted on here (for the latter, the need to be logged in to see any context beyond the immediately linked tweet does bug me).
Come to BlueSky instead. That's increasingly where academic discussion is moving. Although the best place for publicising research outputs I find is probably LinkedIn.
So far I've stuck with Twitter because it would be quite hard work to rebuild such an interesting community - mine has developed since 2008 and has a lot of interesting people in it.
Saying - however subtly - that you are on Bluesky is going to become the marker of the worst type of vain lefty wanker. The social media equivalent of "oh, I only go to Gails, for my bread, lovely sourdough", "or no, actually, I'm a vegan, I can't even LOOK at meat"
Bluesky is full of lefty twats congratulating each other for being on Bluesky
I thought Gails Bakery was problematic due to Israel among other things.
It’s an interesting thought experiment what happens if the Left depose Mr Ming Vase. As many on Twitter without fear of libel law seem to be predicting.
It would be pretty easy for any competent Conservative in the next 20 years to make the argument that Labour can never be trusted in office, even if their leader appears like a relatively soft left metro type.
In turn perhaps this should be a consideration in the next PM market. There’s not a precedent for a contested labour leadership process while in office. Are the left able to force a members process, knowing their candidate (Raynor?) wins? Or is there a cabinet stitch up and a coalescing around perhaps Streeting?
It's virtually impossible to depose a sitting Labour leader. 20% of the PLP have to nominate a rival, and no sign of that happening, not least because the usual subjects are not taking the Labour whip at present.
There are lots of folk on Twitter who believe too much on Twitter.
Starmer is rubbish at retail politics, but very good at consolidating power.
I agree - that's why he'll resign. He'll have to. There's really no way back I don't think.
Yes this is right isn’t it. But what then.
Personally I think the best candidate in the Labour Party is Andy Burnham, but he's not in Parliament, and if there were a byelection to get him in, Reform would fancy their chances of an upset. So it looks like Reeves or Cooper, neither of whom have covered themselves in glory since Labour have come to power.
What’s the mechanism for that, when there’s a huge new intake of MPs that are potentially quite fringey in their political views and who might not want a cabinet stitch up in favour of those two? Perhaps it’s going to be done US style. A cabinet nominee who assumes PM, a vote of confidence in the house and a total bypassing of the usual labour leadership rules?
I would love to have what you are having.
It simply isn't possible unless
1) SKS resigns 2) only one candidate puts their name forward.
And so far we have a few stories about receiving gifts and a very dodgy super injection story that even I know is a pile of kack..
It's copium on the right.
It's not easy to dump a PM mid-term and rightly so. Major survived Black Wednesday, Blair survived Iraq.
For the Conservatives to have lost two PMs in quick succession was unprecedented. Until the party has a good story for how they screwed up so much twice in a row, they aren't a serious party of government. And the only one that really works is "I wasn't around then".
So any current Conservative who wants their exile to be less than a decade has to normalise the idea that both sides are equally bad at choosing suitable PMs.
Trouble is, that even if Starmer does turn out to be a Johnsonesque sleazeball (I rather doubt it), he needs to be followed by a nutter who only lasts seven weeks.
Unlikely.
Very unlikely - because Labour MPs won't be stupid enough to let just their membership pick the next PM - so you would see a stitch up like 2007, or at most, 2 centrist candidates getting nominated.
What you won't see is a left wing candidate getting enough nominations to stand after Corbyn...
I'm still trying to grasp how Tory MPs thought Truss was a suitable candidate..
Sky reporting that some prisoners let out on the early release scheme have not been given accommodation, so they are looking to commit another crime so they can be locked up again
Sky reporting that some prisoners let out on the early release scheme have not been given accommodation, so they are looking to commit another crime so they can be locked up again
You couldn't make this up
No, what you can't make up is a Party which led the Government of this countrty for 14 years and did the sum total of nothing to improve prison capacity or recruit more prison officers leaving the prisons full to bursting when they left office (or, rather, were unceremoniously booted out of office).
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
The date of birth thing? I thought I'd given them my standard fake birth date for organisations with no business knowing it, but I still get asked, so maybe I didn't. But I can simply close the prompt by clicking the cross and it doesn't seem to stop me doing anything.
Still, being off Twitter may still be a net improvement I only really use it for two things, professionally as mainly a broadcast medium (publicising research outputs, calling for participants etc) and following links posted on here (for the latter, the need to be logged in to see any context beyond the immediately linked tweet does bug me).
Come to BlueSky instead. That's increasingly where academic discussion is moving. Although the best place for publicising research outputs I find is probably LinkedIn.
So far I've stuck with Twitter because it would be quite hard work to rebuild such an interesting community - mine has developed since 2008 and has a lot of interesting people in it.
Saying - however subtly - that you are on Bluesky is going to become the marker of the worst type of vain lefty wanker. The social media equivalent of "oh, I only go to Gails, for my bread, lovely sourdough", "or no, actually, I'm a vegan, I can't even LOOK at meat"
Bluesky is full of lefty twats congratulating each other for being on Bluesky
Lefties don't like Gail's. Gail's is for the kind of people who live in Clapham - I've never been inside a Gail's in my life. I only even know about Gail's because class-obsessed PB Tories keep going on about it. And you can add this "Bluesky" thing to the list of things that Lefties are meant to be obsessed with but in reality only know about through rightwingers moaning about them on PB.
Sky reporting that some prisoners let out on the early release scheme have not been given accommodation, so they are looking to commit another crime so they can be locked up again
You couldn't make this up
That's just embarrassing, there just seems to be no joined up thinking anywhere in the government and this isn't me having a go at the current lot, it was the same under the Tories and the same under Labour before that and so on.
Hardly a surprise. I have asked multiple times on here what purported qualities I am missing in Badenoch. She seems entirely without appeal – she was ineffective and cowardly as a minister and seems obsessed with trivial culture war nonsense. Nobody was able to articulate what it was about her that commended her to the leadership – and it seems the answer is indeed "sweet FA".
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
The date of birth thing? I thought I'd given them my standard fake birth date for organisations with no business knowing it, but I still get asked, so maybe I didn't. But I can simply close the prompt by clicking the cross and it doesn't seem to stop me doing anything.
Still, being off Twitter may still be a net improvement I only really use it for two things, professionally as mainly a broadcast medium (publicising research outputs, calling for participants etc) and following links posted on here (for the latter, the need to be logged in to see any context beyond the immediately linked tweet does bug me).
Come to BlueSky instead. That's increasingly where academic discussion is moving. Although the best place for publicising research outputs I find is probably LinkedIn.
So far I've stuck with Twitter because it would be quite hard work to rebuild such an interesting community - mine has developed since 2008 and has a lot of interesting people in it.
Saying - however subtly - that you are on Bluesky is going to become the marker of the worst type of vain lefty wanker. The social media equivalent of "oh, I only go to Gails, for my bread, lovely sourdough", "or no, actually, I'm a vegan, I can't even LOOK at meat"
Bluesky is full of lefty twats congratulating each other for being on Bluesky
Lefties don't like Gail's. Gail's is for the kind of people who live in Clapham - I've never been inside a Gail's in my life. I only even know about Gail's because class-obsessed PB Tories keep going on about it. And you can add this "Bluesky" thing to the list of things that Lefties are meant to be obsessed with but in reality only know about through rightwingers moaning about them on PB.
I never said “lefties go to Gail’s” I said utter wankers drop it into conversion as they think it gives them some bizarre status
However the first person to mention “oh I use Bluesky actually” on this thread appears to be @bondegezou
I fear Kemi will end up being a slightly more competent version of Liz Truss. She's appealing to the exact same demo in the Tory membership with these wild statements. I'm sure there's some businesses that couldn't deal with the minimum wage but the overall good it has done outweighs any downsides.
Twitter’s value now estimated to be down 79% since Musk took over.
It has become unusable for me. I never did use it much but now I can't even look at it unless I give them some personal details. Since I do not wish to, it no longer exists for me.
This has on the whole made a small improvement in the quality of my life.
The date of birth thing? I thought I'd given them my standard fake birth date for organisations with no business knowing it, but I still get asked, so maybe I didn't. But I can simply close the prompt by clicking the cross and it doesn't seem to stop me doing anything.
Still, being off Twitter may still be a net improvement I only really use it for two things, professionally as mainly a broadcast medium (publicising research outputs, calling for participants etc) and following links posted on here (for the latter, the need to be logged in to see any context beyond the immediately linked tweet does bug me).
Come to BlueSky instead. That's increasingly where academic discussion is moving. Although the best place for publicising research outputs I find is probably LinkedIn.
So far I've stuck with Twitter because it would be quite hard work to rebuild such an interesting community - mine has developed since 2008 and has a lot of interesting people in it.
Saying - however subtly - that you are on Bluesky is going to become the marker of the worst type of vain lefty wanker. The social media equivalent of "oh, I only go to Gails, for my bread, lovely sourdough", "or no, actually, I'm a vegan, I can't even LOOK at meat"
Bluesky is full of lefty twats congratulating each other for being on Bluesky
Lefties don't like Gail's. Gail's is for the kind of people who live in Clapham - I've never been inside a Gail's in my life. I only even know about Gail's because class-obsessed PB Tories keep going on about it. And you can add this "Bluesky" thing to the list of things that Lefties are meant to be obsessed with but in reality only know about through rightwingers moaning about them on PB.
Cannot be bothered with Bluesky, I am happy with Twitter. My feed is not too bad and when the odd Tommy Robinson or Katy Hopkins pops in I just block.
As for Gails I thought the lefties didn't like it too, Due it supposed links to Israel.
I fear Kemi will end up being a slightly more competent version of Liz Truss. She's appealing to the exact same demo in the Tory membership with these wild statements. I'm sure there's some businesses that couldn't deal with the minimum wage but the overall good it has done outweighs any downsides.
She needs time to mature if she will mature at all
I fear Kemi will end up being a slightly more competent version of Liz Truss. She's appealing to the exact same demo in the Tory membership with these wild statements. I'm sure there's some businesses that couldn't deal with the minimum wage but the overall good it has done outweighs any downsides.
It's just a crap argument. There is a valid argument that the minimum wage is too high as it means disabled people don't get any chance of working but that wasn't the argument she was making - her's is the race to the bottom, maximise profits argument that even Henry Ford saw was a bad idea.
Comments
Has he ever voted for Plaid Cymru?
He’d annoyed me by claiming that the problem was that the government didn’t boldly invest big money in new ideas. As opposed to seed money for test projects, back the ones that work etc….
Next trousers bunched up over yer ankles!!
Sir Victor Meldrew and Reckless Reeves will be telling us all to turn the thermostats down.
Might hold their nose to vote Jenrick / Badenoch if they're feeling particularly exercised about their tax rates but would really prefer not to vote for a racist, little Englander, Reform aping Conservative party. Probably lost to the LDs unless there's another Cameron-like leader.
I'd have guessed offshore wind is probably the most significant investment though, enabled by the state. Will reach 20gw in the few years - 30 by 2030.
https://bsky.app/profile/goat.navy/lists/3l2347tg6fd2r
Macquarie made a lot of their money effectively borrowing from themselves to gear up the industry. So they took out dividends in the equity and got paid interest on what was effectively government guaranteed borrowing (at rates more expensive than government could itself have borrowed).
Privatised monopolies don't work in the public interest.
https://www.sussexlive.co.uk/news/sussex-news/scarred-life-dad-sickened-hastings-4524160
The Tories are fishing in a shrinking pond, and buying a longer fishing rod isn’t the answer.
What's needed is a proactive culture without fear of failure. Neither of these tend to sit very comfortably in the public sector (or, indeed, within the private sector and in particular large, established organisations).
That’s where railways, or road pricing, or direct investment in power generation could help. Then government has an income stream so the treasury numbers and there’s case for borrowing can better add up.
If we can't build the capacity our railway needs to meet demand we definitely don't have the money to invest in wind turbines which the private sector are willing to invest in... Yes the public may be paying a slightly higher price for energy but it's small relative to other screwups..
"In 2024, a successful economically liberal graduate in their early thirties was about as likely to vote Conservative as they were to vote Green...
...So, the Tories’ difficulties with mid-career voters aren’t just an electoral disaster — they are a major problem for their talent pipeline...
...Almost by definition, when your 30- and 40-something politicians are drawn from a narrow slice of the electorate, they tend to be pretty eccentric."
Just about the best thing for the world economy in the coming months, would be a repeat of the Saudis’ willy-waving competition with Putin that we saw at the start of the pandemic.
The counter argument is that the Lib Dem vote is efficient while the Tory vote isn't and with Reform sat where it is the tories may lose even more seats at the next election.
At best the Tories best hope of winning them is that they come first in a three horse races between Tory / Labour / Reform in seats Labour currently hold.
1. Stupidly high costs coming from a gold-plated scheme, political demands for unnecessary tunnels and the general expensiveness of land.
2. Political choices over how to use the money it would have cost.
Neither of these were because the market wouldn't fund it; it was down to political priorities and, in particular, appeasing Nimbys.
If you link caps on dividends and executive bonuses and salaries to pollution levels then you'd almost certainly see the latter coming down.
The state, to repeat a point made multiple times already, tends to be dreadful at investment. For boring stuff like water networks, that's less because it makes bad investment choices of X over Y and more because political pressure is to keep bills down, and the easiest way to do that is to cut the investment budget which has little immediate adverse effect. It's no coincidence that both water quality and leak rates under the nationalised water boards were dreadful.
Currently we're importing from everywhere except Ireland with whom we share a single electricity market anyway.
To give an example, the people who pipe bombed ULEZ camera could be charged with causing an explosion (terrorism). The facts would suggest A3 category of offence under the charging guidelines. Which starts at 16 years in prison. Range is 12-20 years.
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/explosive-substances-terrorism-only/
But they won’t get charged with that,
But lots of definitional questions.
I'm interested watching my MP demanding that Radcliffe-on-Soar should not be closed.
- has taken £100,000 worth of freebies
- more than every Labour leader put together since 1997
- despite being in the top 1% of earners
- refuses to stop taking them despite the damage it’s inflicted on Labour
What’s the explanation other than that he’s greedy
The basic financial model was this -
they had shareholders like a private company, but there were two major constraints
1) Dividends were capped, but you could get a steady safe income from owning their shares, and
2) increasing the company's borrowing limit required government approval (by a statutory instrument I think)
So increasing debt purely to pay yourself a big dividend would have been a non-starter, though borrowing to e.g. build a new reservoir would have been fine.
SWCs historically owed their existence to under-investment in water infrastructure by the old Urban District, Rural District and Borough councils.
1) I wish to do something
2) It is legal
3) Therefore it is my moral duty to do it. Any opposition to this is grotesquely immoral, since it is legal. To oppose it is to defy the law.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge,has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed, you mark my words, has not only saved the failing Labour party, but will save that other malfunctioning corporation called UK plc.
Harris wins 55 times out of 100 in our simulations of the 2024 presidential election.
Trump wins 45 times out of 100."
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/pennsylvania/
The reason it works is that they appoint expert program directors on very limited (c. 2 years) terms. During that time they have (in their small sphere) unchecked power to award (relatively small( grants for short term</>, high risk projects.
They get to try ideas without fear of failure (the expectation is that many will fail), and if it works, it's then someone else's to take further.
No empire building.
Pinged you. I'm at https://bsky.app/profile/mattwardman.bsky.social .
I've nothing against private finance, or private management for utilities; I just don't like the country getting ripped off.
Also "a question of regulation" amounts to the same thing as state management. By retaining actual ownership rights, the state at least benefits, if the consumer gets ripped off.
As it is, we had the worst of both worlds.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
The problem is a single person apparently acting as sugar daddy for half the cabinet, not the £ amounts.
Really quite embarrassing the credulous idiots you get round here.
Bluesky is full of lefty twats congratulating each other for being on Bluesky
By the way, what is it with that George Osborne/Theresa May power pose that all the silly twats do?
Just to cheer everyone
Bought our bi-lingual Welsh RNLI Christmas cards and first of the family's Christmas presents this morning
Far better than watching the conservative conference, but I would just quietly suggest that those who are writing off the party may be a wee bit premature no matter who the next leader is as while they seem a poor choice they are not talking to anyone at present other than to objectively capture some Reform voters
The electorate are very volatile across the western world and the rise of the right is a warning shot not to be ignored
Indeed who on earth could have predicted the fall in Starmer's ratings and his government's popularity, so much so that last nights poll actually put Sunak's ahead
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/careersandeducation/kemi-badenoch-suggests-minimum-wage-is-harming-businesses/ar-AA1rwbHY?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=c800633c5476411292e07d9d920f8edf&ei=8
The actual use it was put to was irrelevant.
If someone gives me a magnum of Perrier Jouet Belle Epoque and I use it to clean my shoes, I would still have to declare the full purchase price.
So AFAIK Lab still lead on VI
Indeed it is. That post attributed to me is from someone else.
You couldn't make this up
However the first person to mention “oh I use Bluesky actually” on this thread appears to be @bondegezou
As for Gails I thought the lefties didn't like it too, Due it supposed links to Israel.
Jenrick is the best of a bad lot