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A 10% return in two days and a 120% return in two days? – politicalbetting.com
A 10% return in two days and a 120% return in two days? – politicalbetting.com
With Tory MPs voting tomorrow and Wednesday in the leadership election I think a 10% return in two days on Jenrick may appeal to some but I think if Jenrick tries to engineer it that Tugendhat is his oppoent then that 12/1 is stonking value.
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And getting rid of all of those unhappy with her would have been difficult too – firstly, there were quite a few of them, and secondly finding them would not have been easy, as they had been making their feelings known discreetly.
I am told - by sources that have been consistently reliable through all of this - that a decision was made on Friday and the prime minister was willing to sack Sue Gray. He had decided, whatever she said, that she could no longer be his chief of staff.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0jwv9v95yzo
Sounds like when you hear at a football club it been said that the manager has lost the dressing room.
Not sure how I'd price it. 25% shot whereas either Badenoch or Cleverly are 75%?
Shame on those who support him and spread his shit.
When it isn't working, it needs to change.
Which suggests the change agenda is in trouble.
A better bet than 11/8 on Badenoch to make the final two is Badenoch to win at 9/2 at Ladbrokes. If she makes the final 2 then she wins.
I expect there'll be a lot of votes that shift though
For the PM to lose his CoS only three months into being in government, does not reflect well on him.
The appearance is that he’s got no plan at all, and the (domestic political) news is dominated by a whole load of troughing and tittle-tattle while we wait for the doom and gloom of the Budget. Where’s their daily News Grid, and an appropriate minister sent out to sell the Story of the Day?
Even in the dying days of the last government, they could rely on the likes of Michael Gove to be up at 6am and spend the morning defending the indefensible.
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/24630437.single-mum-baby-forced-move-county-durham/
It's not exactly news because dumping people in a different authority happens all the time but sending someone from Hillingdon / Uxbridge to a former mining village with no bus really isn't on - and this time the person involved seems happy for her identity to be known...
But I think it's plausible to say that the Starmer misfires have been political, which is consistent with having a PM who isn't a natural politician and a CoS with the same imbalance of strengths and weaknesses.
Resolving things in favour of McSweeney (who clearly can get things done politically) makes sense, as does starting again with the Comms team. Better to not have to do that, but better to do it than not.
I'm reminded of something Bill Hartston said when he was on telly as Mr Chess and not on Gogglebox.
One of the things about good players is that, when they blunder, they somehow manage to get compensation for it.
Which is bad news for the CotE. If her Budget is poorly received, she will become the lightning rod.
Why should Northerners have to take on the problems of London/The South?
It's not good having to sack the manager so soon into the season, but far worse to persist.
If only Leicester's owners were as ruthless!
The same sum as the black hole they supposedly inherited from the Tories.
When that story was then first up on the Jeremy Vine show, with people phoning in to proclaim it utter bollocks, you have no news operation.
not if Boris Johnson can help it. It’s clear that his memoir, Unleashed, out this week, is primarily intended not as a historical account but as deliberate myth-making. His motivation for picking up his pen is often assumed to be Churchill’s: “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” Johnson’s interest is far more immediate. It’s whether he can lever a misleading version of his past into an eventual comeback.
There were two stunning moments on air that revealed just how power-hungry Johnson is. Bradby asked who he preferred as US president, Harris or Trump? Johnson replied pompously that “the job of a UK premier is to be on the best possible terms with both”. An astonished Bradby said: “But you’re not the premier!” Johnson’s face fell and he lapsed into incoherent mumbling: “Yeah, yeah, I know, but…”
The second was when Bradby asked who he’d prefer as Tory leader. Johnson, who’d been watching with narrowed eyes and wolfish grin, momentarily lost control. His face contorted, his cheeks ballooned and he blew a raspberry. He could not disguise his contempt. His verbal recovery was quick — “four good candidates…” — but nobody could fail to grasp how Johnson will view the next leader. In his imagination he’s still the rightful prime minister. They’ll be a rival to destroy.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/new-tory-leader-must-finally-bury-boris-rrjbwdpmb
These two batsmen look well set now, and with something of the Bazball about them on the flat pitch. Masood with seven boundaries on his way to 60no from only 58 balls. Hopefully it’s just a high scoring game, but the hosts are looking at close to 450 by the end of play unless we get quick wickets.
16 off that penultimate over from Bashir’s bowling not a good sign, although a single let go from Leach in the final over was better.
Lunch, Pak 122/1 25ovs.
Meanwhile, you've got a Forest reject.
Heh.
But most of the time they do it on the quiet person by person with the council complaints ignored. I'm not sure how you fix it unless you insist on 18 years of support being paid by the old to the new one council up front..
Trump has already been president. It was not the end of US democracy, with the institutions of the US constitution remaining intact. It is tricky to see constitutionally how Trump would seek a third term in both meanings of the word (legally, and his physical fitness).
It is by now well established that Biden’s government has deliberately slow walked military aid and restricted the rules of engagement. Because it preferred to slowly bleed out Soviet stockpiles than risk a disorderly collapse of the Putin regime, or Putin behaving like a cornered animal. Most sober analyses conclude those Soviet stockpiles will be exhausted some time in 2025 and regardless of who wins in Nov, Ukraine will have enough to keep defending until then. It is far from clear that there’s a fag paper of difference between Biden, Harris and Trump on what should happen next, namely a negotiated settlement, almost certainly involving a permanent change in borders. If anyone in power in the US is credibly talking about an amphibious assault of Crimea and a combined arms attempt routing on the Donbas I have missed it. Further, there have not been leaks from Trump’s meeting with Zelensky indicating that the US election is life or death for Ukraine. It might well be that Trump expropriates frozen Russian assets to fund continued military aid, potentially even at an increased level to really boost the stocks of U.S. defence companies. He is after all a Republican.
In case you’d missed it, the world is already having a very bad time. The reason in my view is simple, the US has ceased to provide a credible deterrence to the bad guys, because its polity is still full of self doubt after the Iraq debacle. “Red lines” in Syria, the chaotic handover to the Taliban, “it depends what sort of invasion” in 2022 etc… Europe is at at war, the Suez is more or less shut to commercial traffic, the Middle East in flames. And China is busily stockpiling energy and base metals, and gradually reducing its holdings of US Treasuries.
And that’s without getting to the diabolical economic management of the last few years, federal deficit of 6-7% at full employment accompanied by runaway inflation.
Trump may make some of the above better, some of it worse. But things are never as good or as bad as they seem.
Jenrick 90%
Cleverly 70%
Badenoch 20%
Tugendhat 20%
Odds of winning
Jenrick 44%
Cleverly 37%
Badenoch 15%
Tugendhat 5%
Better to stick with the Vanilla site on the iPad.
Given we know there are empty properties on new build sites, perhaps some of these could be made available but presumably the developers will want paying and the market rate for the area.
This won't be alleviated simply by the overused mantra of "build, build, build" as the economics of supply and demand don't alter the fact for some people housing in the area in which they were born and brought up and would prefer to live is now unaffordable, even at the most basic level of renting.
Replacing Gray with someone whose entire working life has been spent as a political operative is unlikely to make any improvement in the substance/presentation ratio.
If however Tugendhat gets most Stride preferences and some lent votes from Jenrick to knock out Cleverly then Jenrick is favourite again. As Jenrick almost certainly beats Tugendhat with members it would need most of Cleverly's votes to go to Badenoch to stop him
As an example of where I think you are wrong: true, there have not been any leaks from Trump’s meeting with Zelensky indicating that the US election is life or death for Ukraine. But there have been plenty of other comments from Trump that show a disdain for Zelensky and Ukraine, and a certain 'fondness' for Putin. It would require a mahoosive backtrack from Trump to suddenly support Ukraine.
But they've messed it up - indeed, a cynic might assume that no progress on CCS will be made and those £22 billion payments will instead be found plugging potholes in Islington, like usual.
It's a shame it's not something decent like offshore renewables hubs in Teesside and Aberdeen, or Northern Powerhouse Rail, or tidal lagoons for power storage. Or 2/3rd of HS2 to Manchester. Or 22,000 miles of high-quality cycle lane.
Johnson would also be more likely to squeeze the Farage and Reform vote and take back Labour seats in the redwall than any of the 4 Tory leadership candidates. He would fail to regain Tory votes lost to the LDs and much of the blue wall but so would most of the 4 except Tugendhat.
Jenrick has already said he would welcome Boris back in the parliamentary party and there are enough Boris loyalists left who would give up their seat in a by election for him even on the thinner Tory benches. Cleverly was also loyal to Boris to the end, even after Javid and Sunak had resigned.
His name is a byword for failure. Is this project doomed by association?
I simply don't see what carbon capture is supposed to solve beyond adding additional costs...
The money should be going on SMR or similar. But we are so late into that game that Rolls Royce have binned the UK factories for the none secret bits and those factories seem to be going to Eastern Europe who are now paying for the first few reactors...
That is what is stated in a previous article in the Northern Echo
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/opinion/24566306.councils-dumping-homeless-county-durham---echo-comment/
Ethnic cleansing/genrtification of the prosperous south while dumping their problem tenants on the poor North.
It's not for nothing that Trump has replaced almost the entirety of his White House team from last time round - and that almost every former cabinet member has said they won't vote for him.
Last time round he barely even expect to win; there was no plan.
He is now surrounded by people on board with his more extreme ideas - and with plans to implement them.
Speak to people in your local area about what happens when a rental comes up, it’s gone. And we are not just talking about the large conurbations, but small sleepy towns and provincial cities also. With local authority letting schemes (what was known as the council house list) giving priority to need. A family with three kids that has no right to work is always going to out need a local family.
This is going to really start biting at some point and the only reason it hasn’t become a national scandal is those that will experience it are not the ‘sensibles’ and rarely really garner much sympathy in the press or politics.
ETA good morning, everyone.
Even if she and her baby go to County Durham, Hillingdon will have to pay some support costs but, as you infer, the "cost" then ends up with County Durham who have to find accommodation but it's cheaper accommodation and I suspect there are transfer payments between the two authorities in the background to alleviate Durham's costs.
Somebody somewhere has to pony up the accommodation costs for the homeless and the distorted housing market has alleviated the problem. For a single homeless man, the options are even more limited and the number of rough sleepers even in my part of London bears testament to this.
It's a huge multi-faceted problem which won't be solved by building more homes unless the economics of housebuilding are deliberately changed to enable the word "affordable" to have some serious meaning for those right at the bottom of the housing ladder (and that includes those priced out of their home area by second or even third home owners).
A PM who campaigned against it and explained at length why it would be a bad idea could not reasonably be expected to deliver it.
The public didn't have faith in his arguments. It is not reasonable to assume they had faith in his actions.
The inevitable failures would have been blamed on Cameron's lack of appetite for the project, and not the fact it's inherently shit.
Of all the mistakes Cameron made with regard to Brexit, resigning was not one of them.
Having to find £150,000+ before a council dumps a family 250 miles north would focus council minds because at the moment they are creating real problems for northern councils by dumping people in villages with no communication links...
This CCS thing feels like regulatory capture.
But it has been reported that unlike Bad Al / Mandy, current lot don't really do weekends / after hours, so the stories gain momentum before crisis management kicks in.
Dave and Boris both failed to have a plan. Part of that was for dishonourable reasons. But part of it was because the 'cake and eat it', 'no downsides' thing that many people seemed to have in mind was not a thing that could be planned for, due to its inherent contradictions.
The problem is that some activities like cement or glass production emit CO2 even if you run them 100% on renewable energy. Then there are other things like aviation where the cost of not using fossil fuels looks like it'll be really high.
So if you're serious about doing net zero, and you're not going for radical degrowth or something like that, you need carbon capture.
However the other problem is that the current tech to do it doesn't work very well. With solar and wind and battery tech governments threw a lot of subsidies at people building them for a while then they ultimately made them really good and we could scale them up really big. Hopefully this will also happen with carbon capture, but we don't know. So the dilemma is that you can spend the money on solar and wind (or stuff like insulation) and in the short term it'll definitely be more effective than spending it on carbon capture, but then you're leaving part of the problem of getting to net zero totally unsolved.
My take is that places that the places on the planet with the most relevant expertise should be building this stuff. If it works then the rest of the world can use it and it'll have a big impact. I don't know whether Britain is one of those places or not.
“Yes we can do it much better than these private wasteful companies and give you the council taxpayer the most amazing return”
Renewables is full of crooked salesman that promise unrealistic returns and dazzle local and national leaders with saving the earth and making easy money.
It's a function of the distorted housing market but also of supply and demand. The other side of this is areas like Cornwall where the locals are priced out of their own towns and villages by second homeowners. You can build more houses (if you like) but the price of each unit will still be beyond the salaries of many locals who often work in low paid service and hospitality jobs supporting tourism.
Of course neither Trump or Harris are the end of American democracy. If the Republic of Gilead ever came into being, it wouldn’t be by a Trumpian coup, but with rainbow lanyards, a dozen pronouns and lots of ‘Joy’.
Government continued
May negotiated a deal
What else were they meant to do?
They couldn't conjure the unicorns BoZo had promised the voters
There will be an election in November 2028, and Donald J Trump will be ineligible if he served from Jan 2025 for more than two years.
It’s written very much in black and white, and there’s no chance a constitutional amendment to change it could be ratified within the timescale required.
But not sensible for climate change mitigation. Climate change is happening happening now and we need to reduce emissions as quickly as possible; moving from coal to gas was brilliant for this. Moving to wind and solar (and nuclear) has to be the priority, along with EVs. CCS is, in this respect, a box-ticking exercise for the UK (but more important in places like China, India).
And it's certainly not great for providing cheap and secure energy for people in the UK, which is the other benefit of renewables (once we sort our pricing system out).
I think it is probably the Federal/State structure that saves US democracy in the event of Trump2. We've already seen the greater independence of State Governors (e.g. in the recent hurricane disaster response) and I don't think they'll wear it.
A cake was delivered without prior notice addressed to the mayor. Donor: Capital & Centric LTD. Value: £50. Date: May 6 2024.
Private dinner with other UK Mayors. Donor: Aviva Investors. Value: £50. Date: 20 May 2024.
Private dinner. Donor: Hitachi. Value: £50. Date: June 5 2024.
Chamber of Commerce Business Awards. Donor: Chamber Business Awards. Value: £100. Date: June 27 2024.
BBC Proms concert in Gateshead and reception. Donor: BBC Proms Concert – The Glasshouse. Value: £50. Date: July 26 2024.
Edinburgh Tattoo Ceremony and evening meal. Donor: Edinburgh Tattoo. Value: £300. Date: August 19 2024
“If U Care Share” shirt. Donor: If U Care Share. Value: £50. Date: August 30 2024.
Great North Run Dinner. Donor: Great North Run Company. Value: £150. Date: September 7 2024.
Accommodation at Hilton Hotel, Gateshead, before Great North Run. Donor: Great North Run Company. Value: £200. Date: September 7 2024.
Private dinner at Labour Party Conference. Donor: Nissan. Value: £50. Date: September 24 2024.
For balance, she also declined a number of gifts:
An invitation from Channel 4 to a Paralympic Games Garden Party in Paris.
Football tickets offered by Sunderland AFC, Newcastle United shirt sponsor Sela, and Newcastle Airport, as well as hospitality packages at an England rugby match at Twickenham and England’s one-day cricket international against Australia at Chester-le-Street.
In the current spirit of neo-puritanism when it comes to political leaders receiving any kind of freebie, do we not need to apply some form of context (apart from the routine Labour bashing)?
If this is going to the North East Mayor, what is going to other Council leaders such as the Mayor of Newham or the Leader of Surrey County Council? The value of the accepted gifts is just over £1000 - you may say that's £1000 too much but even if you take the cake and send it to a residential home (for example), you've still accepted the cake.
I'd say it's equally likely it's one of policy. Certainly if they get policy demonstrably right, then communication loses its importance.
So far there's little sign they have a coherent governing agenda.
Now she’s sadly passed away, and the house is basically unsellable by her family because of this lease. Mortgage companies don’t like them.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13907521/solar-panels-Shade-Greener-ASG-unsellable-despite-asking-price-plummeting.html
In 2020, we all thought we’d seen the worst two candidates ever.
Now, in 2024, we again have the worst two candidates ever.
God knows what 2028 looks like, perhaps Americans will eventually come to their senses and choose a couple of candidates approaching normal?
Spending the money on wind/solar/tidal etc would be of direct and obvious benefit, both from lower energy prices, and our balance of payments.
Carbon capture, as per this plan, both makes energy more expensive, and is of dubious benefit in climate change terms.
I think it comes down to what the role of the NE mayor is. For that reason, I'd say attendance at the Great North Run is fairly obligatory, and perhaps the Gateshead proms. Hitachi is a prominent employer in the area, and attending a meal with other mayors is also sensible.
These are not thousands of pounds worth of clothes and glasses. And I doubt any of the donors got a No. 10 pass out of it, or a say in candidate selection...
One human rights group went to court to argue that housing asylum seekers in Edinburgh was inhumane. When interviewed by a journalist, they repeatedly dodged the question of native borne people being forced out of London.
Only in the mind of a Trumpian madman. Harris is not a bad candidate, especially in the manner in which she got the candidature.
Has Orban ended democracy in Hungary ?
Probably not yet, but that's certainly the direction of travel.
If he wins that would be democracy even if you dislike the result