I am (I think) a deist because consciousness seems ridiculous to me in a purely materialistic sense. I don't really know anything more than that. Don't even see the evidence for free will frankly.
Free will? If we didn't have free will, would we ever do anything difficult?
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
You're ignoring a lot of behavioural economics there. Studies are pretty clear that people *say* they're not influenced by freebies - and genuinely believe it - but actually are.
And also thinking we're all rational about freebies and their costs is just not right at all. Firstly, think of it as an "evening out" - an evening out to someone that wealthy probably feels worth more than two bags. And tbh being far less wealthy than Rishi I can lose £2k in the markets and not give a stuff, but I will go to a surprising amount of effort to "cash in" a 75p freebee voucher. I once spent many hours trying to gain an edge on 2p pusher machines that could never, ever, have been worth more than a couple of pounds an hour if it had worked (spoiler - it doesn't - don't try this - although I did get a fluffy octopus amongst other things). They're different mental accounts that are not fungible.
I have always found in my business life that it is often the people that believe they cannot be influenced are the most suggestible.
A big scandal in my view is how the betting industry has sought to buy politicians, including Rachel Reeves. It is an industry that has all the morals of the tobacco industry and Labour ministers (and Tory ones before them) should be ashamed of taking freebies from them.
It could be worse, it could be the US, where the processed food and pharmaceutical companies have now totally taken over their own regulatory bodies, medicine, academia, media, and politcs.
Today’s Joe Rogan podcast, with Calley and Casey Means, should be required listening as to just how screwed up a society can get. Life expectancy is now falling in the US, because of addiction and the medicalisation of common complaints.
For those who don’t like Joe Rogan, I think this podcast is his record for staying silent and letting the guests talk.
I am afraid I don't buy the idea/myth that big pharma is bad. There have been huge advances in medicine made by the profit motive of pharma companies and the regulatory framework under the FDA and UK MHRA is rigorous. There are some of the dodgy generic pharma companies that have encouraged addiction, but this should not sully an otherwise morally sound industry. It is an interesting and little known fact that pharma companies and medical device companies had to bring in their own industry agreed codes to prevent medical professionals from insisting on large scale freebies when purchasing products.
I think you’re correct with regard to the UK, but the US is a very, very different place from a regulatory point of view when it comes to food standards and the pharma industry, which spends more than a trillion dollars a year on marketing.
I didn’t know until recently, that the big food companies in the US were bought out by the tobacco companies once there was a push against cigarettes, and the same tobacco marketing people then started on the highly-processed food industry in America.
I think there needs to be a distinction though, between marketing a product that will almost certainly kill most of its consumers (tobacco) and marketing, say a BigMac which is only lethal in a contributory sense if someone chooses an unhealthy lifestyle. I enjoy the odd BigMac, but because I exercise regularly and am careful about my weight it isnt risking my health by watching a Macdonalds advert.
No, in the US it’s a lot more than that.
It’s a decades-long regulatory capture, whereby the big food and pharma companies sponsor the universities, train the doctors, write the regulations, buy the politicians, and make money from everyone’s sickness. Something that’s massively advanced in just the last five years.
I'm genuinely disappointed, even though Cleverly was a much stronger candidate and this scarcely believable fiasco suits Labour.
Cleverly is a nice guy, a thoughtful decent man – and an atheist. It would have been interesting – and overdue – to have atheists leading both big parties, which reflected the irreligious nature of our nation.
The nation is irreligious and agnostic.
That is *not* the same as atheist
Yes it is. They are pretty much synonyms.
The idea that atheism is a definitive belief is a fallacy spread by theists.
Atheism is a lack of belief in any god. Agnosticism is a lack of definitive knowledge on whether there is or is not anything.
On a Venn Diagram those two are almost a completely overlapping circle.
Don't fall for theists fallacies in letting them define atheist to mean any more than what it means.
Indeed:
Do you believe in God?
If Yes, goto 1. If No, goto 2.
1: You are a theist 2. You are an atheist
Yes, atheist vs agnostic is a superficial distinction. It mainly crops up as a rhetorical 'divide and rule' play by people who have (and good luck to them) made the Leap of Faith that there is a God and for some reason are bugged that others have not.
It's not a meaningful exercise to try and split atheism from something called "agnosticism". Why? Because everybody (the religious and the not religious) ultimately is an agnostic on the Big Big Picture in the sense they must accept, if they are rational, that there could be things unknown (and possibly unknowable) to us.
So there are theists and there are atheists and that's it. If you're not in the first lane you are in the second. And everyone in both lanes, ie everyone on the planet, is an agnostic.
Atheism and agnosticism are only the same from the point of view of actual established religions, rather than theism as a concept.
I'm not saying they're the same. I'm saying everyone, theist or atheist, is an agnostic.
Which is just claiming that agnosticism is a meaningless concept.
Kind of, yes. Because it's obvious that we cannot know. We can only believe (despite no evidence) or not believe (because of no evidence). But neither believers nor non believers can know. Thus we are all agnostics in addition to being believers or non believers. Agnosticism is not some additional third way between the two.
Except that agnosticism and atheism are not equal. Atheism is the disavowal of possibility without evidence. Atheism is therefore fundamentally irrational. Agnosticism allows an open mind rather than a closed one.
No, atheism is just a lack of belief in god. The "but one can't know" goes without saying.
Nope, atheism is the belief in a lack of gods. Not the same thing at all.
I think it's splitting hairs really. Many people are functionally firm atheists even if technically agnostic in the sense they are not prepared to close their minds 100% to the possibility, just 99%.
The distinction there would only seem to serve to seek to gotcha someone by getting them to accept even a slight possibility when we know very well what 90% mean when they say they're atheist.
I think that's right. Even the likes of Dawkins admit they're technically agnostic, as it's logically possible that God does exist in some remote corner of the universe but is totally undiscoverable and there's not a single effect of his existence anywhere. But as you have no reason to believe that scenario whatsoever (although you can't completely rule it out either) you may as well call yourself an atheist.
Yes, that is Dawkins’ position. He has said many times that there might be a god (just as there might be a tooth fairy or Easter bunny), but there is no evidence for it it is vanishingly unlikely.
I am (I think) a deist because consciousness seems ridiculous to me in a purely materialistic sense. I don't really know anything more than that. Don't even see the evidence for free will frankly.
Free will? If we didn't have free will, would we ever do anything difficult?
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
You're ignoring a lot of behavioural economics there. Studies are pretty clear that people *say* they're not influenced by freebies - and genuinely believe it - but actually are.
And also thinking we're all rational about freebies and their costs is just not right at all. Firstly, think of it as an "evening out" - an evening out to someone that wealthy probably feels worth more than two bags. And tbh being far less wealthy than Rishi I can lose £2k in the markets and not give a stuff, but I will go to a surprising amount of effort to "cash in" a 75p freebee voucher. I once spent many hours trying to gain an edge on 2p pusher machines that could never, ever, have been worth more than a couple of pounds an hour if it had worked (spoiler - it doesn't - don't try this - although I did get a fluffy octopus amongst other things). They're different mental accounts that are not fungible.
I have always found in my business life that it is often the people that believe they cannot be influenced are the most suggestible.
A big scandal in my view is how the betting industry has sought to buy politicians, including Rachel Reeves. It is an industry that has all the morals of the tobacco industry and Labour ministers (and Tory ones before them) should be ashamed of taking freebies from them.
It could be worse, it could be the US, where the processed food and pharmaceutical companies have now totally taken over their own regulatory bodies, medicine, academia, media, and politcs.
Today’s Joe Rogan podcast, with Calley and Casey Means, should be required listening as to just how screwed up a society can get. Life expectancy is now falling in the US, because of addiction and the medicalisation of common complaints.
For those who don’t like Joe Rogan, I think this podcast is his record for staying silent and letting the guests talk.
I am afraid I don't buy the idea/myth that big pharma is bad. There have been huge advances in medicine made by the profit motive of pharma companies and the regulatory framework under the FDA and UK MHRA is rigorous. There are some of the dodgy generic pharma companies that have encouraged addiction, but this should not sully an otherwise morally sound industry. It is an interesting and little known fact that pharma companies and medical device companies had to bring in their own industry agreed codes to prevent medical professionals from insisting on large scale freebies when purchasing products.
The US Big Pharma have engaged in a range of behaviour from ugly to criminal (see the Sacklers)
A large chunk of their bad behaviour is related to their endeavours to stamp out price completion and achieve massive regulatory capture.
On the other hand big pharma can also be extraordinarily generous. MSD has been running it's Mectizan programme across Africa to wipe out oncocerciasis and lymphatic filliariasis. This is perhaps the most effective pharmaceutical intervention of modern times, comparable to HIV treatment and all for free and unobtrusively.
I respect everyone who posts on PB (honest) but two people I feel a lot of political affinity with are Sandpit and Cookie. And they are both opposite to me in the Tory candidate they favour, for what it seems are the same reasons. We are suspicious that our less liked candidate isn't sincere in their intentions to challenge the establishment and create a secure country and a dynamic economy, and is actually a creature of the party establishment. With our more-liked candidate we feel optimistic that they will challenge Labour, cease hemorrhaging votes to Reform (and come to an accommodation with them if necessary), and present right wing solutions in a thoughtful way that will have wide apeal. Hopefully we are both wrong (and right).
Why does it have to be so factional/binary?
We are all Conservatives and there will be lots of things we agree on, and others where we perhaps prioritise or place more importance on slightly different things.
There are no litmus tests.
Why so factional? Because in fact there is no interesting range of fundamental worldview that Tories actually agree on AND distinguishes them from every other party.
Try listing significant big issues where Tories are agreed AND other parties clearly differ from them.
It, I suggest, can't be done. Which is why the big issue at the moment in politics is competence, and the factions discuss the narcissism of small differences and imaginary worlds.
Gotta say, whatever else happens, four years of @KemiBadenoch telling Labour MPs Britain's history is something to be proud of, Britain isn't full of structural racism & women don't have penises is going to be a lot of fun.
She seems the option with the widest range of outcomes, positive and negative. Go big, go bold, go Badenoch?
Watching @TheScreamingEagles go from a couple of dozen “Kemi-kaze” headers, to…
Voting for Badenoch, it's a bit vote for the lizard not the wizard.
Has definitely been something to behold.
Kemi is an STD, Jenrick is necrotising fasciitis.
So you’re voting for Kemi then?
After consultation with JohnO, who is primus inter pares of the PB Tories, I am reluctantly voting for Badenoch.
As somebody who believes in ethics and probity then Jenrick is not fit to be an MP let alone party leader, the Dirty Desmond deal would have seen councillors ending up in prison.
I learned this afternoon on PB (remember everyday on PB is a schoolday) that Swiftgate is a substantially more significant breach of protocol than Jenrick accepting a mere £12,000 (and Desmond got a dinner out of it) for his party, having saved the Pornographer £45m after an intervention by the then Housing Secretary, overturning Tower Hamlets Council 's due planning process.
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
You're ignoring a lot of behavioural economics there. Studies are pretty clear that people *say* they're not influenced by freebies - and genuinely believe it - but actually are.
And also thinking we're all rational about freebies and their costs is just not right at all. Firstly, think of it as an "evening out" - an evening out to someone that wealthy probably feels worth more than two bags. And tbh being far less wealthy than Rishi I can lose £2k in the markets and not give a stuff, but I will go to a surprising amount of effort to "cash in" a 75p freebee voucher. I once spent many hours trying to gain an edge on 2p pusher machines that could never, ever, have been worth more than a couple of pounds an hour if it had worked (spoiler - it doesn't - don't try this - although I did get a fluffy octopus amongst other things). They're different mental accounts that are not fungible.
I have always found in my business life that it is often the people that believe they cannot be influenced are the most suggestible.
A big scandal in my view is how the betting industry has sought to buy politicians, including Rachel Reeves. It is an industry that has all the morals of the tobacco industry and Labour ministers (and Tory ones before them) should be ashamed of taking freebies from them.
It could be worse, it could be the US, where the processed food and pharmaceutical companies have now totally taken over their own regulatory bodies, medicine, academia, media, and politcs.
Today’s Joe Rogan podcast, with Calley and Casey Means, should be required listening as to just how screwed up a society can get. Life expectancy is now falling in the US, because of addiction and the medicalisation of common complaints.
For those who don’t like Joe Rogan, I think this podcast is his record for staying silent and letting the guests talk.
I am afraid I don't buy the idea/myth that big pharma is bad. There have been huge advances in medicine made by the profit motive of pharma companies and the regulatory framework under the FDA and UK MHRA is rigorous. There are some of the dodgy generic pharma companies that have encouraged addiction, but this should not sully an otherwise morally sound industry. It is an interesting and little known fact that pharma companies and medical device companies had to bring in their own industry agreed codes to prevent medical professionals from insisting on large scale freebies when purchasing products.
The US Big Pharma have engaged in a range of behaviour from ugly to criminal (see the Sacklers)
A large chunk of their bad behaviour is related to their endeavours to stamp out price completion and achieve massive regulatory capture.
I specifically wasn't talking about Sacklers and their ilk. They are not mainstream pharma and have avoided the mainstream codes of conduct. Pricing, particularly in the US is, to a large extent, US government policy; it is a way of essentially subsidising the US pharma and device industry. The idea that many lefties have that the pharma industry per se is an evil capitalist enterprise is complete nonsense. Without the global pharma industry the world would be a much more ill place and we would probably still be in a pandemic. Could it be better regulated? Almost certainly, but so could other aspects of health delivery including the medical professions.
I am (I think) a deist because consciousness seems ridiculous to me in a purely materialistic sense. I don't really know anything more than that. Don't even see the evidence for free will frankly.
Free will? If we didn't have free will, would we ever do anything difficult?
Gotta say, whatever else happens, four years of @KemiBadenoch telling Labour MPs Britain's history is something to be proud of, Britain isn't full of structural racism & women don't have penises is going to be a lot of fun.
She seems the option with the widest range of outcomes, positive and negative. Go big, go bold, go Badenoch?
Watching @TheScreamingEagles go from a couple of dozen “Kemi-kaze” headers, to…
Voting for Badenoch, it's a bit vote for the lizard not the wizard.
Has definitely been something to behold.
Kemi is an STD, Jenrick is necrotising fasciitis.
So you’re voting for Kemi then?
After consultation with JohnO, who is primus inter pares of the PB Tories, I am reluctantly voting for Badenoch.
As somebody who believes in ethics and probity then Jenrick is not fit to be an MP let alone party leader, the Dirty Desmond deal would have seen councillors ending up in prison.
Im for Badenoch as she is black and a woman, This means I can laugh at the racist misogynists led by Starmer
Not only that but (speaking as someone who's married to one) black woman conservatives do not take *any* shit. A lot of criticism of Kemi so far seems to me to be to be - unintentionally - semi-cultural in that that's the way they behave. She's too gracious to bring this up but maybe some useful idiots in the Labour party who recognise it will. And yes then we can laugh.
Some more of the abruptness is that compsci/engineering background and being from that background myself (along with various other posters here methinks) I'm very interested in what an *actual* technocrat can do in power.
Those are the positive reasons to go Kemi. But they're still not quite as important as the negative reasons to vote against Jenrick, and preferably have him sent to Chad, bankrupt.
To be fair, there is certainly a case for Kemi.
She cuts through and is authentic. A rather splendid contrast with dull old condescending Sir Keir who had better take especial care or the "has a problem with women" charge could stick. May, just possibly, get the time of day from younger voters esp women. Could puncture Reform and deny Farage oxygen of publicity.
OTOH she may just blow up. So she needs an experienced team around her.
But there is a case. Which is more than can be said for Mr Jenrick.
Shame sbout Cleverly though.
Mr Jenrick *is* a head/nut/basket/hopeless (delete as required) case.
(in other betting news, I just backed tim walz as next president - obviously not for much - at an average price slighly better than 950. That's value imo in the current situation with the hurricaine)
Gotta say, whatever else happens, four years of @KemiBadenoch telling Labour MPs Britain's history is something to be proud of, Britain isn't full of structural racism & women don't have penises is going to be a lot of fun.
Actually it will get boring very quickly.
And more to the point irrelevant.
“So Kemi, what is your policy on the HS2 Lite extension to Manchester and Nottingham?”
Gotta say, whatever else happens, four years of @KemiBadenoch telling Labour MPs Britain's history is something to be proud of, Britain isn't full of structural racism & women don't have penises is going to be a lot of fun.
She seems the option with the widest range of outcomes, positive and negative. Go big, go bold, go Badenoch?
Watching @TheScreamingEagles go from a couple of dozen “Kemi-kaze” headers, to…
Voting for Badenoch, it's a bit vote for the lizard not the wizard.
Has definitely been something to behold.
Kemi is an STD, Jenrick is necrotising fasciitis.
So you’re voting for Kemi then?
After consultation with JohnO, who is primus inter pares of the PB Tories, I am reluctantly voting for Badenoch.
As somebody who believes in ethics and probity then Jenrick is not fit to be an MP let alone party leader, the Dirty Desmond deal would have seen councillors ending up in prison.
I learned this afternoon on PB (remember everyday on PB is a schoolday) that Swiftgate is a substantially more significant breach of protocol than Jenrick accepting a mere £12,000 (and Desmond got a dinner out of it) for his party, having saved the Pornographer £45m after an intervention by the then Housing Secretary, overturning Tower Hamlets Council 's due planning process.
Swiftgate has already been surpassed. Sir Keir is now accused of fabricating his military record by claiming he received extensive shrapnel wounds aboard a ship that never existed during a battle that never occurred.
Not inconsiderable chance that Cleverly is the next Conservative leader, who leads the Tories into the next election, taking over mid-Parliament from whoever wins this contest.
I am (I think) a deist because consciousness seems ridiculous to me in a purely materialistic sense. I don't really know anything more than that. Don't even see the evidence for free will frankly.
Free will? If we didn't have free will, would we ever do anything difficult?
I asked my solicitor if he believed in free will.
But he didn't, so I had to pay for it.
Or, as Matthew Parris said of Gyles Brandreth,
He believes in Free Speech, but not in Free Speeches.
(in other betting news, I just backed tim walz as next president - obviously not for much - at an average price slighly better than 950. That's value imo in the current situation with the hurricaine)
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
You're ignoring a lot of behavioural economics there. Studies are pretty clear that people *say* they're not influenced by freebies - and genuinely believe it - but actually are.
And also thinking we're all rational about freebies and their costs is just not right at all. Firstly, think of it as an "evening out" - an evening out to someone that wealthy probably feels worth more than two bags. And tbh being far less wealthy than Rishi I can lose £2k in the markets and not give a stuff, but I will go to a surprising amount of effort to "cash in" a 75p freebee voucher. I once spent many hours trying to gain an edge on 2p pusher machines that could never, ever, have been worth more than a couple of pounds an hour if it had worked (spoiler - it doesn't - don't try this - although I did get a fluffy octopus amongst other things). They're different mental accounts that are not fungible.
I have always found in my business life that it is often the people that believe they cannot be influenced are the most suggestible.
A big scandal in my view is how the betting industry has sought to buy politicians, including Rachel Reeves. It is an industry that has all the morals of the tobacco industry and Labour ministers (and Tory ones before them) should be ashamed of taking freebies from them.
It could be worse, it could be the US, where the processed food and pharmaceutical companies have now totally taken over their own regulatory bodies, medicine, academia, media, and politcs.
Today’s Joe Rogan podcast, with Calley and Casey Means, should be required listening as to just how screwed up a society can get. Life expectancy is now falling in the US, because of addiction and the medicalisation of common complaints.
For those who don’t like Joe Rogan, I think this podcast is his record for staying silent and letting the guests talk.
I am afraid I don't buy the idea/myth that big pharma is bad. There have been huge advances in medicine made by the profit motive of pharma companies and the regulatory framework under the FDA and UK MHRA is rigorous. There are some of the dodgy generic pharma companies that have encouraged addiction, but this should not sully an otherwise morally sound industry. It is an interesting and little known fact that pharma companies and medical device companies had to bring in their own industry agreed codes to prevent medical professionals from insisting on large scale freebies when purchasing products.
I think you’re correct with regard to the UK, but the US is a very, very different place from a regulatory point of view when it comes to food standards and the pharma industry, which spends more than a trillion dollars a year on marketing.
I didn’t know until recently, that the big food companies in the US were bought out by the tobacco companies once there was a push against cigarettes, and the same tobacco marketing people then started on the highly-processed food industry in America.
I think there needs to be a distinction though, between marketing a product that will almost certainly kill most of its consumers (tobacco) and marketing, say a BigMac which is only lethal in a contributory sense if someone chooses an unhealthy lifestyle. I enjoy the odd BigMac, but because I exercise regularly and am careful about my weight it isnt risking my health by watching a Macdonalds advert.
No, in the US it’s a lot more than that.
It’s a decades-long regulatory capture, whereby the big food and pharma companies sponsor the universities, train the doctors, write the regulations, buy the politicians, and make money from everyone’s sickness. Something that’s massively advanced in just the last five years.
Thanks, Ill have a listen later, though I am afraid I am somewhat sceptical about people who see conspiracies around every corner (not yourself I hasten to add). In my view it is absolutely legitimate that healthcare companies train doctors. The idea that doctors are some kind of pure creatures that know everything about health without interacting with private companies is ludicrous. As mentioned on a previous post, they are often a little too keen to do so, and in my experience many of them are a deal less ethical in their approach than many companies would like them to be, but that is another story. I have no problem with companies making money from people's illnesses. Doctors and other health professionals do so every day.
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
You're ignoring a lot of behavioural economics there. Studies are pretty clear that people *say* they're not influenced by freebies - and genuinely believe it - but actually are.
And also thinking we're all rational about freebies and their costs is just not right at all. Firstly, think of it as an "evening out" - an evening out to someone that wealthy probably feels worth more than two bags. And tbh being far less wealthy than Rishi I can lose £2k in the markets and not give a stuff, but I will go to a surprising amount of effort to "cash in" a 75p freebee voucher. I once spent many hours trying to gain an edge on 2p pusher machines that could never, ever, have been worth more than a couple of pounds an hour if it had worked (spoiler - it doesn't - don't try this - although I did get a fluffy octopus amongst other things). They're different mental accounts that are not fungible.
I have always found in my business life that it is often the people that believe they cannot be influenced are the most suggestible.
A big scandal in my view is how the betting industry has sought to buy politicians, including Rachel Reeves. It is an industry that has all the morals of the tobacco industry and Labour ministers (and Tory ones before them) should be ashamed of taking freebies from them.
It could be worse, it could be the US, where the processed food and pharmaceutical companies have now totally taken over their own regulatory bodies, medicine, academia, media, and politcs.
Today’s Joe Rogan podcast, with Calley and Casey Means, should be required listening as to just how screwed up a society can get. Life expectancy is now falling in the US, because of addiction and the medicalisation of common complaints.
For those who don’t like Joe Rogan, I think this podcast is his record for staying silent and letting the guests talk.
I am afraid I don't buy the idea/myth that big pharma is bad. There have been huge advances in medicine made by the profit motive of pharma companies and the regulatory framework under the FDA and UK MHRA is rigorous. There are some of the dodgy generic pharma companies that have encouraged addiction, but this should not sully an otherwise morally sound industry. It is an interesting and little known fact that pharma companies and medical device companies had to bring in their own industry agreed codes to prevent medical professionals from insisting on large scale freebies when purchasing products.
The US Big Pharma have engaged in a range of behaviour from ugly to criminal (see the Sacklers)
A large chunk of their bad behaviour is related to their endeavours to stamp out price completion and achieve massive regulatory capture.
I specifically wasn't talking about Sacklers and their ilk. They are not mainstream pharma and have avoided the mainstream codes of conduct. Pricing, particularly in the US is, to a large extent, US government policy; it is a way of essentially subsidising the US pharma and device industry. The idea that many lefties have that the pharma industry per se is an evil capitalist enterprise is complete nonsense. Without the global pharma industry the world would be a much more ill place and we would probably still be in a pandemic. Could it be better regulated? Almost certainly, but so could other aspects of health delivery including the medical professions.
I’ll meet you half way. The research can be done and the drugs made, without the billions of dollars spend on advertising to consumers, and the billions more dollars on marketing drugs to doctors and pharmacists in the US.
The Sacklers were just the unlucky ones who got caught. Most of their rest of them got away with it.
I am (I think) a deist because consciousness seems ridiculous to me in a purely materialistic sense. I don't really know anything more than that. Don't even see the evidence for free will frankly.
Free will? If we didn't have free will, would we ever do anything difficult?
It isn't possible to form a rational judgment against the existence of free will, since any such judgment in your mind must, if correct, have arisen by necessity from the operations of the laws of nature beginning before you were were born and so your opinion on the matter arises from necessity not considered judgment, and therefore it is irrational to place any reliance on it. Because you have no free will, you have no choice about placing your reliance on it of course, so the very idea of rationality can be thrown out of the window.
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
You're ignoring a lot of behavioural economics there. Studies are pretty clear that people *say* they're not influenced by freebies - and genuinely believe it - but actually are.
And also thinking we're all rational about freebies and their costs is just not right at all. Firstly, think of it as an "evening out" - an evening out to someone that wealthy probably feels worth more than two bags. And tbh being far less wealthy than Rishi I can lose £2k in the markets and not give a stuff, but I will go to a surprising amount of effort to "cash in" a 75p freebee voucher. I once spent many hours trying to gain an edge on 2p pusher machines that could never, ever, have been worth more than a couple of pounds an hour if it had worked (spoiler - it doesn't - don't try this - although I did get a fluffy octopus amongst other things). They're different mental accounts that are not fungible.
I have always found in my business life that it is often the people that believe they cannot be influenced are the most suggestible.
A big scandal in my view is how the betting industry has sought to buy politicians, including Rachel Reeves. It is an industry that has all the morals of the tobacco industry and Labour ministers (and Tory ones before them) should be ashamed of taking freebies from them.
It could be worse, it could be the US, where the processed food and pharmaceutical companies have now totally taken over their own regulatory bodies, medicine, academia, media, and politcs.
Today’s Joe Rogan podcast, with Calley and Casey Means, should be required listening as to just how screwed up a society can get. Life expectancy is now falling in the US, because of addiction and the medicalisation of common complaints.
For those who don’t like Joe Rogan, I think this podcast is his record for staying silent and letting the guests talk.
I am afraid I don't buy the idea/myth that big pharma is bad. There have been huge advances in medicine made by the profit motive of pharma companies and the regulatory framework under the FDA and UK MHRA is rigorous. There are some of the dodgy generic pharma companies that have encouraged addiction, but this should not sully an otherwise morally sound industry. It is an interesting and little known fact that pharma companies and medical device companies had to bring in their own industry agreed codes to prevent medical professionals from insisting on large scale freebies when purchasing products.
I think you’re correct with regard to the UK, but the US is a very, very different place from a regulatory point of view when it comes to food standards and the pharma industry, which spends more than a trillion dollars a year on marketing.
I didn’t know until recently, that the big food companies in the US were bought out by the tobacco companies once there was a push against cigarettes, and the same tobacco marketing people then started on the highly-processed food industry in America.
I think there needs to be a distinction though, between marketing a product that will almost certainly kill most of its consumers (tobacco) and marketing, say a BigMac which is only lethal in a contributory sense if someone chooses an unhealthy lifestyle. I enjoy the odd BigMac, but because I exercise regularly and am careful about my weight it isnt risking my health by watching a Macdonalds advert.
No, in the US it’s a lot more than that.
It’s a decades-long regulatory capture, whereby the big food and pharma companies sponsor the universities, train the doctors, write the regulations, buy the politicians, and make money from everyone’s sickness. Something that’s massively advanced in just the last five years.
Thanks, Ill have a listen later, though I am afraid I am somewhat sceptical about people who see conspiracies around every corner (not yourself I hasten to add). In my view it is absolutely legitimate that healthcare companies train doctors. The idea that doctors are some kind of pure creatures that know everything about health without interacting with private companies is ludicrous. As mentioned on a previous post, they are often a little too keen to do so, and in my experience many of them are a deal less ethical in their approach than many companies would like them to be, but that is another story. I have no problem with companies making money from people's illnesses. Doctors and other health professionals do so every day.
Yes, in the USA healthcare and pharmaceuticals are businesses like any other. The point is to extract the maximum profit from the market. Why should they do otherwise?
My view is that the membership have to vote Badenoch.
Roll the dice.
There is no point electing 'pound shop tory boy let's pretend I am Nigel' Jenrick.
Given where they are tonight it has to be Kemi.
Can she last 3 weeks against Jenrick? He seems somehow developed a reputation for being a ruthless operator. for some reason.
My wallet no longer cares as I bailed out on BF with some laying.
I am free of the shadow of the poor house.
But as an outsider: they have to elect Kemi.
It has to be worth a shot.
I seem to dimly recall that Maggie was seen as the total outside maverick choice all those years ago.
I'm not saying she is Thatcher.
But Jenrick is the very worse. A combination of faux radical right jonny come lately (he voted Remain!!) and yet another tory boy, careerist, oxbridge lawyer with five houses.
The party would be literally mad to give him it over Bandenoch.
Gotta say, whatever else happens, four years of @KemiBadenoch telling Labour MPs Britain's history is something to be proud of, Britain isn't full of structural racism & women don't have penises is going to be a lot of fun.
She seems the option with the widest range of outcomes, positive and negative. Go big, go bold, go Badenoch?
Watching @TheScreamingEagles go from a couple of dozen “Kemi-kaze” headers, to…
Voting for Badenoch, it's a bit vote for the lizard not the wizard.
Has definitely been something to behold.
Kemi is an STD, Jenrick is necrotising fasciitis.
So you’re voting for Kemi then?
After consultation with JohnO, who is primus inter pares of the PB Tories, I am reluctantly voting for Badenoch.
As somebody who believes in ethics and probity then Jenrick is not fit to be an MP let alone party leader, the Dirty Desmond deal would have seen councillors ending up in prison.
I learned this afternoon on PB (remember everyday on PB is a schoolday) that Swiftgate is a substantially more significant breach of protocol than Jenrick accepting a mere £12,000 (and Desmond got a dinner out of it) for his party, having saved the Pornographer £45m after an intervention by the then Housing Secretary, overturning Tower Hamlets Council 's due planning process.
Swiftgate has already been surpassed. Sir Keir is now accused of fabricating his military record by claiming he received extensive shrapnel wounds aboard a ship that never existed during a battle that never occurred.
I find it remarkable that for a £45m saving Jenrick gratefully accepted a mere £12,000 (less a dinner) from Desmond for his efforts. What an utterly shite businessman, the Tories should have drummed him out for criminal underselling.
Ed Davey (£584) - LIB DEM Bridget Phillipson (£522) - LAB Catherine McKinnell (£2,000) - LAB Wes Streeting (£1,160) - LAB Keir Starmer (£4,000) - LAB Darren Jones (£3,400) - LAB Dan Carden (£900) - LAB Kim Johnson (£900) - LAB Ian Byrne (£900) - INDEPENDENT Joe Morris (£1,660) - LAB Chris Ward (£1,660) - LAB
You can add Yvette Cooper to that she fessed up tonight
This is the flip side of Rishi being married to a billionaire. Say what you like about him, but we all know a £4000 gift would barely have registered.
You say that, but super rich people still take freebies.
They take many freebies, but they are rarely influenced by them. They often feel entitled, but that’s different.
If they weren't influenced by it they wouldn't take them. They don't need it, but want it, and that's still worth influence to them.
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
But obviously the rules have to be the same for everyone - not saying rich folk get a free pass, more saying that it’s more obvious and meaningful when it’s not a billionaire in charge. That’s part of the issue the PM has had.
My thinking is based on the feeling that buttering people up works, even if the buttering up is trivial in the grander scheme of things. It shouldn't influence someone so rich, but I'd bet it does.
In my experience no one likes a freebie more than rich people.
In my experience this also includes highly paid doctors Foxy 😆
Not inconsiderable chance that Cleverly is the next Conservative leader, who leads the Tories into the next election, taking over mid-Parliament from whoever wins this contest.
I think that's unlikely. He's wasn't exactly ripping up trees this time. Just vaguely seen as the safe(ish)-pair-of-hands candidate.
Gotta say, whatever else happens, four years of @KemiBadenoch telling Labour MPs Britain's history is something to be proud of, Britain isn't full of structural racism & women don't have penises is going to be a lot of fun.
Actually it will get boring very quickly.
How could anything get more boring than Starmer ?
Alanbrooke's relentless postings about how boring Starmer is?
I'm genuinely disappointed, even though Cleverly was a much stronger candidate and this scarcely believable fiasco suits Labour.
Cleverly is a nice guy, a thoughtful decent man – and an atheist. It would have been interesting – and overdue – to have atheists leading both big parties, which reflected the irreligious nature of our nation.
The nation is irreligious and agnostic.
That is *not* the same as atheist
Yes it is. They are pretty much synonyms.
The idea that atheism is a definitive belief is a fallacy spread by theists.
Atheism is a lack of belief in any god. Agnosticism is a lack of definitive knowledge on whether there is or is not anything.
On a Venn Diagram those two are almost a completely overlapping circle.
Don't fall for theists fallacies in letting them define atheist to mean any more than what it means.
Indeed:
Do you believe in God?
If Yes, goto 1. If No, goto 2.
1: You are a theist 2. You are an atheist
Yes, atheist vs agnostic is a superficial distinction. It mainly crops up as a rhetorical 'divide and rule' play by people who have (and good luck to them) made the Leap of Faith that there is a God and for some reason are bugged that others have not.
It's not a meaningful exercise to try and split atheism from something called "agnosticism". Why? Because everybody (the religious and the not religious) ultimately is an agnostic on the Big Big Picture in the sense they must accept, if they are rational, that there could be things unknown (and possibly unknowable) to us.
So there are theists and there are atheists and that's it. If you're not in the first lane you are in the second. And everyone in both lanes, ie everyone on the planet, is an agnostic.
Atheism and agnosticism are only the same from the point of view of actual established religions, rather than theism as a concept.
I'm not saying they're the same. I'm saying everyone, theist or atheist, is an agnostic.
Which is just claiming that agnosticism is a meaningless concept.
Kind of, yes. Because it's obvious that we cannot know. We can only believe (despite no evidence) or not believe (because of no evidence). But neither believers nor non believers can know. Thus we are all agnostics in addition to being believers or non believers. Agnosticism is not some additional third way between the two.
Except that agnosticism and atheism are not equal. Atheism is the disavowal of possibility without evidence. Atheism is therefore fundamentally irrational. Agnosticism allows an open mind rather than a closed one.
No, atheism is just a lack of belief in god. The "but one can't know" goes without saying.
Nope, atheism is the belief in a lack of gods. Not the same thing at all.
I think it's splitting hairs really. Many people are functionally firm atheists even if technically agnostic in the sense they are not prepared to close their minds 100% to the possibility, just 99%.
The distinction there would only seem to serve to seek to gotcha someone by getting them to accept even a slight possibility when we know very well what 90% mean when they say they're atheist.
I think that's right. Even the likes of Dawkins admit they're technically agnostic, as it's logically possible that God does exist in some remote corner of the universe but is totally undiscoverable and there's not a single effect of his existence anywhere. But as you have no reason to believe that scenario whatsoever (although you can't completely rule it out either) you may as well call yourself an atheist.
Yes, that is Dawkins’ position. He has said many times that there might be a god (just as there might be a tooth fairy or Easter bunny), but there is no evidence for it it is vanishingly unlikely.
Putting formal proofs on one side, there is a wealth of evidence both for and against the existence of god. The denial of the idea of evidence seems to me evasive and a denial of obvious common sense. It's exactly because thetre is so much evidence on each side that the issue is so puzzling to us.
Ed Davey (£584) - LIB DEM Bridget Phillipson (£522) - LAB Catherine McKinnell (£2,000) - LAB Wes Streeting (£1,160) - LAB Keir Starmer (£4,000) - LAB Darren Jones (£3,400) - LAB Dan Carden (£900) - LAB Kim Johnson (£900) - LAB Ian Byrne (£900) - INDEPENDENT Joe Morris (£1,660) - LAB Chris Ward (£1,660) - LAB
You can add Yvette Cooper to that she fessed up tonight
This is the flip side of Rishi being married to a billionaire. Say what you like about him, but we all know a £4000 gift would barely have registered.
You say that, but super rich people still take freebies.
They take many freebies, but they are rarely influenced by them. They often feel entitled, but that’s different.
If they weren't influenced by it they wouldn't take them. They don't need it, but want it, and that's still worth influence to them.
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
But obviously the rules have to be the same for everyone - not saying rich folk get a free pass, more saying that it’s more obvious and meaningful when it’s not a billionaire in charge. That’s part of the issue the PM has had.
My thinking is based on the feeling that buttering people up works, even if the buttering up is trivial in the grander scheme of things. It shouldn't influence someone so rich, but I'd bet it does.
I just bought another €2 beer in this bar because the owner bought me some peanuts and I felt sad about his empty bar. Apparently there was a murder here in 1978 and it's not been popular since.
The one big question that the Conservatives need to settle is how normal they want to be. Yesterday’s vote limits their options, somewhat. For if Cleverly was the leader of the aspiring normals, then we are left now with Badenoch as the hero of the defiant abnormals and Robert Jenrick being best understood as an ex-normal, having set out on a journey away from normality quite some time ago. In that same YouGov poll mentioned above, the figure even for Conservative voters who thought Conservative MPs “seem like normal people” was only 8 per cent. Some of them, though, might regard abnormality as a strength. Badenoch supporters are quite right when they point out that many of the criticisms thrown at her — fighty, abrasive, downright odd, perhaps mad — were once thrown at Margaret Thatcher. (Asked why she so hated him, Edward Heath famously shrugged and replied “I’m not a doctor.”)
Gotta say, whatever else happens, four years of @KemiBadenoch telling Labour MPs Britain's history is something to be proud of, Britain isn't full of structural racism & women don't have penises is going to be a lot of fun.
Actually it will get boring very quickly.
How could anything get more boring than Starmer ?
Alanbrooke's relentless postings about how boring Starmer is?
Not inconsiderable chance that Cleverly is the next Conservative leader, who leads the Tories into the next election, taking over mid-Parliament from whoever wins this contest.
I think that's unlikely. He's wasn't exactly ripping up trees this time. Just vaguely seen as the safe(ish)-pair-of-hands candidate.
Gotta say, whatever else happens, four years of @KemiBadenoch telling Labour MPs Britain's history is something to be proud of, Britain isn't full of structural racism & women don't have penises is going to be a lot of fun.
Actually it will get boring very quickly.
And more to the point irrelevant.
“So Kemi, what is your policy on the HS2 Lite extension to Manchester and Nottingham?”
Ed Davey (£584) - LIB DEM Bridget Phillipson (£522) - LAB Catherine McKinnell (£2,000) - LAB Wes Streeting (£1,160) - LAB Keir Starmer (£4,000) - LAB Darren Jones (£3,400) - LAB Dan Carden (£900) - LAB Kim Johnson (£900) - LAB Ian Byrne (£900) - INDEPENDENT Joe Morris (£1,660) - LAB Chris Ward (£1,660) - LAB
You can add Yvette Cooper to that she fessed up tonight
This is the flip side of Rishi being married to a billionaire. Say what you like about him, but we all know a £4000 gift would barely have registered.
You say that, but super rich people still take freebies.
They take many freebies, but they are rarely influenced by them. They often feel entitled, but that’s different.
If they weren't influenced by it they wouldn't take them. They don't need it, but want it, and that's still worth influence to them.
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
But obviously the rules have to be the same for everyone - not saying rich folk get a free pass, more saying that it’s more obvious and meaningful when it’s not a billionaire in charge. That’s part of the issue the PM has had.
My thinking is based on the feeling that buttering people up works, even if the buttering up is trivial in the grander scheme of things. It shouldn't influence someone so rich, but I'd bet it does.
In my experience no one likes a freebie more than rich people.
Ed Davey (£584) - LIB DEM Bridget Phillipson (£522) - LAB Catherine McKinnell (£2,000) - LAB Wes Streeting (£1,160) - LAB Keir Starmer (£4,000) - LAB Darren Jones (£3,400) - LAB Dan Carden (£900) - LAB Kim Johnson (£900) - LAB Ian Byrne (£900) - INDEPENDENT Joe Morris (£1,660) - LAB Chris Ward (£1,660) - LAB
You can add Yvette Cooper to that she fessed up tonight
This is the flip side of Rishi being married to a billionaire. Say what you like about him, but we all know a £4000 gift would barely have registered.
You say that, but super rich people still take freebies.
They take many freebies, but they are rarely influenced by them. They often feel entitled, but that’s different.
If they weren't influenced by it they wouldn't take them. They don't need it, but want it, and that's still worth influence to them.
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
But obviously the rules have to be the same for everyone - not saying rich folk get a free pass, more saying that it’s more obvious and meaningful when it’s not a billionaire in charge. That’s part of the issue the PM has had.
My thinking is based on the feeling that buttering people up works, even if the buttering up is trivial in the grander scheme of things. It shouldn't influence someone so rich, but I'd bet it does.
In my experience no one likes a freebie more than rich people.
In my experience this also includes highly paid doctors Foxy 😆
Of course!
Though it's years since I was flown to boozy conference in a Mediterranean country for a product launch.
I respect everyone who posts on PB (honest) but two people I feel a lot of political affinity with are Sandpit and Cookie. And they are both opposite to me in the Tory candidate they favour, for what it seems are the same reasons. We are suspicious that our less liked candidate isn't sincere in their intentions to challenge the establishment and create a secure country and a dynamic economy, and is actually a creature of the party establishment. With our more-liked candidate we feel optimistic that they will challenge Labour, cease hemorrhaging votes to Reform (and come to an accommodation with them if necessary), and present right wing solutions in a thoughtful way that will have wide apeal. Hopefully we are both wrong (and right).
Why does it have to be so factional/binary?
We are all Conservatives and there will be lots of things we agree on, and others where we perhaps prioritise or place more importance on slightly different things.
There are no litmus tests.
For the past thirty years the question "is he/she one of us?" gets asked by every Tory leader. For all her undoubted gifts and charisma, Margaret Thatcher was extremely polarising, even within the Conservative Party. All subsequent leaders from Major to Hague, to Duncan Smith, to Howard often faced open rebellion. Cameron managed to squeak a victory in 2010 and faced less resistance, until his Brexit vote allowed the fruit cakes and loonies (and closet racists) to get their revenge. May was initially ruthless with her "citizen of nowhere" speech and in purging Osborne and other prominent Cameroons, but more than misread the room as far as previously Tory Remainers were concerned. Johnson, of course, smashed the folk memory of CCHQ and purged an awful lot of genuine Conservatives and in doing so may have destroyed the well educated, middle class core of the party. Truss was so inept that she was purged herself, like Duncan Smith. Sunak was still dealing with the Johnson legacy and was constantly dealing with "the letters" to the point that July 4th was more or less forced on him, with catastrophic results.
The Tories obsession with talismanic leadership has been mostly disastrous. The choice of Jenrick v Badenoch is not going to recover the aspirational middle class. It may be too soon to say the oldest and most successful political party in Western Europe is over, but it is not looking good. Chaotic and inept, out of touch and increasingly detached from wealth creators, it is hard to think of a single effective policy proposal in recent years that was not simply an ill conceived gimmick.
I see no ideological core, like that which, for example, Keith Joseph once provided. All I see is second rate ineptitude offered by dishonest, unprincipled chancers.
Granted the Tories are not Labour, but what, in fact, are they? If any Tory MP even says the word "Rwanda", then they should be sent there with a one way ticket. The Party needs to get a grip and offer a coherent and workable set of economic policies, and I see no one on the current front bench that can even understand economic policy, let alone craft a position on the issues of the day.
Under the circumstances the fact that neither Badenoch nor Jenrick are likely ever to become PM is a small mercy.
What was the catalyst for these recent polling movements?
The polls are all over the place, although there does seem to be a small trend to Trump. William only posts Trump positive polls on PB so the pro-Trump changes are amplified.
My view is that the membership have to vote Badenoch.
Roll the dice.
There is no point electing 'pound shop tory boy let's pretend I am Nigel' Jenrick.
Given where they are tonight it has to be Kemi.
Can she last 3 weeks against Jenrick? He seems somehow developed a reputation for being a ruthless operator. for some reason.
My wallet no longer cares as I bailed out on BF with some laying.
I am free of the shadow of the poor house.
But as an outsider: they have to elect Kemi.
It has to be worth a shot.
I seem to dimly recall that Maggie was seen as the total outside maverick choice all those years ago.
I'm not saying she is Thatcher.
But Jenrick is the very worse. A combination of faux radical right jonny come lately (he voted Remain!!) and yet another tory boy, careerist, oxbridge lawyer with five houses.
The party would be literally mad to give him it over Bandenoch.
And that's roughly the other interpretation of today's numbers. That they're not about enthusiasm for Kemi, but a recognition she has a better chance of stopping Tawdry Bob than Jimmy C did.
What are the odds on one or both of the final two experiencing something career-ending in the next three weeks?
Definitely not suggesting that there’s about to be a massive capital flight from the UK to low-tax durisdictions overseas, in anticipation of the Budget, but…
I am (I think) a deist because consciousness seems ridiculous to me in a purely materialistic sense. I don't really know anything more than that. Don't even see the evidence for free will frankly.
Free will? If we didn't have free will, would we ever do anything difficult?
It isn't possible to form a rational judgment against the existence of free will, since any such judgment in your mind must, if correct, have arisen by necessity from the operations of the laws of nature beginning before you were were born and so your opinion on the matter arises from necessity not considered judgment, and therefore it is irrational to place any reliance on it. Because you have no free will, you have no choice about placing your reliance on it of course, so the very idea of rationality can be thrown out of the window.
All existing evidence suggest that God, resiling from an infinitude of uneventful timelessness, created the universe for His own entertainment. He enjoys it through the senses of every sentient creature, not just humans. When you crush a fly God experiences the act from both points of view. When a man vanquishes his rival God marks both the triumph and the pity with equanimity. Only humans, with our severely limited perspective, are inclined to take sides. God doesn't care what happens next, as long as it's interesting.
Two important corollaries arise from this: (a) you may logically thank God if something nice happens ... but don't expect Him to help out if something nasty rears its head, and (b) anyone who invokes the name of God in support of their personal opinions about human conduct is either a fool or a charlatan.
Gotta say, whatever else happens, four years of @KemiBadenoch telling Labour MPs Britain's history is something to be proud of, Britain isn't full of structural racism & women don't have penises is going to be a lot of fun.
Actually it will get boring very quickly.
How could anything get more boring than Starmer ?
Alanbrooke's relentless postings about how boring Starmer is?
I am (I think) a deist because consciousness seems ridiculous to me in a purely materialistic sense. I don't really know anything more than that. Don't even see the evidence for free will frankly.
Free will? If we didn't have free will, would we ever do anything difficult?
The idea that we don't have free will is terrifying, although it is backed by 'science'. If it is accepted then how could anyone ever be held responsible for their actions? You would have to accept that they are all randomly determined. The conclusion I came to 20 years ago is that this is probably best left as a paradox/mystery; certainly it is something that has led me to an agnostic and sceptical position on both religion and science.
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
You're ignoring a lot of behavioural economics there. Studies are pretty clear that people *say* they're not influenced by freebies - and genuinely believe it - but actually are.
And also thinking we're all rational about freebies and their costs is just not right at all. Firstly, think of it as an "evening out" - an evening out to someone that wealthy probably feels worth more than two bags. And tbh being far less wealthy than Rishi I can lose £2k in the markets and not give a stuff, but I will go to a surprising amount of effort to "cash in" a 75p freebee voucher. I once spent many hours trying to gain an edge on 2p pusher machines that could never, ever, have been worth more than a couple of pounds an hour if it had worked (spoiler - it doesn't - don't try this - although I did get a fluffy octopus amongst other things). They're different mental accounts that are not fungible.
I have always found in my business life that it is often the people that believe they cannot be influenced are the most suggestible.
A big scandal in my view is how the betting industry has sought to buy politicians, including Rachel Reeves. It is an industry that has all the morals of the tobacco industry and Labour ministers (and Tory ones before them) should be ashamed of taking freebies from them.
It could be worse, it could be the US, where the processed food and pharmaceutical companies have now totally taken over their own regulatory bodies, medicine, academia, media, and politcs.
Today’s Joe Rogan podcast, with Calley and Casey Means, should be required listening as to just how screwed up a society can get. Life expectancy is now falling in the US, because of addiction and the medicalisation of common complaints.
For those who don’t like Joe Rogan, I think this podcast is his record for staying silent and letting the guests talk.
I am afraid I don't buy the idea/myth that big pharma is bad. There have been huge advances in medicine made by the profit motive of pharma companies and the regulatory framework under the FDA and UK MHRA is rigorous. There are some of the dodgy generic pharma companies that have encouraged addiction, but this should not sully an otherwise morally sound industry. It is an interesting and little known fact that pharma companies and medical device companies had to bring in their own industry agreed codes to prevent medical professionals from insisting on large scale freebies when purchasing products.
The US Big Pharma have engaged in a range of behaviour from ugly to criminal (see the Sacklers)
A large chunk of their bad behaviour is related to their endeavours to stamp out price completion and achieve massive regulatory capture.
I specifically wasn't talking about Sacklers and their ilk. They are not mainstream pharma and have avoided the mainstream codes of conduct. Pricing, particularly in the US is, to a large extent, US government policy; it is a way of essentially subsidising the US pharma and device industry. The idea that many lefties have that the pharma industry per se is an evil capitalist enterprise is complete nonsense. Without the global pharma industry the world would be a much more ill place and we would probably still be in a pandemic. Could it be better regulated? Almost certainly, but so could other aspects of health delivery including the medical professions.
I’ll meet you half way. The research can be done and the drugs made, without the billions of dollars spend on advertising to consumers, and the billions more dollars on marketing drugs to doctors and pharmacists in the US.
The Sacklers were just the unlucky ones who got caught. Most of their rest of them got away with it.
Well, the type of business segment that Sacklers occupy makes up a very tiny section of the market. As to marketing, let me explain. I spend years developing a drug, let's say to reduce tremor in Parkinson's disease patients. Another pharma company uses a different drug to achieve similar efficacy. Doctor Smith can prescribe either drug. He needs academic papers and scientific information to ascertain which one he chooses for his individual patient. He speaks to the Medical Director of the pharma companies, who are medical doctors. The companies will give the best interpretation of data as they have it. Is this "evil" marketing? No it most definitely is not. This is how most marketing for ethical pharmaceuticals is carried out. Sorry if that doesn't fit the "pharma industry is evil" tropes beloved by left wing podcasters!
My view is that the membership have to vote Badenoch.
Roll the dice.
There is no point electing 'pound shop tory boy let's pretend I am Nigel' Jenrick.
Given where they are tonight it has to be Kemi.
Can she last 3 weeks against Jenrick? He seems somehow developed a reputation for being a ruthless operator. for some reason.
My wallet no longer cares as I bailed out on BF with some laying.
I am free of the shadow of the poor house.
But as an outsider: they have to elect Kemi.
It has to be worth a shot.
I seem to dimly recall that Maggie was seen as the total outside maverick choice all those years ago.
I'm not saying she is Thatcher.
But Jenrick is the very worse. A combination of faux radical right jonny come lately (he voted Remain!!) and yet another tory boy, careerist, oxbridge lawyer with five houses.
The party would be literally mad to give him it over Bandenoch.
I can't stand Bad Enoch, but where we are tonight depressingly she seems the least worst option.
How the Tory MPs have conspired to offer a choice of Bad Enoch and someone who chooses to paint over Disney characters that might cheer up sad, traumatised kids is utterly beyond me.
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
You're ignoring a lot of behavioural economics there. Studies are pretty clear that people *say* they're not influenced by freebies - and genuinely believe it - but actually are.
And also thinking we're all rational about freebies and their costs is just not right at all. Firstly, think of it as an "evening out" - an evening out to someone that wealthy probably feels worth more than two bags. And tbh being far less wealthy than Rishi I can lose £2k in the markets and not give a stuff, but I will go to a surprising amount of effort to "cash in" a 75p freebee voucher. I once spent many hours trying to gain an edge on 2p pusher machines that could never, ever, have been worth more than a couple of pounds an hour if it had worked (spoiler - it doesn't - don't try this - although I did get a fluffy octopus amongst other things). They're different mental accounts that are not fungible.
I have always found in my business life that it is often the people that believe they cannot be influenced are the most suggestible.
A big scandal in my view is how the betting industry has sought to buy politicians, including Rachel Reeves. It is an industry that has all the morals of the tobacco industry and Labour ministers (and Tory ones before them) should be ashamed of taking freebies from them.
It could be worse, it could be the US, where the processed food and pharmaceutical companies have now totally taken over their own regulatory bodies, medicine, academia, media, and politcs.
Today’s Joe Rogan podcast, with Calley and Casey Means, should be required listening as to just how screwed up a society can get. Life expectancy is now falling in the US, because of addiction and the medicalisation of common complaints.
For those who don’t like Joe Rogan, I think this podcast is his record for staying silent and letting the guests talk.
I am afraid I don't buy the idea/myth that big pharma is bad. There have been huge advances in medicine made by the profit motive of pharma companies and the regulatory framework under the FDA and UK MHRA is rigorous. There are some of the dodgy generic pharma companies that have encouraged addiction, but this should not sully an otherwise morally sound industry. It is an interesting and little known fact that pharma companies and medical device companies had to bring in their own industry agreed codes to prevent medical professionals from insisting on large scale freebies when purchasing products.
The US Big Pharma have engaged in a range of behaviour from ugly to criminal (see the Sacklers)
A large chunk of their bad behaviour is related to their endeavours to stamp out price completion and achieve massive regulatory capture.
I specifically wasn't talking about Sacklers and their ilk. They are not mainstream pharma and have avoided the mainstream codes of conduct. Pricing, particularly in the US is, to a large extent, US government policy; it is a way of essentially subsidising the US pharma and device industry. The idea that many lefties have that the pharma industry per se is an evil capitalist enterprise is complete nonsense. Without the global pharma industry the world would be a much more ill place and we would probably still be in a pandemic. Could it be better regulated? Almost certainly, but so could other aspects of health delivery including the medical professions.
I’ll meet you half way. The research can be done and the drugs made, without the billions of dollars spend on advertising to consumers, and the billions more dollars on marketing drugs to doctors and pharmacists in the US.
The Sacklers were just the unlucky ones who got caught. Most of their rest of them got away with it.
The Sacklurs weren't caught. They just spend their time whitewashing their family name with donations to the arts.
I am (I think) a deist because consciousness seems ridiculous to me in a purely materialistic sense. I don't really know anything more than that. Don't even see the evidence for free will frankly.
Free will? If we didn't have free will, would we ever do anything difficult?
The idea that we don't have free will is terrifying, although it is backed by 'science'. If it is accepted then how could anyone ever be held responsible for their actions? You would have to accept that they are all randomly determined. The conclusion I came to 20 years ago is that this is probably best left as a paradox/mystery; certainly it is something that has led me to an agnostic and sceptical position on both religion and science.
It is just a theological expression of the debate that we now frame in scientific lingo, having got bored with theology. It's nature vs nurture. Am I who I am because of genetics or of environment?
Ed Davey (£584) - LIB DEM Bridget Phillipson (£522) - LAB Catherine McKinnell (£2,000) - LAB Wes Streeting (£1,160) - LAB Keir Starmer (£4,000) - LAB Darren Jones (£3,400) - LAB Dan Carden (£900) - LAB Kim Johnson (£900) - LAB Ian Byrne (£900) - INDEPENDENT Joe Morris (£1,660) - LAB Chris Ward (£1,660) - LAB
You can add Yvette Cooper to that she fessed up tonight
This is the flip side of Rishi being married to a billionaire. Say what you like about him, but we all know a £4000 gift would barely have registered.
You say that, but super rich people still take freebies.
They take many freebies, but they are rarely influenced by them. They often feel entitled, but that’s different.
If they weren't influenced by it they wouldn't take them. They don't need it, but want it, and that's still worth influence to them.
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
But obviously the rules have to be the same for everyone - not saying rich folk get a free pass, more saying that it’s more obvious and meaningful when it’s not a billionaire in charge. That’s part of the issue the PM has had.
My thinking is based on the feeling that buttering people up works, even if the buttering up is trivial in the grander scheme of things. It shouldn't influence someone so rich, but I'd bet it does.
In my experience no one likes a freebie more than rich people.
In my experience this also includes highly paid doctors Foxy 😆
Of course!
Though it's years since I was flown to boozy conference in a Mediterranean country for a product launch.
The evil pharma companies eventually decided to say no to all of that in the UK with the APBI code of conduct. Poor old doctors now all have to go to the conferences economy class!
My view is that the membership have to vote Badenoch.
Roll the dice.
There is no point electing 'pound shop tory boy let's pretend I am Nigel' Jenrick.
Given where they are tonight it has to be Kemi.
Can she last 3 weeks against Jenrick? He seems somehow developed a reputation for being a ruthless operator. for some reason.
My wallet no longer cares as I bailed out on BF with some laying.
I am free of the shadow of the poor house.
But as an outsider: they have to elect Kemi.
It has to be worth a shot.
I seem to dimly recall that Maggie was seen as the total outside maverick choice all those years ago.
I'm not saying she is Thatcher.
But Jenrick is the very worse. A combination of faux radical right jonny come lately (he voted Remain!!) and yet another tory boy, careerist, oxbridge lawyer with five houses.
The party would be literally mad to give him it over Bandenoch.
I can't stand Bad Enoch, but where we are tonight depressingly she seems the least worst option.
How the Tory MPs have conspired to offer a choice of Bad Enoch and someone who chooses to paint over Disney characters that might cheer up sad, traumatised kids is utterly beyond me.
At some point, the wider British right became more revolutionary than conservative. The failure to strangle Faragism at birth didn't help, because he will always offer a bigger, redder piece of meat.
And revolutions aren't well known for nurturing their children.
Twitter is such a swamp, all the replies to that coming up are along the lines of "what racism", "no racism detected", "its fair comment" etc
Are you freaking kidding me? This is the problem, so many bigots don't understand why racism is objected to as they don't recognise it as racism - or a problem at all.
Ed Davey (£584) - LIB DEM Bridget Phillipson (£522) - LAB Catherine McKinnell (£2,000) - LAB Wes Streeting (£1,160) - LAB Keir Starmer (£4,000) - LAB Darren Jones (£3,400) - LAB Dan Carden (£900) - LAB Kim Johnson (£900) - LAB Ian Byrne (£900) - INDEPENDENT Joe Morris (£1,660) - LAB Chris Ward (£1,660) - LAB
You can add Yvette Cooper to that she fessed up tonight
This is the flip side of Rishi being married to a billionaire. Say what you like about him, but we all know a £4000 gift would barely have registered.
You say that, but super rich people still take freebies.
They take many freebies, but they are rarely influenced by them. They often feel entitled, but that’s different.
If they weren't influenced by it they wouldn't take them. They don't need it, but want it, and that's still worth influence to them.
Nah. Disagree. £2000 to the likes of Rishi is the proportionate equivalent of a supplier offering me a nice biscuit. I think “that was a nice biscuit” but I am influenced not one jot.
But obviously the rules have to be the same for everyone - not saying rich folk get a free pass, more saying that it’s more obvious and meaningful when it’s not a billionaire in charge. That’s part of the issue the PM has had.
My thinking is based on the feeling that buttering people up works, even if the buttering up is trivial in the grander scheme of things. It shouldn't influence someone so rich, but I'd bet it does.
In my experience no one likes a freebie more than rich people.
In my experience this also includes highly paid doctors Foxy 😆
Of course!
Though it's years since I was flown to boozy conference in a Mediterranean country for a product launch.
If the product was a suppository, I'm not surprised you haven't been again.
My view is that the membership have to vote Badenoch.
Roll the dice.
There is no point electing 'pound shop tory boy let's pretend I am Nigel' Jenrick.
Given where they are tonight it has to be Kemi.
Can she last 3 weeks against Jenrick? He seems somehow developed a reputation for being a ruthless operator. for some reason.
My wallet no longer cares as I bailed out on BF with some laying.
I am free of the shadow of the poor house.
But as an outsider: they have to elect Kemi.
It has to be worth a shot.
I seem to dimly recall that Maggie was seen as the total outside maverick choice all those years ago.
I'm not saying she is Thatcher.
But Jenrick is the very worse. A combination of faux radical right jonny come lately (he voted Remain!!) and yet another tory boy, careerist, oxbridge lawyer with five houses.
The party would be literally mad to give him it over Bandenoch.
I can't stand Bad Enoch, but where we are tonight depressingly she seems the least worst option.
How the Tory MPs have conspired to offer a choice of Bad Enoch and someone who chooses to paint over Disney characters that might cheer up sad, traumatised kids is utterly beyond me.
The most sophisticated electorate in the world etc etc.
Meanwhile, with my deep cynicism about human nature, I have placed an additional £100 on Ms Badenoch to win at 5/11 at Ladbrokes. I used their betting machines which can only take preset odds, otherwise it should have been £110. #bigboypants
I respect everyone who posts on PB (honest) but two people I feel a lot of political affinity with are Sandpit and Cookie. And they are both opposite to me in the Tory candidate they favour, for what it seems are the same reasons. We are suspicious that our less liked candidate isn't sincere in their intentions to challenge the establishment and create a secure country and a dynamic economy, and is actually a creature of the party establishment. With our more-liked candidate we feel optimistic that they will challenge Labour, cease hemorrhaging votes to Reform (and come to an accommodation with them if necessary), and present right wing solutions in a thoughtful way that will have wide apeal. Hopefully we are both wrong (and right).
Why does it have to be so factional/binary?
We are all Conservatives and there will be lots of things we agree on, and others where we perhaps prioritise or place more importance on slightly different things.
There are no litmus tests.
For the past thirty years the question "is he/she one of us?" gets asked by every Tory leader. For all her undoubted gifts and charisma, Margaret Thatcher was extremely polarising, even within the Conservative Party. All subsequent leaders from Major to Hague, to Duncan Smith, to Howard often faced open rebellion. Cameron managed to squeak a victory in 2010 and faced less resistance, until his Brexit vote allowed the fruit cakes and loonies (and closet racists) to get their revenge. May was initially ruthless with her "citizen of nowhere" speech and in purging Osborne and other prominent Cameroons, but more than misread the room as far as previously Tory Remainers were concerned. Johnson, of course, smashed the folk memory of CCHQ and purged an awful lot of genuine Conservatives and in doing so may have destroyed the well educated, middle class core of the party. Truss was so inept that she was purged herself, like Duncan Smith. Sunak was still dealing with the Johnson legacy and was constantly dealing with "the letters" to the point that July 4th was more or less forced on him, with catastrophic results.
The Tories obsession with talismanic leadership has been mostly disastrous. The choice of Jenrick v Badenoch is not going to recover the aspirational middle class. It may be too soon to say the oldest and most successful political party in Western Europe is over, but it is not looking good. Chaotic and inept, out of touch and increasingly detached from wealth creators, it is hard to think of a single effective policy proposal in recent years that was not simply an ill conceived gimmick.
I see no ideological core, like that which, for example, Keith Joseph once provided. All I see is second rate ineptitude offered by dishonest, unprincipled chancers.
Granted the Tories are not Labour, but what, in fact, are they? If any Tory MP even says the word "Rwanda", then they should be sent there with a one way ticket. The Party needs to get a grip and offer a coherent and workable set of economic policies, and I see no one on the current front bench that can even understand economic policy, let alone craft a position on the issues of the day.
Under the circumstances the fact that neither Badenoch nor Jenrick are likely ever to become PM is a small mercy.
Good rant - and agree with many of the points.
But let’s be honest it’s not an exclusive thing for the Conservative Party to have a bit of crack at in-fighting. The Labour Party spent a good part of the previous 14 years fighting like ferrets in a sack, flirting with irrelevance and preaching to their choir. Maybe the Tory MPs thought they would fancy that for a while?
Eventually they’ll find a way back. The question is how long, and what the likely absence of meaningful opposition will do in the meantime?
I guess the funny thing about Labour’s navel gazing is that it was focussed on a clear ideological core, and actually was quite good at stacking votes up in cities and what not. Just not so good at winning votes where they were needed.
I just don’t see how this culture war stuff has a serious constituency or any meaningful ideology. But who knows - populists should at least be popular right?
I guess Starmer might treat himself to another couple of Swift tickets this evening and perhaps push the boat out with a natty new tie by way of a minor celebration of the day's events?
Not inconsiderable chance that Cleverly is the next Conservative leader, who leads the Tories into the next election, taking over mid-Parliament from whoever wins this contest.
I am (I think) a deist because consciousness seems ridiculous to me in a purely materialistic sense. I don't really know anything more than that. Don't even see the evidence for free will frankly.
Free will? If we didn't have free will, would we ever do anything difficult?
The idea that we don't have free will is terrifying, although it is backed by 'science'. If it is accepted then how could anyone ever be held responsible for their actions? You would have to accept that they are all randomly determined. The conclusion I came to 20 years ago is that this is probably best left as a paradox/mystery; certainly it is something that has led me to an agnostic and sceptical position on both religion and science.
It is just a theological expression of the debate that we now frame in scientific lingo, having got bored with theology. It's nature vs nurture. Am I who I am because of genetics or of environment?
I respect everyone who posts on PB (honest) but two people I feel a lot of political affinity with are Sandpit and Cookie. And they are both opposite to me in the Tory candidate they favour, for what it seems are the same reasons. We are suspicious that our less liked candidate isn't sincere in their intentions to challenge the establishment and create a secure country and a dynamic economy, and is actually a creature of the party establishment. With our more-liked candidate we feel optimistic that they will challenge Labour, cease hemorrhaging votes to Reform (and come to an accommodation with them if necessary), and present right wing solutions in a thoughtful way that will have wide apeal. Hopefully we are both wrong (and right).
Why does it have to be so factional/binary?
We are all Conservatives and there will be lots of things we agree on, and others where we perhaps prioritise or place more importance on slightly different things.
There are no litmus tests.
For the past thirty years the question "is he/she one of us?" gets asked by every Tory leader. For all her undoubted gifts and charisma, Margaret Thatcher was extremely polarising, even within the Conservative Party. All subsequent leaders from Major to Hague, to Duncan Smith, to Howard often faced open rebellion. Cameron managed to squeak a victory in 2010 and faced less resistance, until his Brexit vote allowed the fruit cakes and loonies (and closet racists) to get their revenge. May was initially ruthless with her "citizen of nowhere" speech and in purging Osborne and other prominent Cameroons, but more than misread the room as far as previously Tory Remainers were concerned. Johnson, of course, smashed the folk memory of CCHQ and purged an awful lot of genuine Conservatives and in doing so may have destroyed the well educated, middle class core of the party. Truss was so inept that she was purged herself, like Duncan Smith. Sunak was still dealing with the Johnson legacy and was constantly dealing with "the letters" to the point that July 4th was more or less forced on him, with catastrophic results.
The Tories obsession with talismanic leadership has been mostly disastrous. The choice of Jenrick v Badenoch is not going to recover the aspirational middle class. It may be too soon to say the oldest and most successful political party in Western Europe is over, but it is not looking good. Chaotic and inept, out of touch and increasingly detached from wealth creators, it is hard to think of a single effective policy proposal in recent years that was not simply an ill conceived gimmick.
I see no ideological core, like that which, for example, Keith Joseph once provided. All I see is second rate ineptitude offered by dishonest, unprincipled chancers.
Granted the Tories are not Labour, but what, in fact, are they? If any Tory MP even says the word "Rwanda", then they should be sent there with a one way ticket. The Party needs to get a grip and offer a coherent and workable set of economic policies, and I see no one on the current front bench that can even understand economic policy, let alone craft a position on the issues of the day.
Under the circumstances the fact that neither Badenoch nor Jenrick are likely ever to become PM is a small mercy.
Good rant - and agree with many of the points.
But let’s be honest it’s not an exclusive thing for the Conservative Party to have a bit of crack at in-fighting. The Labour Party spent a good part of the previous 14 years fighting like ferrets in a sack, flirting with irrelevance and preaching to their choir. Maybe the Tory MPs thought they would fancy that for a while?
Eventually they’ll find a way back. The question is how long, and what the likely absence of meaningful opposition will do in the meantime?
I guess the funny thing about Labour’s navel gazing is that it was focussed on a clear ideological core, and actually was quite good at stacking votes up in cities and what not. Just not so good at winning votes where they were needed.
I just don’t see how this culture war stuff has a serious constituency or any meaningful ideology. But who knows - populists should at least be popular right?
Culture arguments can be effective, but I think they work best as a kind of spice to a political offer, not the whole meal.
My view is that the membership have to vote Badenoch.
Roll the dice.
There is no point electing 'pound shop tory boy let's pretend I am Nigel' Jenrick.
Given where they are tonight it has to be Kemi.
Can she last 3 weeks against Jenrick? He seems somehow developed a reputation for being a ruthless operator. for some reason.
My wallet no longer cares as I bailed out on BF with some laying.
I am free of the shadow of the poor house.
But as an outsider: they have to elect Kemi.
It has to be worth a shot.
I seem to dimly recall that Maggie was seen as the total outside maverick choice all those years ago.
I'm not saying she is Thatcher.
But Jenrick is the very worse. A combination of faux radical right jonny come lately (he voted Remain!!) and yet another tory boy, careerist, oxbridge lawyer with five houses.
The party would be literally mad to give him it over Bandenoch.
Thatcher had a brain, as does Jenrick, Badenoch is more a maverick with a one track anti woke agenda.
Jenrick also tends to poll better with voters with fewer unfavourables than Badenoch, 10 years ago Jenrick was a Cameroon. Having secured the right to win the leadership it would be far easier for him to shift to the centre than Kemi. Jenrick's message on building more homes and stopping the boats is also a sensible one in terms of broadening Tory support
Gotta say, whatever else happens, four years of @KemiBadenoch telling Labour MPs Britain's history is something to be proud of, Britain isn't full of structural racism & women don't have penises is going to be a lot of fun.
She seems the option with the widest range of outcomes, positive and negative. Go big, go bold, go Badenoch?
Watching @TheScreamingEagles go from a couple of dozen “Kemi-kaze” headers, to…
Voting for Badenoch, it's a bit vote for the lizard not the wizard.
Has definitely been something to behold.
Kemi is an STD, Jenrick is necrotising fasciitis.
So you’re voting for Kemi then?
After consultation with JohnO, who is primus inter pares of the PB Tories, I am reluctantly voting for Badenoch.
As somebody who believes in ethics and probity then Jenrick is not fit to be an MP let alone party leader, the Dirty Desmond deal would have seen councillors ending up in prison.
Im for Badenoch as she is black and a woman, This means I can laugh at the racist misogynists led by Starmer
Increasingly successful strategy for rightwing Republicans across America from sea-to-shining sea.
Personally had a bit-part (as an extra extra) in 1994, when one of the first of the breed, US Rep. JC Watts (R-Oklahoma), then-pro football player & former star at U of OK (thus a household word statewide) was elected as 1st-ever Black congressman from the Sooner State (My role was as minor consultant for Dem candidate who lost in primary.)
Subsequent examples include Nikki Haley (Indo American) and Tim Scott (African American) in South Carolina, the former Cradle of the Confederacy.
Also Jaime Herrer Beutler of Washington State, a Latina and former congresswoman, who was defeated in 2022 primary due to MAGA backlash against her vote to impeach Donald Trump, but who(m) today is the GOP's best bet to recapture a statewide office, as candidate for state commissioner of public lands.
AND note that in every instance cited, what Alanbrooke just said, was often said by conservative Republicans & fellow travellers, including some overt and covert racists.
All demonstrating, and NOT just to themselves, that they do NOT care about their candidate's race, ethnicity, etc., etc., or are certainly willing to overlook it.
Which as a pointy-headed Woke-job from way back, let me observe that I personally find this to be a positive development, even though it is too-often biting me in the butt electorally-speaking.
ADDENDUM - to (perhaps) clarify, what rightwing GOPers are saying (I paraphrase) is -
> Don't call ME a racist - I'm voting for the Black guy!
Had a bit of a drawback as a strategy in North Carolina this time and Georgia two years ago though.
True. Works best IF you do NOT nominate a totally-incapable, quasi-insane rightwing Candidate of Color.
Not inconsiderable chance that Cleverly is the next Conservative leader, who leads the Tories into the next election, taking over mid-Parliament from whoever wins this contest.
"He blew it" is a thing in politics and Cleverly is in that territory I think.
So Kemi and Bob now both have to donate £150,000 to the Men In Grey Suits. Is that right?
Let's hope they aren't relying on Alii type benefactors and are expected to front the wonga themselves. Imagine the furore if they have to rely on donors!
Lewis Goodall @lewis_goodall · 2h The Kamala Harris campaign has now raised over $1bn. An astonishing figure, which is even more astonishing when you consider how little time she’s been in the race. Noone has ever raised so much money so fast. That figure doesn’t even include money raised by allied super PACs.
My view is that the membership have to vote Badenoch.
Roll the dice.
There is no point electing 'pound shop tory boy let's pretend I am Nigel' Jenrick.
Given where they are tonight it has to be Kemi.
Can she last 3 weeks against Jenrick? He seems somehow developed a reputation for being a ruthless operator. for some reason.
My wallet no longer cares as I bailed out on BF with some laying.
I am free of the shadow of the poor house.
But as an outsider: they have to elect Kemi.
It has to be worth a shot.
I seem to dimly recall that Maggie was seen as the total outside maverick choice all those years ago.
I'm not saying she is Thatcher.
But Jenrick is the very worse. A combination of faux radical right jonny come lately (he voted Remain!!) and yet another tory boy, careerist, oxbridge lawyer with five houses.
The party would be literally mad to give him it over Bandenoch.
Thatcher had a brain, as does Jenrick, Badenoch is more a maverick with a one track anti woke agenda.
Jenrick also tends to poll better with voters with fewer unfavourables than Badenoch, 10 years ago Jenrick was a Cameroon. Having secured the right to win the leadership it would be far easier for him to shift to the centre than Kemi. Jenrick's message on building more homes and stopping the boats is also a sensible one in terms of broadening Tory support
I know you are a Jenrick supporter and I admit I just cannot stand him, but then I know very little about Badenoch and she seems to be popular with members
I guess Starmer might treat himself to another couple of Swift tickets this evening and perhaps push the boat out with a natty new tie by way of a minor celebration of the day's events?
Pushing the boat out for a man of his lavish taste would probably be a luxury world cruise. That said if it meant getting rid of the boring grifting c*** for a whole year I'd offer to pay myself!
Badenoch will be quite a good LOTO. It's all about mouthing off and getting attention.
It suits her skills far better than being a government minister.
It isn't, you know. A good LOTO gets their party into electable shape. Soundbites at PMQs are trivia.
William Hague was brilliant at soundbites at PMQs.
Asked to withdraw an implication that Labour had been bribed to make false statements, he shot back, 'I'm not suggesting Labour are paid to lie, they do it for free all the time.'
Gotta say, whatever else happens, four years of @KemiBadenoch telling Labour MPs Britain's history is something to be proud of, Britain isn't full of structural racism & women don't have penises is going to be a lot of fun.
She seems the option with the widest range of outcomes, positive and negative. Go big, go bold, go Badenoch?
Watching @TheScreamingEagles go from a couple of dozen “Kemi-kaze” headers, to…
Voting for Badenoch, it's a bit vote for the lizard not the wizard.
Has definitely been something to behold.
Kemi is an STD, Jenrick is necrotising fasciitis.
So you’re voting for Kemi then?
After consultation with JohnO, who is primus inter pares of the PB Tories, I am reluctantly voting for Badenoch.
As somebody who believes in ethics and probity then Jenrick is not fit to be an MP let alone party leader, the Dirty Desmond deal would have seen councillors ending up in prison.
I learned this afternoon on PB (remember everyday on PB is a schoolday) that Swiftgate is a substantially more significant breach of protocol than Jenrick accepting a mere £12,000 (and Desmond got a dinner out of it) for his party, having saved the Pornographer £45m after an intervention by the then Housing Secretary, overturning Tower Hamlets Council 's due planning process.
Swiftgate has already been surpassed. Sir Keir is now accused of fabricating his military record by claiming he received extensive shrapnel wounds aboard a ship that never existed during a battle that never occurred.
I find it remarkable that for a £45m saving Jenrick gratefully accepted a mere £12,000 (less a dinner) from Desmond for his efforts. What an utterly shite businessman, the Tories should have drummed him out for criminal underselling.
There seemed to be a revelling in keeping money from the poorest. Not unlike Rishi's redirecting funds from the inner cities to Richmond. Jenerick's is nasty and corrupt and this Neo-Conservative Party deserve him.
I guess Starmer might treat himself to another couple of Swift tickets this evening and perhaps push the boat out with a natty new tie by way of a minor celebration of the day's events?
I guess Starmer might treat himself to another couple of Swift tickets this evening and perhaps push the boat out with a natty new tie by way of a minor celebration of the day's events?
Surely, the only fitting conclusion to the madness of this Tory leadership election is that it is won by a successful write in vote to re-open nominations thus catching the ire of Brenda from Bristol.
Someone is going to tell me it's electronic voting with no such possible option aren't they?
Not inconsiderable chance that Cleverly is the next Conservative leader, who leads the Tories into the next election, taking over mid-Parliament from whoever wins this contest.
"He blew it" is a thing in politics and Cleverly is in that territory I think.
Yes. He's gone from a player to a joke in minutes. Politics is harsh sometimes.
I respect everyone who posts on PB (honest) but two people I feel a lot of political affinity with are Sandpit and Cookie. And they are both opposite to me in the Tory candidate they favour, for what it seems are the same reasons. We are suspicious that our less liked candidate isn't sincere in their intentions to challenge the establishment and create a secure country and a dynamic economy, and is actually a creature of the party establishment. With our more-liked candidate we feel optimistic that they will challenge Labour, cease hemorrhaging votes to Reform (and come to an accommodation with them if necessary), and present right wing solutions in a thoughtful way that will have wide apeal. Hopefully we are both wrong (and right).
Why does it have to be so factional/binary?
We are all Conservatives and there will be lots of things we agree on, and others where we perhaps prioritise or place more importance on slightly different things.
There are no litmus tests.
For the past thirty years the question "is he/she one of us?" gets asked by every Tory leader. For all her undoubted gifts and charisma, Margaret Thatcher was extremely polarising, even within the Conservative Party. All subsequent leaders from Major to Hague, to Duncan Smith, to Howard often faced open rebellion. Cameron managed to squeak a victory in 2010 and faced less resistance, until his Brexit vote allowed the fruit cakes and loonies (and closet racists) to get their revenge. May was initially ruthless with her "citizen of nowhere" speech and in purging Osborne and other prominent Cameroons, but more than misread the room as far as previously Tory Remainers were concerned. Johnson, of course, smashed the folk memory of CCHQ and purged an awful lot of genuine Conservatives and in doing so may have destroyed the well educated, middle class core of the party. Truss was so inept that she was purged herself, like Duncan Smith. Sunak was still dealing with the Johnson legacy and was constantly dealing with "the letters" to the point that July 4th was more or less forced on him, with catastrophic results.
The Tories obsession with talismanic leadership has been mostly disastrous. The choice of Jenrick v Badenoch is not going to recover the aspirational middle class. It may be too soon to say the oldest and most successful political party in Western Europe is over, but it is not looking good. Chaotic and inept, out of touch and increasingly detached from wealth creators, it is hard to think of a single effective policy proposal in recent years that was not simply an ill conceived gimmick.
I see no ideological core, like that which, for example, Keith Joseph once provided. All I see is second rate ineptitude offered by dishonest, unprincipled chancers.
Granted the Tories are not Labour, but what, in fact, are they? If any Tory MP even says the word "Rwanda", then they should be sent there with a one way ticket. The Party needs to get a grip and offer a coherent and workable set of economic policies, and I see no one on the current front bench that can even understand economic policy, let alone craft a position on the issues of the day.
Under the circumstances the fact that neither Badenoch nor Jenrick are likely ever to become PM is a small mercy.
Good rant - and agree with many of the points.
But let’s be honest it’s not an exclusive thing for the Conservative Party to have a bit of crack at in-fighting. The Labour Party spent a good part of the previous 14 years fighting like ferrets in a sack, flirting with irrelevance and preaching to their choir. Maybe the Tory MPs thought they would fancy that for a while?
Eventually they’ll find a way back. The question is how long, and what the likely absence of meaningful opposition will do in the meantime?
I guess the funny thing about Labour’s navel gazing is that it was focussed on a clear ideological core, and actually was quite good at stacking votes up in cities and what not. Just not so good at winning votes where they were needed.
I just don’t see how this culture war stuff has a serious constituency or any meaningful ideology. But who knows - populists should at least be popular right?
Culture arguments can be effective, but I think they work best as a kind of spice to a political offer, not the whole meal.
You are probably right. Always strike me as simply a bit of dividing lines, with a touch of the “bit of blue for the dads” type vibe.
I often wondered whether the last Conservative administration reached for those arguments because their cupboard was bare (i.e. no new money, no new ideas, no enthusiasm).
I respect everyone who posts on PB (honest) but two people I feel a lot of political affinity with are Sandpit and Cookie. And they are both opposite to me in the Tory candidate they favour, for what it seems are the same reasons. We are suspicious that our less liked candidate isn't sincere in their intentions to challenge the establishment and create a secure country and a dynamic economy, and is actually a creature of the party establishment. With our more-liked candidate we feel optimistic that they will challenge Labour, cease hemorrhaging votes to Reform (and come to an accommodation with them if necessary), and present right wing solutions in a thoughtful way that will have wide apeal. Hopefully we are both wrong (and right).
Why does it have to be so factional/binary?
We are all Conservatives and there will be lots of things we agree on, and others where we perhaps prioritise or place more importance on slightly different things.
There are no litmus tests.
For the past thirty years the question "is he/she one of us?" gets asked by every Tory leader. For all her undoubted gifts and charisma, Margaret Thatcher was extremely polarising, even within the Conservative Party. All subsequent leaders from Major to Hague, to Duncan Smith, to Howard often faced open rebellion. Cameron managed to squeak a victory in 2010 and faced less resistance, until his Brexit vote allowed the fruit cakes and loonies (and closet racists) to get their revenge. May was initially ruthless with her "citizen of nowhere" speech and in purging Osborne and other prominent Cameroons, but more than misread the room as far as previously Tory Remainers were concerned. Johnson, of course, smashed the folk memory of CCHQ and purged an awful lot of genuine Conservatives and in doing so may have destroyed the well educated, middle class core of the party. Truss was so inept that she was purged herself, like Duncan Smith. Sunak was still dealing with the Johnson legacy and was constantly dealing with "the letters" to the point that July 4th was more or less forced on him, with catastrophic results.
The Tories obsession with talismanic leadership has been mostly disastrous. The choice of Jenrick v Badenoch is not going to recover the aspirational middle class. It may be too soon to say the oldest and most successful political party in Western Europe is over, but it is not looking good. Chaotic and inept, out of touch and increasingly detached from wealth creators, it is hard to think of a single effective policy proposal in recent years that was not simply an ill conceived gimmick.
I see no ideological core, like that which, for example, Keith Joseph once provided. All I see is second rate ineptitude offered by dishonest, unprincipled chancers.
Granted the Tories are not Labour, but what, in fact, are they? If any Tory MP even says the word "Rwanda", then they should be sent there with a one way ticket. The Party needs to get a grip and offer a coherent and workable set of economic policies, and I see no one on the current front bench that can even understand economic policy, let alone craft a position on the issues of the day.
Under the circumstances the fact that neither Badenoch nor Jenrick are likely ever to become PM is a small mercy.
I can easily see Badenoch becoming PM. Labour can't beat her on racism because she's a black woman, they can't beat her on immigration because Labour likes immigration, they can't beat her on anti-trans because they are on the same side, they can't beat her on economic competence because they gave Ed Milliband 22bn to spunk up the wall on forfuckssake carbon capture, they can't beat her on benefits because they are on the same side, that can't beat her on corruption because Starmer is also corrupt...in short, what can Labour beat her *with*?
So Kemi and Bob now both have to donate £150,000 to the Men In Grey Suits. Is that right?
Let's hope they aren't relying on Alii type benefactors and are expected to front the wonga themselves. Imagine the furore if they have to rely on donors!
The pearls would not be so much clutched, as crushed. Lordy me!
I'm genuinely disappointed, even though Cleverly was a much stronger candidate and this scarcely believable fiasco suits Labour.
Cleverly is a nice guy, a thoughtful decent man – and an atheist. It would have been interesting – and overdue – to have atheists leading both big parties, which reflected the irreligious nature of our nation.
The nation is irreligious and agnostic.
That is *not* the same as atheist
Yes it is. They are pretty much synonyms.
The idea that atheism is a definitive belief is a fallacy spread by theists.
Atheism is a lack of belief in any god. Agnosticism is a lack of definitive knowledge on whether there is or is not anything.
On a Venn Diagram those two are almost a completely overlapping circle.
Don't fall for theists fallacies in letting them define atheist to mean any more than what it means.
Indeed:
Do you believe in God?
If Yes, goto 1. If No, goto 2.
1: You are a theist 2. You are an atheist
Atheism is a belief that there is no god. That's not identical to a lack of belief in a god.
It's the difference between absence of evidence and evidence of absence.
Any scientist knows those aren't the same thing.
Yes, but in general you can also make the argument of parsimony, that in the absence of evidence for an omnipotent God, existing in a realm very different to our own, etc, etc, it is logical to conclude that he does not exist. There's certainly not much reason to believe that he does so.
But Belief trumps Reason, so it doesn't really matter.
Abscence of evidence != evidence of abscence and btw pronouns....she
My view is that the membership have to vote Badenoch.
Roll the dice.
There is no point electing 'pound shop tory boy let's pretend I am Nigel' Jenrick.
Given where they are tonight it has to be Kemi.
Can she last 3 weeks against Jenrick? He seems somehow developed a reputation for being a ruthless operator. for some reason.
My wallet no longer cares as I bailed out on BF with some laying.
I am free of the shadow of the poor house.
But as an outsider: they have to elect Kemi.
It has to be worth a shot.
I seem to dimly recall that Maggie was seen as the total outside maverick choice all those years ago.
I'm not saying she is Thatcher.
But Jenrick is the very worse. A combination of faux radical right jonny come lately (he voted Remain!!) and yet another tory boy, careerist, oxbridge lawyer with five houses.
The party would be literally mad to give him it over Bandenoch.
Thatcher had a brain, as does Jenrick, Badenoch is more a maverick with a one track anti woke agenda.
Jenrick also tends to poll better with voters with fewer unfavourables than Badenoch, 10 years ago Jenrick was a Cameroon. Having secured the right to win the leadership it would be far easier for him to shift to the centre than Kemi. Jenrick's message on building more homes and stopping the boats is also a sensible one in terms of broadening Tory support
I know you are a Jenrick supporter and I admit I just cannot stand him, but then I know very little about Badenoch and she seems to be popular with members
So who do you think will win ?
At the moment Kemi has the edge, however Jenrick is a sharp speaker and if there is a debate between the 2 could win
I guess Starmer might treat himself to another couple of Swift tickets this evening and perhaps push the boat out with a natty new tie by way of a minor celebration of the day's events?
My view is that the membership have to vote Badenoch.
Roll the dice.
There is no point electing 'pound shop tory boy let's pretend I am Nigel' Jenrick.
Given where they are tonight it has to be Kemi.
Can she last 3 weeks against Jenrick? He seems somehow developed a reputation for being a ruthless operator. for some reason.
My wallet no longer cares as I bailed out on BF with some laying.
I am free of the shadow of the poor house.
But as an outsider: they have to elect Kemi.
It has to be worth a shot.
I seem to dimly recall that Maggie was seen as the total outside maverick choice all those years ago.
I'm not saying she is Thatcher.
But Jenrick is the very worse. A combination of faux radical right jonny come lately (he voted Remain!!) and yet another tory boy, careerist, oxbridge lawyer with five houses.
The party would be literally mad to give him it over Bandenoch.
Thatcher had a brain, as does Jenrick, Badenoch is more a maverick with a one track anti woke agenda.
Jenrick also tends to poll better with voters with fewer unfavourables than Badenoch, 10 years ago Jenrick was a Cameroon. Having secured the right to win the leadership it would be far easier for him to shift to the centre than Kemi. Jenrick's message on building more homes and stopping the boats is also a sensible one in terms of broadening Tory support
I know you are a Jenrick supporter and I admit I just cannot stand him, but then I know very little about Badenoch and she seems to be popular with members
So who do you think will win ?
At the moment Kemi has the edge, however Jenrick is a sharp speaker and if there is a debate between the 2 could win
A television debate would be interesting but to be honest, I heard his conferences speech and he was underwhelming
I'm genuinely disappointed, even though Cleverly was a much stronger candidate and this scarcely believable fiasco suits Labour.
Cleverly is a nice guy, a thoughtful decent man – and an atheist. It would have been interesting – and overdue – to have atheists leading both big parties, which reflected the irreligious nature of our nation.
The nation is irreligious and agnostic.
That is *not* the same as atheist
Yes it is. They are pretty much synonyms.
The idea that atheism is a definitive belief is a fallacy spread by theists.
Atheism is a lack of belief in any god. Agnosticism is a lack of definitive knowledge on whether there is or is not anything.
On a Venn Diagram those two are almost a completely overlapping circle.
Don't fall for theists fallacies in letting them define atheist to mean any more than what it means.
Atheism IS a belief system. You are unable believe in a higher state of collective universal consciousness, therefore you disbelieve, and that disbelief is based on very limited evidence. You also pompously believe that this is a superior belief system, but you are in fact simply demonstrating an extreme lack of imagination and capability to have an open mind.
Agnosticism is the most logical position. Atheism is simply an inability to comprehend that there are elements to the universe that we are unlikely to ever understand. In the hierarchy of closed minded philosophies, materialist atheism is at the top of the pyramid.
Everyone on this site should be a deist, based on Pascal’s wager if nothing else
An omniscient deity isn’t going to be impressed by that.
The message which Farhat shared was posted from a different X account on the anniversary of Hamas' assault.
It read: "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood is one of the most important, valiant, ground-shaking anti-colonial uprisings of our time.
"At the crack of dawn they flew over & burst through the colonial wall, outsmarting and striking a lightning rod blow to the tyrant Goliath.
"Long live the resistance."
Farhat said: "I made a mistake. I retweeted something and I un-retweeted it as soon as I realised but that obviously stays on people's timeline for a while.
"Somebody clearly found it and put in a complaint, which is justified, and all I can do is apologise. It was wholly inappropriate."
I mean, I don't tweet so maybe it's that easy to accidentally retweet something without realising it?
Comments
It’s a decades-long regulatory capture, whereby the big food and pharma companies sponsor the universities, train the doctors, write the regulations, buy the politicians, and make money from everyone’s sickness. Something that’s massively advanced in just the last five years.
Listen to the first 10 minutes of this podcast. https://youtube.com/watch?v=G0lTyhvOeJs
But he didn't, so I had to pay for it.
https://www.msd.com/stories/mectizan/#:~:text=In November 2017, in support,the MDP speak for themselves.
Pharma companies are like people, there is good and bad amongst then, and very often a weird cocktail of the two.
Try listing significant big issues where Tories are agreed AND other parties clearly differ from them.
It, I suggest, can't be done. Which is why the big issue at the moment in politics is competence, and the factions discuss the narcissism of small differences and imaginary worlds.
Roll the dice.
There is no point electing 'pound shop tory boy let's pretend I am Nigel' Jenrick.
Given where they are tonight it has to be Kemi.
“So Kemi, what is your policy on the HS2 Lite extension to Manchester and Nottingham?”
“Women don’t have penises.”
Not inconsiderable chance that Cleverly is the next Conservative leader, who leads the Tories into the next election, taking over mid-Parliament from whoever wins this contest.
He believes in Free Speech, but not in Free Speeches.
The Sacklers were just the unlucky ones who got caught. Most of their rest of them got away with it.
CURRYGATE
RAFGATE
SWIFTGATE
I am free of the shadow of the poor house.
But as an outsider: they have to elect Kemi.
It has to be worth a shot.
I seem to dimly recall that Maggie was seen as the total outside maverick choice all those years ago.
I'm not saying she is Thatcher.
But Jenrick is the very worse. A combination of faux radical right jonny come lately (he voted Remain!!) and yet another tory boy, careerist, oxbridge lawyer with five houses.
The party would be literally mad to give him it over Bandenoch.
Why Threads is still the most terrifying film ever made"
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-threads-is-still-the-most-terrifying-film-ever-made/
In that same YouGov poll mentioned above, the figure even for Conservative voters who thought Conservative MPs “seem like normal people” was only 8 per cent. Some of them, though, might regard abnormality as a strength. Badenoch supporters are quite right when they point out that many of the criticisms thrown at her — fighty, abrasive, downright odd, perhaps mad — were once thrown at Margaret Thatcher. (Asked why she so hated him, Edward Heath famously shrugged and replied “I’m not a doctor.”)
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/so-much-for-tory-flirtation-with-normality-5c9wqqsw6
James Cleverly was the candidate I feared.
Though it's years since I was flown to boozy conference in a Mediterranean country for a product launch.
The Tories obsession with talismanic leadership has been mostly disastrous. The choice of Jenrick v Badenoch is not going to recover the aspirational middle class. It may be too soon to say the oldest and most successful political party in Western Europe is over, but it is not looking good. Chaotic and inept, out of touch and increasingly detached from wealth creators, it is hard to think of a single effective policy proposal in recent years that was not simply an ill conceived gimmick.
I see no ideological core, like that which, for example, Keith Joseph once provided. All I see is second rate ineptitude offered by dishonest, unprincipled chancers.
Granted the Tories are not Labour, but what, in fact, are they? If any Tory MP even says the word "Rwanda", then they should be sent there with a one way ticket. The Party needs to get a grip and offer a coherent and workable set of economic policies, and I see no one on the current front bench that can even understand economic policy, let alone craft a position on the issues of the day.
Under the circumstances the fact that neither Badenoch nor Jenrick are likely ever to become PM is a small mercy.
What are the odds on one or both of the final two experiencing something career-ending in the next three weeks?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/09/billionaire-richard-desmond-buys-dubai-house/
Two important corollaries arise from this: (a) you may logically thank God if something nice happens ... but don't expect Him to help out if something nasty rears its head, and (b) anyone who invokes the name of God in support of their personal opinions about human conduct is either a fool or a charlatan.
If it is accepted then how could anyone ever be held responsible for their actions? You would have to accept that they are all randomly determined.
The conclusion I came to 20 years ago is that this is probably best left as a paradox/mystery; certainly it is something that has led me to an agnostic and sceptical position on both religion and science.
How the Tory MPs have conspired to offer a choice of Bad Enoch and someone who chooses to paint over Disney characters that might cheer up sad, traumatised kids is utterly beyond me.
we're 8/13 on the next leader not making it to the GE.
James Cleverly 4/1 early fav to be the next, next Tory leader
https://nitter.poast.org/PolitlcsUK/status/1843727003956195576#m
An excellent read.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/28/empire-of-pain-by-patrick-radden-keefe-review-all-the-moral-power-of-a-victorian-novel
And revolutions aren't well known for nurturing their children.
Are you freaking kidding me? This is the problem, so many bigots don't understand why racism is objected to as they don't recognise it as racism - or a problem at all.
Meanwhile, with my deep cynicism about human nature, I have placed an additional £100 on Ms Badenoch to win at 5/11 at Ladbrokes. I used their betting machines which can only take preset odds, otherwise it should have been £110. #bigboypants
But let’s be honest it’s not an exclusive thing for the Conservative Party to have a bit of crack at in-fighting. The Labour Party spent a good part of the previous 14 years fighting like ferrets in a sack, flirting with irrelevance and preaching to their choir. Maybe the Tory MPs thought they would fancy that for a while?
Eventually they’ll find a way back. The question is how long, and what the likely absence of meaningful opposition will do in the meantime?
I guess the funny thing about Labour’s navel gazing is that it was focussed on a clear ideological core, and actually was quite good at stacking votes up in cities and what not. Just not so good at winning votes where they were needed.
I just don’t see how this culture war stuff has a serious constituency or any meaningful ideology. But who knows - populists should at least be popular right?
What have I started?
I’m simply said it would have been refreshing to have two atheists as the big party leaders. Now look what I have done!!
5% chance is not inconsiderable
Jenrick also tends to poll better with voters with fewer unfavourables than Badenoch, 10 years ago Jenrick was a Cameroon. Having secured the right to win the leadership it would be far easier for him to shift to the centre than Kemi. Jenrick's message on building more homes and stopping the boats is also a sensible one in terms of broadening Tory support
It suits her skills far better than being a government minister.
Lewis Goodall
@lewis_goodall
·
2h
The Kamala Harris campaign has now raised over $1bn. An astonishing figure, which is even more astonishing when you consider how little time she’s been in the race. Noone has ever raised so much money so fast. That figure doesn’t even include money raised by allied super PACs.
https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1844075417726226767.
So who do you think will win ?
Asked to withdraw an implication that Labour had been bribed to make false statements, he shot back, 'I'm not suggesting Labour are paid to lie, they do it for free all the time.'
Someone is going to tell me it's electronic voting with no such possible option aren't they?
I often wondered whether the last Conservative administration reached for those arguments because their cupboard was bare (i.e. no new money, no new ideas, no enthusiasm).
BBC News - Lib Dem suspended for sharing pro-Hamas message
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgq8k8z32qlo
They have Harris ahead 49% to 47% for Trump in Pennsylvania too
https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3913
Trump leads 49% to 47% for Harris in Wisconsin
https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3913
Research Co though has Harris ahead 50% to 48% for Trump in Wisconsin
https://researchco.ca/2024/10/08/battlegrounds-us-2024/
SoCal has Harris ahead 49% to 48% in Arizona
https://substack.com/home/post/p-149951862
Activote has Trump ahead 51% to 49% for Harris in Arizona
https://www.activote.net/trump-has-small-lead-in-arizona/
InsiderAdvantage has Trump ahead 49% to 47% in Pennsylvania
https://insideradvantage.com/insideradvantage-pennsylvania-survey-trump-leads-by-two-points/
It read: "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood is one of the most important, valiant, ground-shaking anti-colonial uprisings of our time.
"At the crack of dawn they flew over & burst through the colonial wall, outsmarting and striking a lightning rod blow to the tyrant Goliath.
"Long live the resistance."
Farhat said: "I made a mistake. I retweeted something and I un-retweeted it as soon as I realised but that obviously stays on people's timeline for a while.
"Somebody clearly found it and put in a complaint, which is justified, and all I can do is apologise. It was wholly inappropriate."
I mean, I don't tweet so maybe it's that easy to accidentally retweet something without realising it?