This bloke is on the wrong list. However, if true there is something enlightening about it (crops up most years, and it's always a vicar) as he is in deep deep trouble for noting the probable non-existence of Santa Claus - he will have been doing a Bayesian analysis I should think - but he was addressing a post graduate seminar of 10-11 year olds.
Can anyone confirm there really are 10-11 year olds who haven't worked this out?
I think the break point is when kids go to senior school. At infant/Junior school there is a general acceptance that no one mentions the reality even if there is a nod and a wink amongst the oldest children. Once they are going up to senior school the aim is to ensure that, even if they are still pretending to believe, they don't expose themselves to ridicule or a hard landing from the bigger kids.
But the bottom line is the vicar was being a complete arse. Particularly for someone who believes in another non existent mythical being.
A spokesperson for the Diocese of Portsmouth said: “We understand that the vicar of St Faith’s, Lee-on-the-Solent, the Rev Paul Chamberlain, was leading an RE lesson for 10- and 11-year-olds at Lee-on-Solent junior school.
“After talking about the nativity story from the Bible, he made some comments about the existence of Father Christmas.
“Paul has accepted that this was an error of judgment, and he should not have done so. He apologised unreservedly to the school, to the parents and to the children, and the headteacher immediately wrote to all parents to explain this.
“The school and diocese have worked together to address this issue, and the headteacher has now written to parents a second time, sending them Paul’s apology.”
God is real of course, as is Santa
I reckon the Rev Chamberlain should have kept his head well down. Probably made things worse now.
Santa Claus of course originated in name from Christian Bishop St Nicholas, he was an idiot and correctly apologised
With impeccable logic, my 4 year-old nephew told me earlier today that Santa Claus doesn't exist because he hasn't given my nephew any presents yet!
Or he's giving a hint that his uncle has given him any yet either. Smart lad.
You'd probably have to introduce American-style "no jaywalking" rules on British roads to make self-driving cars a sensible proposition, and nobody wants that.
Why?
Auto braking systems (not self driving) - just “step on the brakes if something is on the road” are common and may be mandated for new cars in the near future.
Problem is, they don't work very well. I've had my car brake randomly at things which weren't there in the past.
Me too, but I'm OK with that. Especially if the car behind will also brake so not going to get rear-ended.
I got my new car just over a year ago (its just had its first service) and just once had the automated braking kick in where I thought it was very useful. Cruising at 70mph on the motorway, went over the top of a hill and with no prior warning, not far ahead at all, the entire traffic was stationary. The automated braking kicked in immediately, I slammed my foot hard on the brake and stopped swiftly. Clever thing too is the hazard lights turned themselves on too then turned themselves off once I'd slowed down.
The moral of the story:
Don't drive over blind summits at 70 mph.
I think doing just that describes some political philosophies quite well, however.
As I'm now entering the 'festive spirit' due to having this week off, I thought I'd ask le gpt for a timeline of some events that seem vaguely relevant. Not exactly a 1-2-1 mapping, but interesting (to me at least) if you shuffle the pieces around a little.
### Timeline: #### Collapse of the UK Liberals: - 1910-1922: The decline of the Liberal Party in the UK. - The Liberals' decline began with internal divisions, challenges to their traditional base, and competition from the Labour Party. - 1916: Prime Minister H. H. Asquith resigns, and David Lloyd George takes over, splitting the party further. - By 1922, Labour had overtaken the Liberals as the primary opposition to the Conservatives.
#### First World War: - 1914-1918: World War I. - Triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914. - UK entered the war in August 1914. - Armistice signed on 11 November 1918, ending hostilities.
#### Spanish Flu: - 1918-1920: Spanish Flu pandemic. - Emerged in the final months of World War I. - Estimated to have infected one-third of the world’s population and caused millions of deaths globally. - The pandemic had four waves, with the second wave in late 1918 being the deadliest.
#### Rise of Fascism: - 1919: Benito Mussolini founds the Fasci di Combattimento (Fascist Party) in Italy. - 1922: Mussolini’s March on Rome leads to his appointment as Prime Minister of Italy. - 1920s-1930s: Rise of fascism in Europe. - In Germany, the Nazi Party (founded in 1920) gained traction during the economic turmoil of the late 1920s and early 1930s. - Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.
#### Great Depression: - 1929: Stock Market Crash on 29 October 1929 ("Black Tuesday"). - The crash marked the start of the Great Depression, a global economic downturn that lasted through the 1930s. - High unemployment, deflation, and political instability followed, exacerbating the rise of extremist political movements, including fascism.
### Connections Between Events: 1. WWI and the Liberal Party's Decline: - The war strained the UK’s political system, exacerbating divisions within the Liberal Party. - Labour, advocating for workers' rights and social reform, gained momentum during this period.
2. WWI and Spanish Flu: - The movement of troops and crowded conditions during the war helped spread the flu worldwide.
3. WWI and the Rise of Fascism: - Economic and political instability following WWI (e.g., the Treaty of Versailles, reparations) created fertile ground for extremist ideologies. - Veterans and nationalists sought strong leadership to "restore" national pride.
4. Spanish Flu and Society: - The pandemic's massive death toll exacerbated post-war societal stress, although its impact on political shifts like fascism is debated.
5. Great Depression and Fascism: - Economic collapse in the late 1920s gave populist leaders like Mussolini and Hitler the opportunity to exploit public discontent.
As I'm now entering the 'festive spirit' due to having this week off, I thought I'd ask le gpt for a timeline of some events that seem vaguely relevant. Not exactly a 1-2-1 mapping, but interesting (to me at least) if you shuffle the pieces around a little.
### Timeline: #### Collapse of the UK Liberals: - 1910-1922: The decline of the Liberal Party in the UK. - The Liberals' decline began with internal divisions, challenges to their traditional base, and competition from the Labour Party. - 1916: Prime Minister H. H. Asquith resigns, and David Lloyd George takes over, splitting the party further. - By 1922, Labour had overtaken the Liberals as the primary opposition to the Conservatives.
#### First World War: - 1914-1918: World War I. - Triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914. - UK entered the war in August 1914. - Armistice signed on 11 November 1918, ending hostilities.
#### Spanish Flu: - 1918-1920: Spanish Flu pandemic. - Emerged in the final months of World War I. - Estimated to have infected one-third of the world’s population and caused millions of deaths globally. - The pandemic had four waves, with the second wave in late 1918 being the deadliest.
#### Rise of Fascism: - 1919: Benito Mussolini founds the Fasci di Combattimento (Fascist Party) in Italy. - 1922: Mussolini’s March on Rome leads to his appointment as Prime Minister of Italy. - 1920s-1930s: Rise of fascism in Europe. - In Germany, the Nazi Party (founded in 1920) gained traction during the economic turmoil of the late 1920s and early 1930s. - Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.
#### Great Depression: - 1929: Stock Market Crash on 29 October 1929 ("Black Tuesday"). - The crash marked the start of the Great Depression, a global economic downturn that lasted through the 1930s. - High unemployment, deflation, and political instability followed, exacerbating the rise of extremist political movements, including fascism.
### Connections Between Events: 1. WWI and the Liberal Party's Decline: - The war strained the UK’s political system, exacerbating divisions within the Liberal Party. - Labour, advocating for workers' rights and social reform, gained momentum during this period.
2. WWI and Spanish Flu: - The movement of troops and crowded conditions during the war helped spread the flu worldwide.
3. WWI and the Rise of Fascism: - Economic and political instability following WWI (e.g., the Treaty of Versailles, reparations) created fertile ground for extremist ideologies. - Veterans and nationalists sought strong leadership to "restore" national pride.
4. Spanish Flu and Society: - The pandemic's massive death toll exacerbated post-war societal stress, although its impact on political shifts like fascism is debated.
5. Great Depression and Fascism: - Economic collapse in the late 1920s gave populist leaders like Mussolini and Hitler the opportunity to exploit public discontent.
The Tories' best option would be to reappoint Sunak but give up on chasing 2019 Johnson voters/2024 Farage voters and instead let Sunak be Sunak. Failing that, do the same strategy with Hunt or Mordaunt. The implosion of Starmer means that a centrist strategy is much more viable than it was at the tail end of the last Tory government.
Labour already under 30% and LDs still under 15% leave little room for a centrist to squeeze much more from either.
Kemi's best hope is a hung parliament which looks possible, however if she fails to even win enough seats to do a deal with Reform the Tories best hope might ironically be JRM if he wins back as seat in Somerset as he would be the only Tory leader capable of collapsing the Reform vote again. The Tories cannot progress further and have a hope of a majority with FPTP until they have done that, then if a Labour and LD minority government next time also unpopular the Tories end up the opposition by default to both
Look at the continent for a truer sense of where Labour's floor is once they cease to be seen as a default party of government. They could go down to the low teens.
What is this current hobby horse you have about backing Sunk or Hunt to return us to the glory days of the worst Tory election result in living history? Have you decided the Tories are a busted flush and want to smooth the path for Nige?
If Reform continue to make inroads into the Labour vote, we'll end up quite soon with polls that look something like:
Reform: 30% Conservative: 25% Labour 20%
That's the way the realignment is heading. The Tories have missed their chance to be the party that Reform are becoming, so their best bet is to embrace being the heirs to Blair again. There is an opportunity to kill off Labour as an electoral force for decades.
But you are making the assumption that there's no movement in voter preferences - that there will always be a plurality of centrist dads (and mums) in the UK whose votes will be up for grabs due to Labour's cratering. But Labour are cratering precisely because those centrist social democrat policies are proving to be so inadequate in response to the current challenges. Politics is realigning, and Tory 'centrists' like Hague telling us how awful it will be if Trump wins and Rory Stewart with his idiotic 'bet on the American people' look increasingly ridiculous. As Patrick O'Flynn says in a peerless paragraph:
"Hague is far from being alone among a generation of One Nation Tories who became accustomed to regarding themselves as get-with-the-programme modernisers just as the tide was going out on the progressive paradigm. One could say that George Osborne, Rory Stewart, David Gauke and Dominic Grieve are also among those wandering around an ideological wilderness while claiming it to be the promised land. It’s not where the voters live. Not these days." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/william-hague-donald-trump-and-the-lesson-of-eric-morecambe/
Yes the Tories need to be different from Reform, but urging them to be rats jumping on the sinking ship of centrism looks devious to me.
So, where do the voters live if they don't live somewhere close to One Nation Toryland, and centrist social democrat policies are not adequate?
I agree with the implication that this question is central.
However, looking at Reform's offer, along with the others, I conclude this: Voters including Reform voters (though not all Reform theoreticians) want these elements of the post 1945 UK social democratic deal: NATO; the cradle to grave state - education, health, state pensions, safety net; lots of trade with other nations; regulated private enterprise; regulated migration at non damaging levels; opportunity to do well.
That is where voters live.
Reform differs from others in the coherence (but also impossibility) of their migration policy, while the others all flounder in different ways. That aside, what exactly is this new deal the voters want to live in?
In short I would say massively reduced migration and less political correctness.
WRT the totality of the state's political programme and spending etc, that list is quite short. If all it amounts to is we want the system we have had since 1945, but we want it better run, and we want to magic people to work it without bringing them in from somewhere else and we want to stop talking about pronouns and stuff, it isn't very radical.
I'd suggest that the police's focus on non-crime hate incidents whilst being unable to send anyone to respond to burglaries is toxic with the broad majority of voters. The arrogant dismissal of the public's exasperation with current social policy will be the death of the 'centrists'. It's about an awful lot more than pronouns.
Yes. Who will actually SERIOUSLY crack down on the sort of crime that frightens and angers people? The shoplifting? The sexual harrassment? Litter, graffiti, all of it? Who will re-empower the police and get them to actually prosecute phone and bicycle thieves?
It's not Labour, it's certainly not the Tories (they had 14 years to do this), the Lib Dems lol
So again you're left with Reform. And this is why they might win. WE'VE TRIED EVERYTHING ELSE
As I'm now entering the 'festive spirit' due to having this week off, I thought I'd ask le gpt for a timeline of some events that seem vaguely relevant. Not exactly a 1-2-1 mapping, but interesting (to me at least) if you shuffle the pieces around a little.
### Timeline: #### Collapse of the UK Liberals: - 1910-1922: The decline of the Liberal Party in the UK. - The Liberals' decline began with internal divisions, challenges to their traditional base, and competition from the Labour Party. - 1916: Prime Minister H. H. Asquith resigns, and David Lloyd George takes over, splitting the party further. - By 1922, Labour had overtaken the Liberals as the primary opposition to the Conservatives.
#### First World War: - 1914-1918: World War I. - Triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914. - UK entered the war in August 1914. - Armistice signed on 11 November 1918, ending hostilities.
#### Spanish Flu: - 1918-1920: Spanish Flu pandemic. - Emerged in the final months of World War I. - Estimated to have infected one-third of the world’s population and caused millions of deaths globally. - The pandemic had four waves, with the second wave in late 1918 being the deadliest.
#### Rise of Fascism: - 1919: Benito Mussolini founds the Fasci di Combattimento (Fascist Party) in Italy. - 1922: Mussolini’s March on Rome leads to his appointment as Prime Minister of Italy. - 1920s-1930s: Rise of fascism in Europe. - In Germany, the Nazi Party (founded in 1920) gained traction during the economic turmoil of the late 1920s and early 1930s. - Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.
#### Great Depression: - 1929: Stock Market Crash on 29 October 1929 ("Black Tuesday"). - The crash marked the start of the Great Depression, a global economic downturn that lasted through the 1930s. - High unemployment, deflation, and political instability followed, exacerbating the rise of extremist political movements, including fascism.
### Connections Between Events: 1. WWI and the Liberal Party's Decline: - The war strained the UK’s political system, exacerbating divisions within the Liberal Party. - Labour, advocating for workers' rights and social reform, gained momentum during this period.
2. WWI and Spanish Flu: - The movement of troops and crowded conditions during the war helped spread the flu worldwide.
3. WWI and the Rise of Fascism: - Economic and political instability following WWI (e.g., the Treaty of Versailles, reparations) created fertile ground for extremist ideologies. - Veterans and nationalists sought strong leadership to "restore" national pride.
4. Spanish Flu and Society: - The pandemic's massive death toll exacerbated post-war societal stress, although its impact on political shifts like fascism is debated.
5. Great Depression and Fascism: - Economic collapse in the late 1920s gave populist leaders like Mussolini and Hitler the opportunity to exploit public discontent.
Ooft - sorry - that didn't look like nearly that much text in my editor. Apols.
The Tories' best option would be to reappoint Sunak but give up on chasing 2019 Johnson voters/2024 Farage voters and instead let Sunak be Sunak. Failing that, do the same strategy with Hunt or Mordaunt. The implosion of Starmer means that a centrist strategy is much more viable than it was at the tail end of the last Tory government.
Labour already under 30% and LDs still under 15% leave little room for a centrist to squeeze much more from either.
Kemi's best hope is a hung parliament which looks possible, however if she fails to even win enough seats to do a deal with Reform the Tories best hope might ironically be JRM if he wins back as seat in Somerset as he would be the only Tory leader capable of collapsing the Reform vote again. The Tories cannot progress further and have a hope of a majority with FPTP until they have done that, then if a Labour and LD minority government next time also unpopular the Tories end up the opposition by default to both
Look at the continent for a truer sense of where Labour's floor is once they cease to be seen as a default party of government. They could go down to the low teens.
What is this current hobby horse you have about backing Sunk or Hunt to return us to the glory days of the worst Tory election result in living history? Have you decided the Tories are a busted flush and want to smooth the path for Nige?
If Reform continue to make inroads into the Labour vote, we'll end up quite soon with polls that look something like:
Reform: 30% Conservative: 25% Labour 20%
That's the way the realignment is heading. The Tories have missed their chance to be the party that Reform are becoming, so their best bet is to embrace being the heirs to Blair again. There is an opportunity to kill off Labour as an electoral force for decades.
But you are making the assumption that there's no movement in voter preferences - that there will always be a plurality of centrist dads (and mums) in the UK whose votes will be up for grabs due to Labour's cratering. But Labour are cratering precisely because those centrist social democrat policies are proving to be so inadequate in response to the current challenges. Politics is realigning, and Tory 'centrists' like Hague telling us how awful it will be if Trump wins and Rory Stewart with his idiotic 'bet on the American people' look increasingly ridiculous. As Patrick O'Flynn says in a peerless paragraph:
"Hague is far from being alone among a generation of One Nation Tories who became accustomed to regarding themselves as get-with-the-programme modernisers just as the tide was going out on the progressive paradigm. One could say that George Osborne, Rory Stewart, David Gauke and Dominic Grieve are also among those wandering around an ideological wilderness while claiming it to be the promised land. It’s not where the voters live. Not these days." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/william-hague-donald-trump-and-the-lesson-of-eric-morecambe/
Yes the Tories need to be different from Reform, but urging them to be rats jumping on the sinking ship of centrism looks devious to me.
So, where do the voters live if they don't live somewhere close to One Nation Toryland, and centrist social democrat policies are not adequate?
I agree with the implication that this question is central.
However, looking at Reform's offer, along with the others, I conclude this: Voters including Reform voters (though not all Reform theoreticians) want these elements of the post 1945 UK social democratic deal: NATO; the cradle to grave state - education, health, state pensions, safety net; lots of trade with other nations; regulated private enterprise; regulated migration at non damaging levels; opportunity to do well.
That is where voters live.
Reform differs from others in the coherence (but also impossibility) of their migration policy, while the others all flounder in different ways. That aside, what exactly is this new deal the voters want to live in?
In short I would say massively reduced migration and less political correctness.
WRT the totality of the state's political programme and spending etc, that list is quite short. If all it amounts to is we want the system we have had since 1945, but we want it better run, and we want to magic people to work it without bringing them in from somewhere else and we want to stop talking about pronouns and stuff, it isn't very radical.
I'd suggest that the police's focus on non-crime hate incidents whilst being unable to send anyone to respond to burglaries is toxic with the broad majority of voters. The arrogant dismissal of the public's exasperation with current social policy will be the death of the 'centrists'. It's about an awful lot more than pronouns.
Do you really think the reason the police aren’t able to respond to burglaries is because they’re busy addressing “non crime hate incidents”? Rather than the fact the police budget has been cut by 20% in real terms since 2010.
They’ve gaslit you good and proper.
There are many reasons, and I would humbly suggest that investigating speech crimes (accompanied by deprioritising actual crime) has more to do with the issue than not being hosed with money.
𝕏 stands out as the most politically balanced social media platform. Unlike many other platforms, 𝕏 has an almost equal split between Democrat (48%) and Republican (47%) news consumers. As you would expect, the data don't align with the "right-wing dominance" narrative projected by traditional media.
Instagram, TikTok and Reddit mainly consumed by Democrats and Facebook and Youtube by Republicans
And Bluesky is a tedious Woke tea-party. Pleasant chit chat. Yawn
PB is by far the best platform of them all!
I was looking at the latest circular from a special interest society (totally non-political) of which I am a member. They've moved from twitter to Bluesky by general agreement. Partly because this is more comfortable in terms of not getting extraneous and unpleasant posts, recommendations etc. but also because it's much more accessible to non-members, instead presumably of the random posts of the last few years one gets on twitter.
The Tories' best option would be to reappoint Sunak but give up on chasing 2019 Johnson voters/2024 Farage voters and instead let Sunak be Sunak. Failing that, do the same strategy with Hunt or Mordaunt. The implosion of Starmer means that a centrist strategy is much more viable than it was at the tail end of the last Tory government.
Labour already under 30% and LDs still under 15% leave little room for a centrist to squeeze much more from either.
Kemi's best hope is a hung parliament which looks possible, however if she fails to even win enough seats to do a deal with Reform the Tories best hope might ironically be JRM if he wins back as seat in Somerset as he would be the only Tory leader capable of collapsing the Reform vote again. The Tories cannot progress further and have a hope of a majority with FPTP until they have done that, then if a Labour and LD minority government next time also unpopular the Tories end up the opposition by default to both
Look at the continent for a truer sense of where Labour's floor is once they cease to be seen as a default party of government. They could go down to the low teens.
What is this current hobby horse you have about backing Sunk or Hunt to return us to the glory days of the worst Tory election result in living history? Have you decided the Tories are a busted flush and want to smooth the path for Nige?
If Reform continue to make inroads into the Labour vote, we'll end up quite soon with polls that look something like:
Reform: 30% Conservative: 25% Labour 20%
That's the way the realignment is heading. The Tories have missed their chance to be the party that Reform are becoming, so their best bet is to embrace being the heirs to Blair again. There is an opportunity to kill off Labour as an electoral force for decades.
But you are making the assumption that there's no movement in voter preferences - that there will always be a plurality of centrist dads (and mums) in the UK whose votes will be up for grabs due to Labour's cratering. But Labour are cratering precisely because those centrist social democrat policies are proving to be so inadequate in response to the current challenges. Politics is realigning, and Tory 'centrists' like Hague telling us how awful it will be if Trump wins and Rory Stewart with his idiotic 'bet on the American people' look increasingly ridiculous. As Patrick O'Flynn says in a peerless paragraph:
"Hague is far from being alone among a generation of One Nation Tories who became accustomed to regarding themselves as get-with-the-programme modernisers just as the tide was going out on the progressive paradigm. One could say that George Osborne, Rory Stewart, David Gauke and Dominic Grieve are also among those wandering around an ideological wilderness while claiming it to be the promised land. It’s not where the voters live. Not these days." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/william-hague-donald-trump-and-the-lesson-of-eric-morecambe/
Yes the Tories need to be different from Reform, but urging them to be rats jumping on the sinking ship of centrism looks devious to me.
So, where do the voters live if they don't live somewhere close to One Nation Toryland, and centrist social democrat policies are not adequate?
I agree with the implication that this question is central.
However, looking at Reform's offer, along with the others, I conclude this: Voters including Reform voters (though not all Reform theoreticians) want these elements of the post 1945 UK social democratic deal: NATO; the cradle to grave state - education, health, state pensions, safety net; lots of trade with other nations; regulated private enterprise; regulated migration at non damaging levels; opportunity to do well.
That is where voters live.
Reform differs from others in the coherence (but also impossibility) of their migration policy, while the others all flounder in different ways. That aside, what exactly is this new deal the voters want to live in?
In short I would say massively reduced migration and less political correctness.
WRT the totality of the state's political programme and spending etc, that list is quite short. If all it amounts to is we want the system we have had since 1945, but we want it better run, and we want to magic people to work it without bringing them in from somewhere else and we want to stop talking about pronouns and stuff, it isn't very radical.
I'd suggest that the police's focus on non-crime hate incidents whilst being unable to send anyone to respond to burglaries is toxic with the broad majority of voters. The arrogant dismissal of the public's exasperation with current social policy will be the death of the 'centrists'. It's about an awful lot more than pronouns.
Do you really think the reason the police aren’t able to respond to burglaries is because they’re busy addressing “non crime hate incidents”? Rather than the fact the police budget has been cut by 20% in real terms since 2010.
They’ve gaslit you good and proper.
But they are spending quite a bit of time on non-crime hate incidents. We are also seeing people jailed for offensive remarks whilst people who've committed very serious crimes are being let out of prison early. The debasement of the Oxford Union, the Prime minister unable to stand up to calls for a new blasphemy law and the entire mainstream media (except GB News) ignoring the latest child grooming convictions in Rotherham. Have you ever wondered if maybe something isn't quite right at the moment?
The grooming gang scandal is Britain's Chernobyl. Except, unlike the Russians, we have never actually truly addressed it
When and if we do, I expect the entire edifice to collapse, as in Russia
𝕏 stands out as the most politically balanced social media platform. Unlike many other platforms, 𝕏 has an almost equal split between Democrat (48%) and Republican (47%) news consumers. As you would expect, the data don't align with the "right-wing dominance" narrative projected by traditional media.
Instagram, TikTok and Reddit mainly consumed by Democrats and Facebook and Youtube by Republicans
Telling in a way they just don’t understand. They look at the USA and think it’s the world.
I think the tweet is referencing this Pew survey published Jan 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/01/31/americans-social-media-use/ so the figures are based on a survey of Americans, not by looking at all users of those platforms. Also, the figures are from before the Xodus. They won’t represent Twitter today.
Exactly the point. They look at US stats and decide that’s the world.
There are probably similar patterns elsewhere, but who needs to check when you have domestic American facts.
Pew are highly respected researchers describing US society. Their report is about how Americans use social media. It doesn't make claims about the rest of the world. Nowhere do I see them "decid[ing] that's the world".
The Tories' best option would be to reappoint Sunak but give up on chasing 2019 Johnson voters/2024 Farage voters and instead let Sunak be Sunak. Failing that, do the same strategy with Hunt or Mordaunt. The implosion of Starmer means that a centrist strategy is much more viable than it was at the tail end of the last Tory government.
Labour already under 30% and LDs still under 15% leave little room for a centrist to squeeze much more from either.
Kemi's best hope is a hung parliament which looks possible, however if she fails to even win enough seats to do a deal with Reform the Tories best hope might ironically be JRM if he wins back as seat in Somerset as he would be the only Tory leader capable of collapsing the Reform vote again. The Tories cannot progress further and have a hope of a majority with FPTP until they have done that, then if a Labour and LD minority government next time also unpopular the Tories end up the opposition by default to both
Look at the continent for a truer sense of where Labour's floor is once they cease to be seen as a default party of government. They could go down to the low teens.
What is this current hobby horse you have about backing Sunk or Hunt to return us to the glory days of the worst Tory election result in living history? Have you decided the Tories are a busted flush and want to smooth the path for Nige?
If Reform continue to make inroads into the Labour vote, we'll end up quite soon with polls that look something like:
Reform: 30% Conservative: 25% Labour 20%
That's the way the realignment is heading. The Tories have missed their chance to be the party that Reform are becoming, so their best bet is to embrace being the heirs to Blair again. There is an opportunity to kill off Labour as an electoral force for decades.
But you are making the assumption that there's no movement in voter preferences - that there will always be a plurality of centrist dads (and mums) in the UK whose votes will be up for grabs due to Labour's cratering. But Labour are cratering precisely because those centrist social democrat policies are proving to be so inadequate in response to the current challenges. Politics is realigning, and Tory 'centrists' like Hague telling us how awful it will be if Trump wins and Rory Stewart with his idiotic 'bet on the American people' look increasingly ridiculous. As Patrick O'Flynn says in a peerless paragraph:
"Hague is far from being alone among a generation of One Nation Tories who became accustomed to regarding themselves as get-with-the-programme modernisers just as the tide was going out on the progressive paradigm. One could say that George Osborne, Rory Stewart, David Gauke and Dominic Grieve are also among those wandering around an ideological wilderness while claiming it to be the promised land. It’s not where the voters live. Not these days." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/william-hague-donald-trump-and-the-lesson-of-eric-morecambe/
Yes the Tories need to be different from Reform, but urging them to be rats jumping on the sinking ship of centrism looks devious to me.
So, where do the voters live if they don't live somewhere close to One Nation Toryland, and centrist social democrat policies are not adequate?
I agree with the implication that this question is central.
However, looking at Reform's offer, along with the others, I conclude this: Voters including Reform voters (though not all Reform theoreticians) want these elements of the post 1945 UK social democratic deal: NATO; the cradle to grave state - education, health, state pensions, safety net; lots of trade with other nations; regulated private enterprise; regulated migration at non damaging levels; opportunity to do well.
That is where voters live.
Reform differs from others in the coherence (but also impossibility) of their migration policy, while the others all flounder in different ways. That aside, what exactly is this new deal the voters want to live in?
In short I would say massively reduced migration and less political correctness.
WRT the totality of the state's political programme and spending etc, that list is quite short. If all it amounts to is we want the system we have had since 1945, but we want it better run, and we want to magic people to work it without bringing them in from somewhere else and we want to stop talking about pronouns and stuff, it isn't very radical.
I'd suggest that the police's focus on non-crime hate incidents whilst being unable to send anyone to respond to burglaries is toxic with the broad majority of voters. The arrogant dismissal of the public's exasperation with current social policy will be the death of the 'centrists'. It's about an awful lot more than pronouns.
Do you really think the reason the police aren’t able to respond to burglaries is because they’re busy addressing “non crime hate incidents”? Rather than the fact the police budget has been cut by 20% in real terms since 2010.
They’ve gaslit you good and proper.
But they are spending quite a bit of time on non-crime hate incidents. We are also seeing people jailed for offensive remarks whilst people who've committed very serious crimes are being let out of prison early. The debasement of the Oxford Union, the Prime minister unable to stand up to calls for a new blasphemy law and the entire mainstream media (except GB News) ignoring the latest child grooming convictions in Rotherham. Have you ever wondered if maybe something isn't quite right at the moment?
The grooming gang scandal is Britain's Chernobyl. Except, unlike the Russians, we have never actually truly addressed it
When and if we do, I expect the entire edifice to collapse, as in Russia
People being pushed and pushed and then exploding is in some ways an optimistic perspective. A pessimistic one would be that each new outrage is actually training people gradually to accept and a degraded version of life as 'the new normal' and be grateful for what they get. The acceptance (and outright approval in some quarters) of lockdown being an obvious example. Part of the renewal of our politics must be to raise peoples' expectations and train them to love and protect their liberty just as they've undoubtedly been trained into their current state of subservience.
The Tories' best option would be to reappoint Sunak but give up on chasing 2019 Johnson voters/2024 Farage voters and instead let Sunak be Sunak. Failing that, do the same strategy with Hunt or Mordaunt. The implosion of Starmer means that a centrist strategy is much more viable than it was at the tail end of the last Tory government.
Labour already under 30% and LDs still under 15% leave little room for a centrist to squeeze much more from either.
Kemi's best hope is a hung parliament which looks possible, however if she fails to even win enough seats to do a deal with Reform the Tories best hope might ironically be JRM if he wins back as seat in Somerset as he would be the only Tory leader capable of collapsing the Reform vote again. The Tories cannot progress further and have a hope of a majority with FPTP until they have done that, then if a Labour and LD minority government next time also unpopular the Tories end up the opposition by default to both
Look at the continent for a truer sense of where Labour's floor is once they cease to be seen as a default party of government. They could go down to the low teens.
What is this current hobby horse you have about backing Sunk or Hunt to return us to the glory days of the worst Tory election result in living history? Have you decided the Tories are a busted flush and want to smooth the path for Nige?
If Reform continue to make inroads into the Labour vote, we'll end up quite soon with polls that look something like:
Reform: 30% Conservative: 25% Labour 20%
That's the way the realignment is heading. The Tories have missed their chance to be the party that Reform are becoming, so their best bet is to embrace being the heirs to Blair again. There is an opportunity to kill off Labour as an electoral force for decades.
But you are making the assumption that there's no movement in voter preferences - that there will always be a plurality of centrist dads (and mums) in the UK whose votes will be up for grabs due to Labour's cratering. But Labour are cratering precisely because those centrist social democrat policies are proving to be so inadequate in response to the current challenges. Politics is realigning, and Tory 'centrists' like Hague telling us how awful it will be if Trump wins and Rory Stewart with his idiotic 'bet on the American people' look increasingly ridiculous. As Patrick O'Flynn says in a peerless paragraph:
"Hague is far from being alone among a generation of One Nation Tories who became accustomed to regarding themselves as get-with-the-programme modernisers just as the tide was going out on the progressive paradigm. One could say that George Osborne, Rory Stewart, David Gauke and Dominic Grieve are also among those wandering around an ideological wilderness while claiming it to be the promised land. It’s not where the voters live. Not these days." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/william-hague-donald-trump-and-the-lesson-of-eric-morecambe/
Yes the Tories need to be different from Reform, but urging them to be rats jumping on the sinking ship of centrism looks devious to me.
So, where do the voters live if they don't live somewhere close to One Nation Toryland, and centrist social democrat policies are not adequate?
I agree with the implication that this question is central.
However, looking at Reform's offer, along with the others, I conclude this: Voters including Reform voters (though not all Reform theoreticians) want these elements of the post 1945 UK social democratic deal: NATO; the cradle to grave state - education, health, state pensions, safety net; lots of trade with other nations; regulated private enterprise; regulated migration at non damaging levels; opportunity to do well.
That is where voters live.
Reform differs from others in the coherence (but also impossibility) of their migration policy, while the others all flounder in different ways. That aside, what exactly is this new deal the voters want to live in?
In short I would say massively reduced migration and less political correctness.
WRT the totality of the state's political programme and spending etc, that list is quite short. If all it amounts to is we want the system we have had since 1945, but we want it better run, and we want to magic people to work it without bringing them in from somewhere else and we want to stop talking about pronouns and stuff, it isn't very radical.
I'd suggest that the police's focus on non-crime hate incidents whilst being unable to send anyone to respond to burglaries is toxic with the broad majority of voters. The arrogant dismissal of the public's exasperation with current social policy will be the death of the 'centrists'. It's about an awful lot more than pronouns.
Do you really think the reason the police aren’t able to respond to burglaries is because they’re busy addressing “non crime hate incidents”? Rather than the fact the police budget has been cut by 20% in real terms since 2010.
They’ve gaslit you good and proper.
But they are spending quite a bit of time on non-crime hate incidents. We are also seeing people jailed for offensive remarks whilst people who've committed very serious crimes are being let out of prison early. The debasement of the Oxford Union, the Prime minister unable to stand up to calls for a new blasphemy law and the entire mainstream media (except GB News) ignoring the latest child grooming convictions in Rotherham. Have you ever wondered if maybe something isn't quite right at the moment?
The grooming gang scandal is Britain's Chernobyl. Except, unlike the Russians, we have never actually truly addressed it
When and if we do, I expect the entire edifice to collapse, as in Russia
The left still don't like talking about it, even now.
The Tories' best option would be to reappoint Sunak but give up on chasing 2019 Johnson voters/2024 Farage voters and instead let Sunak be Sunak. Failing that, do the same strategy with Hunt or Mordaunt. The implosion of Starmer means that a centrist strategy is much more viable than it was at the tail end of the last Tory government.
Labour already under 30% and LDs still under 15% leave little room for a centrist to squeeze much more from either.
Kemi's best hope is a hung parliament which looks possible, however if she fails to even win enough seats to do a deal with Reform the Tories best hope might ironically be JRM if he wins back as seat in Somerset as he would be the only Tory leader capable of collapsing the Reform vote again. The Tories cannot progress further and have a hope of a majority with FPTP until they have done that, then if a Labour and LD minority government next time also unpopular the Tories end up the opposition by default to both
Look at the continent for a truer sense of where Labour's floor is once they cease to be seen as a default party of government. They could go down to the low teens.
What is this current hobby horse you have about backing Sunk or Hunt to return us to the glory days of the worst Tory election result in living history? Have you decided the Tories are a busted flush and want to smooth the path for Nige?
If Reform continue to make inroads into the Labour vote, we'll end up quite soon with polls that look something like:
Reform: 30% Conservative: 25% Labour 20%
That's the way the realignment is heading. The Tories have missed their chance to be the party that Reform are becoming, so their best bet is to embrace being the heirs to Blair again. There is an opportunity to kill off Labour as an electoral force for decades.
But you are making the assumption that there's no movement in voter preferences - that there will always be a plurality of centrist dads (and mums) in the UK whose votes will be up for grabs due to Labour's cratering. But Labour are cratering precisely because those centrist social democrat policies are proving to be so inadequate in response to the current challenges. Politics is realigning, and Tory 'centrists' like Hague telling us how awful it will be if Trump wins and Rory Stewart with his idiotic 'bet on the American people' look increasingly ridiculous. As Patrick O'Flynn says in a peerless paragraph:
"Hague is far from being alone among a generation of One Nation Tories who became accustomed to regarding themselves as get-with-the-programme modernisers just as the tide was going out on the progressive paradigm. One could say that George Osborne, Rory Stewart, David Gauke and Dominic Grieve are also among those wandering around an ideological wilderness while claiming it to be the promised land. It’s not where the voters live. Not these days." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/william-hague-donald-trump-and-the-lesson-of-eric-morecambe/
Yes the Tories need to be different from Reform, but urging them to be rats jumping on the sinking ship of centrism looks devious to me.
So, where do the voters live if they don't live somewhere close to One Nation Toryland, and centrist social democrat policies are not adequate?
I agree with the implication that this question is central.
However, looking at Reform's offer, along with the others, I conclude this: Voters including Reform voters (though not all Reform theoreticians) want these elements of the post 1945 UK social democratic deal: NATO; the cradle to grave state - education, health, state pensions, safety net; lots of trade with other nations; regulated private enterprise; regulated migration at non damaging levels; opportunity to do well.
That is where voters live.
Reform differs from others in the coherence (but also impossibility) of their migration policy, while the others all flounder in different ways. That aside, what exactly is this new deal the voters want to live in?
In short I would say massively reduced migration and less political correctness.
WRT the totality of the state's political programme and spending etc, that list is quite short. If all it amounts to is we want the system we have had since 1945, but we want it better run, and we want to magic people to work it without bringing them in from somewhere else and we want to stop talking about pronouns and stuff, it isn't very radical.
I'd suggest that the police's focus on non-crime hate incidents whilst being unable to send anyone to respond to burglaries is toxic with the broad majority of voters. The arrogant dismissal of the public's exasperation with current social policy will be the death of the 'centrists'. It's about an awful lot more than pronouns.
Do you really think the reason the police aren’t able to respond to burglaries is because they’re busy addressing “non crime hate incidents”? Rather than the fact the police budget has been cut by 20% in real terms since 2010.
They’ve gaslit you good and proper.
But they are spending quite a bit of time on non-crime hate incidents. We are also seeing people jailed for offensive remarks whilst people who've committed very serious crimes are being let out of prison early. The debasement of the Oxford Union, the Prime minister unable to stand up to calls for a new blasphemy law and the entire mainstream media (except GB News) ignoring the latest child grooming convictions in Rotherham. Have you ever wondered if maybe something isn't quite right at the moment?
The grooming gang scandal is Britain's Chernobyl. Except, unlike the Russians, we have never actually truly addressed it
When and if we do, I expect the entire edifice to collapse, as in Russia
People being pushed and pushed and then exploding is in some ways an optimistic perspective. A pessimistic one would be that each new outrage is actually training people gradually to accept and a degraded version of life as 'the new normal' and be grateful for what they get. The acceptance (and outright approval in some quarters) of lockdown being an obvious example. Part of the renewal of our politics must be to raise peoples' expectations and train them to love and protect their liberty just as they've undoubtedly been trained into their current state of subservience.
If you suppress public opinion for long enough, in the end it explodes in your stupid political face, as David Cameron experienced with Brexit
I expect the same thing with race/asylum/migration/grooming - the whole chaotic unpleasant vortex of grievance and anger, whirling around just beneath the surface of British life, and getting evermore volatile. Starmer is sitll in Repression Mode, locking people up for Facebook posts. That cannot and will not be sustained forever
It is why we probably need a Reform government, as a relatively safe way of venting the steam of discontent. Better a Silly Nigel than an actual British Adolf
The Tories' best option would be to reappoint Sunak but give up on chasing 2019 Johnson voters/2024 Farage voters and instead let Sunak be Sunak. Failing that, do the same strategy with Hunt or Mordaunt. The implosion of Starmer means that a centrist strategy is much more viable than it was at the tail end of the last Tory government.
Labour already under 30% and LDs still under 15% leave little room for a centrist to squeeze much more from either.
Kemi's best hope is a hung parliament which looks possible, however if she fails to even win enough seats to do a deal with Reform the Tories best hope might ironically be JRM if he wins back as seat in Somerset as he would be the only Tory leader capable of collapsing the Reform vote again. The Tories cannot progress further and have a hope of a majority with FPTP until they have done that, then if a Labour and LD minority government next time also unpopular the Tories end up the opposition by default to both
Look at the continent for a truer sense of where Labour's floor is once they cease to be seen as a default party of government. They could go down to the low teens.
What is this current hobby horse you have about backing Sunk or Hunt to return us to the glory days of the worst Tory election result in living history? Have you decided the Tories are a busted flush and want to smooth the path for Nige?
If Reform continue to make inroads into the Labour vote, we'll end up quite soon with polls that look something like:
Reform: 30% Conservative: 25% Labour 20%
That's the way the realignment is heading. The Tories have missed their chance to be the party that Reform are becoming, so their best bet is to embrace being the heirs to Blair again. There is an opportunity to kill off Labour as an electoral force for decades.
But you are making the assumption that there's no movement in voter preferences - that there will always be a plurality of centrist dads (and mums) in the UK whose votes will be up for grabs due to Labour's cratering. But Labour are cratering precisely because those centrist social democrat policies are proving to be so inadequate in response to the current challenges. Politics is realigning, and Tory 'centrists' like Hague telling us how awful it will be if Trump wins and Rory Stewart with his idiotic 'bet on the American people' look increasingly ridiculous. As Patrick O'Flynn says in a peerless paragraph:
"Hague is far from being alone among a generation of One Nation Tories who became accustomed to regarding themselves as get-with-the-programme modernisers just as the tide was going out on the progressive paradigm. One could say that George Osborne, Rory Stewart, David Gauke and Dominic Grieve are also among those wandering around an ideological wilderness while claiming it to be the promised land. It’s not where the voters live. Not these days." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/william-hague-donald-trump-and-the-lesson-of-eric-morecambe/
Yes the Tories need to be different from Reform, but urging them to be rats jumping on the sinking ship of centrism looks devious to me.
So, where do the voters live if they don't live somewhere close to One Nation Toryland, and centrist social democrat policies are not adequate?
I agree with the implication that this question is central.
However, looking at Reform's offer, along with the others, I conclude this: Voters including Reform voters (though not all Reform theoreticians) want these elements of the post 1945 UK social democratic deal: NATO; the cradle to grave state - education, health, state pensions, safety net; lots of trade with other nations; regulated private enterprise; regulated migration at non damaging levels; opportunity to do well.
That is where voters live.
Reform differs from others in the coherence (but also impossibility) of their migration policy, while the others all flounder in different ways. That aside, what exactly is this new deal the voters want to live in?
In short I would say massively reduced migration and less political correctness.
WRT the totality of the state's political programme and spending etc, that list is quite short. If all it amounts to is we want the system we have had since 1945, but we want it better run, and we want to magic people to work it without bringing them in from somewhere else and we want to stop talking about pronouns and stuff, it isn't very radical.
I'd suggest that the police's focus on non-crime hate incidents whilst being unable to send anyone to respond to burglaries is toxic with the broad majority of voters. The arrogant dismissal of the public's exasperation with current social policy will be the death of the 'centrists'. It's about an awful lot more than pronouns.
Do you really think the reason the police aren’t able to respond to burglaries is because they’re busy addressing “non crime hate incidents”? Rather than the fact the police budget has been cut by 20% in real terms since 2010.
They’ve gaslit you good and proper.
But they are spending quite a bit of time on non-crime hate incidents. We are also seeing people jailed for offensive remarks whilst people who've committed very serious crimes are being let out of prison early. The debasement of the Oxford Union, the Prime minister unable to stand up to calls for a new blasphemy law and the entire mainstream media (except GB News) ignoring the latest child grooming convictions in Rotherham. Have you ever wondered if maybe something isn't quite right at the moment?
You have come back several time to this proposed new blasphemy law. So, let's consider what happened with the proposal? Absolutely nothing. The idea was dead on arrival. So, where's the problem?
The Tories' best option would be to reappoint Sunak but give up on chasing 2019 Johnson voters/2024 Farage voters and instead let Sunak be Sunak. Failing that, do the same strategy with Hunt or Mordaunt. The implosion of Starmer means that a centrist strategy is much more viable than it was at the tail end of the last Tory government.
Labour already under 30% and LDs still under 15% leave little room for a centrist to squeeze much more from either.
Kemi's best hope is a hung parliament which looks possible, however if she fails to even win enough seats to do a deal with Reform the Tories best hope might ironically be JRM if he wins back as seat in Somerset as he would be the only Tory leader capable of collapsing the Reform vote again. The Tories cannot progress further and have a hope of a majority with FPTP until they have done that, then if a Labour and LD minority government next time also unpopular the Tories end up the opposition by default to both
Look at the continent for a truer sense of where Labour's floor is once they cease to be seen as a default party of government. They could go down to the low teens.
What is this current hobby horse you have about backing Sunk or Hunt to return us to the glory days of the worst Tory election result in living history? Have you decided the Tories are a busted flush and want to smooth the path for Nige?
If Reform continue to make inroads into the Labour vote, we'll end up quite soon with polls that look something like:
Reform: 30% Conservative: 25% Labour 20%
That's the way the realignment is heading. The Tories have missed their chance to be the party that Reform are becoming, so their best bet is to embrace being the heirs to Blair again. There is an opportunity to kill off Labour as an electoral force for decades.
But you are making the assumption that there's no movement in voter preferences - that there will always be a plurality of centrist dads (and mums) in the UK whose votes will be up for grabs due to Labour's cratering. But Labour are cratering precisely because those centrist social democrat policies are proving to be so inadequate in response to the current challenges. Politics is realigning, and Tory 'centrists' like Hague telling us how awful it will be if Trump wins and Rory Stewart with his idiotic 'bet on the American people' look increasingly ridiculous. As Patrick O'Flynn says in a peerless paragraph:
"Hague is far from being alone among a generation of One Nation Tories who became accustomed to regarding themselves as get-with-the-programme modernisers just as the tide was going out on the progressive paradigm. One could say that George Osborne, Rory Stewart, David Gauke and Dominic Grieve are also among those wandering around an ideological wilderness while claiming it to be the promised land. It’s not where the voters live. Not these days." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/william-hague-donald-trump-and-the-lesson-of-eric-morecambe/
Yes the Tories need to be different from Reform, but urging them to be rats jumping on the sinking ship of centrism looks devious to me.
So, where do the voters live if they don't live somewhere close to One Nation Toryland, and centrist social democrat policies are not adequate?
I agree with the implication that this question is central.
However, looking at Reform's offer, along with the others, I conclude this: Voters including Reform voters (though not all Reform theoreticians) want these elements of the post 1945 UK social democratic deal: NATO; the cradle to grave state - education, health, state pensions, safety net; lots of trade with other nations; regulated private enterprise; regulated migration at non damaging levels; opportunity to do well.
That is where voters live.
Reform differs from others in the coherence (but also impossibility) of their migration policy, while the others all flounder in different ways. That aside, what exactly is this new deal the voters want to live in?
In short I would say massively reduced migration and less political correctness.
WRT the totality of the state's political programme and spending etc, that list is quite short. If all it amounts to is we want the system we have had since 1945, but we want it better run, and we want to magic people to work it without bringing them in from somewhere else and we want to stop talking about pronouns and stuff, it isn't very radical.
I'd suggest that the police's focus on non-crime hate incidents whilst being unable to send anyone to respond to burglaries is toxic with the broad majority of voters. The arrogant dismissal of the public's exasperation with current social policy will be the death of the 'centrists'. It's about an awful lot more than pronouns.
Do you really think the reason the police aren’t able to respond to burglaries is because they’re busy addressing “non crime hate incidents”? Rather than the fact the police budget has been cut by 20% in real terms since 2010.
They’ve gaslit you good and proper.
But they are spending quite a bit of time on non-crime hate incidents. We are also seeing people jailed for offensive remarks whilst people who've committed very serious crimes are being let out of prison early. The debasement of the Oxford Union, the Prime minister unable to stand up to calls for a new blasphemy law and the entire mainstream media (except GB News) ignoring the latest child grooming convictions in Rotherham. Have you ever wondered if maybe something isn't quite right at the moment?
You have come back several time to this proposed new blasphemy law. So, let's consider what happened with the proposal? Absolutely nothing. The idea was dead on arrival. So, where's the problem?
We already have a blasphemy law, de facto. Go ask that teacher in Batley. Oh, wait, you can't - he and his family are in hiding for their lives
I run a SME currently employing 5 people. I would like to employ more, I've an order-book that's full for over 2 years, but we can't really expand any more as I'm running out of space in our present (rented) premises.
The actual cost of premises for us should be very cheap - we only need a concrete pad with a big steel framed shed on it. I could probably purchase agricultural land and build a suitable building for £150k, but I wouldn't have a prayer of getting suitable planning.
There has been exactly one potential site come up for sale this year*, which was maybe 25% larger than we really needed. It sold for £950k which was slightly more than I could raise. Nothing else, not even a brownfield site on which I could possibly get planning.
Over the years lot of suitable sites/buildings which used to exist have been turned into housing, because it's "brownfield" so much easier to get residential planning.
It's yet another way that the state is steadily strangling SMEs - but our moron politicians can't understand why we've no growth, even as they are the ones killing it off.
*I'm searching a fairly rural area of about 100sq miles which is the limits of how far I think I could move us before a move will cost me some of my existing staff.
The Tories' best option would be to reappoint Sunak but give up on chasing 2019 Johnson voters/2024 Farage voters and instead let Sunak be Sunak. Failing that, do the same strategy with Hunt or Mordaunt. The implosion of Starmer means that a centrist strategy is much more viable than it was at the tail end of the last Tory government.
Labour already under 30% and LDs still under 15% leave little room for a centrist to squeeze much more from either.
Kemi's best hope is a hung parliament which looks possible, however if she fails to even win enough seats to do a deal with Reform the Tories best hope might ironically be JRM if he wins back as seat in Somerset as he would be the only Tory leader capable of collapsing the Reform vote again. The Tories cannot progress further and have a hope of a majority with FPTP until they have done that, then if a Labour and LD minority government next time also unpopular the Tories end up the opposition by default to both
Look at the continent for a truer sense of where Labour's floor is once they cease to be seen as a default party of government. They could go down to the low teens.
What is this current hobby horse you have about backing Sunk or Hunt to return us to the glory days of the worst Tory election result in living history? Have you decided the Tories are a busted flush and want to smooth the path for Nige?
If Reform continue to make inroads into the Labour vote, we'll end up quite soon with polls that look something like:
Reform: 30% Conservative: 25% Labour 20%
That's the way the realignment is heading. The Tories have missed their chance to be the party that Reform are becoming, so their best bet is to embrace being the heirs to Blair again. There is an opportunity to kill off Labour as an electoral force for decades.
But you are making the assumption that there's no movement in voter preferences - that there will always be a plurality of centrist dads (and mums) in the UK whose votes will be up for grabs due to Labour's cratering. But Labour are cratering precisely because those centrist social democrat policies are proving to be so inadequate in response to the current challenges. Politics is realigning, and Tory 'centrists' like Hague telling us how awful it will be if Trump wins and Rory Stewart with his idiotic 'bet on the American people' look increasingly ridiculous. As Patrick O'Flynn says in a peerless paragraph:
"Hague is far from being alone among a generation of One Nation Tories who became accustomed to regarding themselves as get-with-the-programme modernisers just as the tide was going out on the progressive paradigm. One could say that George Osborne, Rory Stewart, David Gauke and Dominic Grieve are also among those wandering around an ideological wilderness while claiming it to be the promised land. It’s not where the voters live. Not these days." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/william-hague-donald-trump-and-the-lesson-of-eric-morecambe/
Yes the Tories need to be different from Reform, but urging them to be rats jumping on the sinking ship of centrism looks devious to me.
So, where do the voters live if they don't live somewhere close to One Nation Toryland, and centrist social democrat policies are not adequate?
I agree with the implication that this question is central.
However, looking at Reform's offer, along with the others, I conclude this: Voters including Reform voters (though not all Reform theoreticians) want these elements of the post 1945 UK social democratic deal: NATO; the cradle to grave state - education, health, state pensions, safety net; lots of trade with other nations; regulated private enterprise; regulated migration at non damaging levels; opportunity to do well.
That is where voters live.
Reform differs from others in the coherence (but also impossibility) of their migration policy, while the others all flounder in different ways. That aside, what exactly is this new deal the voters want to live in?
In short I would say massively reduced migration and less political correctness.
WRT the totality of the state's political programme and spending etc, that list is quite short. If all it amounts to is we want the system we have had since 1945, but we want it better run, and we want to magic people to work it without bringing them in from somewhere else and we want to stop talking about pronouns and stuff, it isn't very radical.
I'd suggest that the police's focus on non-crime hate incidents whilst being unable to send anyone to respond to burglaries is toxic with the broad majority of voters. The arrogant dismissal of the public's exasperation with current social policy will be the death of the 'centrists'. It's about an awful lot more than pronouns.
Do you really think the reason the police aren’t able to respond to burglaries is because they’re busy addressing “non crime hate incidents”? Rather than the fact the police budget has been cut by 20% in real terms since 2010.
They’ve gaslit you good and proper.
But they are spending quite a bit of time on non-crime hate incidents. We are also seeing people jailed for offensive remarks whilst people who've committed very serious crimes are being let out of prison early. The debasement of the Oxford Union, the Prime minister unable to stand up to calls for a new blasphemy law and the entire mainstream media (except GB News) ignoring the latest child grooming convictions in Rotherham. Have you ever wondered if maybe something isn't quite right at the moment?
The grooming gang scandal is Britain's Chernobyl. Except, unlike the Russians, we have never actually truly addressed it
When and if we do, I expect the entire edifice to collapse, as in Russia
The left still don't like talking about it, even now.
It was one of the drivers of the riots. Of course they hate talking about it, and the situation worsens
The next UK general election will probably be after the second Trump Presidency has finished. Trump is the poster boy for right-wing populism. Reform UK aren't going to win if the Trump Presidency is an omnishambles.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles?
The next UK general election will probably be after the second Trump Presidency has finished. Trump is the poster boy for right-wing populism. Reform UK aren't going to win if the Trump Presidency is an omnishambles.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles?
This analysis is based on the idea that things will go back to normal at some point and this populist spasm will end, but that sounds like wishful thinking, or denial about the type of political situation that has been created by post-Cold War liberalism. There is no normal.
The next UK general election will probably be after the second Trump Presidency has finished. Trump is the poster boy for right-wing populism. Reform UK aren't going to win if the Trump Presidency is an omnishambles.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles?
Meloni is leading the polls in Italy: a popular populist leader
I run a SME currently employing 5 people. I would like to employ more, I've an order-book that's full for over 2 years, but we can't really expand any more as I'm running out of space in our present (rented) premises.
The actual cost of premises for us should be very cheap - we only need a concrete pad with a big steel framed shed on it. I could probably purchase agricultural land and build a suitable building for £150k, but I wouldn't have a prayer of getting suitable planning.
There has been exactly one potential site come up for sale this year*, which was maybe 25% larger than we really needed. It sold for £950k which was slightly more than I could raise. Nothing else, not even a brownfield site on which I could possibly get planning.
Over the years lot of suitable sites/buildings which used to exist have been turned into housing, because it's "brownfield" so much easier to get residential planning.
It's yet another way that the state is steadily strangling SMEs - but our moron politicians can't understand why we've no growth, even as they are the ones killing it off.
*I'm searching a fairly rural area of about 100sq miles which is the limits of how far I think I could move us before a move will cost me some of my existing staff.
Absofrigginglutely!
Its not just housing that is screwed by our broken planning system, its everything.
The next UK general election will probably be after the second Trump Presidency has finished. Trump is the poster boy for right-wing populism. Reform UK aren't going to win if the Trump Presidency is an omnishambles.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles?
A fatuous assumption. What Reform need to win is Starmer's Government to be an omnishambles. That doesn't need a bet; it's already happening.
The next UK general election will probably be after the second Trump Presidency has finished. Trump is the poster boy for right-wing populism. Reform UK aren't going to win if the Trump Presidency is an omnishambles.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles?
So you're now content to engage in wishful thinking. Why not try and do something about the reasons why Reform are on the rise?
The next UK general election will probably be after the second Trump Presidency has finished. Trump is the poster boy for right-wing populism. Reform UK aren't going to win if the Trump Presidency is an omnishambles.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles?
So you're now content to engage in wishful thinking. Why not try and do something about the reasons why Reform are on the rise?
I run a SME currently employing 5 people. I would like to employ more, I've an order-book that's full for over 2 years, but we can't really expand any more as I'm running out of space in our present (rented) premises.
The actual cost of premises for us should be very cheap - we only need a concrete pad with a big steel framed shed on it. I could probably purchase agricultural land and build a suitable building for £150k, but I wouldn't have a prayer of getting suitable planning.
There has been exactly one potential site come up for sale this year*, which was maybe 25% larger than we really needed. It sold for £950k which was slightly more than I could raise. Nothing else, not even a brownfield site on which I could possibly get planning.
Over the years lot of suitable sites/buildings which used to exist have been turned into housing, because it's "brownfield" so much easier to get residential planning.
It's yet another way that the state is steadily strangling SMEs - but our moron politicians can't understand why we've no growth, even as they are the ones killing it off.
*I'm searching a fairly rural area of about 100sq miles which is the limits of how far I think I could move us before a move will cost me some of my existing staff.
Houses earn more than anything else so outside of a major city the default choice is always going to be a few houses rather than anything more industrial.
The only way to fix that is to build so many houses that your company can compete or find a suitable location and apply for permission - you may be surprised in what a farm can get away with to diversify..
It's a death match between the Tories and Reform. Only one of them can be part of the big two. Of course, they could merge. But that wouldn't be Continuity Tory.
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
It's a death match between the Tories and Reform. Only one of them can be part of the big two. Of course, they could merge. But that wouldn't be Continuity Tory.
If Reform rise to the 30s, it's the Labour Party that will be on life support.
It's a death match between the Tories and Reform. Only one of them can be part of the big two. Of course, they could merge. But that wouldn't be Continuity Tory.
If Reform rise to the 30s, it's the Labour Party that will be on life support.
Like the Tories were on life support when the SDP/Alliance hit 30s/40s/50s?
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Today, following reports from our government officials, we agreed on actions regarding Syria—primarily humanitarian and security efforts aimed at stabilization. For Ukraine, this is important: the calmer the situation in such regions, the more actively the world can help us achieve peace.
It is precisely for this reason that Moscow tries so hard to ignite more conflicts and wars in various parts of the world, fueling instability and adding to global challenges.
We are ready to assist Syria in preventing a food crisis, particularly through the humanitarian program “Grain from Ukraine.” I have instructed the government to establish food supply mechanisms in cooperation with international organizations and partners who can help.
We call on everyone worldwide to join stabilization efforts to ensure that the war—ignited over a decade ago in Syria with the involvement of Iran and Russia—can finally come to an end. https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1867967802276987253
It's a death match between the Tories and Reform. Only one of them can be part of the big two. Of course, they could merge. But that wouldn't be Continuity Tory.
If Reform rise to the 30s, it's the Labour Party that will be on life support.
I can see Reform sweeping almost the entire white working class vote in the UK. I dunno how many people that is, but it is surely enough to fuck Labour forever
It's a death match between the Tories and Reform. Only one of them can be part of the big two. Of course, they could merge. But that wouldn't be Continuity Tory.
If Reform rise to the 30s, it's the Labour Party that will be on life support.
I can see Reform sweeping almost the entire white working class vote in the UK. I dunno how many people that is, but it is surely enough to fuck Labour forever
And the more Labour try to fight back, the more they'll alienate the metropolitan elite side of their coalition.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the fun university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun and picking up a language.
"The UK government says an estimated 38,000 students are set to go abroad, of whom around 20,000 are disadvantaged students from schools, colleges and universities. Compared to the 18,300 Erasmus+ placements for British students in 2018-19, Turing is projected to enable more students to go abroad."
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Other than there not being any hard evidence for it, it's a bit more plausible than some of the bollocks going around. So there's that.
It has the advantage of explaining almost everything, without utilising aliens. In particular, it explains the weird evasive /"mystified" emanations from the US authorities. This is exactly how they would behave if they were doing something vitally important but they cannot admit it because that might cause panic
Instead they waffle about "not foreign adversaries", "mostly planes", "we aren't entirely sure haha" - that keeps everyone calm or at most bewildered, then hopefully they can do their job and solve the problem and no one will be the wiser
Also this was a theory punted out on TwiX by an account about a week ago which sounded highly authoritative - but it then got deleted swiftly
It's a death match between the Tories and Reform. Only one of them can be part of the big two. Of course, they could merge. But that wouldn't be Continuity Tory.
If Reform rise to the 30s, it's the Labour Party that will be on life support.
I can see Reform sweeping almost the entire white working class vote in the UK. I dunno how many people that is, but it is surely enough to fuck Labour forever
And the more Labour try to fight back, the more they'll alienate the metropolitan elite side of their coalition.
Yes, Labour will end up fighting for the Lib Dem vote
The PB consensus seems to be that Reform are going to replace Labour. I think that is very unlikely.
'PB consensus' my arse.
A handful of our more vocal right-wingers are wetting themselves with excitement at the thought that Farage is marching into No. 10. They're almost certainly going to be disappointed and they don't in any event constitute a 'consensus'.
The Tories' best option would be to reappoint Sunak but give up on chasing 2019 Johnson voters/2024 Farage voters and instead let Sunak be Sunak. Failing that, do the same strategy with Hunt or Mordaunt. The implosion of Starmer means that a centrist strategy is much more viable than it was at the tail end of the last Tory government.
Labour already under 30% and LDs still under 15% leave little room for a centrist to squeeze much more from either.
Kemi's best hope is a hung parliament which looks possible, however if she fails to even win enough seats to do a deal with Reform the Tories best hope might ironically be JRM if he wins back as seat in Somerset as he would be the only Tory leader capable of collapsing the Reform vote again. The Tories cannot progress further and have a hope of a majority with FPTP until they have done that, then if a Labour and LD minority government next time also unpopular the Tories end up the opposition by default to both
Look at the continent for a truer sense of where Labour's floor is once they cease to be seen as a default party of government. They could go down to the low teens.
What is this current hobby horse you have about backing Sunk or Hunt to return us to the glory days of the worst Tory election result in living history? Have you decided the Tories are a busted flush and want to smooth the path for Nige?
If Reform continue to make inroads into the Labour vote, we'll end up quite soon with polls that look something like:
Reform: 30% Conservative: 25% Labour 20%
That's the way the realignment is heading. The Tories have missed their chance to be the party that Reform are becoming, so their best bet is to embrace being the heirs to Blair again. There is an opportunity to kill off Labour as an electoral force for decades.
But you are making the assumption that there's no movement in voter preferences - that there will always be a plurality of centrist dads (and mums) in the UK whose votes will be up for grabs due to Labour's cratering. But Labour are cratering precisely because those centrist social democrat policies are proving to be so inadequate in response to the current challenges. Politics is realigning, and Tory 'centrists' like Hague telling us how awful it will be if Trump wins and Rory Stewart with his idiotic 'bet on the American people' look increasingly ridiculous. As Patrick O'Flynn says in a peerless paragraph:
"Hague is far from being alone among a generation of One Nation Tories who became accustomed to regarding themselves as get-with-the-programme modernisers just as the tide was going out on the progressive paradigm. One could say that George Osborne, Rory Stewart, David Gauke and Dominic Grieve are also among those wandering around an ideological wilderness while claiming it to be the promised land. It’s not where the voters live. Not these days." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/william-hague-donald-trump-and-the-lesson-of-eric-morecambe/
Yes the Tories need to be different from Reform, but urging them to be rats jumping on the sinking ship of centrism looks devious to me.
So, where do the voters live if they don't live somewhere close to One Nation Toryland, and centrist social democrat policies are not adequate?
I agree with the implication that this question is central.
However, looking at Reform's offer, along with the others, I conclude this: Voters including Reform voters (though not all Reform theoreticians) want these elements of the post 1945 UK social democratic deal: NATO; the cradle to grave state - education, health, state pensions, safety net; lots of trade with other nations; regulated private enterprise; regulated migration at non damaging levels; opportunity to do well.
That is where voters live.
Reform differs from others in the coherence (but also impossibility) of their migration policy, while the others all flounder in different ways. That aside, what exactly is this new deal the voters want to live in?
If centrism had not moved beyond those things, and remained in late Major/early Blair mode, I suspect people would be quite satisfied with it, but it has morphed into something that cannot really be called 'centrist' with much justification.
'Centrism' has become extreme. In the UK at least it has come to mean taxes on businesses and individuals at record levels, a production-guzzling and totally unreformed state, police whose job it is to intimidate the law abiding for wrongthink whilst sneering at the suggestion they should investigate theft, a de-facto privacy law protecting the wealthy and powerful from their misdeeds being made public, green taxes putting people out of business and making the thought of manufacturing something in the UK a sick joke, green energy policies resulting in a vast transfer of wealth from the poor to corporations, a tsunami of immigration placing an intolerable strain on both the resources of the state and societal cohesion, and a set of deeply concerning social policies around gender and woke. Which of these represents moderate centrism?
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
One of the best places I've ever been to. I was there February last year. It was freezing at night, which suited me fine, although must be very unusual. I don't like hot weather much.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Sadly i was on holiday in the canaries a couple of weeks ago. Bars that used to be packed out are now dead and some are closing. There is trouble throughout the west.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the fun university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun and picking up a language.
"The UK government says an estimated 38,000 students are set to go abroad, of whom around 20,000 are disadvantaged students from schools, colleges and universities. Compared to the 18,300 Erasmus+ placements for British students in 2018-19, Turing is projected to enable more students to go abroad."
Don't let facts get in the way of @Roger uninformed comments as just confirmed by my post at 9.58pm
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
One of the best places I've ever been to. I was there February last year. It was freezing at night, which suited me fine, although must be very unusual. I don't like hot weather much.
What I noticed is how well - and formally - the people dress, especially in the evening. And not just the elderly.
The Tories' best option would be to reappoint Sunak but give up on chasing 2019 Johnson voters/2024 Farage voters and instead let Sunak be Sunak. Failing that, do the same strategy with Hunt or Mordaunt. The implosion of Starmer means that a centrist strategy is much more viable than it was at the tail end of the last Tory government.
Labour already under 30% and LDs still under 15% leave little room for a centrist to squeeze much more from either.
Kemi's best hope is a hung parliament which looks possible, however if she fails to even win enough seats to do a deal with Reform the Tories best hope might ironically be JRM if he wins back as seat in Somerset as he would be the only Tory leader capable of collapsing the Reform vote again. The Tories cannot progress further and have a hope of a majority with FPTP until they have done that, then if a Labour and LD minority government next time also unpopular the Tories end up the opposition by default to both
Look at the continent for a truer sense of where Labour's floor is once they cease to be seen as a default party of government. They could go down to the low teens.
What is this current hobby horse you have about backing Sunk or Hunt to return us to the glory days of the worst Tory election result in living history? Have you decided the Tories are a busted flush and want to smooth the path for Nige?
If Reform continue to make inroads into the Labour vote, we'll end up quite soon with polls that look something like:
Reform: 30% Conservative: 25% Labour 20%
That's the way the realignment is heading. The Tories have missed their chance to be the party that Reform are becoming, so their best bet is to embrace being the heirs to Blair again. There is an opportunity to kill off Labour as an electoral force for decades.
But you are making the assumption that there's no movement in voter preferences - that there will always be a plurality of centrist dads (and mums) in the UK whose votes will be up for grabs due to Labour's cratering. But Labour are cratering precisely because those centrist social democrat policies are proving to be so inadequate in response to the current challenges. Politics is realigning, and Tory 'centrists' like Hague telling us how awful it will be if Trump wins and Rory Stewart with his idiotic 'bet on the American people' look increasingly ridiculous. As Patrick O'Flynn says in a peerless paragraph:
"Hague is far from being alone among a generation of One Nation Tories who became accustomed to regarding themselves as get-with-the-programme modernisers just as the tide was going out on the progressive paradigm. One could say that George Osborne, Rory Stewart, David Gauke and Dominic Grieve are also among those wandering around an ideological wilderness while claiming it to be the promised land. It’s not where the voters live. Not these days." https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/william-hague-donald-trump-and-the-lesson-of-eric-morecambe/
Yes the Tories need to be different from Reform, but urging them to be rats jumping on the sinking ship of centrism looks devious to me.
So, where do the voters live if they don't live somewhere close to One Nation Toryland, and centrist social democrat policies are not adequate?
I agree with the implication that this question is central.
However, looking at Reform's offer, along with the others, I conclude this: Voters including Reform voters (though not all Reform theoreticians) want these elements of the post 1945 UK social democratic deal: NATO; the cradle to grave state - education, health, state pensions, safety net; lots of trade with other nations; regulated private enterprise; regulated migration at non damaging levels; opportunity to do well.
That is where voters live.
Reform differs from others in the coherence (but also impossibility) of their migration policy, while the others all flounder in different ways. That aside, what exactly is this new deal the voters want to live in?
If centrism had not moved beyond those things, and remained in late Major/early Blair mode, I suspect people would be quite satisfied with it, but it has morphed into something that cannot really be called 'centrist' with much justification.
'Centrism' has become extreme. In the UK at least it has come to mean taxes on businesses and individuals at record levels, a production-guzzling and totally unreformed state, police whose job it is to intimidate the law abiding for wrongthink whilst sneering at the suggestion they should investigate theft, a de-facto privacy law protecting the wealthy and powerful from their misdeeds being made public, green taxes putting people out of business and making the thought of manufacturing something in the UK a sick joke, green energy policies resulting in a vast transfer of wealth from the poor to corporations, a tsunami of immigration placing an intolerable strain on both the resources of the state and societal cohesion, and a set of deeply concerning social policies around gender and woke. Which of these represents moderate centrism?
Yes but moderate centrism is excellent for the Cameron class. It enables them to rule unchallenged.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
One of the best places I've ever been to. I was there February last year. It was freezing at night, which suited me fine, although must be very unusual. I don't like hot weather much.
+1 for Seville - great city - must get back there soon.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Sadly i was on holiday in the canaries a couple of weeks ago. Bars that used to be packed out are now dead and some are closing. There is trouble throughout the west.
Interesting and troubling. Do you know why?
Global tourism is actually enjoying something of a boom, at the moment, with many places reporting record visitors - even higher than 2019
So I'm not sure what is happening in the Canaries?
The PB consensus seems to be that Reform are going to replace Labour. I think that is very unlikely.
'PB consensus' my arse.
A handful of our more vocal right-wingers are wetting themselves with excitement at the thought that Farage is marching into No. 10. They're almost certainly going to be disappointed and they don't in any event constitute a 'consensus'.
Of course it is not a concensus, but there is some evidence Reform are causing Labour problems in the red wall, most recently in St Helens
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the fun university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun and picking up a language.
"The UK government says an estimated 38,000 students are set to go abroad, of whom around 20,000 are disadvantaged students from schools, colleges and universities. Compared to the 18,300 Erasmus+ placements for British students in 2018-19, Turing is projected to enable more students to go abroad."
Don't let facts get in the way of @Roger uninformed comments as just confirmed by my post at 9.58pm
To be fair to Rog, it can be difficult to keep track of which post-brexit schemes turned out to be successful, and which of the more harebrained suggestions coming out in the middle of the negotiations failed to materialise. Newspapers aren't very good at followup.
The PB consensus seems to be that Reform are going to replace Labour. I think that is very unlikely.
'PB consensus' my arse.
A handful of our more vocal right-wingers are wetting themselves with excitement at the thought that Farage is marching into No. 10. They're almost certainly going to be disappointed and they don't in any event constitute a 'consensus'.
Of course it is not a concensus, but there is some evidence Reform are causing Labour problems in the red wall, most recently in St Helens
Oh sure, and as the 'protest party' I am sure Reform will pick up a few eye-catching byelection victories during this parliament. But we've seen it all before with the Liberals / SDP / LibDems.
Next GE is still over 3 years away - 4.5 years away if Labour are struggling.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Sadly i was on holiday in the canaries a couple of weeks ago. Bars that used to be packed out are now dead and some are closing. There is trouble throughout the west.
What's that to do with UK university students enjoying study in the EU ?
The next UK general election will probably be after the second Trump Presidency has finished. Trump is the poster boy for right-wing populism. Reform UK aren't going to win if the Trump Presidency is an omnishambles.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles?
This analysis is based on the idea that things will go back to normal at some point and this populist spasm will end, but that sounds like wishful thinking, or denial about the type of political situation that has been created by post-Cold War liberalism. There is no normal.
No, I'm not predicting things "will go back to normal". There are alternatives to both the normal or right-wing populism. Some sort of left-wing populism might emerge: think Mélenchon, Sanders or Wagenknecht. Or a turn towards centrism, as put Macron in power. Or maybe the normal does continue.
We've had a spate of elections with populists doing well. But there's no inevitability about that. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael just did fine in the Irish election when predictions 9 months before said they'd be wiped out by the more populist Sinn Féin. The centrist Civic Coalition kicked out Law & Justice in Poland last year.
I don't know what will happen in 5 years time. But I do know that the US has a big influence on the UK's society and politics. Donald Trump is the right-wing populist par excellence. The UK electorate don't pay much attention to an Orbán or an Erdoğan, but they know who Trump is. If Trump is successful, that's great news for Reform UK. But if Trump crashes and burns, I don't see Farage coming out of it well.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles? I mean, introducing high tariffs, abolishing all regulation of banks, and discouraging childhood vaccination... is that a recipe for success or failure?
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Sadly i was on holiday in the canaries a couple of weeks ago. Bars that used to be packed out are now dead and some are closing. There is trouble throughout the west.
What's that to do with UK university students enjoying study in the EU ?
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Sadly i was on holiday in the canaries a couple of weeks ago. Bars that used to be packed out are now dead and some are closing. There is trouble throughout the west.
Interesting and troubling. Do you know why?
Global tourism is actually enjoying something of a boom, at the moment, with many places reporting record visitors - even higher than 2019
So I'm not sure what is happening in the Canaries?
Think about it. The canaries attract low to at best middle income british tourists those who are likely suffering the most economically. But i was in Irish bars on a saturday night that wete packed out a few years ago and are now dead.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the fun university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun and picking up a language.
"The UK government says an estimated 38,000 students are set to go abroad, of whom around 20,000 are disadvantaged students from schools, colleges and universities. Compared to the 18,300 Erasmus+ placements for British students in 2018-19, Turing is projected to enable more students to go abroad."
I have hosted over 20 exchange students since Brexit. I see no difference at all. The fact is the EU tried to make us pay over the odds to be in Erasmus. We host exchange students, the point being students go both ways. It works.
The next UK general election will probably be after the second Trump Presidency has finished. Trump is the poster boy for right-wing populism. Reform UK aren't going to win if the Trump Presidency is an omnishambles.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles?
So you're now content to engage in wishful thinking. Why not try and do something about the reasons why Reform are on the rise?
For the same reason why the SDP was on the rise.
And probably with the same outcome.
They'll go into a coalition with the Tories a quarter of a century later?
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Ergo, American (hence the flashing lights - to warn others). But maybe commercially sourced, giving the Pentagon plausible deniability. And the idea they are looking for something nasty (why else fly at night?) is pretty good - that's why the White House double-speaks, they don't want to frit the folk
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the fun university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun and picking up a language.
"The UK government says an estimated 38,000 students are set to go abroad, of whom around 20,000 are disadvantaged students from schools, colleges and universities. Compared to the 18,300 Erasmus+ placements for British students in 2018-19, Turing is projected to enable more students to go abroad."
I have hosted over 20 exchange students since Brexit. I see no difference at all. The fact is the EU tried to make us pay over the odds to be in Erasmus. We host exchange students, the point being students go both ways. It works.
It's possible they may offer better terms in the upcoming negotiations.
Are students allowed to work with Turing, or does it depend on the country?
I run a SME currently employing 5 people. I would like to employ more, I've an order-book that's full for over 2 years, but we can't really expand any more as I'm running out of space in our present (rented) premises.
The actual cost of premises for us should be very cheap - we only need a concrete pad with a big steel framed shed on it. I could probably purchase agricultural land and build a suitable building for £150k, but I wouldn't have a prayer of getting suitable planning.
There has been exactly one potential site come up for sale this year*, which was maybe 25% larger than we really needed. It sold for £950k which was slightly more than I could raise. Nothing else, not even a brownfield site on which I could possibly get planning.
Over the years lot of suitable sites/buildings which used to exist have been turned into housing, because it's "brownfield" so much easier to get residential planning.
It's yet another way that the state is steadily strangling SMEs - but our moron politicians can't understand why we've no growth, even as they are the ones killing it off.
*I'm searching a fairly rural area of about 100sq miles which is the limits of how far I think I could move us before a move will cost me some of my existing staff.
Houses earn more than anything else so outside of a major city the default choice is always going to be a few houses rather than anything more industrial.
The only way to fix that is to build so many houses that your company can compete or find a suitable location and apply for permission - you may be surprised in what a farm can get away with to diversify..
Farm buildings are very much on the radar. Change of use is trivial if they are over ten years old, and under 500sqm (which I could just about live with - we are in about 300sqm now, and it's not a well laid out 300sqm either. I'd really like more like 1000sqm, but begars can't necessarily by choosers).
The problem is finding one that's the right size and particularly height (we need height because we need overhead cranes inside the building).
The inflated prices resulting from the lack of supply is of course also pushing valuations for business rates up - which is a terrible tax for small businesses trying to grow - stretch yourself to take on premises which are a bit big intending to expand the business till it uses it all and you get clobbered for full whack business rates from the get-go, right at the moment your finances are tightest.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Sadly i was on holiday in the canaries a couple of weeks ago. Bars that used to be packed out are now dead and some are closing. There is trouble throughout the west.
What's that to do with UK university students enjoying study in the EU ?
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the fun university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun and picking up a language.
"The UK government says an estimated 38,000 students are set to go abroad, of whom around 20,000 are disadvantaged students from schools, colleges and universities. Compared to the 18,300 Erasmus+ placements for British students in 2018-19, Turing is projected to enable more students to go abroad."
Don't let facts get in the way of @Roger uninformed comments as just confirmed by my post at 9.58pm
To be fair to Rog, it can be difficult to keep track of which post-brexit schemes turned out to be successful, and which of the more harebrained suggestions coming out in the middle of the negotiations failed to materialise. Newspapers aren't very good at followup.
The Turing scheme may be better than the Erasmus scheme (though that's arguable) but prior to Brexit a British student could apply to any EU university without needing to do so via a 'scheme'.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Sadly i was on holiday in the canaries a couple of weeks ago. Bars that used to be packed out are now dead and some are closing. There is trouble throughout the west.
What's that to do with UK university students enjoying study in the EU ?
CHart may be one of our little friends.
I assumed that, given his name, CHart worked in a Lib Dem bar.
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Nuclear material gives off easily detectable radioactivity. It wouldn't be that hard to find given enough people with Geiger counters.
I wouldn't mind so much about conspiracy theories, but they're all shit and pretty boring.
Plus, when the authorities really want to find someone, it's generally not hard for them to do so. If they had wind of something like this there would be a whole bunch of people connected to it and the way to track it down would be to track those people.
And drones. Really, what do drones flying about in the dark do to make it possible to track something like this down?
Have people lost all semblance of critical thinking?
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Sadly i was on holiday in the canaries a couple of weeks ago. Bars that used to be packed out are now dead and some are closing. There is trouble throughout the west.
What's that to do with UK university students enjoying study in the EU ?
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Nuclear material gives off easily detectable radioactivity. It wouldn't be that hard to find given enough people with Geiger counters.
I wouldn't mind so much about conspiracy theories, but they're all shit and pretty boring.
Plus, when the authorities really want to find someone, it's generally not hard for them to do so. If they had wind of something like this there would be a whole bunch of people connected to it and the way to track it down would be to track those people.
And drones. Really, what do drones flying about in the dark do to make it possible to track something like this down?
Have perked lost all semblance of critical thinking?
It's Leon posting crap from Twitter. Why would you expect any sort of critical thinking to have been involved?
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Nuclear material gives off easily detectable radioactivity. It wouldn't be that hard to find given enough people with Geiger counters.
I wouldn't mind so much about conspiracy theories, but they're all shit and pretty boring.
Plus, when the authorities really want to find someone, it's generally not hard for them to do so. If they had wind of something like this there would be a whole bunch of people connected to it and the way to track it down would be to track those people.
And drones. Really, what do drones flying about in the dark do to make it possible to track something like this down?
Have perked lost all semblance of critical thinking?
You know it's going to be ridiculous when Leon promotes it as "one of the leading theories".
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Sadly i was on holiday in the canaries a couple of weeks ago. Bars that used to be packed out are now dead and some are closing. There is trouble throughout the west.
Interesting and troubling. Do you know why?
Global tourism is actually enjoying something of a boom, at the moment, with many places reporting record visitors - even higher than 2019
So I'm not sure what is happening in the Canaries?
Think about it. The canaries attract low to at best middle income british tourists those who are likely suffering the most economically. But i was in Irish bars on a saturday night that wete packed out a few years ago and are now dead.
But then that's a British issue
Or it could be something entirely local
Because Spanish tourism in toto is doing really well:
The PB consensus seems to be that Reform are going to replace Labour. I think that is very unlikely.
'PB consensus' my arse.
A handful of our more vocal right-wingers are wetting themselves with excitement at the thought that Farage is marching into No. 10. They're almost certainly going to be disappointed and they don't in any event constitute a 'consensus'.
I guess it's hard Ben when every post I see is about how we're headed for Reform/Tory Government and Starmer is a dud.
The PB consensus seems to be that Reform are going to replace Labour. I think that is very unlikely.
'PB consensus' my arse.
A handful of our more vocal right-wingers are wetting themselves with excitement at the thought that Farage is marching into No. 10. They're almost certainly going to be disappointed and they don't in any event constitute a 'consensus'.
I watched a Dominic Cummings video the other day where the master of '5D chess' was absolutely insistent that Reform's ceiling was 15%.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Sadly i was on holiday in the canaries a couple of weeks ago. Bars that used to be packed out are now dead and some are closing. There is trouble throughout the west.
What's that to do with UK university students enjoying study in the EU ?
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the fun university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun and picking up a language.
"The UK government says an estimated 38,000 students are set to go abroad, of whom around 20,000 are disadvantaged students from schools, colleges and universities. Compared to the 18,300 Erasmus+ placements for British students in 2018-19, Turing is projected to enable more students to go abroad."
Don't let facts get in the way of @Roger uninformed comments as just confirmed by my post at 9.58pm
To be fair to Rog, it can be difficult to keep track of which post-brexit schemes turned out to be successful, and which of the more harebrained suggestions coming out in the middle of the negotiations failed to materialise. Newspapers aren't very good at followup.
The Turing scheme may be better than the Erasmus scheme (though that's arguable) but prior to Brexit a British student could apply to any EU university without needing to do so via a 'scheme'.
Are you talking about years abroad, or whole degrees? I assume they are entirely different sets of arrangements...
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Ergo, American (hence the flashing lights - to warn others). But maybe commercially sourced, giving the Pentagon plausible deniability. And the idea they are looking for something nasty (why else fly at night?) is pretty good - that's why the White House double-speaks, they don't want to frit the folk
It’s an idea that appeals to you because it’s exciting. It’s also just nonsense. It’s a flap. Who knows how or why it started but once it starts it will run and run. Seriously - if you are interested in how these things work, read In Alien Heat about Warminster. It’s exactly the same.
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Nuclear material gives off easily detectable radioactivity. It wouldn't be that hard to find given enough people with Geiger counters.
I wouldn't mind so much about conspiracy theories, but they're all shit and pretty boring.
Plus, when the authorities really want to find someone, it's generally not hard for them to do so. If they had wind of something like this there would be a whole bunch of people connected to it and the way to track it down would be to track those people.
And drones. Really, what do drones flying about in the dark do to make it possible to track something like this down?
Have people lost all semblance of critical thinking?
It is now probably the leading theory - in terms of social media credence (yes yes). Otherwise, you need to provide a DIFFERENT theory which covers all the bases
The PB consensus seems to be that Reform are going to replace Labour. I think that is very unlikely.
'PB consensus' my arse.
A handful of our more vocal right-wingers are wetting themselves with excitement at the thought that Farage is marching into No. 10. They're almost certainly going to be disappointed and they don't in any event constitute a 'consensus'.
I guess it's hard Ben when every post I see is about how we're headed for Reform/Tory Government and Starmer is a dud.
Apols, I overreacted a bit. Appreciate there was a certain irony in your original post.
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the fun university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun and picking up a language.
"The UK government says an estimated 38,000 students are set to go abroad, of whom around 20,000 are disadvantaged students from schools, colleges and universities. Compared to the 18,300 Erasmus+ placements for British students in 2018-19, Turing is projected to enable more students to go abroad."
Don't let facts get in the way of @Roger uninformed comments as just confirmed by my post at 9.58pm
To be fair to Rog, it can be difficult to keep track of which post-brexit schemes turned out to be successful, and which of the more harebrained suggestions coming out in the middle of the negotiations failed to materialise. Newspapers aren't very good at followup.
The Turing scheme may be better than the Erasmus scheme (though that's arguable) but prior to Brexit a British student could apply to any EU university without needing to do so via a 'scheme'.
So? And how many actually did? And for that matter how many outside of pampered upper class privately educated kids did?
Look - I voted remain and I am sad at how things turned out, but not everything is shite now because Brexit. We have seen no difference in the ability for our UGs to go on exchange. And that’s the truth.
The next UK general election will probably be after the second Trump Presidency has finished. Trump is the poster boy for right-wing populism. Reform UK aren't going to win if the Trump Presidency is an omnishambles.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles?
This analysis is based on the idea that things will go back to normal at some point and this populist spasm will end, but that sounds like wishful thinking, or denial about the type of political situation that has been created by post-Cold War liberalism. There is no normal.
No, I'm not predicting things "will go back to normal". There are alternatives to both the normal or right-wing populism. Some sort of left-wing populism might emerge: think Mélenchon, Sanders or Wagenknecht. Or a turn towards centrism, as put Macron in power. Or maybe the normal does continue.
We've had a spate of elections with populists doing well. But there's no inevitability about that. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael just did fine in the Irish election when predictions 9 months before said they'd be wiped out by the more populist Sinn Féin. The centrist Civic Coalition kicked out Law & Justice in Poland last year.
I don't know what will happen in 5 years time. But I do know that the US has a big influence on the UK's society and politics. Donald Trump is the right-wing populist par excellence. The UK electorate don't pay much attention to an Orbán or an Erdoğan, but they know who Trump is. If Trump is successful, that's great news for Reform UK. But if Trump crashes and burns, I don't see Farage coming out of it well.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles? I mean, introducing high tariffs, abolishing all regulation of banks, and discouraging childhood vaccination... is that a recipe for success or failure?
The concern must be that the serious disasters consequential on the Trump presidency really happen after the end of said presidency.
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Nuclear material gives off easily detectable radioactivity. It wouldn't be that hard to find given enough people with Geiger counters.
I wouldn't mind so much about conspiracy theories, but they're all shit and pretty boring.
Plus, when the authorities really want to find someone, it's generally not hard for them to do so. If they had wind of something like this there would be a whole bunch of people connected to it and the way to track it down would be to track those people.
And drones. Really, what do drones flying about in the dark do to make it possible to track something like this down?
Have people lost all semblance of critical thinking?
It is now probably the leading theory - in terms of social media credence (yes yes). Otherwise, you need to provide a DIFFERENT theory which covers all the bases
What is that?
Theres this.
New Theory: NJ Drone Sightings May Be "Nuclear Sniffers" Following Elevated NYC Radiation Levels
The PB consensus seems to be that Reform are going to replace Labour. I think that is very unlikely.
'PB consensus' my arse.
A handful of our more vocal right-wingers are wetting themselves with excitement at the thought that Farage is marching into No. 10. They're almost certainly going to be disappointed and they don't in any event constitute a 'consensus'.
I guess it's hard Ben when every post I see is about how we're headed for Reform/Tory Government and Starmer is a dud.
To be fair that is not the case with every post.
The next GE is 4+ years away and it is impossible to predict it
There are sighs Reform are gaining popularity, but we have no way of knowing how the public will react once Trump is POTUS and Reform seek financial backing from Musk
As far as Starmer is concerned his poll ratings are terrible for a new PM, but also Reeves decisions including the anti jobs and growth budget has compounded the impression
A lot can happen in 4 years but there needs to be a change in economic policy in favour of businesses and I do not see it at present
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the fun university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun and picking up a language.
"The UK government says an estimated 38,000 students are set to go abroad, of whom around 20,000 are disadvantaged students from schools, colleges and universities. Compared to the 18,300 Erasmus+ placements for British students in 2018-19, Turing is projected to enable more students to go abroad."
Don't let facts get in the way of @Roger uninformed comments as just confirmed by my post at 9.58pm
To be fair to Rog, it can be difficult to keep track of which post-brexit schemes turned out to be successful, and which of the more harebrained suggestions coming out in the middle of the negotiations failed to materialise. Newspapers aren't very good at followup.
The Turing scheme may be better than the Erasmus scheme (though that's arguable) but prior to Brexit a British student could apply to any EU university without needing to do so via a 'scheme'.
I seem to recall Maastricht was popular. Tried to attract British (etc) students, too.
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Nuclear material gives off easily detectable radioactivity. It wouldn't be that hard to find given enough people with Geiger counters.
I wouldn't mind so much about conspiracy theories, but they're all shit and pretty boring.
Plus, when the authorities really want to find someone, it's generally not hard for them to do so. If they had wind of something like this there would be a whole bunch of people connected to it and the way to track it down would be to track those people.
And drones. Really, what do drones flying about in the dark do to make it possible to track something like this down?
Have people lost all semblance of critical thinking?
It is now probably the leading theory - in terms of social media credence (yes yes). Otherwise, you need to provide a DIFFERENT theory which covers all the bases
What is that?
Theres this.
New Theory: NJ Drone Sightings May Be "Nuclear Sniffers" Following Elevated NYC Radiation Levels
The next UK general election will probably be after the second Trump Presidency has finished. Trump is the poster boy for right-wing populism. Reform UK aren't going to win if the Trump Presidency is an omnishambles.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles?
This analysis is based on the idea that things will go back to normal at some point and this populist spasm will end, but that sounds like wishful thinking, or denial about the type of political situation that has been created by post-Cold War liberalism. There is no normal.
No, I'm not predicting things "will go back to normal". There are alternatives to both the normal or right-wing populism. Some sort of left-wing populism might emerge: think Mélenchon, Sanders or Wagenknecht. Or a turn towards centrism, as put Macron in power. Or maybe the normal does continue.
We've had a spate of elections with populists doing well. But there's no inevitability about that. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael just did fine in the Irish election when predictions 9 months before said they'd be wiped out by the more populist Sinn Féin. The centrist Civic Coalition kicked out Law & Justice in Poland last year.
I don't know what will happen in 5 years time. But I do know that the US has a big influence on the UK's society and politics. Donald Trump is the right-wing populist par excellence. The UK electorate don't pay much attention to an Orbán or an Erdoğan, but they know who Trump is. If Trump is successful, that's great news for Reform UK. But if Trump crashes and burns, I don't see Farage coming out of it well.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles? I mean, introducing high tariffs, abolishing all regulation of banks, and discouraging childhood vaccination... is that a recipe for success or failure?
The concern must be that the serious disasters consequential on the Trump presidency really happen after the end of said presidency.
Maybe we will look back on Trump as a soft liberal compared with what follows.
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Ergo, American (hence the flashing lights - to warn others). But maybe commercially sourced, giving the Pentagon plausible deniability. And the idea they are looking for something nasty (why else fly at night?) is pretty good - that's why the White House double-speaks, they don't want to frit the folk
It’s an idea that appeals to you because it’s exciting. It’s also just nonsense. It’s a flap. Who knows how or why it started but once it starts it will run and run. Seriously - if you are interested in how these things work, read In Alien Heat about Warminster. It’s exactly the same.
Oh sweet Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up about "Warminster"
Just spent a few days in Seville. What a fab place. Reminds me of Arles in France. A great student vibe. Cheap cafes bars and restaurants. If I was a British student I'd be livid with those crusty old Brexiteers who voted leave and meant British students couldn't enjoy the university towns other Europeans could while having a lot of fun with some very attractive people and even picking up a language.
My granddaughter has just enjoyed 12 months at Turin University on her Italian languages and culture course along with other fellow Leeds University students
Sadly i was on holiday in the canaries a couple of weeks ago. Bars that used to be packed out are now dead and some are closing. There is trouble throughout the west.
Interesting and troubling. Do you know why?
Global tourism is actually enjoying something of a boom, at the moment, with many places reporting record visitors - even higher than 2019
So I'm not sure what is happening in the Canaries?
Think about it. The canaries attract low to at best middle income british tourists those who are likely suffering the most economically. But i was in Irish bars on a saturday night that wete packed out a few years ago and are now dead.
But then that's a British issue
Or it could be something entirely local
Because Spanish tourism in toto is doing really well:
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Ergo, American (hence the flashing lights - to warn others). But maybe commercially sourced, giving the Pentagon plausible deniability. And the idea they are looking for something nasty (why else fly at night?) is pretty good - that's why the White House double-speaks, they don't want to frit the folk
It’s an idea that appeals to you because it’s exciting. It’s also just nonsense. It’s a flap. Who knows how or why it started but once it starts it will run and run. Seriously - if you are interested in how these things work, read In Alien Heat about Warminster. It’s exactly the same.
Oh sweet Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up about "Warminster"
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Ergo, American (hence the flashing lights - to warn others). But maybe commercially sourced, giving the Pentagon plausible deniability. And the idea they are looking for something nasty (why else fly at night?) is pretty good - that's why the White House double-speaks, they don't want to frit the folk
It’s an idea that appeals to you because it’s exciting. It’s also just nonsense. It’s a flap. Who knows how or why it started but once it starts it will run and run. Seriously - if you are interested in how these things work, read In Alien Heat about Warminster. It’s exactly the same.
Oh sweet Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up about "Warminster"
Why? Read up and educate yourself for fucks sake.
Has it occurred to you that I already know and understand the mass psychology of "flaps"?
This is not some exciting revelation. Crowds get hysterical. Ugandan men suddenly think their penises are being stolen. Girls in school start fainting due to a "gas leak". Nuns in France start masturbating frantically in public. Entire nations go into "lockdown" over a flu. Yes yes
This has become one of the leading theories to explain the drones in the USA
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
Ergo, American (hence the flashing lights - to warn others). But maybe commercially sourced, giving the Pentagon plausible deniability. And the idea they are looking for something nasty (why else fly at night?) is pretty good - that's why the White House double-speaks, they don't want to frit the folk
It’s an idea that appeals to you because it’s exciting. It’s also just nonsense. It’s a flap. Who knows how or why it started but once it starts it will run and run. Seriously - if you are interested in how these things work, read In Alien Heat about Warminster. It’s exactly the same.
Oh sweet Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up about "Warminster"
Why? Read up and educate yourself for fucks sake.
Has it occurred to you that I already know and understand the mass psychology of "flaps"?
This is not some exciting revelation. Crowds get hysterical. Ugandan men suddenly think their penises are being stolen. Girls in school start fainting due to a "gas leak". Nuns in France start masturbating frantically in public. Entire nations go into "lockdown" over a flu. Yes yes
So why, then, do you not see that this is exactly what is happening?
Comments
### Timeline:
#### Collapse of the UK Liberals:
- 1910-1922: The decline of the Liberal Party in the UK.
- The Liberals' decline began with internal divisions, challenges to their traditional base, and competition from the Labour Party.
- 1916: Prime Minister H. H. Asquith resigns, and David Lloyd George takes over, splitting the party further.
- By 1922, Labour had overtaken the Liberals as the primary opposition to the Conservatives.
#### First World War:
- 1914-1918: World War I.
- Triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914.
- UK entered the war in August 1914.
- Armistice signed on 11 November 1918, ending hostilities.
#### Spanish Flu:
- 1918-1920: Spanish Flu pandemic.
- Emerged in the final months of World War I.
- Estimated to have infected one-third of the world’s population and caused millions of deaths globally.
- The pandemic had four waves, with the second wave in late 1918 being the deadliest.
#### Rise of Fascism:
- 1919: Benito Mussolini founds the Fasci di Combattimento (Fascist Party) in Italy.
- 1922: Mussolini’s March on Rome leads to his appointment as Prime Minister of Italy.
- 1920s-1930s: Rise of fascism in Europe.
- In Germany, the Nazi Party (founded in 1920) gained traction during the economic turmoil of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
- Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.
#### Great Depression:
- 1929: Stock Market Crash on 29 October 1929 ("Black Tuesday").
- The crash marked the start of the Great Depression, a global economic downturn that lasted through the 1930s.
- High unemployment, deflation, and political instability followed, exacerbating the rise of extremist political movements, including fascism.
### Connections Between Events:
1. WWI and the Liberal Party's Decline:
- The war strained the UK’s political system, exacerbating divisions within the Liberal Party.
- Labour, advocating for workers' rights and social reform, gained momentum during this period.
2. WWI and Spanish Flu:
- The movement of troops and crowded conditions during the war helped spread the flu worldwide.
3. WWI and the Rise of Fascism:
- Economic and political instability following WWI (e.g., the Treaty of Versailles, reparations) created fertile ground for extremist ideologies.
- Veterans and nationalists sought strong leadership to "restore" national pride.
4. Spanish Flu and Society:
- The pandemic's massive death toll exacerbated post-war societal stress, although its impact on political shifts like fascism is debated.
5. Great Depression and Fascism:
- Economic collapse in the late 1920s gave populist leaders like Mussolini and Hitler the opportunity to exploit public discontent.
It's not Labour, it's certainly not the Tories (they had 14 years to do this), the Lib Dems lol
So again you're left with Reform. And this is why they might win. WE'VE TRIED EVERYTHING ELSE
There is virtually no overlap between Lee Anderson and Nigel Farage except on immigration.
This is exactly the same problem Johnson had. This new coalition may yet win an election but it won’t hold long term. It can’t.
When and if we do, I expect the entire edifice to collapse, as in Russia
I expect the same thing with race/asylum/migration/grooming - the whole chaotic unpleasant vortex of grievance and anger, whirling around just beneath the surface of British life, and getting evermore volatile. Starmer is sitll in Repression Mode, locking people up for Facebook posts. That cannot and will not be sustained forever
It is why we probably need a Reform government, as a relatively safe way of venting the steam of discontent. Better a Silly Nigel than an actual British Adolf
The actual cost of premises for us should be very cheap - we only need a concrete pad with a big steel framed shed on it. I could probably purchase agricultural land and build a suitable building for £150k, but I wouldn't have a prayer of getting suitable planning.
There has been exactly one potential site come up for sale this year*, which was maybe 25% larger than we really needed. It sold for £950k which was slightly more than I could raise. Nothing else, not even a brownfield site on which I could possibly get planning.
Over the years lot of suitable sites/buildings which used to exist have been turned into housing, because it's "brownfield" so much easier to get residential planning.
It's yet another way that the state is steadily strangling SMEs - but our moron politicians can't understand why we've no growth, even as they are the ones killing it off.
*I'm searching a fairly rural area of about 100sq miles which is the limits of how far I think I could move us before a move will cost me some of my existing staff.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles?
https://youtu.be/sH0Qda32IKM
Its not just housing that is screwed by our broken planning system, its everything.
The whole system is totally BANANAs.
And probably with the same outcome.
The only way to fix that is to build so many houses that your company can compete or find a suitable location and apply for permission - you may be surprised in what a farm can get away with to diversify..
Only one of them can be part of the big two.
Of course, they could merge. But that wouldn't be Continuity Tory.
They are American, and military, and they are trying to detect something on the ground, and it is potentially a nuclear warhead/dirty bomb: that explains why they fly at night, and why the White House is in this weird half-denial mode
https://x.com/KoryYeshua/status/1868118969149976579
See what you think
Midterm polls don't mean shit.
So there's that.
It is precisely for this reason that Moscow tries so hard to ignite more conflicts and wars in various parts of the world, fueling instability and adding to global challenges.
We are ready to assist Syria in preventing a food crisis, particularly through the humanitarian program “Grain from Ukraine.” I have instructed the government to establish food supply mechanisms in cooperation with international organizations and partners who can help.
We call on everyone worldwide to join stabilization efforts to ensure that the war—ignited over a decade ago in Syria with the involvement of Iran and Russia—can finally come to an end.
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1867967802276987253
https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2021/08/05/whats-the-difference-between-the-new-turing-scheme-and-erasmus/
"The UK government says an estimated 38,000 students are set to go abroad, of whom around 20,000 are disadvantaged students from schools, colleges and universities. Compared to the 18,300 Erasmus+ placements for British students in 2018-19, Turing is projected to enable more students to go abroad."
Instead they waffle about "not foreign adversaries", "mostly planes", "we aren't entirely sure haha" - that keeps everyone calm or at most bewildered, then hopefully they can do their job and solve the problem and no one will be the wiser
Also this was a theory punted out on TwiX by an account about a week ago which sounded highly authoritative - but it then got deleted swiftly
A handful of our more vocal right-wingers are wetting themselves with excitement at the thought that Farage is marching into No. 10. They're almost certainly going to be disappointed and they don't in any event constitute a 'consensus'.
'Centrism' has become extreme. In the UK at least it has come to mean taxes on businesses and individuals at record levels, a production-guzzling and totally unreformed state, police whose job it is to intimidate the law abiding for wrongthink whilst sneering at the suggestion they should investigate theft, a de-facto privacy law protecting the wealthy and powerful from their misdeeds being made public, green taxes putting people out of business and making the thought of manufacturing something in the UK a sick joke, green energy policies resulting in a vast transfer of wealth from the poor to corporations, a tsunami of immigration placing an intolerable strain on both the resources of the state and societal cohesion, and a set of deeply concerning social policies around gender and woke. Which of these represents moderate centrism?
Global tourism is actually enjoying something of a boom, at the moment, with many places reporting record visitors - even higher than 2019
So I'm not sure what is happening in the Canaries?
Surely the Occam’s razor answer.
Next GE is still over 3 years away - 4.5 years away if Labour are struggling.
We've had a spate of elections with populists doing well. But there's no inevitability about that. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael just did fine in the Irish election when predictions 9 months before said they'd be wiped out by the more populist Sinn Féin. The centrist Civic Coalition kicked out Law & Justice in Poland last year.
I don't know what will happen in 5 years time. But I do know that the US has a big influence on the UK's society and politics. Donald Trump is the right-wing populist par excellence. The UK electorate don't pay much attention to an Orbán or an Erdoğan, but they know who Trump is. If Trump is successful, that's great news for Reform UK. But if Trump crashes and burns, I don't see Farage coming out of it well.
So, what's the betting the Trump Presidency will be an omnishambles? I mean, introducing high tariffs, abolishing all regulation of banks, and discouraging childhood vaccination... is that a recipe for success or failure?
https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1868047352248037446
Ergo, American (hence the flashing lights - to warn others). But maybe commercially sourced, giving the Pentagon plausible deniability. And the idea they are looking for something nasty (why else fly at night?) is pretty good - that's why the White House double-speaks, they don't want to frit the folk
Are students allowed to work with Turing, or does it depend on the country?
The problem is finding one that's the right size and particularly height (we need height because we need overhead cranes inside the building).
The inflated prices resulting from the lack of supply is of course also pushing valuations for business rates up - which is a terrible tax for small businesses trying to grow - stretch yourself to take on premises which are a bit big intending to expand the business till it uses it all and you get clobbered for full whack business rates from the get-go, right at the moment your finances are tightest.
I wouldn't mind so much about conspiracy theories, but they're all shit and pretty boring.
Plus, when the authorities really want to find someone, it's generally not hard for them to do so. If they had wind of something like this there would be a whole bunch of people connected to it and the way to track it down would be to track those people.
And drones. Really, what do drones flying about in the dark do to make it possible to track something like this down?
Have people lost all semblance of critical thinking?
Or it could be something entirely local
Because Spanish tourism in toto is doing really well:
https://www.rabobank.com/knowledge/d011441269-spains-economy-thrives-on-tourism-boom-whats-next
It's one of the main reasons they have one of the healthiest GDP growth rates in the EU
What is that?
Look - I voted remain and I am sad at how things turned out, but not everything is shite now because Brexit. We have seen no difference in the ability for our UGs to go on exchange. And that’s the truth.
New Theory: NJ Drone Sightings May Be "Nuclear Sniffers" Following Elevated NYC Radiation Levels
https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1868317629322035360
The next GE is 4+ years away and it is impossible to predict it
There are sighs Reform are gaining popularity, but we have no way of knowing how the public will react once Trump is POTUS and Reform seek financial backing from Musk
As far as Starmer is concerned his poll ratings are terrible for a new PM, but also Reeves decisions including the anti jobs and growth budget has compounded the impression
A lot can happen in 4 years but there needs to be a change in economic policy in favour of businesses and I do not see it at present
Here is a vid PURPORTING to be from NJ (caveat emptor - could all be bollocks)
If this is legitimate then that looks and sounds very much like a big old drone
https://x.com/Life_In_The_USA/status/1868299780419662107
I would not be surprised if UK holidaymakers boycott the islands
This is not some exciting revelation. Crowds get hysterical. Ugandan men suddenly think their penises are being stolen. Girls in school start fainting due to a "gas leak". Nuns in France start masturbating frantically in public. Entire nations go into "lockdown" over a flu. Yes yes