I demand justice! Someone contact the historical crimes unit, this is a nation of laws.
Scientists have uncovered the aftermath of an "exceptionally violent" attack about 4,000 years ago in Somerset when at least 37 people appear to have been butchered and likely eaten.
The error is perhaps in assuming it was a peaceful time. Maybe I'm wrong but I suspect the absence of evidence of violence in early Bronze Age doesn't outweigh humans having a violent nature when threatened.
That did seem like an odd sentence to include. I mean, there were comparitively few people around at the time, so instances of mass violence would likewise be fewer and harder for evidence to have survived, so I'd be curious of the nature of analysis and if it really was more peaceful compared to others.
Or if it was just an extension of the idea that hunter gatherer societies or isolated island communities etc did not really have violence, which I think has been largely debunked but has lived on through patronising perceptions of naiive innocent native societies.
I've just been reading the original paper which is happily open access - the Graun has a linky if the BBC doesn't. The issue is the cannibalism. Very thorough, right down to cracking open bones for the marrow. Which obviously surprises the researchers (who are in any case being very careful in their arguments).
Edit: survival of evidence is discussed. Obvs dumping them down a pothole on Mendip helped preserve it!
Part of the problem is the Woke academic world-view that Cannibalism Never Happened, and where it is mentioned by older or dead researchers it is always racist/Orientalist/whateverist worldviews imposed on non-white or ancient peoples
This is a real thing, and it reaches quite mad levels. I found a serious paper, written recently, that claims the Aztecs never practised human sacrifice or torture, it was all made up by the racist Spaniards. Utterly insane
So modern academics grow up with this "all peaceful", "noble savage" perspective on any ancient or non-white society and then get very surprised when they find utterly incontrovertible proof of the opposite
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
All of that was offshored back in the 90s and until people are willing to pay £100 for a shirt it’s not coming back.
And even if it did come back it’s now been automated through productivity enhancements to the extent there are plastic box manufacturers who used to employ 80 people who now have 2 people operating forklifts at either end of the factory, pellets go in boxes get carried into a HGV
And that carefully picked example was chosen as its one of the few areas where local manufacturing is desirable because of shipping costs
There are plenty of people willing to pay £100 a shirt ducks. And the shirt making process isn't automated, there's a big human element. There is still a (niche, premium, superpremium) clothing and cloth industry in this country and there's absolutely no reason why it shouldn't be revived further - Spain and Portugal have hige clothing industries and they are a high wage economy.
So all in all you're spouting unfounded defeatist tripe, but do go on.
What is very clear to me, Nigel Farage’s chances of becoming UK Prime Minister are now over.
If he had nothing to do with Reform in the 2024 election, explained he was voting Conservative, and was allowed back into the party, that was the last route open to him. But he chose a different path.
I couldn't disagree more.
My understanding, from direct experience, is that at least some of Tory party membership is defecting to Reform.
A Farage vehicle with proper boots on the ground experience of long term Tory party members and activists is probably going to hurt both Labour and a Badenoch led Tory party.
By then Tudor is not only a Team Rector but also a Rural Dean, appointed by an earlier bishop, John Gladwin. (No idea how or why, but from a modern point of vierw it's crazy).
In 2012 he knows that Tudor has paid off a very serious allegation about a very young girl by paying £10K.
He also knows that previously Tudor has been imprisoned for similar offences, quashed on appeal, but earlier suspended from office under church law for 5 years for similar deeds.
Cottrell then does two things: He allows the Rural Dean job to continue. And in 2015 appoints Tudor an honorary canon. In context both these are inexplicable.
There may be 'res judicata' points about the wider charges, but these two actions look very like a smoking gun to me. This has got legs.
(The current Bp Chelmsford is an outside bet for Canterbury. She looks out of trouble as she took office in 2021, and Tudor was suspended from 2019).
I’ve actually met Tudor, briefly. He came to speak on racism issues to the U3a of which I’m a member. Seemed like a pleasant enough chap, and well-informed. Got the impression he wasn’t a poor man.
What is very clear to me, Nigel Farage’s chances of becoming UK Prime Minister are now over.
If he had nothing to do with Reform in the 2024 election, explained he was voting Conservative, and was allowed back into the party, that was the last route open to him. But he chose a different path.
Do I think he should be favourite to be next PM? No.
Do I think there is a path to him becoming next PM? Yes. The big question is what people will think of Labour in 2028/2029.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
All of that was offshored back in the 90s and until people are willing to pay £100 for a shirt it’s not coming back.
And even if it did come back it’s now been automated through productivity enhancements to the extent there are plastic box manufacturers who used to employ 80 people who now have 2 people operating forklifts at either end of the factory, pellets go in boxes get carried into a HGV
And that carefully picked example was chosen as its one of the few areas where local manufacturing is desirable because of shipping costs
There are plenty of people willing to pay £100 a shirt ducks. And the shirt making process isn't automated, there's a big human element. There is still a (niche, premium, superpremium) clothing and cloth industry in this country and there's absolutely no reason why it shouldn't be revived further - Spain and Portugal have hige clothing industries and they are a high wage economy.
So all in all you're spouting unfounded defeatist tripe, but do go on.
My point was that you can’t manufacture a shirt in the Uk at a price the general public is willing to pay.
Oh and the minimum wage of Spain and Portugal is not £11.43 or €14 an hour
In Spain it’s €1323 per month
Portugal €956
In the uk it’s €2230.80 based on minimum wage a 37 hour week and an exchange rate of €1.20
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
It dropped that far because of Brexit. We all presumed that the government had "taken back control" of our borders and was introducing a "strict, Australian-style points-based immigration system"
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
This is utterly delusional, but depressing that that anyone can actually believe this stuff.
I'd love a pair of bespoke shoes but the market is mostly local (your feet are measured to make a last) and limited by the price. You are literally paying for a person to hand make them slowly, their productivity won't have changed significantly in 100 years. It would probably be more profitable to dig coal by hand in Wales than attempt to compete in textiles in any meaningful scale
Its fetishising things made by toil and sweat and skill - always by someone with their arse welded to an office chair and would be horrified if one of their kids wanted to be a hairdresser or mechanic.
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
Well the net migration numbers are going to fall and it's probable that "boats" will too. Much then depends on Trump. REF's short price is because of him winning. Nigel Farage and Donald Trump are strongly correlated commodities. Anybody who thinks Trump2 is going to be a success should consider backing REF most seats at the next GE.
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
It dropped that far because of Brexit. We all presumed that the government had "taken back control" of our borders and was introducing a "strict, Australian-style points-based immigration system"
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
This seems unlikely
The most bizarre aspect of the Brexit betrayal on immigration is that while it was happening, people were acting as though Boris Johnson was some kind of authoritatian nativist.
@Nigel_Farage We now live in a country where you can assault a Member of Parliament and not go to prison.
The latest example of two-tier justice.
Of course, Farage wasn't an MP at the time, but I think the point stands.
The man who threw objects at Farage in a pre-planned attack also only got a suspended sentence. And of course Farrage has been targeted multiple times before.
I said at the time that Corbyn got assaulted and stand by it that these types of attacks on politicians for being politicians should be treated extremely seriously. It is different to normal members of the public, same as attacks on judges.
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
It dropped that far because of Brexit. We all presumed that the government had "taken back control" of our borders and was introducing a "strict, Australian-style points-based immigration system"
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
This seems unlikely
The most bizarre aspect of the Brexit betrayal on immigration is that while it was happening, people were acting as though Boris Johnson was some kind of authoritatian nativist.
Yes. It's one reason he can be ruled out as a future Tory leader, let alone PM. Too many people feel bitterly betrayed, now they know the truth. His significant political career is finished
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
It dropped that far because of Brexit. We all presumed that the government had "taken back control" of our borders and was introducing a "strict, Australian-style points-based immigration system"
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
This seems unlikely
The most bizarre aspect of the Brexit betrayal on immigration is that while it was happening, people were acting as though Boris Johnson was some kind of authoritatian nativist.
Yes. It's one reason he can be ruled out as a future Tory leader, let alone PM. Too many people feel bitterly betrayed, now they know the truth. His significant political career is finished
The 'Boriswave' of immigration now has its own Wikipedia page:
@Nigel_Farage We now live in a country where you can assault a Member of Parliament and not go to prison.
The latest example of two-tier justice.
Of course, Farage wasn't an MP at the time, but I think the point stands.
I don’t want to live in a world where throwing a milkshake at someone, as a first offence and pleading guilty, results in jail time. Whether the target is an MP or anyone else.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
Remote work has passed me by - yet I’m sat at home (up north) working for a London company managing a software project where everyone else is in India.
And that was true of my last but one contract. The one in between was 100% remote but UK based staff as the client understood that there was a sensible trade off between UK based staff who delivered and an offshore team who while cheaper on a per head basis cost the same (or more) when you looked at actual output
Edit - but there is one thing to add about that last job. No one working on it is under 40 years old, the outsourcing of IT means there are very few UK workers with the knowledge to do what I do - we’ve outsourced the foundation steps so there are very few people aged 22 doing the job that trained me into what I can now do - because those jobs are now all in India as are the 3 subsequent jobs I went on to.
Absolutely right that a formal Conservative/Reform electoral alliance will probably never work, as they would lose at least as many consequential votes as they would gain.
There are two important points that many more exciteable commentators on the right forget, or at least overlook:
1. The 2024 Labour vote is exceptionally efficiently spread, such that in the next election, even if Labour took third place in total votes, they could still get by far the most seats. The Conservatives need therefore to try to take voters from Labour most of all (and Reform are working on doing the same, though in a different set of seats).
2. Donald Trump will not be president when the next general election is likely to take place. At that point he may well be extremely unpopular and/or discredited, and have fallen out with influential allies like Elon Musk. So currying favour with the Orange One is not the priority for long-term success.
Badenoch's only option, because of the hand she has been dealt, is to play the long game. My current assumption is that the best she can probably hope for in the next election is a 2005-style result, and even that may be a tall order. Currently there is an opening for the Conservatives to get a hearing from business leaders disillusioned by the budget and various new regulations, but with everyone else they still need to 'earn the right to be heard' as many in their own party have put it.
I'm not sure you can say much about the 2029 election this far out. Until the 2024 election only in 1970 had one party had gone into an election with a majority, lost it and gave the opposition a majority instead.
The last three or four general elections have been rollercoasters. We've seen a party in government gain seats to gain a majority from a minority. We've seen (for the first time in a long time) a campaign actually matter and the opposition go from 24% to 40% over six weeks to force a hung parliament when all the polls pre calling the election suggested a Conservative landslide. We've seen a government in power nine years turn it all around, convince the electorate they were the party of 'change' and go forward in terms of votes and seats. And then we've seen the opposition put on no votes at all really, and gain double their seats and gain a majority nearly as good as Blair's.
Labour could lose not a single vote in 2029 and lose 150 seats if the Conservatives can simply take 15% off Reform. The Conservatives could lose 3% to Reform, and another 50 seats to Labour.
Honestly, we just don't know, and whilst Labour aren't doing well at the moment, anyone in early 2020 (pre Covid) who was saying 'Labour landslide in 2024) would've been laughed at. Fact of the matter now is the electorate is fickle, support for all parties is a mile wide and an inch deep, and huge seats swings is perfectly possible without any vote totals changing at all.
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
It dropped that far because of Brexit. We all presumed that the government had "taken back control" of our borders and was introducing a "strict, Australian-style points-based immigration system"
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
This seems unlikely
The most bizarre aspect of the Brexit betrayal on immigration is that while it was happening, people were acting as though Boris Johnson was some kind of authoritatian nativist.
Yes. It's one reason he can be ruled out as a future Tory leader, let alone PM. Too many people feel bitterly betrayed, now they know the truth. His significant political career is finished
The 'Boriswave' of immigration now has its own Wikipedia page:
If you want to see Wikipedia at war check the hostilities over the definition "Asian grooming scandal". For a few months this year the whole category was deleted and replaced by "Far Right Moral Panic about Grooming Gangs", and no one was allowed to edit it. The truth was changed to lies and then fortified
Now there's been a shift and it all comes under Child Sexual Abuse in the UK but the entry is a mess as editors skirmish, violently
Wikipedia is losing the battle for neutrality, and is headed for the end, I fear. The bots will take over
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
The period in question where it was polling as a lower priority is a rather politically unstable period though. It captures the Brexit negotiation period (where a lot of the public’s concern will have manifested in leaving the EU/freedom of movement) and then the Covid pandemic (where everyone had the pandemic on their minds).
True, but you don’t know the next 5 years also won’t be politically unstable.
Indeed, those who fancy a bit of right-wing populism here always say the modern era is politically unstable and thus argue that Reform UK can top the polls at the next election. But they don’t acknowledge that that instability can also mean that something very different might happen. A global recession triggered by Trump, for example, could see big changes in UK issues polling.
(Why is it Unstable but Instability? Is it the shift of stress?)
If it had been acid, she would have got a very different sentence. But it wasn’t. So she didn’t.
No. That kind of thinking creates the circumstances for it to be acid next time.
Anyone attacking any politician needs to receive a nasty sentence pour encourager les autres.
No they should get the same sentence an attack on anyone else should get. Otherwise it truly is two tier.
That’s not how the law has ever worked. If it was, we wouldn’t have a different offence for “assaulting a police officer”. If you have a profile, and perform a public function, deterrence is important.
Though I am sympathetic to your basis point and have questioned the “assaulting a police officer” offence before.
But we have an assaulting a police office offence. We don’t have an assaulting a politician offence.
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
It dropped that far because of Brexit. We all presumed that the government had "taken back control" of our borders and was introducing a "strict, Australian-style points-based immigration system"
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
This seems unlikely
The most bizarre aspect of the Brexit betrayal on immigration is that while it was happening, people were acting as though Boris Johnson was some kind of authoritatian nativist.
Yes. It's one reason he can be ruled out as a future Tory leader, let alone PM. Too many people feel bitterly betrayed, now they know the truth. His significant political career is finished
Shows two things. The contempt he had for the people who voted Boris/Brexit in 2019 and gave him his finest hour. The gullibility of those voters.
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
It dropped that far because of Brexit. We all presumed that the government had "taken back control" of our borders and was introducing a "strict, Australian-style points-based immigration system"
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
This seems unlikely
The most bizarre aspect of the Brexit betrayal on immigration is that while it was happening, people were acting as though Boris Johnson was some kind of authoritatian nativist.
Yes. It's one reason he can be ruled out as a future Tory leader, let alone PM. Too many people feel bitterly betrayed, now they know the truth. His significant political career is finished
Shows two things. The contempt he had for the people who voted Boris/Brexit in 2019 and gave him his finest hour. The gullibility of those voters.
And crucially, a third. The Westminster blob seem utterly wedded to growing GDP by immigration. And clueless that the British people might dislike this
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
This is utterly delusional, but depressing that that anyone can actually believe this stuff.
I'd love a pair of bespoke shoes but the market is mostly local (your feet are measured to make a last) and limited by the price. You are literally paying for a person to hand make them slowly, their productivity won't have changed significantly in 100 years. It would probably be more profitable to dig coal by hand in Wales than attempt to compete in textiles in any meaningful scale
Its fetishising things made by toil and sweat and skill - always by someone with their arse welded to an office chair and would be horrified if one of their kids wanted to be a hairdresser or mechanic.
What's depressing is that you and like-minded idiots liking this post dismiss the idea of high quality manufacturing playing a role in our economy when it plays a significant role in the economies of Germany, France, Italy, and the other countries that I've mentioned. Probably because you like the fact that it means we're 'releasing less carbon', despite every possibility that more net carbon will be released worldwide as a result.
Wales has a good track record in garment manufacture afaicr, it made all M&S clothes until the 90s, along with Laura Ashley. The reasons against it doing so again that you seem to think are so very insurmountable are simply the costs we as a state have chosen to heap on businesses that make things. They are choices. So your opposition to what I'm putting forward is entirely circular and based on nothing.
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
It dropped that far because of Brexit. We all presumed that the government had "taken back control" of our borders and was introducing a "strict, Australian-style points-based immigration system"
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
This seems unlikely
The most bizarre aspect of the Brexit betrayal on immigration is that while it was happening, people were acting as though Boris Johnson was some kind of authoritatian nativist.
Yes. It's one reason he can be ruled out as a future Tory leader, let alone PM. Too many people feel bitterly betrayed, now they know the truth. His significant political career is finished
Shows two things. The contempt he had for the people who voted Boris/Brexit in 2019 and gave him his finest hour. The gullibility of those voters.
The choice was him or Corbyn, also it was "delivering Brexit" or "the end of UK democracy via a 2nd vote"
Thank Fuck he won, and I speak as someone who hopes he never ever gets a political job again. The migration betrayal is unforgivable
Goodness, a thread header from TSE with which I agree. I must go and do some real work to recover.
The sanest most sensible header for weeks. Merry Christmas TSE ❤️
And great from Kemi Badenoch too. 👍🏻
But are the PB “25%+25%=50” club actually listening? Are they even capable of understanding what is being explained?
Ref+Tory is not, so clearly electorally demonstrated as not, and never will be a mutually supportive voting block. It’s a death match.
This period of UK politics is about the Reform v Tory deathmatch till one eats the other - and until that meal is over and the plates scraped into pigbin, FPTP keeps Labour in power - this period of Labour could be 20 years or more.
The Conservatives could be replaced as official opposition by the Lib Dem’s. The Conservatives could go the same place as the Liberals went 100 years ago. They need to get the policy platform credible, eye catching and watertight going into that May 2029 election.
I suppose the LibDems could, theoretically, become the official opposition if Reform and the Tories cut each others throats at the next election but it is pretty unlikely. Ultimately someone on the right will prevail as the alternative to Labour and it will almost certainly be badged "Conservative" whether Reform in part or whole is absorbed or ultimately stifled. Politics is certainly turbulent and the old party loyalties have withered but the Tories remain part of the country's political DNA. They won't be replaced by either LibDems or Reform.
I agree with your analysis in that the Conservatives are overwhelming favourites to win the death match and cannibalise Reform. Reform come into the fight as a mere none of the above protest party - they have no policies, mere soundbites like “we won’t have any migration” is as detailed as it gets, and they only broke through in votes because the Tory government was bizarrely utter rubbish, a lost plot of historical proportions.
However, I’ll run this past you for your thoughts. There is absolutely no reason why the front bench’s have to be each from left and right of politics - but one where Labour government are faced by LibDem LOTO is still that: the LibDems are a centre-right UK party (how they instinctively voted on covid lockdowns for example) are they not? Which is why the Tory heartlands could shift to them in the coming elections.
The Liberal Party under Lloyd George even brought out strong manifesto’s for government in 1920s, just as todays Tory’s could do in 2029 and 2033, only to not be listened to. Their voters had moved on, same could happen again.
And that thought, LibDems being a centre-right party so replaces another centre right party, helps explain how the electoral politics in Europe has already changed, traditional parties, of left and right, disappearing off the map, and struggling to come back. Footnotes of history. What we need to keep thinking of is we are entering an age of spectral-syncretic politics. Regardless of history, it’s what those successfully exploiting spectral-syncreticsm are now doing - taking policy direction not from traditional party ideology but from across the political spectrum just like Starmer’s government is doing, that is getting rewarded by voters.
OMG is that the guy whose "amazing release" on CNN had @Nigelb weeping with tender joy?
HHAHAHAHAHAH
Yet he still holds forth on Syria as if he's some form of credible commentor.
Also, why is this lying TV news journalist still emmployed by CNN? I believe this is not her first offense. She faked a personal rocket attack a couple of years back
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
This is utterly delusional, but depressing that that anyone can actually believe this stuff.
I'd love a pair of bespoke shoes but the market is mostly local (your feet are measured to make a last) and limited by the price. You are literally paying for a person to hand make them slowly, their productivity won't have changed significantly in 100 years. It would probably be more profitable to dig coal by hand in Wales than attempt to compete in textiles in any meaningful scale
Its fetishising things made by toil and sweat and skill - always by someone with their arse welded to an office chair and would be horrified if one of their kids wanted to be a hairdresser or mechanic.
What's depressing is that you and like-minded idiots liking this post dismiss the idea of high quality manufacturing playing a role in our economy when it plays a significant role in the economies of Germany, France, Italy, and the other countries that I've mentioned. Probably because you like the fact that it means we're 'releasing less carbon', despite every possibility that more net carbon will be released worldwide as a result.
Wales has a good track record in garment manufacture afaicr, it made all M&S clothes until the 90s, along with Laura Ashley. The reasons against it doing so again that you seem to think are so very insurmountable are simply the costs we as a state have chosen to heap on businesses that make things. They are choices. So your opposition to what I'm putting forward is entirely circular and based on nothing.
You seem to have this idea that manufacturing still looks like it did in the 1990s and it simply doesn’t.
Then a factory was a lot of workers and a few machines, now it’s 99% machines with far fewer very highly skilled people keeping the machines in order.
And factories then have a habit of moving to whichever country offers the best tax breaks - which is why you see factories close down and move to Eastern Europe or similar because that country is currently providing incentives for the next x years. When those x years are up the company looks at where to go next.
Now there are exceptions to that Nissan being the obvious one but even then every x years it goes to the government and asks for more money to remain open
Btw Nissan pays well but your £40,000 role to keep the machines going is a very skilled role with years of experience required to know the ins and outs of all the machines you need to maintain
I demand justice! Someone contact the historical crimes unit, this is a nation of laws.
Scientists have uncovered the aftermath of an "exceptionally violent" attack about 4,000 years ago in Somerset when at least 37 people appear to have been butchered and likely eaten.
The error is perhaps in assuming it was a peaceful time. Maybe I'm wrong but I suspect the absence of evidence of violence in early Bronze Age doesn't outweigh humans having a violent nature when threatened.
That did seem like an odd sentence to include. I mean, there were comparitively few people around at the time, so instances of mass violence would likewise be fewer and harder for evidence to have survived, so I'd be curious of the nature of analysis and if it really was more peaceful compared to others.
Or if it was just an extension of the idea that hunter gatherer societies or isolated island communities etc did not really have violence, which I think has been largely debunked but has lived on through patronising perceptions of naiive innocent native societies.
I've just been reading the original paper which is happily open access - the Graun has a linky if the BBC doesn't. The issue is the cannibalism. Very thorough, right down to cracking open bones for the marrow. Which obviously surprises the researchers (who are in any case being very careful in their arguments).
Edit: survival of evidence is discussed. Obvs dumping them down a pothole on Mendip helped preserve it!
Part of the problem is the Woke academic world-view that Cannibalism Never Happened, and where it is mentioned by older or dead researchers it is always racist/Orientalist/whateverist worldviews imposed on non-white or ancient peoples
This is a real thing, and it reaches quite mad levels. I found a serious paper, written recently, that claims the Aztecs never practised human sacrifice or torture, it was all made up by the racist Spaniards. Utterly insane
So modern academics grow up with this "all peaceful", "noble savage" perspective on any ancient or non-white society and then get very surprised when they find utterly incontrovertible proof of the opposite
Not dissimilar to the quotes you see in gossip mags my wife reads about, "When would you like to live in history?" and getting (serious) answers from the local hairdressers that 'they'd love to live in 1560s Britain. All those lovely dresses and ruffs. Or the 1860s during the Victorian era with every man a Gentleman and all the ladies in finery.'
No. Any answer prior to 1955 in the UK is a disaster zone compared to now, and for women you'd really need to say nothing pre 1985 (and even then).
The past was terrible. Things aren't necessarily good now, but they are a lot better than the terrible they were back then.
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
It dropped that far because of Brexit. We all presumed that the government had "taken back control" of our borders and was introducing a "strict, Australian-style points-based immigration system"
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
This seems unlikely
The most bizarre aspect of the Brexit betrayal on immigration is that while it was happening, people were acting as though Boris Johnson was some kind of authoritatian nativist.
Yes. It's one reason he can be ruled out as a future Tory leader, let alone PM. Too many people feel bitterly betrayed, now they know the truth. His significant political career is finished
Shows two things. The contempt he had for the people who voted Boris/Brexit in 2019 and gave him his finest hour. The gullibility of those voters.
And crucially, a third. The Westminster blob seem utterly wedded to growing GDP by immigration. And clueless that the British people might dislike this
But many of those same people would also moan if we closed the borders and stagnated. How to grow the economy without a regular influx of new people - there aren't any good answers to this question.
Absolutely right that a formal Conservative/Reform electoral alliance will probably never work, as they would lose at least as many consequential votes as they would gain.
There are two important points that many more exciteable commentators on the right forget, or at least overlook:
1. The 2024 Labour vote is exceptionally efficiently spread, such that in the next election, even if Labour took third place in total votes, they could still get by far the most seats. The Conservatives need therefore to try to take voters from Labour most of all (and Reform are working on doing the same, though in a different set of seats).
2. Donald Trump will not be president when the next general election is likely to take place. At that point he may well be extremely unpopular and/or discredited, and have fallen out with influential allies like Elon Musk. So currying favour with the Orange One is not the priority for long-term success.
Badenoch's only option, because of the hand she has been dealt, is to play the long game. My current assumption is that the best she can probably hope for in the next election is a 2005-style result, and even that may be a tall order. Currently there is an opening for the Conservatives to get a hearing from business leaders disillusioned by the budget and various new regulations, but with everyone else they still need to 'earn the right to be heard' as many in their own party have put it.
I'm not sure you can say much about the 2029 election this far out. Until the 2024 election only in 1970 had one party had gone into an election with a majority, lost it and gave the opposition a majority instead.
The last three or four general elections have been rollercoasters. We've seen a party in government gain seats to gain a majority from a minority. We've seen (for the first time in a long time) a campaign actually matter and the opposition go from 24% to 40% over six weeks to force a hung parliament when all the polls pre calling the election suggested a Conservative landslide. We've seen a government in power nine years turn it all around, convince the electorate they were the party of 'change' and go forward in terms of votes and seats. And then we've seen the opposition put on no votes at all really, and gain double their seats and gain a majority nearly as good as Blair's.
Labour could lose not a single vote in 2029 and lose 150 seats if the Conservatives can simply take 15% off Reform. The Conservatives could lose 3% to Reform, and another 50 seats to Labour.
Honestly, we just don't know, and whilst Labour aren't doing well at the moment, anyone in early 2020 (pre Covid) who was saying 'Labour landslide in 2024) would've been laughed at. Fact of the matter now is the electorate is fickle, support for all parties is a mile wide and an inch deep, and huge seats swings is perfectly possible without any vote totals changing at all.
This is very true and of course no-one has a crystal ball and none of us can really hope to predict the next election result this far out. In terms of my views, all I can point to are indicators. I have no idea who will win, but these are the big headlines to me:
1) Labour have not had an auspicious start to government. It doesn’t mean that they can’t win the next GE (history shows that), but they face a challenging global outlook and a leader who isn’t particularly likeable or popular at the moment and with limited scope for policy success in the next 12-18 months. This is about as far from 1997 as you can get.
2) Conversely, the Tories are proving that they cannot shake their very poor record in government and cannot articulate an alternative. That may improve in time as memories fade and the new leadership beds in, but this is far from certain. Badenoch has been uninspiring thus far.
3) There doesn’t appear to be an alternative in either Labour or the Tories who can ride to the rescue. Streeting is maybe an early candidate, but intensely distrusted by some in the party.
Ergo:
4) the idea that an alternative to the big 2 parties might do well in the coming years/months is very plausible, and hence why I think Reform and Farage pose significant danger to both Labour and the Tories.
So I don’t profess to be predicting the outcome of the next GE but the fundamentals feel to me to favour Reform’s march forward, certainly in the short to medium term. That is all I’m really willing to say at this time.
Reading an interesting World Bank report on water and energy.
Saudi Arabia's water consumption has risen since 1980 by a factor of fifteen.
We think of Saudi as a massive producer of the world's energy. However, it "already burns a third of its oil production just to meet domestic water [desalination] and energy needs."
That's a staggering statistic, but I'm not 100% sure it's true.
Firstly, most water desalination plants are natural gas powered. So, while it might be correct on a "calorie of energy basis" (i.e. Saudi Arabia uses energy equivalent to a third of its oil production in water desalination, rather than it using a third of its oil production).
Secondly, as far as I'm aware, essentially all the desalination plants are combined power and desalination. So, it's a little misleading to claim all the power is used for desalination, when the energy is being expended to produce electricity too - and desalination is essentially a byproduct of that water heating process. (Edit to add: ah, your quote includes this.)
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when fLondon got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
It's weird because, on the whole, people in the northeast pay much less tax because they are either not in work or on low salaries. Average GVA per capita (2017):
NE £20,100 London £48,900
The question is why, given this difference, don't more firms take advantage of the cheap labour, land and buildings up north? Education, infrastructure, perhaps? I also note that high-tax Scotland has the highest GVA per head anywhere outside the SE of England.
Critical mass of skill set - so your options are
London pay market rate and you can recruit Elsewhere - find a trainee and train them up.
Worse elsewhere the number of possible recruits will be lower because London has a 15 million within a 1 hour commute of London, Newcastle 1/2 million or so
It also works both ways: young people with skills are drawn to places where there are jobs for their skillset.
I demand justice! Someone contact the historical crimes unit, this is a nation of laws.
Scientists have uncovered the aftermath of an "exceptionally violent" attack about 4,000 years ago in Somerset when at least 37 people appear to have been butchered and likely eaten.
The error is perhaps in assuming it was a peaceful time. Maybe I'm wrong but I suspect the absence of evidence of violence in early Bronze Age doesn't outweigh humans having a violent nature when threatened.
That did seem like an odd sentence to include. I mean, there were comparitively few people around at the time, so instances of mass violence would likewise be fewer and harder for evidence to have survived, so I'd be curious of the nature of analysis and if it really was more peaceful compared to others.
Or if it was just an extension of the idea that hunter gatherer societies or isolated island communities etc did not really have violence, which I think has been largely debunked but has lived on through patronising perceptions of naiive innocent native societies.
I've just been reading the original paper which is happily open access - the Graun has a linky if the BBC doesn't. The issue is the cannibalism. Very thorough, right down to cracking open bones for the marrow. Which obviously surprises the researchers (who are in any case being very careful in their arguments).
Edit: survival of evidence is discussed. Obvs dumping them down a pothole on Mendip helped preserve it!
Part of the problem is the Woke academic world-view that Cannibalism Never Happened, and where it is mentioned by older or dead researchers it is always racist/Orientalist/whateverist worldviews imposed on non-white or ancient peoples
This is a real thing, and it reaches quite mad levels. I found a serious paper, written recently, that claims the Aztecs never practised human sacrifice or torture, it was all made up by the racist Spaniards. Utterly insane
So modern academics grow up with this "all peaceful", "noble savage" perspective on any ancient or non-white society and then get very surprised when they find utterly incontrovertible proof of the opposite
The myth of the Noble Savage is both very stupid, and extremely persistent.
Ethnic cleansing and chattel slavery don’t become nicer when practised by non- Europeans.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
This is utterly delusional, but depressing that that anyone can actually believe this stuff.
I'd love a pair of bespoke shoes but the market is mostly local (your feet are measured to make a last) and limited by the price. You are literally paying for a person to hand make them slowly, their productivity won't have changed significantly in 100 years. It would probably be more profitable to dig coal by hand in Wales than attempt to compete in textiles in any meaningful scale
Its fetishising things made by toil and sweat and skill - always by someone with their arse welded to an office chair and would be horrified if one of their kids wanted to be a hairdresser or mechanic.
What's depressing is that you and like-minded idiots liking this post dismiss the idea of high quality manufacturing playing a role in our economy when it plays a significant role in the economies of Germany, France, Italy, and the other countries that I've mentioned. Probably because you like the fact that it means we're 'releasing less carbon', despite every possibility that more net carbon will be released worldwide as a result.
Wales has a good track record in garment manufacture afaicr, it made all M&S clothes until the 90s, along with Laura Ashley. The reasons against it doing so again that you seem to think are so very insurmountable are simply the costs we as a state have chosen to heap on businesses that make things. They are choices. So your opposition to what I'm putting forward is entirely circular and based on nothing.
You seem to have this idea that manufacturing still looks like it did in the 1990s and it simply doesn’t.
Then a factory was a lot of workers and a few machines, now it’s 99% machines with far fewer very highly skilled people keeping the machines in order.
And factories then have a habit of moving to whichever country offers the best tax breaks - which is why you see factories close down and move to Eastern Europe or similar because that country is currently providing incentives for the next x years. When those x years are up the company looks at where to go next.
Now there are exceptions to that Nissan being the obvious one but even then every x years it goes to the government and asks for more money to remain open
Btw Nissan pays well but your £40,000 role to keep the machines going is a very skilled role with years of experience required to know the ins and outs of all the machines you need to maintain
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
This is utterly delusional, but depressing that that anyone can actually believe this stuff.
I'd love a pair of bespoke shoes but the market is mostly local (your feet are measured to make a last) and limited by the price. You are literally paying for a person to hand make them slowly, their productivity won't have changed significantly in 100 years. It would probably be more profitable to dig coal by hand in Wales than attempt to compete in textiles in any meaningful scale
Its fetishising things made by toil and sweat and skill - always by someone with their arse welded to an office chair and would be horrified if one of their kids wanted to be a hairdresser or mechanic.
What's depressing is that you and like-minded idiots liking this post dismiss the idea of high quality manufacturing playing a role in our economy when it plays a significant role in the economies of Germany, France, Italy, and the other countries that I've mentioned. Probably because you like the fact that it means we're 'releasing less carbon', despite every possibility that more net carbon will be released worldwide as a result.
Wales has a good track record in garment manufacture afaicr, it made all M&S clothes until the 90s, along with Laura Ashley. The reasons against it doing so again that you seem to think are so very insurmountable are simply the costs we as a state have chosen to heap on businesses that make things. They are choices. So your opposition to what I'm putting forward is entirely circular and based on nothing.
You seem to have this idea that manufacturing still looks like it did in the 1990s and it simply doesn’t.
Then a factory was a lot of workers and a few machines, now it’s 99% machines with far fewer very highly skilled people keeping the machines in order.
And factories then have a habit of moving to whichever country offers the best tax breaks - which is why you see factories close down and move to Eastern Europe or similar because that country is currently providing incentives for the next x years. When those x years are up the company looks at where to go next.
Now there are exceptions to that Nissan being the obvious one but even then every x years it goes to the government and asks for more money to remain open
Btw Nissan pays well but your £40,000 role to keep the machines going is a very skilled role with years of experience required to know the ins and outs of all the machines you need to maintain
It is the same worldwide - very much a human process assisted by machine, and not a huge amount different to the factories we have mothballed.
It isn't the same as making a plastic box. So I rather think it is you who needs to broaden your knowledge not me.
Depends on the sector, surely.
A T-Shirt plant (and clothing is usually the first stage in a country's industrial development) has changed remarkably little in the last 100 years. Sure, everything is now electric and moves that little bit quicker. But there's still a ton of manual labour involved.
On the other hand, a modern car factory is completely unrecognizable.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
This is utterly delusional, but depressing that that anyone can actually believe this stuff.
I'd love a pair of bespoke shoes but the market is mostly local (your feet are measured to make a last) and limited by the price. You are literally paying for a person to hand make them slowly, their productivity won't have changed significantly in 100 years. It would probably be more profitable to dig coal by hand in Wales than attempt to compete in textiles in any meaningful scale
Its fetishising things made by toil and sweat and skill - always by someone with their arse welded to an office chair and would be horrified if one of their kids wanted to be a hairdresser or mechanic.
What's depressing is that you and like-minded idiots liking this post dismiss the idea of high quality manufacturing playing a role in our economy when it plays a significant role in the economies of Germany, France, Italy, and the other countries that I've mentioned. Probably because you like the fact that it means we're 'releasing less carbon', despite every possibility that more net carbon will be released worldwide as a result.
Wales has a good track record in garment manufacture afaicr, it made all M&S clothes until the 90s, along with Laura Ashley. The reasons against it doing so again that you seem to think are so very insurmountable are simply the costs we as a state have chosen to heap on businesses that make things. They are choices. So your opposition to what I'm putting forward is entirely circular and based on nothing.
You seem to have this idea that manufacturing still looks like it did in the 1990s and it simply doesn’t.
Then a factory was a lot of workers and a few machines, now it’s 99% machines with far fewer very highly skilled people keeping the machines in order.
And factories then have a habit of moving to whichever country offers the best tax breaks - which is why you see factories close down and move to Eastern Europe or similar because that country is currently providing incentives for the next x years. When those x years are up the company looks at where to go next.
Now there are exceptions to that Nissan being the obvious one but even then every x years it goes to the government and asks for more money to remain open
Btw Nissan pays well but your £40,000 role to keep the machines going is a very skilled role with years of experience required to know the ins and outs of all the machines you need to maintain
It is the same worldwide - very much a human process assisted by machine, and not a huge amount different to the factories we have mothballed.
It isn't the same as making a plastic box. So I rather think it is you who needs to broaden your knowledge not me.
Depends on the sector, surely.
A T-Shirt plant (and clothing is usually stage one a country's industrial development) has changed remarkably little in the last 100 years. Sure, everything is now electric and moves that little bit quicker. But there's still a ton of manual labour involved.
On the other hand, a modern car factory is completely unrecognizable.
Absolutely. And I specifically mentioned garments, boots, and Birmingham glass (yes a factory process but some artisinal). All very different from making plastic boxes, or indeed cars - though I think that could come back too.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when fLondon got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
It's weird because, on the whole, people in the northeast pay much less tax because they are either not in work or on low salaries. Average GVA per capita (2017):
NE £20,100 London £48,900
The question is why, given this difference, don't more firms take advantage of the cheap labour, land and buildings up north? Education, infrastructure, perhaps? I also note that high-tax Scotland has the highest GVA per head anywhere outside the SE of England.
Critical mass of skill set - so your options are
London pay market rate and you can recruit Elsewhere - find a trainee and train them up.
Worse elsewhere the number of possible recruits will be lower because London has a 15 million within a 1 hour commute of London, Newcastle 1/2 million or so
It also works both ways: young people with skills are drawn to places where there are jobs for their skillset.
True, although I’m hearing that an awful lot of people are discovering that they can’t afford to remain in London so end up giving up and going home - the minimum wage doesn’t go far when you need to find £800+ in rent for a small room.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
This is utterly delusional, but depressing that that anyone can actually believe this stuff.
I'd love a pair of bespoke shoes but the market is mostly local (your feet are measured to make a last) and limited by the price. You are literally paying for a person to hand make them slowly, their productivity won't have changed significantly in 100 years. It would probably be more profitable to dig coal by hand in Wales than attempt to compete in textiles in any meaningful scale
Its fetishising things made by toil and sweat and skill - always by someone with their arse welded to an office chair and would be horrified if one of their kids wanted to be a hairdresser or mechanic.
What's depressing is that you and like-minded idiots liking this post dismiss the idea of high quality manufacturing playing a role in our economy when it plays a significant role in the economies of Germany, France, Italy, and the other countries that I've mentioned. Probably because you like the fact that it means we're 'releasing less carbon', despite every possibility that more net carbon will be released worldwide as a result.
Wales has a good track record in garment manufacture afaicr, it made all M&S clothes until the 90s, along with Laura Ashley. The reasons against it doing so again that you seem to think are so very insurmountable are simply the costs we as a state have chosen to heap on businesses that make things. They are choices. So your opposition to what I'm putting forward is entirely circular and based on nothing.
You seem to have this idea that manufacturing still looks like it did in the 1990s and it simply doesn’t.
Then a factory was a lot of workers and a few machines, now it’s 99% machines with far fewer very highly skilled people keeping the machines in order.
And factories then have a habit of moving to whichever country offers the best tax breaks - which is why you see factories close down and move to Eastern Europe or similar because that country is currently providing incentives for the next x years. When those x years are up the company looks at where to go next.
Now there are exceptions to that Nissan being the obvious one but even then every x years it goes to the government and asks for more money to remain open
Btw Nissan pays well but your £40,000 role to keep the machines going is a very skilled role with years of experience required to know the ins and outs of all the machines you need to maintain
It is the same worldwide - very much a human process assisted by machine, and not a huge amount different to the factories we have mothballed.
It isn't the same as making a plastic box. So I rather think it is you who needs to broaden your knowledge not me.
Depends on the sector, surely.
A T-Shirt plant (and clothing is usually the first stage in a country's industrial development) has changed remarkably little in the last 100 years. Sure, everything is now electric and moves that little bit quicker. But there's still a ton of manual labour involved.
On the other hand, a modern car factory is completely unrecognizable.
Which is even more reason why it’s never going to come back to the Uk because a t-shirt requires 1 hour of manual Labour to make (an exaggeration I know but it makes things easier) you are going to manufacture it in a place where Labour is as cheap as possible instead of the Uk where the labor cost is £15.
I started off by saying that the reason why clothes are not made in the UK is because people are not willing to spend £100 on a shirt and to avoid those prices companies shift manufacturing to wherever is cheapest - and that isn’t going to be the UK.
And if the UK does enter the position where it makes sense to manufacture Labour intensive products here we have serious problems
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when fLondon got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
It's weird because, on the whole, people in the northeast pay much less tax because they are either not in work or on low salaries. Average GVA per capita (2017):
NE £20,100 London £48,900
The question is why, given this difference, don't more firms take advantage of the cheap labour, land and buildings up north? Education, infrastructure, perhaps? I also note that high-tax Scotland has the highest GVA per head anywhere outside the SE of England.
Critical mass of skill set - so your options are
London pay market rate and you can recruit Elsewhere - find a trainee and train them up.
Worse elsewhere the number of possible recruits will be lower because London has a 15 million within a 1 hour commute of London, Newcastle 1/2 million or so
It also works both ways: young people with skills are drawn to places where there are jobs for their skillset.
Or, with the advent of WFH, to places which aren't shitholes and where there are other young people to engage with.
My favourite example of this was Paisley rejecting a load of funding for a revamped public realm because they thought it would put people off going. Spectacular lack of self-awareness. Paisley.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
This is utterly delusional, but depressing that that anyone can actually believe this stuff.
I'd love a pair of bespoke shoes but the market is mostly local (your feet are measured to make a last) and limited by the price. You are literally paying for a person to hand make them slowly, their productivity won't have changed significantly in 100 years. It would probably be more profitable to dig coal by hand in Wales than attempt to compete in textiles in any meaningful scale
Its fetishising things made by toil and sweat and skill - always by someone with their arse welded to an office chair and would be horrified if one of their kids wanted to be a hairdresser or mechanic.
What's depressing is that you and like-minded idiots liking this post dismiss the idea of high quality manufacturing playing a role in our economy when it plays a significant role in the economies of Germany, France, Italy, and the other countries that I've mentioned. Probably because you like the fact that it means we're 'releasing less carbon', despite every possibility that more net carbon will be released worldwide as a result.
Wales has a good track record in garment manufacture afaicr, it made all M&S clothes until the 90s, along with Laura Ashley. The reasons against it doing so again that you seem to think are so very insurmountable are simply the costs we as a state have chosen to heap on businesses that make things. They are choices. So your opposition to what I'm putting forward is entirely circular and based on nothing.
You seem to have this idea that manufacturing still looks like it did in the 1990s and it simply doesn’t.
Then a factory was a lot of workers and a few machines, now it’s 99% machines with far fewer very highly skilled people keeping the machines in order.
And factories then have a habit of moving to whichever country offers the best tax breaks - which is why you see factories close down and move to Eastern Europe or similar because that country is currently providing incentives for the next x years. When those x years are up the company looks at where to go next.
Now there are exceptions to that Nissan being the obvious one but even then every x years it goes to the government and asks for more money to remain open
Btw Nissan pays well but your £40,000 role to keep the machines going is a very skilled role with years of experience required to know the ins and outs of all the machines you need to maintain
It is the same worldwide - very much a human process assisted by machine, and not a huge amount different to the factories we have mothballed.
It isn't the same as making a plastic box. So I rather think it is you who needs to broaden your knowledge not me.
Depends on the sector, surely.
A T-Shirt plant (and clothing is usually the first stage in a country's industrial development) has changed remarkably little in the last 100 years. Sure, everything is now electric and moves that little bit quicker. But there's still a ton of manual labour involved.
On the other hand, a modern car factory is completely unrecognizable.
Isn't the question then... is it really in the UK's interests to be doing those jobs in the UK? We already have an economy with too many low value-adding jobs so we need a shedload of immigration to stop the system falling over.
If we do what the rest of the world does, we end up with their living standards, don't we? And in general, that would be trading down.
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
It dropped that far because of Brexit. We all presumed that the government had "taken back control" of our borders and was introducing a "strict, Australian-style points-based immigration system"
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
This seems unlikely
The most bizarre aspect of the Brexit betrayal on immigration is that while it was happening, people were acting as though Boris Johnson was some kind of authoritatian nativist.
Yes. It's one reason he can be ruled out as a future Tory leader, let alone PM. Too many people feel bitterly betrayed, now they know the truth. His significant political career is finished
Shows two things. The contempt he had for the people who voted Boris/Brexit in 2019 and gave him his finest hour. The gullibility of those voters.
The choice was him or Corbyn, also it was "delivering Brexit" or "the end of UK democracy via a 2nd vote"
Thank Fuck he won, and I speak as someone who hopes he never ever gets a political job again. The migration betrayal is unforgivable
A second vote immediately might have been betraying democracy although we should remember Nigel Farage called for one when he thought he'd lost. A second vote on the actual agreement rather than simply the principle would have been more democratic than what we got.
And what betrayal? Boris was open about wanting more immigration.
I've met him, he was known as Christopher Yang then.
H6 was stopped at a port in November 2021 when the letter from Hampshire was found on his personal electronic devices that listed "main talking points" for a telephone call with Prince Andrew, Duke of York. The letter stated "IMPORTANT: Manage expectations. Really important to not set 'too high' expectations - he is in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything....
Also found on this device...."met with man involved with influential political blog today, terrible shoes, terrible....think he might have been on to me, kept asking strange questions about if I like certain types of pizza and something called a Radiohead."
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
This is utterly delusional, but depressing that that anyone can actually believe this stuff.
I'd love a pair of bespoke shoes but the market is mostly local (your feet are measured to make a last) and limited by the price. You are literally paying for a person to hand make them slowly, their productivity won't have changed significantly in 100 years. It would probably be more profitable to dig coal by hand in Wales than attempt to compete in textiles in any meaningful scale
Its fetishising things made by toil and sweat and skill - always by someone with their arse welded to an office chair and would be horrified if one of their kids wanted to be a hairdresser or mechanic.
What's depressing is that you and like-minded idiots liking this post dismiss the idea of high quality manufacturing playing a role in our economy when it plays a significant role in the economies of Germany, France, Italy, and the other countries that I've mentioned. Probably because you like the fact that it means we're 'releasing less carbon', despite every possibility that more net carbon will be released worldwide as a result.
Wales has a good track record in garment manufacture afaicr, it made all M&S clothes until the 90s, along with Laura Ashley. The reasons against it doing so again that you seem to think are so very insurmountable are simply the costs we as a state have chosen to heap on businesses that make things. They are choices. So your opposition to what I'm putting forward is entirely circular and based on nothing.
You seem to have this idea that manufacturing still looks like it did in the 1990s and it simply doesn’t.
Then a factory was a lot of workers and a few machines, now it’s 99% machines with far fewer very highly skilled people keeping the machines in order.
And factories then have a habit of moving to whichever country offers the best tax breaks - which is why you see factories close down and move to Eastern Europe or similar because that country is currently providing incentives for the next x years. When those x years are up the company looks at where to go next.
Now there are exceptions to that Nissan being the obvious one but even then every x years it goes to the government and asks for more money to remain open
Btw Nissan pays well but your £40,000 role to keep the machines going is a very skilled role with years of experience required to know the ins and outs of all the machines you need to maintain
It is the same worldwide - very much a human process assisted by machine, and not a huge amount different to the factories we have mothballed.
It isn't the same as making a plastic box. So I rather think it is you who needs to broaden your knowledge not me.
Depends on the sector, surely.
A T-Shirt plant (and clothing is usually the first stage in a country's industrial development) has changed remarkably little in the last 100 years. Sure, everything is now electric and moves that little bit quicker. But there's still a ton of manual labour involved.
On the other hand, a modern car factory is completely unrecognizable.
Isn't the question then... is it really in the UK's interests to be doing those jobs in the UK? We already have an economy with too many low value-adding jobs so we need a shedload of immigration to stop the system falling over.
If we do what the rest of the world does, we end up with their living standards, don't we? And in general, that would be trading down.
For premium products you can - Solovair charge twice what Dr Martens do and you get a shoe made in Northampton (well Wollaston).
Likewise Community Clothing sells UK made clothes but it’s not cheap and that’s after they’ve bypassed high street markups by selling direct
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Yep. Millipede strikes again.
This is why we privatised industries away from nationalisation, because the State proved such a poor predictor of investible propositions for the future.
Reminds me a bit British Railways massively investing in massive marshalling yards in the early 1950s just years before containerisation and lorries rendered most wagons redundant, except bulk heavy cargo.
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Yep. Millipede strikes again.
This is why we privatised industries away from nationalisation, because the State proved such a poor predictor of investible propositions for the future.
Reminds me a bit British Railways massively investing in massive marshalling yards in the early 1950s just years before containerisation and lorries rendered most wagons redundant, except bulk heavy cargo.
Indeed: the record of the State (and the British State in particular) picking winners is pretty atrocious.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
Oi! I am a professional data analyst, have some respect, please.
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Yep. Millipede strikes again.
This is why we privatised industries away from nationalisation, because the State proved such a poor predictor of investible propositions for the future.
Reminds me a bit British Railways massively investing in massive marshalling yards in the early 1950s just years before containerisation and lorries rendered most wagons redundant, except bulk heavy cargo.
Indeed: the record of the State (and the British State in particular) picking winners is pretty atrocious.
Yes, for years the GPO had a legal monopoly on satellite broadcasting but didn't build any satellites.
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Yep. Millipede strikes again.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that some in the sector said Ed Miliband has the competence of Chris Grayling and the ideological entrenchment of Jeremy Corbyn.
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Yep. Millipede strikes again.
This is why we privatised industries away from nationalisation, because the State proved such a poor predictor of investible propositions for the future.
Reminds me a bit British Railways massively investing in massive marshalling yards in the early 1950s just years before containerisation and lorries rendered most wagons redundant, except bulk heavy cargo.
The public/private question isn’t always as simple as that. The US government as a customer has been the backbone of many of that country’s world beating industries. So has the CCP’s patronage of some Chinese sectors, notably solar.
CC may or may not be a winning bet, but it’s the sort of thing that would only get off the ground as a successful industry with Government dollars to seed it.
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Yep. Millipede strikes again.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that some in the sector said Ed Miliband has the competence of Chris Grayling and the ideological entrenchment of Jeremy Corbyn.
I think you are insulting both Grayling and Corbyn with that comparison.
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Yep. Millipede strikes again.
This is why we privatised industries away from nationalisation, because the State proved such a poor predictor of investible propositions for the future.
Reminds me a bit British Railways massively investing in massive marshalling yards in the early 1950s just years before containerisation and lorries rendered most wagons redundant, except bulk heavy cargo.
Indeed: the record of the State (and the British State in particular) picking winners is pretty atrocious.
We’ve not really tried in recent decades mind. Except in pharma where government has had a vital role in a lot of cases.
I've met him, he was known as Christopher Yang then.
H6 was stopped at a port in November 2021 when the letter from Hampshire was found on his personal electronic devices that listed "main talking points" for a telephone call with Prince Andrew, Duke of York. The letter stated "IMPORTANT: Manage expectations. Really important to not set 'too high' expectations - he is in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything....
Also found on this device...."met with man involved with influential political blog today, terrible shoes, terrible....think he might have been on to me, kept asking strange questions about if I like certain types of pizza and something called a Radiohead."
I also asked him this question which is well known for catching out foreign spies.
Yang Tengbo, the alleged Chinese spy banned from the UK and linked to the Duke of York, said he has “done nothing wrong or unlawful”.
He said in a statement: “I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.
“This is why I applied for a review of the Home Office decision in the first place, and why I am seeking permission to appeal the SIAC decision. It is also why an order extending my anonymity up to the point of determination of the appeal process was granted.”
Yang Tengbo, the alleged Chinese spy banned from the UK and linked to the Duke of York, said he has “done nothing wrong or unlawful”.
He said in a statement: “I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.
“This is why I applied for a review of the Home Office decision in the first place, and why I am seeking permission to appeal the SIAC decision. It is also why an order extending my anonymity up to the point of determination of the appeal process was granted.”
If it had been acid, she would have got a very different sentence. But it wasn’t. So she didn’t.
No. That kind of thinking creates the circumstances for it to be acid next time.
Anyone attacking any politician needs to receive a nasty sentence pour encourager les autres.
When I was at school, another boy once tipped a bowl of ice cream over my head. The police were not involved. Should they have been?
Or does the victim being a politician make all the difference? That sounds like two tiers to me.
For family reasons, I went to schools abroad with a British basis and a US basis. Bullying was rife at the former and unknown at the latter. I've sometimes wondered why - the mix of families involved was similar (diplomats, business people, etc.), so there was apparently something in the British culture which encouraged bullying.
I'd favour fairly mild penalties for the ice cream assault, not necessarily involving the overstretched police but not excused as being only kids. Suspension for a week, something like that. If it happened to a politician, I'd expect the assailant to lose their job or at least get a last-chance warning. A suspended prison sentence sounds about right.
I've met him, he was known as Christopher Yang then.
H6 was stopped at a port in November 2021 when the letter from Hampshire was found on his personal electronic devices that listed "main talking points" for a telephone call with Prince Andrew, Duke of York. The letter stated "IMPORTANT: Manage expectations. Really important to not set 'too high' expectations - he is in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything....
Also found on this device...."met with man involved with influential political blog today, terrible shoes, terrible....think he might have been on to me, kept asking strange questions about if I like certain types of pizza and something called a Radiohead."
I also asked him this question which is well known for catching out foreign spies.
Yang Tengbo, the alleged Chinese spy banned from the UK and linked to the Duke of York, said he has “done nothing wrong or unlawful”.
He said in a statement: “I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.
“This is why I applied for a review of the Home Office decision in the first place, and why I am seeking permission to appeal the SIAC decision. It is also why an order extending my anonymity up to the point of determination of the appeal process was granted.”
If it had been acid, she would have got a very different sentence. But it wasn’t. So she didn’t.
No. That kind of thinking creates the circumstances for it to be acid next time.
Anyone attacking any politician needs to receive a nasty sentence pour encourager les autres.
When I was at school, another boy once tipped a bowl of ice cream over my head. The police were not involved. Should they have been?
Or does the victim being a politician make all the difference? That sounds like two tiers to me.
For family reasons, I went to schools abroad with a British basis and a US basis. Bullying was rife at the former and unknown at the latter. I've sometimes wondered why - the mix of families involved was similar (diplomats, business people, etc.), so there was apparently something in the British culture which encouraged bullying.
I'd favour fairly mild penalties for the ice cream assault, not necessarily involving the overstretched police but not excused as being only kids. Suspension for a week, something like that. If it happened to a politician, I'd expect the assailant to lose their job or at least get a last-chance warning. A suspended prison sentence sounds about right.
There has been a long history of people throwing harmless things at politicians in this country. Normally eggs. I don't approve of it, but I also think that saying "ooooo, it could have been acid" is absurd. It wasn't. It was a milkshake. An egg does not equate to a Molotov cocktail, and a milkshake does not equate to acid. Goodness me, Faragists are now becoming as snowflakey as lefties!
Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son will announce a $100 billion investment in the U.S. over the next four years during a Monday visit to President-elect Donald Trump’s residence Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC’s Sara Eisen.
The billionaire investor and founder of the Japanese tech-investing firm will also promise in the joint announcement with Trump to create 100,000 jobs focused on artificial intelligence and related infrastructure, the sources said. The money will be deployed before the end of Trump’s term.
Yang Tengbo, the alleged Chinese spy banned from the UK and linked to the Duke of York, said he has “done nothing wrong or unlawful”.
He said in a statement: “I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.
“This is why I applied for a review of the Home Office decision in the first place, and why I am seeking permission to appeal the SIAC decision. It is also why an order extending my anonymity up to the point of determination of the appeal process was granted.”
Yang Tengbo, the alleged Chinese spy banned from the UK and linked to the Duke of York, said he has “done nothing wrong or unlawful”.
He said in a statement: “I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.
“This is why I applied for a review of the Home Office decision in the first place, and why I am seeking permission to appeal the SIAC decision. It is also why an order extending my anonymity up to the point of determination of the appeal process was granted.”
Suspiciously good English.
He has been here for over 20 years.
And after all, the chief examiner for AQA English Language has lived here since birth and still can't speak it properly.
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Yep. Millipede strikes again.
This is why we privatised industries away from nationalisation, because the State proved such a poor predictor of investible propositions for the future.
Reminds me a bit British Railways massively investing in massive marshalling yards in the early 1950s just years before containerisation and lorries rendered most wagons redundant, except bulk heavy cargo.
Indeed: the record of the State (and the British State in particular) picking winners is pretty atrocious.
We’ve not really tried in recent decades mind. Except in pharma where government has had a vital role in a lot of cases.
When I was younger and naive, I tried to talk to politicians about tech investment, DARPA style.
They all thought it was a good idea. Just that it needed to be adjusted for massive investment in a single method/tech. The idea of running a half dozen projects/experiments in parallel and picking two which worked horrified them.
On topic: Nigel Farage is reliant on people being het up about immigration. He could struggle if that issue cools down. Anger about immigration is his Rodri.
Genuine question, how do you see that issue cooling down in the next 5 years? I simply cannot.
YouGov poll in November showed that 54% of Britons who voted leave, including 59% of voters in “red wall seats”, said, in exchange for single market access, they would now accept full free movement for EU and UK citizens to travel, live and work across borders.
I think the issue for most people isn't immigration per se but uncontrolled immigration (eg small boats) and (for the racists) mass immigration from more colourful countries than the EU - which is all down to the Tories and Brexit.
YouGov have issues polling data on their website. Immigration being one of the most important issues has ranged from 71% (Sep 2015) to 14% (Apr 2020). If it can drop 56% in that 5-year period, I see no reason to presume that it will necessarily be an issue at the next general election.
It dropped that far because of Brexit. We all presumed that the government had "taken back control" of our borders and was introducing a "strict, Australian-style points-based immigration system"
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
This seems unlikely
The most bizarre aspect of the Brexit betrayal on immigration is that while it was happening, people were acting as though Boris Johnson was some kind of authoritatian nativist.
Yes. It's one reason he can be ruled out as a future Tory leader, let alone PM. Too many people feel bitterly betrayed, now they know the truth. His significant political career is finished
Shows two things. The contempt he had for the people who voted Boris/Brexit in 2019 and gave him his finest hour. The gullibility of those voters.
Some of us recognised long ago that Boris Johnson was an incompetent opportunist. It is good that @Leon is at last catching up.
HYUFD, on the other hand, still has a shrine to his hero in his box room where a faux candle continues to keep alight the fake flame.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
Oi! I am a professional data analyst, have some respect, please.
Not from Romford I hope (remembering a tube advert I saw last week on a train from Romford).
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Yep. Millipede strikes again.
This is why we privatised industries away from nationalisation, because the State proved such a poor predictor of investible propositions for the future.
Reminds me a bit British Railways massively investing in massive marshalling yards in the early 1950s just years before containerisation and lorries rendered most wagons redundant, except bulk heavy cargo.
Indeed: the record of the State (and the British State in particular) picking winners is pretty atrocious.
We’ve not really tried in recent decades mind. Except in pharma where government has had a vital role in a lot of cases.
When I was younger and naive, I tried to talk to politicians about tech investment, DARPA style.
They all thought it was a good idea. Just that it needed to be adjusted for massive investment in a single method/tech. The idea of running a half dozen projects/experiments in parallel and picking two which worked horrified them.
Linked this earlier, again very similar suggestion given.
Yang Tengbo, the alleged Chinese spy banned from the UK and linked to the Duke of York, said he has “done nothing wrong or unlawful”.
He said in a statement: “I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.
“This is why I applied for a review of the Home Office decision in the first place, and why I am seeking permission to appeal the SIAC decision. It is also why an order extending my anonymity up to the point of determination of the appeal process was granted.”
Suspiciously good English.
He has been here for over 20 years.
And after all, the chief examiner for AQA English Language has lived here since birth and still can't speak it properly.
If it had been acid, she would have got a very different sentence. But it wasn’t. So she didn’t.
No. That kind of thinking creates the circumstances for it to be acid next time.
Anyone attacking any politician needs to receive a nasty sentence pour encourager les autres.
When I was at school, another boy once tipped a bowl of ice cream over my head. The police were not involved. Should they have been?
Or does the victim being a politician make all the difference? That sounds like two tiers to me.
For family reasons, I went to schools abroad with a British basis and a US basis. Bullying was rife at the former and unknown at the latter. I've sometimes wondered why - the mix of families involved was similar (diplomats, business people, etc.), so there was apparently something in the British culture which encouraged bullying.
I'd favour fairly mild penalties for the ice cream assault, not necessarily involving the overstretched police but not excused as being only kids. Suspension for a week, something like that. If it happened to a politician, I'd expect the assailant to lose their job or at least get a last-chance warning. A suspended prison sentence sounds about right.
That's interesting, from watching US movies you'd think that bullying was extremely widespread in US schools! I think that bullying is more common in some types of school than in others. Our children's comprehensive school seems to do a good job anyway, our kids don't report any problems.
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
According to the GOV'Ts OWN NUMBERS we emit 486 million tonnes of Co2e per year.
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Yep. Millipede strikes again.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that some in the sector said Ed Miliband has the competence of Chris Grayling and the ideological entrenchment of Jeremy Corbyn.
I don't think he is actually a real person. I know many people have said how he bears an uncanny resemblance to a Wallace and Gromit puppet, but I am now convinced that he is another creation of Nick Park, but devoid of humour and his weird mouth movements are in reality controlled by Jeremy Corbyn or more likely (as Corbyn isn't clever enough), Mick Lynch.
If it had been acid, she would have got a very different sentence. But it wasn’t. So she didn’t.
No. That kind of thinking creates the circumstances for it to be acid next time.
Anyone attacking any politician needs to receive a nasty sentence pour encourager les autres.
When I was at school, another boy once tipped a bowl of ice cream over my head. The police were not involved. Should they have been?
Or does the victim being a politician make all the difference? That sounds like two tiers to me.
For family reasons, I went to schools abroad with a British basis and a US basis. Bullying was rife at the former and unknown at the latter. I've sometimes wondered why - the mix of families involved was similar (diplomats, business people, etc.), so there was apparently something in the British culture which encouraged bullying.
I'd favour fairly mild penalties for the ice cream assault, not necessarily involving the overstretched police but not excused as being only kids. Suspension for a week, something like that. If it happened to a politician, I'd expect the assailant to lose their job or at least get a last-chance warning. A suspended prison sentence sounds about right.
That's interesting, from watching US movies you'd think that bullying was extremely widespread in US schools! I think that bullying is more common in some types of school than in others. Our children's comprehensive school seems to do a good job anyway, our kids don't report any problems.
Yang Tengbo, the alleged Chinese spy banned from the UK and linked to the Duke of York, said he has “done nothing wrong or unlawful”.
He said in a statement: “I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.
“This is why I applied for a review of the Home Office decision in the first place, and why I am seeking permission to appeal the SIAC decision. It is also why an order extending my anonymity up to the point of determination of the appeal process was granted.”
Suspiciously good English.
He has been here for over 20 years.
And after all, the chief examiner for AQA English Language has lived here since birth and still can't speak it properly.
If it had been acid, she would have got a very different sentence. But it wasn’t. So she didn’t.
No. That kind of thinking creates the circumstances for it to be acid next time.
Anyone attacking any politician needs to receive a nasty sentence pour encourager les autres.
When I was at school, another boy once tipped a bowl of ice cream over my head. The police were not involved. Should they have been?
Or does the victim being a politician make all the difference? That sounds like two tiers to me.
For family reasons, I went to schools abroad with a British basis and a US basis. Bullying was rife at the former and unknown at the latter. I've sometimes wondered why - the mix of families involved was similar (diplomats, business people, etc.), so there was apparently something in the British culture which encouraged bullying.
I'd favour fairly mild penalties for the ice cream assault, not necessarily involving the overstretched police but not excused as being only kids. Suspension for a week, something like that. If it happened to a politician, I'd expect the assailant to lose their job or at least get a last-chance warning. A suspended prison sentence sounds about right.
There has been a long history of people throwing harmless things at politicians in this country. Normally eggs. I don't approve of it, but I also think that saying "ooooo, it could have been acid" is absurd. It wasn't. It was a milkshake. An egg does not equate to a Molotov cocktail, and a milkshake does not equate to acid. Goodness me, Faragists are now becoming as snowflakey as lefties!
We also have a horrible recent history of MPs being murdered and attacked - Jo Cox and David Amess, and others
I am not a fan of British politicians, as a class, but they are way more exposed than the rest of us: they meet many more people in their daily lives, so they take much more risk. And they are far more likely to be a juicy target for a jihadist or a Nazi or a nutter - than you or I
For that reason they DO deserve greater protection than Joe Newent. I would have short prison sentences for anyone that physically attacks them, even just a milkshake, and I would apply that to Jeremy Corbyn just as much as Nigel Farage
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You need infrastructure to get people to where you want them to work otherwise the company will just go to London where there are enough qualified people in a sane commuting area to work there.
“Levelling up” didn’t happen because like everything Johnson did, it was a slogan not a policy.
Probably just as well, because it's not a very good policy. Economic wealth will not return to the North becauase they have gleaming trams and no potholes. We need a wider economic revival based on low taxes, easy regulation, a flexible labour market and low energy costs, then build the infrastructure we need when things take off, not build the infrastructure first and hope a backward process takes place. The idea is more absurd the more one thinks about it.
You mean, what we've had since the 1980s, when London got turbocharged and the north went backwards?
Not at all - London loves an overregulated economy with expensive power and high barriers to entry; it serves big corporations very well. I am talking about recreating the conditions (bar slavery) that made the provinces wealthy in the first place.
Not quite you are badly quoting what happened on the Industrial Revolution with little understanding of how things have changed.
Nowadays for companies to be successful they need a critical mass of qualified workers within the appropriate commuting area hence why London does so well because if I need another data analyst there are a lot of London and so always a few looking for a new job.
Up north there may be 100 rather than 5000 so recruitment is far harder
Firstly, no you don't - remote working appears to have passed you by, speaking of having little understanding about the way things have changed...
Secondly, you are talking about professional services companies. Clearly I am not. I am talking about Northampton shoemakers, Birmingham glass, Welsh clothiers. None of which need 'a lot' of data analysts in the vicinity - yes data analysis is still important, but companies of the sort I describe don't need big departments of them. They need people who are pretty good with their hands and want to make stuff.
Oi! I am a professional data analyst, have some respect, please.
Comments
This is a real thing, and it reaches quite mad levels. I found a serious paper, written recently, that claims the Aztecs never practised human sacrifice or torture, it was all made up by the racist Spaniards. Utterly insane
So modern academics grow up with this "all peaceful", "noble savage" perspective on any ancient or non-white society and then get very surprised when they find utterly incontrovertible proof of the opposite
So all in all you're spouting unfounded defeatist tripe, but do go on.
My understanding, from direct experience, is that at least some of Tory party membership is defecting to Reform.
A Farage vehicle with proper boots on the ground experience of long term Tory party members and activists is probably going to hurt both Labour and a Badenoch led Tory party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization
(Naturally, not all archaeologists agree with his conclusion.)
Seemed like a pleasant enough chap, and well-informed. Got the impression he wasn’t a poor man.
Do I think there is a path to him becoming next PM? Yes. The big question is what people will think of Labour in 2028/2029.
Oh and the minimum wage of Spain and Portugal is not £11.43 or €14 an hour
In Spain it’s €1323 per month
Portugal €956
In the uk it’s €2230.80 based on minimum wage a 37 hour week and an exchange rate of €1.20
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Brexit, at least immigration would now go way down! Huzzah!
Except that didn't happen, and in time voters woke up, first they saw the lack of control over the boats, then they saw the huge upwards change in the migration numbers - and the real, visible change in our streets. You can SEE the Boriswave millions
Unless Starmer can do some kind of psychological Brexit on migration, then it won't go back down in salience as an issue. He needs to visibly stop most of the boats, and get immigration down to, rough guess, under 200,000 at a bare minimum. He might have to do even more than that
This seems unlikely
I'd love a pair of bespoke shoes but the market is mostly local (your feet are measured to make a last) and limited by the price. You are literally paying for a person to hand make them slowly, their productivity won't have changed significantly in 100 years.
It would probably be more profitable to dig coal by hand in Wales than attempt to compete in textiles in any meaningful scale
Its fetishising things made by toil and sweat and skill - always by someone with their arse welded to an office chair and would be horrified if one of their kids wanted to be a hairdresser or mechanic.
I said at the time that Corbyn got assaulted and stand by it that these types of attacks on politicians for being politicians should be treated extremely seriously. It is different to normal members of the public, same as attacks on judges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boriswave
Man filmed by CNN ‘being rescued’ from Assad jail was ‘regime torturer’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/15/syria-jail-man-rescued-filmed-false-identity-cnn-fact-check/
And that was true of my last but one contract. The one in between was 100% remote but UK based staff as the client understood that there was a sensible trade off between UK based staff who delivered and an offshore team who while cheaper on a per head basis cost the same (or more) when you looked at actual output
Edit - but there is one thing to add about that last job. No one working on it is under 40 years old, the outsourcing of IT means there are very few UK workers with the knowledge to do what I do - we’ve outsourced the foundation steps so there are very few people aged 22 doing the job that trained me into what I can now do - because those jobs are now all in India as are the 3 subsequent jobs I went on to.
The last three or four general elections have been rollercoasters. We've seen a party in government gain seats to gain a majority from a minority. We've seen (for the first time in a long time) a campaign actually matter and the opposition go from 24% to 40% over six weeks to force a hung parliament when all the polls pre calling the election suggested a Conservative landslide. We've seen a government in power nine years turn it all around, convince the electorate they were the party of 'change' and go forward in terms of votes and seats. And then we've seen the opposition put on no votes at all really, and gain double their seats and gain a majority nearly as good as Blair's.
Labour could lose not a single vote in 2029 and lose 150 seats if the Conservatives can simply take 15% off Reform. The Conservatives could lose 3% to Reform, and another 50 seats to Labour.
Honestly, we just don't know, and whilst Labour aren't doing well at the moment, anyone in early 2020 (pre Covid) who was saying 'Labour landslide in 2024) would've been laughed at. Fact of the matter now is the electorate is fickle, support for all parties is a mile wide and an inch deep, and huge seats swings is perfectly possible without any vote totals changing at all.
Or does the victim being a politician make all the difference? That sounds like two tiers to me.
Now there's been a shift and it all comes under Child Sexual Abuse in the UK but the entry is a mess as editors skirmish, violently
Wikipedia is losing the battle for neutrality, and is headed for the end, I fear. The bots will take over
HHAHAHAHAHAH
Indeed, those who fancy a bit of right-wing populism here always say the modern era is politically unstable and thus argue that Reform UK can top the polls at the next election. But they don’t acknowledge that that instability can also mean that something very different might happen. A global recession triggered by Trump, for example, could see big changes in UK issues polling.
(Why is it Unstable but Instability? Is it the shift of stress?)
https://x.com/keir_starmer/status/1868612720578396531
Our new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture.
My government will deliver our Plan for Change, reigniting industrial heartlands and putting more money in working people’s pockets.
Wales has a good track record in garment manufacture afaicr, it made all M&S clothes until the 90s, along with Laura Ashley. The reasons against it doing so again that you seem to think are so very insurmountable are simply the costs we as a state have chosen to heap on businesses that make things. They are choices. So your opposition to what I'm putting forward is entirely circular and based on nothing.
Thank Fuck he won, and I speak as someone who hopes he never ever gets a political job again. The migration betrayal is unforgivable
However, I’ll run this past you for your thoughts. There is absolutely no reason why the front bench’s have to be each from left and right of politics - but one where Labour government are faced by LibDem LOTO is still that: the LibDems are a centre-right UK party (how they instinctively voted on covid lockdowns for example) are they not? Which is why the Tory heartlands could shift to them in the coming elections.
The Liberal Party under Lloyd George even brought out strong manifesto’s for government in 1920s, just as todays Tory’s could do in 2029 and 2033, only to not be listened to. Their voters had moved on, same could happen again.
And that thought, LibDems being a centre-right party so replaces another centre right party, helps explain how the electoral politics in Europe has already changed, traditional parties, of left and right, disappearing off the map, and struggling to come back. Footnotes of history. What we need to keep thinking of is we are entering an age of spectral-syncretic politics. Regardless of history, it’s what those successfully exploiting spectral-syncreticsm are now doing - taking policy direction not from traditional party ideology but from across the political spectrum just like Starmer’s government is doing, that is getting rewarded by voters.
Laughable
£21.7 Bn is going to reduce that by 8.5 million tonnes (Whether it does or not for that price is debatable but let's go with it).
UK Gov't spend is £1189 Bn according to Google
£21.7/£1189 Bn = 1.8%
8.5 m tonnes / 486 m = 1.75%
So the Gov't would spend the entirety of it's overall spend pro rata to achieve net zero if CC was scaled up (It is pro rata almost 1:1 for the overall emissions reduction).
It's absolutely bonkers & bear in mind these are gov't figures so the cash spend is probably an underestimate and CO2 reduced an under.
Then a factory was a lot of workers and a few machines, now it’s 99% machines with far fewer very highly skilled people keeping the machines in order.
And factories then have a habit of moving to whichever country offers the best tax breaks - which is why you see factories close down and move to Eastern Europe or similar because that country is currently providing incentives for the next x years. When those x years are up the company looks at where to go next.
Now there are exceptions to that Nissan being the obvious one but even then every x years it goes to the government and asks for more money to remain open
Btw Nissan pays well but your £40,000 role to keep the machines going is a very skilled role with years of experience required to know the ins and outs of all the machines you need to maintain
No. Any answer prior to 1955 in the UK is a disaster zone compared to now, and for women you'd really need to say nothing pre 1985 (and even then).
The past was terrible. Things aren't necessarily good now, but they are a lot better than the terrible they were back then.
"Just the most astounding bit of TV journalism imaginable.
@clarissaward is a titan."
LOLOLOL
https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1867196581776077230
Perhaps he means she sounds like she's working with the scriptwriters from Titanic
1) Labour have not had an auspicious start to government. It doesn’t mean that they can’t win the next GE (history shows that), but they face a challenging global outlook and a leader who isn’t particularly likeable or popular at the moment and with limited scope for policy success in the next 12-18 months. This is about as far from 1997 as you can get.
2) Conversely, the Tories are proving that they cannot shake their very poor record in government and cannot articulate an alternative. That may improve in time as memories fade and the new leadership beds in, but this is far from certain. Badenoch has been uninspiring thus far.
3) There doesn’t appear to be an alternative in either Labour or the Tories who can ride to the rescue. Streeting is maybe an early candidate, but intensely distrusted by some in the party.
Ergo:
4) the idea that an alternative to the big 2 parties might do well in the coming years/months is very plausible, and hence why I think Reform and Farage pose significant danger to both Labour and the Tories.
So I don’t profess to be predicting the outcome of the next GE but the fundamentals feel to me to favour Reform’s march forward, certainly in the short to medium term. That is all I’m really willing to say at this time.
Firstly, most water desalination plants are natural gas powered. So, while it might be correct on a "calorie of energy basis" (i.e. Saudi Arabia uses energy equivalent to a third of its oil production in water desalination, rather than it using a third of its oil production).
Secondly, as far as I'm aware, essentially all the desalination plants are combined power and desalination. So, it's a little misleading to claim all the power is used for desalination, when the energy is being expended to produce electricity too - and desalination is essentially a byproduct of that water heating process. (Edit to add: ah, your quote includes this.)
Ethnic cleansing and chattel slavery don’t become nicer when practised by non-
Europeans.
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/workers-work-at-a-garment-manufacturing-company-in-binzhou-news-photo/1749180337
It is the same worldwide - very much a human process assisted by machine, and not a huge amount different to the factories we have mothballed.
It isn't the same as making a plastic box. So I rather think it is you who needs to broaden your knowledge not me.
A T-Shirt plant (and clothing is usually the first stage in a country's industrial development) has changed remarkably little in the last 100 years. Sure, everything is now electric and moves that little bit quicker. But there's still a ton of manual labour involved.
On the other hand, a modern car factory is completely unrecognizable.
I started off by saying that the reason why clothes are not made in the UK is because people are not willing to spend £100 on a shirt and to avoid those prices companies shift manufacturing to wherever is cheapest - and that isn’t going to be the UK.
And if the UK does enter the position where it makes sense to manufacture Labour intensive products here we have serious problems
My favourite example of this was Paisley rejecting a load of funding for a revamped public realm because they thought it would put people off going. Spectacular lack of self-awareness. Paisley.
If we do what the rest of the world does, we end up with their living standards, don't we? And in general, that would be trading down.
And what betrayal? Boris was open about wanting more immigration.
Also found on this device...."met with man involved with influential political blog today, terrible shoes, terrible....think he might have been on to me, kept asking strange questions about if I like certain types of pizza and something called a Radiohead."
Likewise Community Clothing sells UK made clothes but it’s not cheap and that’s after they’ve bypassed high street markups by selling direct
Reminds me a bit British Railways massively investing in massive marshalling yards in the early 1950s just years before containerisation and lorries rendered most wagons redundant, except bulk heavy cargo.
https://x.com/cafreeland/status/1868659332285702167
CC may or may not be a winning bet, but it’s the sort of thing that would only get off the ground as a successful industry with Government dollars to seed it.
https://youtu.be/OKuHYO9TM5A?si=-KXlv5SLjQJtg7VM
He said in a statement: “I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.
“This is why I applied for a review of the Home Office decision in the first place, and why I am seeking permission to appeal the SIAC decision. It is also why an order extending my anonymity up to the point of determination of the appeal process was granted.”
I'd favour fairly mild penalties for the ice cream assault, not necessarily involving the overstretched police but not excused as being only kids. Suspension for a week, something like that. If it happened to a politician, I'd expect the assailant to lose their job or at least get a last-chance warning. A suspended prison sentence sounds about right.
Catches them every time.
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social
·
8m
Trudeau Liberals heading to wipeout territory www.ipsos.com/en-ca/libera...
https://bsky.app/profile/davidfrum.bsky.social/post/3ldglkgrous2t
The billionaire investor and founder of the Japanese tech-investing firm will also promise in the joint announcement with Trump to create 100,000 jobs focused on artificial intelligence and related infrastructure, the sources said. The money will be deployed before the end of Trump’s term.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/16/softbank-ceo-to-announce-100-billion-investment-in-us-during-visit-with-trump.html
They all thought it was a good idea. Just that it needed to be adjusted for massive investment in a single method/tech. The idea of running a half dozen projects/experiments in parallel and picking two which worked horrified them.
HYUFD, on the other hand, still has a shrine to his hero in his box room where a faux candle continues to keep alight the fake flame.
Economist breaks down how the Treasury rules the UK | Paul Collier interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f51urcvWmsM
Yours, not the examiner's!
I am not a fan of British politicians, as a class, but they are way more exposed than the rest of us: they meet many more people in their daily lives, so they take much more risk. And they are far more likely to be a juicy target for a jihadist or a Nazi or a nutter - than you or I
For that reason they DO deserve greater protection than Joe Newent. I would have short prison sentences for anyone that physically attacks them, even just a milkshake, and I would apply that to Jeremy Corbyn just as much as Nigel Farage