Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Puzzled rather than concerned.
Looking at the latest YouGov poll, Labour has lost 30% of its GE vote. 10% to LD, 8% to Ref, 5% to Green and 5% to Con (Sub Sample 650) So more to LD than Reform, but small sample.
LDs have also lost 8% of its GE vote back to Labour. Presumably Labour LD tactical voters moving back to Labour in answering the poll.
Lib Dem support before the election was so correlated with Labour support that for the party to be flat is not too bad.
Performance at the next election will be all about how well or badly the Tories perform. If they bounce back then the Lib Dems lose seats even if they gain share. But if Reform surges at Tory expense then that’s much better news for LD. It also helps them to self-define as the opposite to Reform.
I think the next election will be between the populists (Tory, Reform) and Progressives (Lab, LD, Green). Currently they are 50/50 in the polls.
Under FPTP, it will turn on how tactically each can optimise seats. I think the Progressives have shown how they can optimise seats without any formal pacts. The question is can the Populists manage this too?
Wonder if they will consider our recent decision on the matter - sometimes courts consider cases in other similar legal jurisdictions...
Canadian commentators have done so, though ive seen at least one anti Trudeau legal commentator say its awful but not unlawful.
That was a reasonable analysis of Boris's 3 day prorogation, until the SC got involved with politics in a doomed and counterproductive attempt to keep the UK in the EU by hook or by crook.
And this one is what? Three months?
The Supreme Court's ruling was unanimous, even when the Article50 ruling was not and some of the judges from the latter sat on the former, so im not convinced their reasoning was purely partisan, even though that was the parliamentary goal at the time.
I wasnt massively persuaded by it, but my view was the lawfulness or not was a side issue - it was wrong even if it was lawful (and as the Court of Appeal had thought it was it wasnt absurd to think it was). And so if people focused on the lawfulness they'd have no means to criticise if the decision had gone the other way.
Almost everybody on here is writing Kemi Bad off. But she's only been in the job for three months.
You're all assuming she's incapable of change.
Badenoch isnt doing as badly as some say, but it’s fair to say she isn’t doing great, either.
She’s leading the Tories at a time no-one wants to listen to them and after a historic defeat. I have said before that anyone they chose as a leader would be finding it hard to get a hearing at the moment. Kemi’s low ratings are partly to do with this.
Her goal is to get that hearing and really the only way she can do so is to start to talk about policy.
But let’s be honest she also needs to sharpen up and be more incisive.
She's got one thing right: Tory priority must be to take on Reform.
The LDs are the Tories eternal rivals, but they're not an existential threat, like Reform.
At most, LDs can take Tory seats, but Reform can take away the Tory birthright.
Depends. If the Tories didn't exist about a third of their current voters would normally go LD even if 2/3 would normally go Reform. So to be distinctive Kemi needs to ensure they keep a middle way between the 2
Trouble is that sometimes the middle way gets you the best of both worlds, but sometimes it gets the worst of both. (See the post-2016 fallout. EEA might have been a middle way, but it just annoyed true believers on both sides and satisfied very few.)
As for whether the Conservatives need to move their tanks towards the Lib Dems or Reform, the fact they are having to fight both at once shows what a problem the Conservatives have. The Lib Dems are opposition, and without taking a decent bite out of those Nice Britain seats, Kemi ain't going to Number Ten, except as a guest. But Reform are the enemy. And anything the Conservatives do on one side weakens them.on the other
Almost everybody on here is writing Kemi Bad off. But she's only been in the job for three months.
You're all assuming she's incapable of change.
Badenoch isnt doing as badly as some say, but it’s fair to say she isn’t doing great, either.
She’s leading the Tories at a time no-one wants to listen to them and after a historic defeat. I have said before that anyone they chose as a leader would be finding it hard to get a hearing at the moment. Kemi’s low ratings are partly to do with this.
Her goal is to get that hearing and really the only way she can do so is to start to talk about policy.
But let’s be honest she also needs to sharpen up and be more incisive.
She's got one thing right: Tory priority must be to take on Reform.
The LDs are the Tories eternal rivals, but they're not an existential threat, like Reform.
At most, LDs can take Tory seats, but Reform can take away the Tory birthright.
Depends. If the Tories didn't exist about a third of their current voters would normally go LD even if 2/3 would normally go Reform. So to be distinctive Kemi needs to ensure they keep a middle way between the 2
I think that 2/3 split might be exaggerating how close Reform and the Tories are (and the suggestion that none would go Labour in an election that could be 4 1/2 years away seems unlikely).
Before/after the election there was plenty of polling of Reform voters, which suggested under a third would have voted Tory, while a similar amount would vote Lab/LD/Green, and plenty wouldn't vote at all. They weren't a group who had always voted Tory in the past, rather a much more complex coalition.
With the more recent talk of a pact, there was polling of the Tories, asking a similar question, and, while Reform were the most popular, the overall results were fairly similar, with a significant majority saying they wouldn't vote Reform.
Given that we saw that Labour, LDs and Greens were pretty ruthless about tactical voting at the last election, I suspect both parties are fully aware that they may lose more than they gain with a merger.
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
Problem is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is normally a pretty niche position, hence Clegg's LDs got just 8% here in 2015 and the FDP are now polling at less than 5% on average and their highest ever voteshare was 15% in the 2009 German election.
Macron has probably been the most electorally successful national leader as an economic and social liberal but even he started off as Finance Minister in a Socialist PM's Cabinet and run runoff elections mainly to keep out the far right. Yet now finds his party squeezed between Melenchon's party to his left and Le Pen's party to his right
Yes, the gap for such a party is never as much as people think it seems.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Puzzled rather than concerned.
Looking at the latest YouGov poll, Labour has lost 30% of its GE vote. 10% to LD, 8% to Ref, 5% to Green and 5% to Con (Sub Sample 650) So more to LD than Reform, but small sample.
LDs have also lost 8% of its GE vote back to Labour. Presumably Labour LD tactical voters moving back to Labour in answering the poll.
Haven't the LDs lost any support back to the Tories? Round here on the Hants/Surrey border there was a big swing to the LDs in Tory seats where Labour normally come nowhere
According to YouGov, the LDs have lost 4% of their GE voters back to the Tories. The Tories have lost a further 2% of their GE voters to the LDs. NB Small sample.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
[REPOST] More detail about how Google is getting steadily worse. Basically they worked out that if the search was bad you would stay on for longer and see more ads, so they made it worse deliberately. Those wacky 2020s, eh?
A confession. I really don't give a flying fuck what Kemi has for lunch, or how much it costs.
My potentially unpopular confession is I don't care if politicians are provided for more than the cheapest possible travel, and that may well mean that a helicopter trip is fine rather than taking a train or using business class instead of economy on a plane.
I also don't think it is a good use of anyone's time for PMs to visit flood affected areas, probably causing disruption and taking people away from useful activity. Send the royals and the relevant Cabinet minister and let the PM coordinate that, and other daily matters, from Westminster. It doesn't mean they don't care.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Puzzled rather than concerned.
Looking at the latest YouGov poll, Labour has lost 30% of its GE vote. 10% to LD, 8% to Ref, 5% to Green and 5% to Con (Sub Sample 650) So more to LD than Reform, but small sample.
LDs have also lost 8% of its GE vote back to Labour. Presumably Labour LD tactical voters moving back to Labour in answering the poll.
Haven't the LDs lost any support back to the Tories? Round here on the Hants/Surrey border there was a big swing to the LDs in Tory seats where Labour normally come nowhere
Since the May 2024 local elections, the LibDems are down 1 in local by-elections. They’ve gained net 4 from Labour, net lost 2 to the Tories, 1 to the SNP and 2 to independent/other.
In comparison, the Conservatives are up 22, mainly +11 from Labour, +4 from SNP and +4 from ind/oth.
Reform are up 7, which is mainly +4 against Labour.
[REPOST] More detail about how Google is getting steadily worse. Basically they worked out that if the search was bad you would stay on for longer and see more ads, so they made it worse deliberately. Those wacky 2020s, eh?
I have no idea if Google is any good or not now, but their dominance presumably means it doesn't matter. Absent being forced to break up, how bad would things have to get before large numbers abandoned them?
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
Problem is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is normally a pretty niche position, hence Clegg's LDs got just 8% here in 2015 and the FDP are now polling at less than 5% on average and their highest ever voteshare was 15% in the 2009 German election.
Macron has probably been the most electorally successful national leader as an economic and social liberal but even he started off as Finance Minister in a Socialist PM's Cabinet and run runoff elections mainly to keep out the far right. Yet now finds his party squeezed between Melenchon's party to his left and Le Pen's party to his right
Yes, the gap for such a party is never as much as people think it seems.
It doesn't help that a large proportion of PBers fit that description.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Almost everybody on here is writing Kemi Bad off. But she's only been in the job for three months.
You're all assuming she's incapable of change.
Badenoch isnt doing as badly as some say, but it’s fair to say she isn’t doing great, either.
She’s leading the Tories at a time no-one wants to listen to them and after a historic defeat. I have said before that anyone they chose as a leader would be finding it hard to get a hearing at the moment. Kemi’s low ratings are partly to do with this.
Her goal is to get that hearing and really the only way she can do so is to start to talk about policy.
But let’s be honest she also needs to sharpen up and be more incisive.
She's got one thing right: Tory priority must be to take on Reform.
The LDs are the Tories eternal rivals, but they're not an existential threat, like Reform.
At most, LDs can take Tory seats, but Reform can take away the Tory birthright.
Depends. If the Tories didn't exist about a third of their current voters would normally go LD even if 2/3 would normally go Reform. So to be distinctive Kemi needs to ensure they keep a middle way between the 2
Trouble is that sometimes the middle way gets you the best of both worlds, but sometimes it gets the worst of both. (See the post-2016 fallout. EEA might have been a middle way, but it just annoyed true believers on both sides and satisfied very few.)
As for whether the Conservatives need to move their tanks towards the Lib Dems or Reform, the fact they are having to fight both at once shows what a problem the Conservatives have. The Lib Dems are opposition, and without taking a decent bite out of those Nice Britain seats, Kemi ain't going to Number Ten, except as a guest. But Reform are the enemy. And anything the Conservatives do on one side weakens them.on the other
Farage being appointed ambassador the USA, whilst a stupid idea (just because he gets on better with Trump does not mean he could represent what the UK government of the day wants him to), would probably have been a desired outcome for the Tories. Reform is not just him, there's clearly a market for it, but he has been an effective marketer.
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
Problem is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is normally a pretty niche position, hence Clegg's LDs got just 8% here in 2015 and the FDP are now polling at less than 5% on average and their highest ever voteshare was 15% in the 2009 German election
Yeah, my late father always liked to say, "be reasonable, do it my way." But most didn't.
Under pressure from Reform Badenoch seems to want to pursue the populist route. She may pick up some votes that way from Reform but she risks losing as many such as me.
Will she pick up Fukker votes? If you want nationalist and populist government by and for right wing fucktards then the Fukkers offer a far more authentic and compelling vision of that unlovely eschaton. At the moment the tories are just the LibDems of the right and will probably end up with the number of MPs commensurate to that position at the next GE.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
Hard to fathom the mania about supporting Palestine in UK. Pretty bizarre.
I've finished "Late Soviet Britain": I'll have to reread it at least twice with notes, which will take me to the end of the year at least. But as a palate cleanser I'll have a go at "May at 10: the verdict" , which'll take me about a month.
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
They weren't fiscally conservative when it came to giving money to oldies.
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
Problem is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is normally a pretty niche position, hence Clegg's LDs got just 8% here in 2015 and the FDP are now polling at less than 5% on average and their highest ever voteshare was 15% in the 2009 German election
Yeah, my late father always liked to say, "be reasonable, do it my way." But most didn't.
Under pressure from Reform Badenoch seems to want to pursue the populist route. She may pick up some votes that way from Reform but she risks losing as many such as me.
Will she pick up Fukker votes? If you want nationalist and populist government by and for right wing fucktards then the Fukkers offer a far more authentic and compelling vision of that unlovely eschaton. At the moment the tories are just the LibDems of the right and will probably end up with the number of MPs commensurate to that position at the next GE.
Some are just disaffected Tories who probably can be tempted back, especially if some nuttier Reformites grab attention or cause chaos. But I don't think that group, being easier to get back, is as large as Kemi and co will hope. The very fact of Reform having MPs I think makes a difference, makes them seem 'proper' in a way they wouldn't before and UKIP never managed despite winning 1 at a GE.
I think the Greens may benefit in a similar way if they can successfull combine shire Greens and inner city Greens together, Lucas was a novelty, but having 4 makes them seem more plausible.
NOTA gets 44%, is that a record and more worthy of the headline?
It has been higher in the past, notably in the Johnson/Corbyn era.
These polling figures are odd of course, but predictable. What remains odd is that in the political world there is a lack of a sense of the next tier of stellar leadership at different places on the greasy pole. Labour have one or two prominent figures but no more than that. The Tories have none at all, not even a few vague names. The LDs have none. And - this could be important - Reform have none. The SNP have Kate Forbes. Weird; and a bit troubling.
Welcome to the age of the SpAd.
Have any of our party leaders ever worked as a Spad?
Indeed maybe that's the problem, insufficient study of policy development.
Spadification is more of a general name for the blandification and narrowing of the political class now, rather than a direct descriptor as its a holdover from around the Cameron/Ed M era
Neither current leader may fit that particular mould, but theres a lot fewer 'normal' MPs than existed historically nonetheless.
Look at the biographies of the new LibDem intake if you want to see some MPs with diverse real world experience.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
That reminds me, is this the year we actually get the rumoured Corbyn party? I wonder if the Gaza bros will join.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
Hard to fathom the mania about supporting Palestine in UK. Pretty bizarre.
As @Leon or similar said, we live on the internet these days. The combination of algorithmic recommendations ("That made you angry. This will make you more angry! Enjoy!"), supranational loyalties and the annihilation of distance means people get VERY UPSET about things many miles away, and politics has become things that make people VERY UPSET
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
Problem is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is normally a pretty niche position, hence Clegg's LDs got just 8% here in 2015 and the FDP are now polling at less than 5% on average and their highest ever voteshare was 15% in the 2009 German election
Yeah, my late father always liked to say, "be reasonable, do it my way." But most didn't.
Under pressure from Reform Badenoch seems to want to pursue the populist route. She may pick up some votes that way from Reform but she risks losing as many such as me.
Will she pick up Fukker votes? If you want nationalist and populist government by and for right wing fucktards then the Fukkers offer a far more authentic and compelling vision of that unlovely eschaton. At the moment the tories are just the LibDems of the right and will probably end up with the number of MPs commensurate to that position at the next GE.
Appalling as he was in many ways, Cyril Smith was right about what to do if another party pops up on your turf.
(Strangle it at birth, to save the youngsters from seeing a load of ads on Google.)
Now Reform have MPs elected under their banner at a General Election, it's going to be much much harder for the Conservatives.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
The Tories can’t out-Reform Farage. So the angle in a normal situation would be to grab the bits of Reform that are popular and explain it’s only you who will be able to implement it.
But the Tories don’t have that fallback because they are neither seen as competent enough to deliver or even the leading party on the right now.
Almost everybody on here is writing Kemi Bad off. But she's only been in the job for three months.
You're all assuming she's incapable of change.
Badenoch isnt doing as badly as some say, but it’s fair to say she isn’t doing great, either.
She’s leading the Tories at a time no-one wants to listen to them and after a historic defeat. I have said before that anyone they chose as a leader would be finding it hard to get a hearing at the moment. Kemi’s low ratings are partly to do with this.
Her goal is to get that hearing and really the only way she can do so is to start to talk about policy.
But let’s be honest she also needs to sharpen up and be more incisive.
She's got one thing right: Tory priority must be to take on Reform.
The LDs are the Tories eternal rivals, but they're not an existential threat, like Reform.
At most, LDs can take Tory seats, but Reform can take away the Tory birthright.
Depends. If the Tories didn't exist about a third of their current voters would normally go LD even if 2/3 would normally go Reform. So to be distinctive Kemi needs to ensure they keep a middle way between the 2
Trouble is that sometimes the middle way gets you the best of both worlds, but sometimes it gets the worst of both. (See the post-2016 fallout. EEA might have been a middle way, but it just annoyed true believers on both sides and satisfied very few.)
As for whether the Conservatives need to move their tanks towards the Lib Dems or Reform, the fact they are having to fight both at once shows what a problem the Conservatives have. The Lib Dems are opposition, and without taking a decent bite out of those Nice Britain seats, Kemi ain't going to Number Ten, except as a guest. But Reform are the enemy. And anything the Conservatives do on one side weakens them.on the other
Farage being appointed ambassador the USA, whilst a stupid idea (just because he gets on better with Trump does not mean he could represent what the UK government of the day wants him to), would probably have been a desired outcome for the Tories. Reform is not just him, there's clearly a market for it, but he has been an effective marketer.
Sunak (the little shit) should have bought Farage off with a peerage and High Commissioner to New Zealand. Australia at a push.
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
Problem is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is normally a pretty niche position, hence Clegg's LDs got just 8% here in 2015 and the FDP are now polling at less than 5% on average and their highest ever voteshare was 15% in the 2009 German election
Yeah, my late father always liked to say, "be reasonable, do it my way." But most didn't.
Under pressure from Reform Badenoch seems to want to pursue the populist route. She may pick up some votes that way from Reform but she risks losing as many such as me.
To an extent, though Kemi is still distinct from Reform populism in wanting to stay in the ECHR for example and also even the LDs in wanting to means test the triple lock and WFA and being less NIMBY than Davey is
Sunday politics shows will be fall of the great and good declaring how to respond to Trump without actually knowing what he'll do. On anything.
Trump chaos, four seat majority in Congress, two years to mid-terms, plus whether governments can even make big differences to economics and society in the modern global age.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Puzzled rather than concerned.
Looking at the latest YouGov poll, Labour has lost 30% of its GE vote. 10% to LD, 8% to Ref, 5% to Green and 5% to Con (Sub Sample 650) So more to LD than Reform, but small sample.
LDs have also lost 8% of its GE vote back to Labour. Presumably Labour LD tactical voters moving back to Labour in answering the poll.
Lib Dem support before the election was so correlated with Labour support that for the party to be flat is not too bad.
Performance at the next election will be all about how well or badly the Tories perform. If they bounce back then the Lib Dems lose seats even if they gain share. But if Reform surges at Tory expense then that’s much better news for LD. It also helps them to self-define as the opposite to Reform.
I think the next election will be between the populists (Tory, Reform) and Progressives (Lab, LD, Green). Currently they are 50/50 in the polls.
Under FPTP, it will turn on how tactically each can optimise seats. I think the Progressives have shown how they can optimise seats without any formal pacts. The question is can the Populists manage this too?
The next election will be between various populist parties - Lab, Con, Reform LD, Green, fringe Inds and Nats.
The only difference is that they will all be aiming their own brand of populism at differing voter groups.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
I'd struggle with expensive food, because I would worry I'm not enjoying it enough. Like, maybe my £50 steak* would be better than a £25 one...but I am enjoying it twice as much?
'A NEW poll has found that Scots are split on the idea of a potential SNP-Labour coalition.
The two parties entering into an agreement after the 2026 Holyrood election was the most favoured option of Scots when asked about potential deals.
However, a majority still opposed the coalition between the pro-independence and unionist party.'
I think a Labour/SNP coalition is almost inevitable. I will be very surprised if the numbers allow a stable government any other way. A Unionist coalition of Labour Tories and Lib Dems might be possible but I suspect that many Labour supporters would far rather get in bed with the SNP than the Tories.
The question that is open is which of the 2 will be the largest and thus lead the Coalition? Until the UK election this looked a no brainer with Labour very much the favourites but the unpopularity of the Starmer government risks this being reversed.
Betty Brown didn’t celebrate her 92nd birthday on Monday like a typical nonagenarian.
Instead, the Glaswegian grandmother blew out the candles on her pink birthday cake in the green room of the BBC studios after appearing on Newsnight, and the next morning met the post office minister in Whitehall.
“My week has been exciting, unbelievable, unexpected — and just wonderful,” says Brown, who in the past year has become one of the key voices in the sub-postmasters’ campaign for justice. Beaming, she warms her hands on a cup of tea in the kitchen of her son Alastair’s farmhouse in Co Durham while her two grandsons potter around.
After decades feeling ashamed of having lost everything when she handed back the keys to her beloved post office in the northeast of England, Brown is now in the spotlight. As the oldest member of the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance, founded by Sir Alan Bates, she is demanding justice — and payouts — for wronged sub-postmasters.
A year after the Post Office scandal came to prominence, thanks to the hit ITV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office, victims are still waiting for their claims to be settled. Sub-postmasters lost thousands of pounds, their jobs and in some cases their homes when the company’s Horizon computer system, rolled out in branches in the early 2000s, proved defective.
Now Brown and hundreds of other sub-postmasters are trapped in an Kafka-esque nightmare. A team of government-funded independent psychologists, forensic accountants and lawyers have been deployed to assess individuals and come up with a “financial redress” figure for them to claim compensation. Yet application forms filled with legal jargon can be filled out only by lawyers. The Department for Business and Trade aims to provide an offer in 40 working days. “The victims are being re-victimised,” says Brown.
At the same time claims are being contested by an “independent panel” in the Department for Business and Trade. Many sub-postmasters, after spending hours filling out forms, have been offered as little as 10 per cent of their total claim amounts. Brown has been offered 29 per cent. Bates, the leader of a group of sub-postmasters who 2019 won a High Court Group Litigation Order (GLO) case against the Post Office, was initially offered 16 per cent of his claim. His second offer was upped to about 30 per cent. He has still not accepted and has forwarded his claim to be reviewed again by Sir Ross Cranston.
“It’s disgusting,” says Brown. “I had nothing to do with the amount that’s on that claim because it’s independently assessed,” she says.
Many of the group have been left feeling as if they are being tested again — and are stuck in a deadlock, where the government is refusing to pay out. And Brown is not getting any younger.
If Starmer paid the sub postmasters full compensation now, it would do more than any other act to restore his popularity.
The WASPI crowd would go bananas if money was found for that (even considering their call for 'compensation' is a different level entirely).
Let them.
They’ve lost.
A hardcore will never give up but they have, to all intents and purposes, lost and rightly wont get a penny.
Will I get compensation as I’ve no recollection of a letter telling me my pension age has gone up twice, from 65 to 66 to 67 ? Of course not and neither should I
Post Office scandal has real victims. WASPI lot are entitled boomers.
You had to have been living on Mars not to know that pension ages were changing. These people are just the perfect illustration of the decline in principles, grifters looking for something for nothing. As you say lots of people lost , both my wife and I got stiffed , not nice but I knew it was coming for many years.
You are a smart chap who follows politics from day to day. Of course you knew about pensions. But what about the 30 per cent of our countrymen and women who cannot name the Leader of the Opposition?
Almost everybody on here is writing Kemi Bad off. But she's only been in the job for three months.
You're all assuming she's incapable of change.
I doubt more than 10% know who she is.
You see, that is why I doubt the PB narrative that Waspi women *must* have known about pension changes. We on PB forget how odd we are in following politics day-to-day, even actively campaigning for one party or another. Most people are barely conscious of politics outside of elections.
Awareness of Kemi will not be as low as 10 per cent, that is hyperbole, but around 60 per cent would not surprise me, even with the added publicity for a first Black LotO.
And just this morning, I had to look up my own pension age – I knew it had been increased but had forgotten to what. So yes, I can easily believe the Waspi women were unpleasantly surprised. That is not to say they deserve compensation but a measure of sympathy is not amiss.
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
Problem is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is normally a pretty niche position, hence Clegg's LDs got just 8% here in 2015 and the FDP are now polling at less than 5% on average and their highest ever voteshare was 15% in the 2009 German election
Yeah, my late father always liked to say, "be reasonable, do it my way." But most didn't.
Under pressure from Reform Badenoch seems to want to pursue the populist route. She may pick up some votes that way from Reform but she risks losing as many such as me.
Will she pick up Fukker votes? If you want nationalist and populist government by and for right wing fucktards then the Fukkers offer a far more authentic and compelling vision of that unlovely eschaton. At the moment the tories are just the LibDems of the right and will probably end up with the number of MPs commensurate to that position at the next GE.
I fear for the Cons, I really do. They've lost their "trusted with the money" USP and they're outflanked to the right on culture and immigration by RUK. It's left them out in the cold. Like they've wandered off and the locks have been changed.
The United States actually more despotic than China now.
Really? Have you tried to Google "Tiananmen Square" from China recently?
I don't think even in China a major corporation like Tik Tok would put up an official notice saying your service depends entirely on Xi Jinping's whim. In Trump's America on the other hand ...
TikTok is banned in China. Their domestic equivalent bans you for mentioning Winnie the Pooh.
NOTA gets 44%, is that a record and more worthy of the headline?
It has been higher in the past, notably in the Johnson/Corbyn era.
These polling figures are odd of course, but predictable. What remains odd is that in the political world there is a lack of a sense of the next tier of stellar leadership at different places on the greasy pole. Labour have one or two prominent figures but no more than that. The Tories have none at all, not even a few vague names. The LDs have none. And - this could be important - Reform have none. The SNP have Kate Forbes. Weird; and a bit troubling.
Welcome to the age of the SpAd.
Have any of our party leaders ever worked as a Spad?
Indeed maybe that's the problem, insufficient study of policy development.
Spadification is more of a general name for the blandification and narrowing of the political class now, rather than a direct descriptor as its a holdover from around the Cameron/Ed M era
Neither current leader may fit that particular mould, but theres a lot fewer 'normal' MPs than existed historically nonetheless.
Look at the biographies of the new LibDem intake if you want to see some MPs with diverse real world experience.
Full biographies of I think all the new Lib Dem MPs:
Betty Brown didn’t celebrate her 92nd birthday on Monday like a typical nonagenarian.
Instead, the Glaswegian grandmother blew out the candles on her pink birthday cake in the green room of the BBC studios after appearing on Newsnight, and the next morning met the post office minister in Whitehall.
“My week has been exciting, unbelievable, unexpected — and just wonderful,” says Brown, who in the past year has become one of the key voices in the sub-postmasters’ campaign for justice. Beaming, she warms her hands on a cup of tea in the kitchen of her son Alastair’s farmhouse in Co Durham while her two grandsons potter around.
After decades feeling ashamed of having lost everything when she handed back the keys to her beloved post office in the northeast of England, Brown is now in the spotlight. As the oldest member of the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance, founded by Sir Alan Bates, she is demanding justice — and payouts — for wronged sub-postmasters.
A year after the Post Office scandal came to prominence, thanks to the hit ITV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office, victims are still waiting for their claims to be settled. Sub-postmasters lost thousands of pounds, their jobs and in some cases their homes when the company’s Horizon computer system, rolled out in branches in the early 2000s, proved defective.
Now Brown and hundreds of other sub-postmasters are trapped in an Kafka-esque nightmare. A team of government-funded independent psychologists, forensic accountants and lawyers have been deployed to assess individuals and come up with a “financial redress” figure for them to claim compensation. Yet application forms filled with legal jargon can be filled out only by lawyers. The Department for Business and Trade aims to provide an offer in 40 working days. “The victims are being re-victimised,” says Brown.
At the same time claims are being contested by an “independent panel” in the Department for Business and Trade. Many sub-postmasters, after spending hours filling out forms, have been offered as little as 10 per cent of their total claim amounts. Brown has been offered 29 per cent. Bates, the leader of a group of sub-postmasters who 2019 won a High Court Group Litigation Order (GLO) case against the Post Office, was initially offered 16 per cent of his claim. His second offer was upped to about 30 per cent. He has still not accepted and has forwarded his claim to be reviewed again by Sir Ross Cranston.
“It’s disgusting,” says Brown. “I had nothing to do with the amount that’s on that claim because it’s independently assessed,” she says.
Many of the group have been left feeling as if they are being tested again — and are stuck in a deadlock, where the government is refusing to pay out. And Brown is not getting any younger.
If Starmer paid the sub postmasters full compensation now, it would do more than any other act to restore his popularity.
The WASPI crowd would go bananas if money was found for that (even considering their call for 'compensation' is a different level entirely).
Let them.
They’ve lost.
A hardcore will never give up but they have, to all intents and purposes, lost and rightly wont get a penny.
Will I get compensation as I’ve no recollection of a letter telling me my pension age has gone up twice, from 65 to 66 to 67 ? Of course not and neither should I
Post Office scandal has real victims. WASPI lot are entitled boomers.
You had to have been living on Mars not to know that pension ages were changing. These people are just the perfect illustration of the decline in principles, grifters looking for something for nothing. As you say lots of people lost , both my wife and I got stiffed , not nice but I knew it was coming for many years.
You are a smart chap who follows politics from day to day. Of course you knew about pensions. But what about the 30 per cent of our countrymen and women who cannot name the Leader of the Opposition?
Almost everybody on here is writing Kemi Bad off. But she's only been in the job for three months.
You're all assuming she's incapable of change.
I doubt more than 10% know who she is.
You see, that is why I doubt the PB narrative that Waspi women *must* have known about pension changes. We on PB forget how odd we are in following politics day-to-day, even actively campaigning for one party or another. Most people are barely conscious of politics outside of elections.
Awareness of Kemi will not be as low as 10 per cent, that is hyperbole, but around 60 per cent would not surprise me, even with the added publicity for a first Black LotO.
And just this morning, I had to look up my own pension age – I knew it had been increased but had forgotten to what. So yes, I can easily believe the Waspi women were unpleasantly surprised. That is not to say they deserve compensation but a measure of sympathy is not amiss.
"Awareness of Kemi will not be as low as 10 per cent, that is hyperbole, but around 60 per cent would not surprise me"
Much nearer to 10 than 60. Watch "Pointless" to find out how low recognition of "public" figures can be.
Kemi has done nothing to register with Joe Public other than become Leader of the Opposition.
Betty Brown didn’t celebrate her 92nd birthday on Monday like a typical nonagenarian.
Instead, the Glaswegian grandmother blew out the candles on her pink birthday cake in the green room of the BBC studios after appearing on Newsnight, and the next morning met the post office minister in Whitehall.
“My week has been exciting, unbelievable, unexpected — and just wonderful,” says Brown, who in the past year has become one of the key voices in the sub-postmasters’ campaign for justice. Beaming, she warms her hands on a cup of tea in the kitchen of her son Alastair’s farmhouse in Co Durham while her two grandsons potter around.
After decades feeling ashamed of having lost everything when she handed back the keys to her beloved post office in the northeast of England, Brown is now in the spotlight. As the oldest member of the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance, founded by Sir Alan Bates, she is demanding justice — and payouts — for wronged sub-postmasters.
A year after the Post Office scandal came to prominence, thanks to the hit ITV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office, victims are still waiting for their claims to be settled. Sub-postmasters lost thousands of pounds, their jobs and in some cases their homes when the company’s Horizon computer system, rolled out in branches in the early 2000s, proved defective.
Now Brown and hundreds of other sub-postmasters are trapped in an Kafka-esque nightmare. A team of government-funded independent psychologists, forensic accountants and lawyers have been deployed to assess individuals and come up with a “financial redress” figure for them to claim compensation. Yet application forms filled with legal jargon can be filled out only by lawyers. The Department for Business and Trade aims to provide an offer in 40 working days. “The victims are being re-victimised,” says Brown.
At the same time claims are being contested by an “independent panel” in the Department for Business and Trade. Many sub-postmasters, after spending hours filling out forms, have been offered as little as 10 per cent of their total claim amounts. Brown has been offered 29 per cent. Bates, the leader of a group of sub-postmasters who 2019 won a High Court Group Litigation Order (GLO) case against the Post Office, was initially offered 16 per cent of his claim. His second offer was upped to about 30 per cent. He has still not accepted and has forwarded his claim to be reviewed again by Sir Ross Cranston.
“It’s disgusting,” says Brown. “I had nothing to do with the amount that’s on that claim because it’s independently assessed,” she says.
Many of the group have been left feeling as if they are being tested again — and are stuck in a deadlock, where the government is refusing to pay out. And Brown is not getting any younger.
If Starmer paid the sub postmasters full compensation now, it would do more than any other act to restore his popularity.
The WASPI crowd would go bananas if money was found for that (even considering their call for 'compensation' is a different level entirely).
Let them.
They’ve lost.
A hardcore will never give up but they have, to all intents and purposes, lost and rightly wont get a penny.
Will I get compensation as I’ve no recollection of a letter telling me my pension age has gone up twice, from 65 to 66 to 67 ? Of course not and neither should I
Post Office scandal has real victims. WASPI lot are entitled boomers.
You had to have been living on Mars not to know that pension ages were changing. These people are just the perfect illustration of the decline in principles, grifters looking for something for nothing. As you say lots of people lost , both my wife and I got stiffed , not nice but I knew it was coming for many years.
You are a smart chap who follows politics from day to day. Of course you knew about pensions. But what about the 30 per cent of our countrymen and women who cannot name the Leader of the Opposition?
Almost everybody on here is writing Kemi Bad off. But she's only been in the job for three months.
You're all assuming she's incapable of change.
I doubt more than 10% know who she is.
You see, that is why I doubt the PB narrative that Waspi women *must* have known about pension changes. We on PB forget how odd we are in following politics day-to-day, even actively campaigning for one party or another. Most people are barely conscious of politics outside of elections.
Awareness of Kemi will not be as low as 10 per cent, that is hyperbole, but around 60 per cent would not surprise me, even with the added publicity for a first Black LotO.
And just this morning, I had to look up my own pension age – I knew it had been increased but had forgotten to what. So yes, I can easily believe the Waspi women were unpleasantly surprised. That is not to say they deserve compensation but a measure of sympathy is not amiss.
I'm sorry, but it was over such a long period of time and there was a lot done to inform then, that even if plenty did indeed not know I do not accept their argument that the government's actions were unlawful or requiring compensation, and that being the case I find the tenor of their complaints to erode any sympathy I might otherwise have for them. Their in effect demands for what should have been done to inform them, and the emotionally manipulative descriptions, are so ridiculous I find it to be a bit insincere.
Ultimately they just don't like a government policy. Well that's unfortunate and happens to all of us at some point, I don't appreciate them trying to tell me this is also some kind of historic injustice. It's not even that they 'must' have known, but just not knowing is not inherently worthy of sympathy.
"I truly did not know", even if true, does not engender much sympathy from me when those that speak on my behalf lay it on thickly to the point of absurdity.
Is that a bit harsh? Maybe. But I suspect like others I did have some sympathy to start with.
'A NEW poll has found that Scots are split on the idea of a potential SNP-Labour coalition.
The two parties entering into an agreement after the 2026 Holyrood election was the most favoured option of Scots when asked about potential deals.
However, a majority still opposed the coalition between the pro-independence and unionist party.'
The Scottish Conservatives, Reform and Alba would certainly be the biggest beneficiaries of a deal between the SNP and Scottish Labour to form the next Scottish government
By the way Elon Musk is a twat who ruins everything he touches.
It is now close to impossible to embed Tweets in thread headers.
In the past all you had to do was post a link to the Tweet, now you have to arse around for five mins with embed codes.
As of yesterday I am now dark on Twitter. As entertaining as watching the cultural skip fire was, I have better things to do with my time. Plus as I listened to Jess Phillips on the Electoral Disfunction podcast she said something that opened my eyes.
The furore about her blew up as Musk started tweeting. She hadn't a clue because she doesn't have Twitter any more - she had to be told. There's the winning strategy - don't look up...
Musk and TwiX have recently altered the entire political debate in the UK, and indeed set new government policy on a crucial and pivotal issue
So not being on TwiX is, by itself, very risky - for a politician - because you won’t see this shit coming. Abandoning THE political forum - which TwiX is, still - for a lefty ghetto is like refusing to talk to the major newspapers and only appearing in the Knapper’s Gazette
On a personal level, for non pols, thinking Musk is such an arsehole you don’t want to boost his site is entirely different, and understandable
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
I'd struggle with expensive food, because I would worry I'm not enjoying it enough. Like, maybe my £50 steak* would be better than a £25 one...but I am enjoying it twice as much?
*hypothetial example only
It's interesting watching the impact of high running costs on the price of the product and hence what the product has become. For instance the £34 toasted cheese sandwich is Montgomery Cheddar, Gruyère, mozzarella, Parmesan, sourdough.
Mind you the salmon and avocado on rye bread is only £1 more so I don't get this idea that it's avocado sandwiches which mean people can't buy a house - it's almost the cheapest option on the money
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
Problem is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is normally a pretty niche position, hence Clegg's LDs got just 8% here in 2015 and the FDP are now polling at less than 5% on average and their highest ever voteshare was 15% in the 2009 German election
Yeah, my late father always liked to say, "be reasonable, do it my way." But most didn't.
Under pressure from Reform Badenoch seems to want to pursue the populist route. She may pick up some votes that way from Reform but she risks losing as many such as me.
Will she pick up Fukker votes? If you want nationalist and populist government by and for right wing fucktards then the Fukkers offer a far more authentic and compelling vision of that unlovely eschaton. At the moment the tories are just the LibDems of the right and will probably end up with the number of MPs commensurate to that position at the next GE.
I fear for the Cons, I really do. They've lost their "trusted with the money" USP and they're outflanked to the right on culture and immigration by RUK. It's left them out in the cold. Like they've wandered off and the locks have been changed.
Reform aren't trusted with anything other being "NOTA".
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
Hard to fathom the mania about supporting Palestine in UK. Pretty bizarre.
As @Leon or similar said, we live on the internet these days. The combination of algorithmic recommendations ("That made you angry. This will make you more angry! Enjoy!"), supranational loyalties and the annihilation of distance means people get VERY UPSET about things many miles away, and politics has become things that make people VERY UPSET
Or, perhaps, a lot of people, especially those with links to the region, are genuinely very upset about the huge loss of civilian life in Gaza.
The United States actually more despotic than China now.
It's not despotic to legislate a conditional ban. The legislation also gave TikTok the option of changing their massively intrusive data collection policy. They refused.
NOTA gets 44%, is that a record and more worthy of the headline?
It has been higher in the past, notably in the Johnson/Corbyn era.
These polling figures are odd of course, but predictable. What remains odd is that in the political world there is a lack of a sense of the next tier of stellar leadership at different places on the greasy pole. Labour have one or two prominent figures but no more than that. The Tories have none at all, not even a few vague names. The LDs have none. And - this could be important - Reform have none. The SNP have Kate Forbes. Weird; and a bit troubling.
Welcome to the age of the SpAd.
Have any of our party leaders ever worked as a Spad?
Indeed maybe that's the problem, insufficient study of policy development.
Spadification is more of a general name for the blandification and narrowing of the political class now, rather than a direct descriptor as its a holdover from around the Cameron/Ed M era
Neither current leader may fit that particular mould, but theres a lot fewer 'normal' MPs than existed historically nonetheless.
Look at the biographies of the new LibDem intake if you want to see some MPs with diverse real world experience.
Time they started speaking up then
Here is James MacCleary, LD spokesman on Europe, introducing the 1st Reading of the motion on Youth Mobility in Europe, which has been offered by the EU and rejected by Starmer. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=610395554706022
I assume it’s an ironic take on Tory comments about young people and avocado on toast / Netflix / not being able to buy a house.
I thought that at first but not from the journalists twitter feed where he just doubles down on it. Unless that is simply him tweeting for clicks.
Is the Mirror really capable of that level of irony ? I’ve not read it for donkeys.
The Star seems more that inclined, I don’t read the Mirror either but the connection seems too obvious not to be the trigger.
£12.70 is actually quite reasonable for a steak.
you would struggle hard to get a burger outside McDonalds basic , for that nowadays
Good morning
A local restaurant is offering fish and chips for 2 for £27.50
I really do not know how people afford to eat out regularly
Coming from solid NE Scottish fishing stock my good lady likes nothing better than haddock and chips, and I cook it regularly for us.
It costs just £5.00 for the 2 of us including petit pois peas
And as for Kemi's lunchtime steak have we really become this banal ?
It's to do with the fact that many young people can't afford houses, and how the Right blamed it on them buying avocados, Starbucks coffee, and other Woke comestibles.
Rightly or wrongly - but this is politics and there is (just about) enough logic in the matter to suit.
And the same people criticising them for buying Starbucks now insist they stop WFH and get back into the cities to buy more Starbucks.
Wonder if they will consider our recent decision on the matter - sometimes courts consider cases in other similar legal jurisdictions...
Canadian commentators have done so, though ive seen at least one anti Trudeau legal commentator say its awful but not unlawful.
IIRC the surprise with our decision amongst legal scholars was that the supreme court considered it "justiciable" at all. Once they decided it was, and thus felt able to consider the matter, I don't think many were surprised by the actual judgement.
I wasn’t really a fan of the ruling. I think Parliament is entitled to set its own rules and limits on the principles of prorogation. I was not convinced that the courts had a role at that point. The fact that I thought the actions of the Johnson government highly questionable were neither here nor there - it was for the public to judge him on his actions, in my view.
I am sure a lot of constitutional lawyers would disagree with me - just how I saw it.
I disagree, Parliament shouldn't be able to set its own rules on prorogation, it is quite rightly a prorogative matter for the Crown. Once it was decided that it was justiciable - ie that the Crown can't behave irrationally - the ruling seemed to make sense
I don't see how, with a prorogation long overdue, having it coinciding with the conference season recess was in any way "irrational".
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Puzzled rather than concerned.
Looking at the latest YouGov poll, Labour has lost 30% of its GE vote. 10% to LD, 8% to Ref, 5% to Green and 5% to Con (Sub Sample 650) So more to LD than Reform, but small sample.
LDs have also lost 8% of its GE vote back to Labour. Presumably Labour LD tactical voters moving back to Labour in answering the poll.
Lib Dem support before the election was so correlated with Labour support that for the party to be flat is not too bad.
Performance at the next election will be all about how well or badly the Tories perform. If they bounce back then the Lib Dems lose seats even if they gain share. But if Reform surges at Tory expense then that’s much better news for LD. It also helps them to self-define as the opposite to Reform.
I think the next election will be between the populists (Tory, Reform) and Progressives (Lab, LD, Green). Currently they are 50/50 in the polls.
Under FPTP, it will turn on how tactically each can optimise seats. I think the Progressives have shown how they can optimise seats without any formal pacts. The question is can the Populists manage this too?
The next election will be between various populist parties - Lab, Con, Reform LD, Green, fringe Inds and Nats.
The only difference is that they will all be aiming their own brand of populism at differing voter groups.
By Populist I mean socially conservative, anti immigrant, little Englanders, spend money on us, short term prospective. By Progressive I mean socially liberal, internationally minded, long term prospective.
Obviously all parties want to be popular. Maybe we need a better word for Populist.
'A NEW poll has found that Scots are split on the idea of a potential SNP-Labour coalition.
The two parties entering into an agreement after the 2026 Holyrood election was the most favoured option of Scots when asked about potential deals.
However, a majority still opposed the coalition between the pro-independence and unionist party.'
I think a Labour/SNP coalition is almost inevitable. I will be very surprised if the numbers allow a stable government any other way. A Unionist coalition of Labour Tories and Lib Dems might be possible but I suspect that many Labour supporters would far rather get in bed with the SNP than the Tories.
The question that is open is which of the 2 will be the largest and thus lead the Coalition? Until the UK election this looked a no brainer with Labour very much the favourites but the unpopularity of the Starmer government risks this being reversed.
It will be the SNP by a mile. Even-stevens in the central belt but SNP will crush Labour in the rural areas.
Wonder if they will consider our recent decision on the matter - sometimes courts consider cases in other similar legal jurisdictions...
Canadian commentators have done so, though ive seen at least one anti Trudeau legal commentator say its awful but not unlawful.
IIRC the surprise with our decision amongst legal scholars was that the supreme court considered it "justiciable" at all. Once they decided it was, and thus felt able to consider the matter, I don't think many were surprised by the actual judgement.
I wasn’t really a fan of the ruling. I think Parliament is entitled to set its own rules and limits on the principles of prorogation. I was not convinced that the courts had a role at that point. The fact that I thought the actions of the Johnson government highly questionable were neither here nor there - it was for the public to judge him on his actions, in my view.
I am sure a lot of constitutional lawyers would disagree with me - just how I saw it.
I disagree, Parliament shouldn't be able to set its own rules on prorogation, it is quite rightly a prorogative matter for the Crown. Once it was decided that it was justiciable - ie that the Crown can't behave irrationally - the ruling seemed to make sense
I thought part of the point of the judgement was they decided the prorogration was a proceeding done to Parliament, rather than a proceeding of Parliament, that that was why it was justiciable?
That is, it wasn't Parliament setting its own rules on prorogation - and if that had been what it was, then the court would have said it was indeed ok even if people thought it was irrational?
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
Betty Brown didn’t celebrate her 92nd birthday on Monday like a typical nonagenarian.
Instead, the Glaswegian grandmother blew out the candles on her pink birthday cake in the green room of the BBC studios after appearing on Newsnight, and the next morning met the post office minister in Whitehall.
“My week has been exciting, unbelievable, unexpected — and just wonderful,” says Brown, who in the past year has become one of the key voices in the sub-postmasters’ campaign for justice. Beaming, she warms her hands on a cup of tea in the kitchen of her son Alastair’s farmhouse in Co Durham while her two grandsons potter around.
After decades feeling ashamed of having lost everything when she handed back the keys to her beloved post office in the northeast of England, Brown is now in the spotlight. As the oldest member of the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance, founded by Sir Alan Bates, she is demanding justice — and payouts — for wronged sub-postmasters.
A year after the Post Office scandal came to prominence, thanks to the hit ITV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office, victims are still waiting for their claims to be settled. Sub-postmasters lost thousands of pounds, their jobs and in some cases their homes when the company’s Horizon computer system, rolled out in branches in the early 2000s, proved defective.
Now Brown and hundreds of other sub-postmasters are trapped in an Kafka-esque nightmare. A team of government-funded independent psychologists, forensic accountants and lawyers have been deployed to assess individuals and come up with a “financial redress” figure for them to claim compensation. Yet application forms filled with legal jargon can be filled out only by lawyers. The Department for Business and Trade aims to provide an offer in 40 working days. “The victims are being re-victimised,” says Brown.
At the same time claims are being contested by an “independent panel” in the Department for Business and Trade. Many sub-postmasters, after spending hours filling out forms, have been offered as little as 10 per cent of their total claim amounts. Brown has been offered 29 per cent. Bates, the leader of a group of sub-postmasters who 2019 won a High Court Group Litigation Order (GLO) case against the Post Office, was initially offered 16 per cent of his claim. His second offer was upped to about 30 per cent. He has still not accepted and has forwarded his claim to be reviewed again by Sir Ross Cranston.
“It’s disgusting,” says Brown. “I had nothing to do with the amount that’s on that claim because it’s independently assessed,” she says.
Many of the group have been left feeling as if they are being tested again — and are stuck in a deadlock, where the government is refusing to pay out. And Brown is not getting any younger.
If Starmer paid the sub postmasters full compensation now, it would do more than any other act to restore his popularity.
The WASPI crowd would go bananas if money was found for that (even considering their call for 'compensation' is a different level entirely).
Let them.
They’ve lost.
A hardcore will never give up but they have, to all intents and purposes, lost and rightly wont get a penny.
Will I get compensation as I’ve no recollection of a letter telling me my pension age has gone up twice, from 65 to 66 to 67 ? Of course not and neither should I
Post Office scandal has real victims. WASPI lot are entitled boomers.
You had to have been living on Mars not to know that pension ages were changing. These people are just the perfect illustration of the decline in principles, grifters looking for something for nothing. As you say lots of people lost , both my wife and I got stiffed , not nice but I knew it was coming for many years.
You are a smart chap who follows politics from day to day. Of course you knew about pensions. But what about the 30 per cent of our countrymen and women who cannot name the Leader of the Opposition?
Almost everybody on here is writing Kemi Bad off. But she's only been in the job for three months.
You're all assuming she's incapable of change.
I doubt more than 10% know who she is.
You see, that is why I doubt the PB narrative that Waspi women *must* have known about pension changes. We on PB forget how odd we are in following politics day-to-day, even actively campaigning for one party or another. Most people are barely conscious of politics outside of elections.
Awareness of Kemi will not be as low as 10 per cent, that is hyperbole, but around 60 per cent would not surprise me, even with the added publicity for a first Black LotO.
And just this morning, I had to look up my own pension age – I knew it had been increased but had forgotten to what. So yes, I can easily believe the Waspi women were unpleasantly surprised. That is not to say they deserve compensation but a measure of sympathy is not amiss.
Some of us are old enough to remember the 1990s and overhearing actual discussions about the pension changes.
Now to me there are two possibilities:
1) Waspi women didn't see anything on television, hear anything on the radio, read anything in the papers, didn't discuss it at work but would have been informed if they had received a single letter AND, this is the usually overlooked part, would have changed their lifestyle in the following two decades by spending less and saving more to fund their later retirement.
2) Waspi women knew about the change, didn't want to save more and are lying in an attempt to grift some more money from the young.
I think there might be a few in the first group but vastly outnumbered by those in the second.
[REPOST] More detail about how Google is getting steadily worse. Basically they worked out that if the search was bad you would stay on for longer and see more ads, so they made it worse deliberately. Those wacky 2020s, eh?
I have no idea if Google is any good or not now, but their dominance presumably means it doesn't matter. Absent being forced to break up, how bad would things have to get before large numbers abandoned them?
It’s already happening. I now use Google for about 10% of my searches and it used to be 100%. ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude - or a combo thereof, are infinitely better, faster, smarter, and you don’t get ads. They are gamechangers
'A NEW poll has found that Scots are split on the idea of a potential SNP-Labour coalition.
The two parties entering into an agreement after the 2026 Holyrood election was the most favoured option of Scots when asked about potential deals.
However, a majority still opposed the coalition between the pro-independence and unionist party.'
I think a Labour/SNP coalition is almost inevitable. I will be very surprised if the numbers allow a stable government any other way. A Unionist coalition of Labour Tories and Lib Dems might be possible but I suspect that many Labour supporters would far rather get in bed with the SNP than the Tories.
The question that is open is which of the 2 will be the largest and thus lead the Coalition? Until the UK election this looked a no brainer with Labour very much the favourites but the unpopularity of the Starmer government risks this being reversed.
It will be the SNP by a mile. Even-stevens in the central belt but SNP will crush Labour in the rural areas.
There is a huge swathe of central belt seats that swing on comparatively little changes between the 2, as we saw in both 2015 and 2024. It is a brave man or woman who puts more than few shillings on who will win that race in 2026 with both of the contenders in trouble and the risk of Reform getting in the mix as well. Starmer and Reeves have had a terrible start but its not as if Swinney & Co are setting the heather alight either.
Of course in the Scottish Parliament the loser will claw back a lot of the losses from the list seats but I think that the constituency winners are still likely to end up the largest party.
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
Problem is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is normally a pretty niche position, hence Clegg's LDs got just 8% here in 2015 and the FDP are now polling at less than 5% on average and their highest ever voteshare was 15% in the 2009 German election.
Macron has probably been the most electorally successful national leader as an economic and social liberal but even he started off as Finance Minister in a Socialist PM's Cabinet and run runoff elections mainly to keep out the far right. Yet now finds his party squeezed between Melenchon's party to his left and Le Pen's party to his right
Yes, the gap for such a party is never as much as people think it seems.
It doesn't help that a large proportion of PBers fit that description.
Beinkg socially liberal seems to be a position (or many positions) embraced by *leaders* of economically conservative parties.
Betty Brown didn’t celebrate her 92nd birthday on Monday like a typical nonagenarian.
Instead, the Glaswegian grandmother blew out the candles on her pink birthday cake in the green room of the BBC studios after appearing on Newsnight, and the next morning met the post office minister in Whitehall.
“My week has been exciting, unbelievable, unexpected — and just wonderful,” says Brown, who in the past year has become one of the key voices in the sub-postmasters’ campaign for justice. Beaming, she warms her hands on a cup of tea in the kitchen of her son Alastair’s farmhouse in Co Durham while her two grandsons potter around.
After decades feeling ashamed of having lost everything when she handed back the keys to her beloved post office in the northeast of England, Brown is now in the spotlight. As the oldest member of the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance, founded by Sir Alan Bates, she is demanding justice — and payouts — for wronged sub-postmasters.
A year after the Post Office scandal came to prominence, thanks to the hit ITV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office, victims are still waiting for their claims to be settled. Sub-postmasters lost thousands of pounds, their jobs and in some cases their homes when the company’s Horizon computer system, rolled out in branches in the early 2000s, proved defective.
Now Brown and hundreds of other sub-postmasters are trapped in an Kafka-esque nightmare. A team of government-funded independent psychologists, forensic accountants and lawyers have been deployed to assess individuals and come up with a “financial redress” figure for them to claim compensation. Yet application forms filled with legal jargon can be filled out only by lawyers. The Department for Business and Trade aims to provide an offer in 40 working days. “The victims are being re-victimised,” says Brown.
At the same time claims are being contested by an “independent panel” in the Department for Business and Trade. Many sub-postmasters, after spending hours filling out forms, have been offered as little as 10 per cent of their total claim amounts. Brown has been offered 29 per cent. Bates, the leader of a group of sub-postmasters who 2019 won a High Court Group Litigation Order (GLO) case against the Post Office, was initially offered 16 per cent of his claim. His second offer was upped to about 30 per cent. He has still not accepted and has forwarded his claim to be reviewed again by Sir Ross Cranston.
“It’s disgusting,” says Brown. “I had nothing to do with the amount that’s on that claim because it’s independently assessed,” she says.
Many of the group have been left feeling as if they are being tested again — and are stuck in a deadlock, where the government is refusing to pay out. And Brown is not getting any younger.
If Starmer paid the sub postmasters full compensation now, it would do more than any other act to restore his popularity.
The WASPI crowd would go bananas if money was found for that (even considering their call for 'compensation' is a different level entirely).
Let them.
They’ve lost.
A hardcore will never give up but they have, to all intents and purposes, lost and rightly wont get a penny.
Will I get compensation as I’ve no recollection of a letter telling me my pension age has gone up twice, from 65 to 66 to 67 ? Of course not and neither should I
Post Office scandal has real victims. WASPI lot are entitled boomers.
You had to have been living on Mars not to know that pension ages were changing. These people are just the perfect illustration of the decline in principles, grifters looking for something for nothing. As you say lots of people lost , both my wife and I got stiffed , not nice but I knew it was coming for many years.
You are a smart chap who follows politics from day to day. Of course you knew about pensions. But what about the 30 per cent of our countrymen and women who cannot name the Leader of the Opposition?
Almost everybody on here is writing Kemi Bad off. But she's only been in the job for three months.
You're all assuming she's incapable of change.
I doubt more than 10% know who she is.
You see, that is why I doubt the PB narrative that Waspi women *must* have known about pension changes. We on PB forget how odd we are in following politics day-to-day, even actively campaigning for one party or another. Most people are barely conscious of politics outside of elections.
Awareness of Kemi will not be as low as 10 per cent, that is hyperbole, but around 60 per cent would not surprise me, even with the added publicity for a first Black LotO.
And just this morning, I had to look up my own pension age – I knew it had been increased but had forgotten to what. So yes, I can easily believe the Waspi women were unpleasantly surprised. That is not to say they deserve compensation but a measure of sympathy is not amiss.
Some of us are old enough to remember the 1990s and overhearing actual discussions about the pension changes.
Now to me there are two possibilities:
1) Waspi women didn't see anything on television, hear anything on the radio, read anything in the papers, didn't discuss it at work but would have been informed if they had received a single letter AND, this is the usually overlooked part, would have changed their lifestyle in the following two decades by spending less and saving more to fund their later retirement.
2) Waspi women knew about the change, didn't want to save more and are lying in an attempt to grift some more money from the young.
I think there might be a few in the first group but vastly outnumbered by those in the second.
And even if it was 1, should the government compensate them for that? However nice that would be, is it a reasonable use of government funds given the efforts which did take place?
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
Problem is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is normally a pretty niche position, hence Clegg's LDs got just 8% here in 2015 and the FDP are now polling at less than 5% on average and their highest ever voteshare was 15% in the 2009 German election
Yeah, my late father always liked to say, "be reasonable, do it my way." But most didn't.
Under pressure from Reform Badenoch seems to want to pursue the populist route. She may pick up some votes that way from Reform but she risks losing as many such as me.
Will she pick up Fukker votes? If you want nationalist and populist government by and for right wing fucktards then the Fukkers offer a far more authentic and compelling vision of that unlovely eschaton. At the moment the tories are just the LibDems of the right and will probably end up with the number of MPs commensurate to that position at the next GE.
I fear for the Cons, I really do. They've lost their "trusted with the money" USP and they're outflanked to the right on culture and immigration by RUK. It's left them out in the cold. Like they've wandered off and the locks have been changed.
It’s actually WORSE than that for the Tories. They’ve lost their “trusted with migration and the borders” USP after the insane and self harming Boriswave. I wonder if they will ever recover from that
I reckon they will become junior partners to Reform in a Reform led Coalition govt next time; and after that they may wither and die altogether. Oh dear what a shame etc
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
How much of your lunch was for the food and how much for the setting and how much for the pretension.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
[REPOST] More detail about how Google is getting steadily worse. Basically they worked out that if the search was bad you would stay on for longer and see more ads, so they made it worse deliberately. Those wacky 2020s, eh?
I have no idea if Google is any good or not now, but their dominance presumably means it doesn't matter. Absent being forced to break up, how bad would things have to get before large numbers abandoned them?
It’s already happening. I now use Google for about 10% of my searches and it used to be 100%. ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude - or a combo thereof, are infinitely better, faster, smarter, and you don’t get ads. They are gamechangers
NB - this does NOT mean the end of Google Inc. They own Gemini for a start, and they have enormous wealth and power
It DOES mean the end of Google search as we know it, it will die in a year or three as people realise there are vastly superior alternatives
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
Whilst I don't drink, my dining companions do.
I have spent a lot of money on alcohol than a good Muslim boy ever should.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
The food is awesome there, you leave feeling that they've undercharged you.
Oh come off it, who are you fooling? I could buy that for some of the meal offerings there, but no cheese toastie on earth could be worth that - they're already amazing doing it yourself at home, there's only so much you can improve upon it.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
How much of your lunch was for the food and how much for the setting and how much for the pretension.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
50% pretension, 40% vintage champagne, 8% setting (it is very pretty and striking) and 2% food, which was decidedly mediocre
That’s the weird thing with these places that are INSANELY expensive - nearly always the food is shite, or Meh at best. The restaurant knows that people are only coming in to pose and do instagram and boast about how much they’ve spent, on Tiktok, so they focus on decor, bling and faff, and don’t bother with the cooking
When I go to these places (I never go myself on my own shilling, but I am taken to them in my job) I always order the simplest seafood - oysters and caviar and Dover sole etc. Because good oysters are good oysters, they can’t fuck it up, unless they are literally ordering in shit oysters (unlikely, as they would poison people)
By the way Elon Musk is a twat who ruins everything he touches.
It is now close to impossible to embed Tweets in thread headers.
In the past all you had to do was post a link to the Tweet, now you have to arse around for five mins with embed codes.
As of yesterday I am now dark on Twitter. As entertaining as watching the cultural skip fire was, I have better things to do with my time. Plus as I listened to Jess Phillips on the Electoral Disfunction podcast she said something that opened my eyes.
The furore about her blew up as Musk started tweeting. She hadn't a clue because she doesn't have Twitter any more - she had to be told. There's the winning strategy - don't look up...
Musk and TwiX have recently altered the entire political debate in the UK, and indeed set new government policy on a crucial and pivotal issue
So not being on TwiX is, by itself, very risky - for a politician - because you won’t see this shit coming. Abandoning THE political forum - which TwiX is, still - for a lefty ghetto is like refusing to talk to the major newspapers and only appearing in the Knapper’s Gazette
On a personal level, for non pols, thinking Musk is such an arsehole you don’t want to boost his site is entirely different, and understandable
I've come off. My followers are just going to have to readjust. They'll be fine, I think.
By the way Elon Musk is a twat who ruins everything he touches.
It is now close to impossible to embed Tweets in thread headers.
In the past all you had to do was post a link to the Tweet, now you have to arse around for five mins with embed codes.
As of yesterday I am now dark on Twitter. As entertaining as watching the cultural skip fire was, I have better things to do with my time. Plus as I listened to Jess Phillips on the Electoral Disfunction podcast she said something that opened my eyes.
The furore about her blew up as Musk started tweeting. She hadn't a clue because she doesn't have Twitter any more - she had to be told. There's the winning strategy - don't look up...
Musk and TwiX have recently altered the entire political debate in the UK, and indeed set new government policy on a crucial and pivotal issue
So not being on TwiX is, by itself, very risky - for a politician - because you won’t see this shit coming. Abandoning THE political forum - which TwiX is, still - for a lefty ghetto is like refusing to talk to the major newspapers and only appearing in the Knapper’s Gazette
On a personal level, for non pols, thinking Musk is such an arsehole you don’t want to boost his site is entirely different, and understandable
I've come off. My followers are just going to have to readjust. They'll be fine, I think.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
I'd struggle with expensive food, because I would worry I'm not enjoying it enough. Like, maybe my £50 steak* would be better than a £25 one...but I am enjoying it twice as much?
*hypothetial example only
It's interesting watching the impact of high running costs on the price of the product and hence what the product has become. For instance the £34 toasted cheese sandwich is Montgomery Cheddar, Gruyère, mozzarella, Parmesan, sourdough.
Mind you the salmon and avocado on rye bread is only £1 more so I don't get this idea that it's avocado sandwiches which mean people can't buy a house - it's almost the cheapest option on the money
Don't we all miss those articles? Older PBers will remember Mrs Thatcher praising Carol's financial independence as a student, although of course, we paid for her skiing holidays.
How to buy a house by giving up lattes and smashed avocado on toast was in the same line. Below those headline measures would be save £1,000 a month on food and rent by moving in with mum and dad, then if you are really lucky and he isn't, have grandad (RIP) leave you £30,000.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
How much of your lunch was for the food and how much for the setting and how much for the pretension.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
50% pretension, 40% vintage champagne, 8% setting (it is very pretty and striking) and 2% food, which was decidedly mediocre
That’s the weird thing with these places that are INSANELY expensive - nearly always the food is shite, or Meh at best. The restaurant knows that people are only coming in to pose and do instagram and boast about how much they’ve spent, on Tiktok, so they focus on decor, bling and faff, and don’t bother with the cooking
When I go to these places (I never go myself on my own shilling, but I am taken to them in my job) I always order the simplest seafood - oysters and caviar and Dover sole etc. Because good oysters are good oysters, they can’t fuck it up, unless they are literally ordering in shit oysters (unlikely, as they would poison people)
I recall getting some random youtube videos of a supposed marketing expert (maybe he even is one, who knows) talking about eating experience and that especially back in the day restaurants catering to tourists in particular had very little incentive to make sure they were really good, because 90% of the customers will be there once and never come back anyway, so you're busting a gut for no real reason. And if you got food poisoning even most would never know (not that anyone sets out to serve such food).
Whereas McDonalds will not provide you with a really excellent burger, but you know if you walk into one anywhere in the world you will get exactly the same as anywhere, it will be ok, and it won't make you sick - it may not be as good as a better place (I love it though), but it also won't be as bad as some.
I'm not even opposed to the idea that you pay a premium for the experience to some extent however.
The United States actually more despotic than China now.
It's not despotic to legislate a conditional ban. The legislation also gave TikTok the option of changing their massively intrusive data collection policy. They refused.
And anyone who suggests doing so is more despotic than China is trolling at best.
Remind me how many Western social media apps are legal in China right now.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
Shows that the "tax relief" proposals of the AfD and FDP will mostly benefit the rich, other parties benefit the less rich Eg
It (FDP program) is really lucrative for those with high or top incomes: a single-income couple with two children with an exemplary gross annual income of 180,000 euros would receive around 19,190 if the AfD program were implemented. It would be 11,990 for the FDP and 5,840 euros for the Union. With the SPD program, this family would have 2,200 euros more at their disposal. With the Greens, income would increase by 100 euros, with the BSW it would remain unchanged. Only the Left's program would reduce income by around 800 euros.
So much for the AfD being against the elites!
Also
A single-income couple with two children and a gross income of 40,000 euros would be better off financially if the election programs of the Left Party (plus 6,150 euros/year), the BSW (plus 1,010 euros), the Greens (plus 870 euros) or the SPD (plus 860 euros) were implemented. With the Union's program, it would still be 300 euros more per year.If the election programs of the FDP or AfD were implemented, this family would have less money at its disposal, according to the ZEW. For the AfD, it would be 440 euros less per year, and for the FDP, 1,520 euros less.
The FDP are an interesting bunch. Members of the ALDE bloc but very different from any others in that group.
The only European party with what I’d describe as full on Thatcherite “neoliberal” policies. Forget orange book, more like a Tory party run by 1990s vintage John Redwood and Peter Lilley but with more socially liberal views. It’s a brave position to be in these days.
Sounds pretty ideal from my perspective. Bit like the Tories under Cameron/Osborne. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Oh, those were the days. I frankly wonder if I will ever vote with any enthusiasm again.
Problem is socially liberal and fiscally conservative is normally a pretty niche position, hence Clegg's LDs got just 8% here in 2015 and the FDP are now polling at less than 5% on average and their highest ever voteshare was 15% in the 2009 German election
Yeah, my late father always liked to say, "be reasonable, do it my way." But most didn't.
Under pressure from Reform Badenoch seems to want to pursue the populist route. She may pick up some votes that way from Reform but she risks losing as many such as me.
Will she pick up Fukker votes? If you want nationalist and populist government by and for right wing fucktards then the Fukkers offer a far more authentic and compelling vision of that unlovely eschaton. At the moment the tories are just the LibDems of the right and will probably end up with the number of MPs commensurate to that position at the next GE.
I fear for the Cons, I really do. They've lost their "trusted with the money" USP and they're outflanked to the right on culture and immigration by RUK. It's left them out in the cold. Like they've wandered off and the locks have been changed.
Reform aren't trusted with anything other being "NOTA".
Which isn't a basis for forming a goverment.
They have the enormous advantage of never having been in government. I hope it's an advantage they continue to enjoy for as long as they live.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Puzzled rather than concerned.
Looking at the latest YouGov poll, Labour has lost 30% of its GE vote. 10% to LD, 8% to Ref, 5% to Green and 5% to Con (Sub Sample 650) So more to LD than Reform, but small sample.
LDs have also lost 8% of its GE vote back to Labour. Presumably Labour LD tactical voters moving back to Labour in answering the poll.
Lib Dem support before the election was so correlated with Labour support that for the party to be flat is not too bad.
Performance at the next election will be all about how well or badly the Tories perform. If they bounce back then the Lib Dems lose seats even if they gain share. But if Reform surges at Tory expense then that’s much better news for LD. It also helps them to self-define as the opposite to Reform.
I think the next election will be between the populists (Tory, Reform) and Progressives (Lab, LD, Green). Currently they are 50/50 in the polls.
Under FPTP, it will turn on how tactically each can optimise seats. I think the Progressives have shown how they can optimise seats without any formal pacts. The question is can the Populists manage this too?
The next election will be between various populist parties - Lab, Con, Reform LD, Green, fringe Inds and Nats.
The only difference is that they will all be aiming their own brand of populism at differing voter groups.
By Populist I mean socially conservative, anti immigrant, little Englanders, spend money on us, short term prospective. By Progressive I mean socially liberal, internationally minded, long term prospective.
Obviously all parties want to be popular. Maybe we need a better word for Populist.
As a semi-serious question, and a giggle, do any of our local correspondents know whether La Oakeshott will be integrating into the Muslim culture of the Muslim country she has immigrated to for (she says) a period of years 'as the best place to educate my children' * - as her party demands of people who immigrate here?
* TBF I think this is standard Oakeshott attention-seeking BS.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
How much of your lunch was for the food and how much for the setting and how much for the pretension.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
50% pretension, 40% vintage champagne, 8% setting (it is very pretty and striking) and 2% food, which was decidedly mediocre
That’s the weird thing with these places that are INSANELY expensive - nearly always the food is shite, or Meh at best. The restaurant knows that people are only coming in to pose and do instagram and boast about how much they’ve spent, on Tiktok, so they focus on decor, bling and faff, and don’t bother with the cooking
When I go to these places (I never go myself on my own shilling, but I am taken to them in my job) I always order the simplest seafood - oysters and caviar and Dover sole etc. Because good oysters are good oysters, they can’t fuck it up, unless they are literally ordering in shit oysters (unlikely, as they would poison people)
I recall getting some random youtube videos of a supposed marketing expert (maybe he even is one, who knows) talking about eating experience and that especially back in the day restaurants catering to tourists in particular had very little incentive to make sure they were really good, because 90% of the customers will be there once and never come back anyway, so you're busting a gut for no real reason. And if you got food poisoning even most would never know (not that anyone sets out to serve such food).
Whereas McDonalds will not provide you with a really excellent burger, but you know if you walk into one anywhere in the world you will get exactly the same as anywhere, it will be ok, and it won't make you sick - it may not be as good as a better place (I love it though), but it also won't be as bad as some.
I'm not even opposed to the idea that you pay a premium for the experience to some extent however.
It’s why the food in Venice is some of the worst in the world (unless you stay at an incredibly high end hotel like the Cipriani or the Gritti, when it will be genuinely excellent, but hideously pricey). They have literally zero incentive to make even passable food, as Venice gets 60 trillion tourists a day, 96% of whom will never return. Why waste good ingredients and serious preparation on them? Just cream the maximum profit (to help pay your very hefty rent)
By the way Elon Musk is a twat who ruins everything he touches.
It is now close to impossible to embed Tweets in thread headers.
In the past all you had to do was post a link to the Tweet, now you have to arse around for five mins with embed codes.
As of yesterday I am now dark on Twitter. As entertaining as watching the cultural skip fire was, I have better things to do with my time. Plus as I listened to Jess Phillips on the Electoral Disfunction podcast she said something that opened my eyes.
The furore about her blew up as Musk started tweeting. She hadn't a clue because she doesn't have Twitter any more - she had to be told. There's the winning strategy - don't look up...
Musk and TwiX have recently altered the entire political debate in the UK, and indeed set new government policy on a crucial and pivotal issue
So not being on TwiX is, by itself, very risky - for a politician - because you won’t see this shit coming. Abandoning THE political forum - which TwiX is, still - for a lefty ghetto is like refusing to talk to the major newspapers and only appearing in the Knapper’s Gazette
On a personal level, for non pols, thinking Musk is such an arsehole you don’t want to boost his site is entirely different, and understandable
I've come off. My followers are just going to have to readjust. They'll be fine, I think.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
How much of your lunch was for the food and how much for the setting and how much for the pretension.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
50% pretension, 40% vintage champagne, 8% setting (it is very pretty and striking) and 2% food, which was decidedly mediocre
That’s the weird thing with these places that are INSANELY expensive - nearly always the food is shite, or Meh at best. The restaurant knows that people are only coming in to pose and do instagram and boast about how much they’ve spent, on Tiktok, so they focus on decor, bling and faff, and don’t bother with the cooking
When I go to these places (I never go myself on my own shilling, but I am taken to them in my job) I always order the simplest seafood - oysters and caviar and Dover sole etc. Because good oysters are good oysters, they can’t fuck it up, unless they are literally ordering in shit oysters (unlikely, as they would poison people)
I recall getting some random youtube videos of a supposed marketing expert (maybe he even is one, who knows) talking about eating experience and that especially back in the day restaurants catering to tourists in particular had very little incentive to make sure they were really good, because 90% of the customers will be there once and never come back anyway, so you're busting a gut for no real reason. And if you got food poisoning even most would never know (not that anyone sets out to serve such food).
Whereas McDonalds will not provide you with a really excellent burger, but you know if you walk into one anywhere in the world you will get exactly the same as anywhere, it will be ok, and it won't make you sick - it may not be as good as a better place (I love it though), but it also won't be as bad as some.
I'm not even opposed to the idea that you pay a premium for the experience to some extent however.
Fortunately Trip Adviser and specialist dietary forums seem to be pushing back against that.
By the way Elon Musk is a twat who ruins everything he touches.
It is now close to impossible to embed Tweets in thread headers.
In the past all you had to do was post a link to the Tweet, now you have to arse around for five mins with embed codes.
As of yesterday I am now dark on Twitter. As entertaining as watching the cultural skip fire was, I have better things to do with my time. Plus as I listened to Jess Phillips on the Electoral Disfunction podcast she said something that opened my eyes.
The furore about her blew up as Musk started tweeting. She hadn't a clue because she doesn't have Twitter any more - she had to be told. There's the winning strategy - don't look up...
Musk and TwiX have recently altered the entire political debate in the UK, and indeed set new government policy on a crucial and pivotal issue
So not being on TwiX is, by itself, very risky - for a politician - because you won’t see this shit coming. Abandoning THE political forum - which TwiX is, still - for a lefty ghetto is like refusing to talk to the major newspapers and only appearing in the Knapper’s Gazette
On a personal level, for non pols, thinking Musk is such an arsehole you don’t want to boost his site is entirely different, and understandable
I've come off. My followers are just going to have to readjust. They'll be fine, I think.
Curious. How many followers did you have on TwiX?
Two.
That’s commendably honest AND you managed to exceed my expectations in terms of numbers
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
How much of your lunch was for the food and how much for the setting and how much for the pretension.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
50% pretension, 40% vintage champagne, 8% setting (it is very pretty and striking) and 2% food, which was decidedly mediocre
That’s the weird thing with these places that are INSANELY expensive - nearly always the food is shite, or Meh at best. The restaurant knows that people are only coming in to pose and do instagram and boast about how much they’ve spent, on Tiktok, so they focus on decor, bling and faff, and don’t bother with the cooking
When I go to these places (I never go myself on my own shilling, but I am taken to them in my job) I always order the simplest seafood - oysters and caviar and Dover sole etc. Because good oysters are good oysters, they can’t fuck it up, unless they are literally ordering in shit oysters (unlikely, as they would poison people)
I recall getting some random youtube videos of a supposed marketing expert (maybe he even is one, who knows) talking about eating experience and that especially back in the day restaurants catering to tourists in particular had very little incentive to make sure they were really good, because 90% of the customers will be there once and never come back anyway, so you're busting a gut for no real reason. And if you got food poisoning even most would never know (not that anyone sets out to serve such food).
Whereas McDonalds will not provide you with a really excellent burger, but you know if you walk into one anywhere in the world you will get exactly the same as anywhere, it will be ok, and it won't make you sick - it may not be as good as a better place (I love it though), but it also won't be as bad as some.
I'm not even opposed to the idea that you pay a premium for the experience to some extent however.
Sounds like Rory Sutherland, stablemate of Leon's and vice-something of Ogilvy & Mather.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
How much of your lunch was for the food and how much for the setting and how much for the pretension.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
50% pretension, 40% vintage champagne, 8% setting (it is very pretty and striking) and 2% food, which was decidedly mediocre
That’s the weird thing with these places that are INSANELY expensive - nearly always the food is shite, or Meh at best. The restaurant knows that people are only coming in to pose and do instagram and boast about how much they’ve spent, on Tiktok, so they focus on decor, bling and faff, and don’t bother with the cooking
When I go to these places (I never go myself on my own shilling, but I am taken to them in my job) I always order the simplest seafood - oysters and caviar and Dover sole etc. Because good oysters are good oysters, they can’t fuck it up, unless they are literally ordering in shit oysters (unlikely, as they would poison people)
I recall getting some random youtube videos of a supposed marketing expert (maybe he even is one, who knows) talking about eating experience and that especially back in the day restaurants catering to tourists in particular had very little incentive to make sure they were really good, because 90% of the customers will be there once and never come back anyway, so you're busting a gut for no real reason. And if you got food poisoning even most would never know (not that anyone sets out to serve such food).
Whereas McDonalds will not provide you with a really excellent burger, but you know if you walk into one anywhere in the world you will get exactly the same as anywhere, it will be ok, and it won't make you sick - it may not be as good as a better place (I love it though), but it also won't be as bad as some.
I'm not even opposed to the idea that you pay a premium for the experience to some extent however.
Sounds like Rory Sutherland, stablemate of Leon's and vice-something of Ogilvy & Mather.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
How much of your lunch was for the food and how much for the setting and how much for the pretension.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
50% pretension, 40% vintage champagne, 8% setting (it is very pretty and striking) and 2% food, which was decidedly mediocre
That’s the weird thing with these places that are INSANELY expensive - nearly always the food is shite, or Meh at best. The restaurant knows that people are only coming in to pose and do instagram and boast about how much they’ve spent, on Tiktok, so they focus on decor, bling and faff, and don’t bother with the cooking
When I go to these places (I never go myself on my own shilling, but I am taken to them in my job) I always order the simplest seafood - oysters and caviar and Dover sole etc. Because good oysters are good oysters, they can’t fuck it up, unless they are literally ordering in shit oysters (unlikely, as they would poison people)
I recall getting some random youtube videos of a supposed marketing expert (maybe he even is one, who knows) talking about eating experience and that especially back in the day restaurants catering to tourists in particular had very little incentive to make sure they were really good, because 90% of the customers will be there once and never come back anyway, so you're busting a gut for no real reason. And if you got food poisoning even most would never know (not that anyone sets out to serve such food).
Whereas McDonalds will not provide you with a really excellent burger, but you know if you walk into one anywhere in the world you will get exactly the same as anywhere, it will be ok, and it won't make you sick - it may not be as good as a better place (I love it though), but it also won't be as bad as some.
I'm not even opposed to the idea that you pay a premium for the experience to some extent however.
It’s why the food in Venice is some of the worst in the world (unless you stay at an incredibly high end hotel like the Cipriani or the Gritti, when it will be genuinely excellent, but hideously pricey). They have literally zero incentive to make even passable food, as Venice gets 60 trillion tourists a day, 96% of whom will never return. Why waste good ingredients and serious preparation on them? Just cream the maximum profit (to help pay your very hefty rent)
You need to go to the bits of Venice where Venetians live. The food there is excellent but you need an Italian speaker in your group.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
How much of your lunch was for the food and how much for the setting and how much for the pretension.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
50% pretension, 40% vintage champagne, 8% setting (it is very pretty and striking) and 2% food, which was decidedly mediocre
That’s the weird thing with these places that are INSANELY expensive - nearly always the food is shite, or Meh at best. The restaurant knows that people are only coming in to pose and do instagram and boast about how much they’ve spent, on Tiktok, so they focus on decor, bling and faff, and don’t bother with the cooking
When I go to these places (I never go myself on my own shilling, but I am taken to them in my job) I always order the simplest seafood - oysters and caviar and Dover sole etc. Because good oysters are good oysters, they can’t fuck it up, unless they are literally ordering in shit oysters (unlikely, as they would poison people)
I recall getting some random youtube videos of a supposed marketing expert (maybe he even is one, who knows) talking about eating experience and that especially back in the day restaurants catering to tourists in particular had very little incentive to make sure they were really good, because 90% of the customers will be there once and never come back anyway, so you're busting a gut for no real reason. And if you got food poisoning even most would never know (not that anyone sets out to serve such food).
Whereas McDonalds will not provide you with a really excellent burger, but you know if you walk into one anywhere in the world you will get exactly the same as anywhere, it will be ok, and it won't make you sick - it may not be as good as a better place (I love it though), but it also won't be as bad as some.
I'm not even opposed to the idea that you pay a premium for the experience to some extent however.
It’s why the food in Venice is some of the worst in the world (unless you stay at an incredibly high end hotel like the Cipriani or the Gritti, when it will be genuinely excellent, but hideously pricey). They have literally zero incentive to make even passable food, as Venice gets 60 trillion tourists a day, 96% of whom will never return. Why waste good ingredients and serious preparation on them? Just cream the maximum profit (to help pay your very hefty rent)
Isn't there also an element with really high end restaurants that raising the price automatically increases in quality of the experience? Partly keeping out the riffraff but also because if it's expensive it must be good. Which is a nifty bit of the economy to be in. (See also: private schools and the sort of watch you don't own because you're looking after it for you favourite son.)
But in a way it doesn't matter, because the person who makes the profit is the landlord.
By the way Elon Musk is a twat who ruins everything he touches.
It is now close to impossible to embed Tweets in thread headers.
In the past all you had to do was post a link to the Tweet, now you have to arse around for five mins with embed codes.
As of yesterday I am now dark on Twitter. As entertaining as watching the cultural skip fire was, I have better things to do with my time. Plus as I listened to Jess Phillips on the Electoral Disfunction podcast she said something that opened my eyes.
The furore about her blew up as Musk started tweeting. She hadn't a clue because she doesn't have Twitter any more - she had to be told. There's the winning strategy - don't look up...
Musk and TwiX have recently altered the entire political debate in the UK, and indeed set new government policy on a crucial and pivotal issue
So not being on TwiX is, by itself, very risky - for a politician - because you won’t see this shit coming. Abandoning THE political forum - which TwiX is, still - for a lefty ghetto is like refusing to talk to the major newspapers and only appearing in the Knapper’s Gazette
On a personal level, for non pols, thinking Musk is such an arsehole you don’t want to boost his site is entirely different, and understandable
I've come off. My followers are just going to have to readjust. They'll be fine, I think.
Curious. How many followers did you have on TwiX?
Two.
That’s commendably honest AND you managed to exceed my expectations in terms of numbers
Yes well, 2 is also the number of tweets I did in 4 years. If I'd poured myself into it I'd probably be in double digits.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
How much of your lunch was for the food and how much for the setting and how much for the pretension.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
50% pretension, 40% vintage champagne, 8% setting (it is very pretty and striking) and 2% food, which was decidedly mediocre
That’s the weird thing with these places that are INSANELY expensive - nearly always the food is shite, or Meh at best. The restaurant knows that people are only coming in to pose and do instagram and boast about how much they’ve spent, on Tiktok, so they focus on decor, bling and faff, and don’t bother with the cooking
When I go to these places (I never go myself on my own shilling, but I am taken to them in my job) I always order the simplest seafood - oysters and caviar and Dover sole etc. Because good oysters are good oysters, they can’t fuck it up, unless they are literally ordering in shit oysters (unlikely, as they would poison people)
I recall getting some random youtube videos of a supposed marketing expert (maybe he even is one, who knows) talking about eating experience and that especially back in the day restaurants catering to tourists in particular had very little incentive to make sure they were really good, because 90% of the customers will be there once and never come back anyway, so you're busting a gut for no real reason. And if you got food poisoning even most would never know (not that anyone sets out to serve such food).
Whereas McDonalds will not provide you with a really excellent burger, but you know if you walk into one anywhere in the world you will get exactly the same as anywhere, it will be ok, and it won't make you sick - it may not be as good as a better place (I love it though), but it also won't be as bad as some.
I'm not even opposed to the idea that you pay a premium for the experience to some extent however.
It’s why the food in Venice is some of the worst in the world (unless you stay at an incredibly high end hotel like the Cipriani or the Gritti, when it will be genuinely excellent, but hideously pricey). They have literally zero incentive to make even passable food, as Venice gets 60 trillion tourists a day, 96% of whom will never return. Why waste good ingredients and serious preparation on them? Just cream the maximum profit (to help pay your very hefty rent)
You need to go to the bits of Venice where Venetians live. The food there is excellent but you need an Italian speaker in your group.
Yeah, I know, I’ve been to Venice maybe a dozen times., I am aware that if you try really hard you can find nice food. Venetian tapas - cicchetti - can be pretty agreeable, tho nothing as good as Spain
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
How much of your lunch was for the food and how much for the setting and how much for the pretension.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
50% pretension, 40% vintage champagne, 8% setting (it is very pretty and striking) and 2% food, which was decidedly mediocre
That’s the weird thing with these places that are INSANELY expensive - nearly always the food is shite, or Meh at best. The restaurant knows that people are only coming in to pose and do instagram and boast about how much they’ve spent, on Tiktok, so they focus on decor, bling and faff, and don’t bother with the cooking
When I go to these places (I never go myself on my own shilling, but I am taken to them in my job) I always order the simplest seafood - oysters and caviar and Dover sole etc. Because good oysters are good oysters, they can’t fuck it up, unless they are literally ordering in shit oysters (unlikely, as they would poison people)
I recall getting some random youtube videos of a supposed marketing expert (maybe he even is one, who knows) talking about eating experience and that especially back in the day restaurants catering to tourists in particular had very little incentive to make sure they were really good, because 90% of the customers will be there once and never come back anyway, so you're busting a gut for no real reason. And if you got food poisoning even most would never know (not that anyone sets out to serve such food).
Whereas McDonalds will not provide you with a really excellent burger, but you know if you walk into one anywhere in the world you will get exactly the same as anywhere, it will be ok, and it won't make you sick - it may not be as good as a better place (I love it though), but it also won't be as bad as some.
I'm not even opposed to the idea that you pay a premium for the experience to some extent however.
It’s why the food in Venice is some of the worst in the world (unless you stay at an incredibly high end hotel like the Cipriani or the Gritti, when it will be genuinely excellent, but hideously pricey). They have literally zero incentive to make even passable food, as Venice gets 60 trillion tourists a day, 96% of whom will never return. Why waste good ingredients and serious preparation on them? Just cream the maximum profit (to help pay your very hefty rent)
Isn't there also an element with really high end restaurants that raising the price automatically increases in quality of the experience? Partly keeping out the riffraff but also because if it's expensive it must be good. Which is a nifty bit of the economy to be in. (See also: private schools and the sort of watch you don't own because you're looking after it for you favourite son.)
But in a way it doesn't matter, because the person who makes the profit is the landlord.
Comments
Under FPTP, it will turn on how tactically each can optimise seats. I think the Progressives have shown how they can optimise seats without any formal pacts. The question is can the Populists manage this too?
I wasnt massively persuaded by it, but my view was the lawfulness or not was a side issue - it was wrong even if it was lawful (and as the Court of Appeal had thought it was it wasnt absurd to think it was). And so if people focused on the lawfulness they'd have no means to criticise if the decision had gone the other way.
As for whether the Conservatives need to move their tanks towards the Lib Dems or Reform, the fact they are having to fight both at once shows what a problem the Conservatives have. The Lib Dems are opposition, and without taking a decent bite out of those Nice Britain seats, Kemi ain't going to Number Ten, except as a guest. But Reform are the enemy. And anything the Conservatives do on one side weakens them.on the other
For @TSE
'A NEW poll has found that Scots are split on the idea of a potential SNP-Labour coalition.
The two parties entering into an agreement after the 2026 Holyrood election was the most favoured option of Scots when asked about potential deals.
However, a majority still opposed the coalition between the pro-independence and unionist party.'
Before/after the election there was plenty of polling of Reform voters, which suggested under a third would have voted Tory, while a similar amount would vote Lab/LD/Green, and plenty wouldn't vote at all. They weren't a group who had always voted Tory in the past, rather a much more complex coalition.
With the more recent talk of a pact, there was polling of the Tories, asking a similar question, and, while Reform were the most popular, the overall results were fairly similar, with a significant majority saying they wouldn't vote Reform.
Given that we saw that Labour, LDs and Greens were pretty ruthless about tactical voting at the last election, I suspect both parties are fully aware that they may lose more than they gain with a merger.
https://bsky.app/profile/tricialockwood.bsky.social/post/3lfvddt2awk2z
I also don't think it is a good use of anyone's time for PMs to visit flood affected areas, probably causing disruption and taking people away from useful activity. Send the royals and the relevant Cabinet minister and let the PM coordinate that, and other daily matters, from Westminster. It doesn't mean they don't care.
In comparison, the Conservatives are up 22, mainly +11 from Labour, +4 from SNP and +4 from ind/oth.
Reform are up 7, which is mainly +4 against Labour.
Or when it came to any of their pet projects.
I think the Greens may benefit in a similar way if they can successfull combine shire Greens and inner city Greens together, Lucas was a novelty, but having 4 makes them seem more plausible.
(Strangle it at birth, to save the youngsters from seeing a load of ads on Google.)
Now Reform have MPs elected under their banner at a General Election, it's going to be much much harder for the Conservatives.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
https://www.claridges.co.uk/siteassets/restaurants--bars/foyer--reading-room/menus/2025/the-foyer-and-reading-room-all-day-dining-january-2025.pdf
But the Tories don’t have that fallback because they are neither seen as competent enough to deliver or even the leading party on the right now.
David Henig 🇺🇦
@DavidHenigUK
Sunday politics shows will be fall of the great and good declaring how to respond to Trump without actually knowing what he'll do. On anything.
Trump chaos, four seat majority in Congress, two years to mid-terms, plus whether governments can even make big differences to economics and society in the modern global age.
We'll see, but assume very little.
https://x.com/DavidHenigUK
The only difference is that they will all be aiming their own brand of populism at differing voter groups.
*hypothetial example only
The question that is open is which of the 2 will be the largest and thus lead the Coalition? Until the UK election this looked a no brainer with Labour very much the favourites but the unpopularity of the Starmer government risks this being reversed.
And Spotify is sending me adverts from Blackpool Council.
Awareness of Kemi will not be as low as 10 per cent, that is hyperbole, but around 60 per cent would not surprise me, even with the added publicity for a first Black LotO.
And just this morning, I had to look up my own pension age – I knew it had been increased but had forgotten to what. So yes, I can easily believe the Waspi women were unpleasantly surprised. That is not to say they deserve compensation but a measure of sympathy is not amiss.
Their domestic equivalent bans you for mentioning Winnie the Pooh.
https://www.libdemvoice.org/tag/our-new-mps
Much nearer to 10 than 60. Watch "Pointless" to find out how low recognition of "public" figures can be.
Kemi has done nothing to register with Joe Public other than become Leader of the Opposition.
Ultimately they just don't like a government policy. Well that's unfortunate and happens to all of us at some point, I don't appreciate them trying to tell me this is also some kind of historic injustice. It's not even that they 'must' have known, but just not knowing is not inherently worthy of sympathy.
"I truly did not know", even if true, does not engender much sympathy from me when those that speak on my behalf lay it on thickly to the point of absurdity.
Is that a bit harsh? Maybe. But I suspect like others I did have some sympathy to start with.
So not being on TwiX is, by itself, very risky - for a politician - because you won’t see this shit coming. Abandoning THE political forum - which TwiX is, still - for a lefty ghetto is like refusing to talk to the major newspapers and only appearing in the Knapper’s Gazette
On a personal level, for non pols, thinking Musk is such an arsehole you don’t want to boost his site is entirely different, and understandable
Mind you the salmon and avocado on rye bread is only £1 more so I don't get this idea that it's avocado sandwiches which mean people can't buy a house - it's almost the cheapest option on the money
Which isn't a basis for forming a goverment.
The legislation also gave TikTok the option of changing their massively intrusive data collection policy.
They refused.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=610395554706022
Obviously all parties want to be popular.
Maybe we need a better word for Populist.
That is, it wasn't Parliament setting its own rules on prorogation - and if that had been what it was, then the court would have said it was indeed ok even if people thought it was irrational?
£150 is a hefty chunk of money, but not overly impressive. I had a Xmas lunch at Kaspar’s in the Savoy which easily went into four figures - 10 years ago
This was for 2 people. We were both exceptionally drunk at the end, at which point my very loaded friend announced HE was going to cover it all, and we ran out of the Savoy and climbed in his armour-plated, chauffeured Bentley and drove the 300 yards to the Ivy Club, where he put his card behind the bar
THAT is a proper lunch, and puts Kemi’s sixpenny sirloin into proper context
Now to me there are two possibilities:
1) Waspi women didn't see anything on television, hear anything on the radio, read anything in the papers, didn't discuss it at work but would have been informed if they had received a single letter AND, this is the usually overlooked part, would have changed their lifestyle in the following two decades by spending less and saving more to fund their later retirement.
2) Waspi women knew about the change, didn't want to save more and are lying in an attempt to grift some more money from the young.
I think there might be a few in the first group but vastly outnumbered by those in the second.
Of course in the Scottish Parliament the loser will claw back a lot of the losses from the list seats but I think that the constituency winners are still likely to end up the largest party.
I reckon they will become junior partners to Reform in a Reform led Coalition govt next time; and after that they may wither and die altogether. Oh dear what a shame etc
I like going out and having a *really* nice meal occasionally. Perhaps once or twice a year, as (or at) an event. I couldn't stand doing it regularly.
The £42 fish and chips at Claridges seems about equal amounts for food, setting and pretension.
It DOES mean the end of Google search as we know it, it will die in a year or three as people realise there are vastly superior alternatives
I have spent a lot of money on alcohol than a good Muslim boy ever should.
Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands
In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen
Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk
Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
In fact, I meay make one now for lunch.
That’s the weird thing with these places that are INSANELY expensive - nearly always the food is shite, or Meh at best. The restaurant knows that people are only coming in to pose and do instagram and boast about how much they’ve spent, on Tiktok, so they focus on decor, bling and faff, and don’t bother with the cooking
When I go to these places (I never go myself on my own shilling, but I am taken to them in my job) I always order the simplest seafood - oysters and caviar and Dover sole etc. Because good oysters are good oysters, they can’t fuck it up, unless they are literally ordering in shit oysters (unlikely, as they would poison people)
How to buy a house by giving up lattes and smashed avocado on toast was in the same line. Below those headline measures would be save £1,000 a month on food and rent by moving in with mum and dad, then if you are really lucky and he isn't, have grandad (RIP) leave you £30,000.
The blogger formerly know as a PBer has rejoined the SNP.
https://x.com/scotnational/status/1880314143363694638?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
ALBA seems to have descended into bickering irrelevance since Salmond’s death. If they elect Regan as leader they might as jack it in.
Whereas McDonalds will not provide you with a really excellent burger, but you know if you walk into one anywhere in the world you will get exactly the same as anywhere, it will be ok, and it won't make you sick - it may not be as good as a better place (I love it though), but it also won't be as bad as some.
I'm not even opposed to the idea that you pay a premium for the experience to some extent however.
Remind me how many Western social media apps are legal in China right now.
* TBF I think this is standard Oakeshott attention-seeking BS.
It’s a poem by Bertolt Brecht - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Lösung
But in a way it doesn't matter, because the person who makes the profit is the landlord.
https://katieparla.com/daily-food-photo-cicchetti/
But will the average tourist experience this near the Rialto or St Marks Sq or along the Grand Canal? Nope
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good