What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
So you're happy the government is giving away £18bn and territory to a hostile foreign power in league with China? You're also happy with the prospect of the government opening the door to hundreds of billions in liability for reparations?
I guess it's a view.
I don't care about giving away small legacy colonial territories in a part of the world we have no geopolitical or military influence.
I also don't have a strong view on £90m pa being paid for leasing a military base for the Americans, where presumably we get various quid quo pros with them elsewhere in military terms.
I don't believe we will ever pay any reparations and it's all talk. There's no money left, whatever the politics or it. I will care if they are paid. Until that point, I don't care about talking.
I understand many on here yet excited by it. But I'm much more interested as to whether their positive noise on planning reform and building come to fruition. That was always going to take longer than 6 months to get right.
“I don't care about giving away small legacy colonial territories in a part of the world we have no geopolitical or military influence.”
I don’t agree with that line at all. Looking at the next hundred years, it’s part of the world that is growing economic powerhouse, which means we hold a key strategic security interest in it.
What is key about this Chagos work around, which none of you, the MSM nor LOTO seems to appreciate, is India likes it - Moldy telling Trump his like for it, is what imo seals Trump Admin backing. Through India is a key economic and strategic security interest in the region.
What US and UK are trying to do here is cuddle in with India - so India, with our backing, owns these waters in face of any Chinese future claims (that aren’t really there at the moment) but balanced with how things have shifted at the UN, against what we done to secure this set up in 1960s - which might have been a bit “clunky” measured against different standards for behaviour 60 years later.
There’s plenty around quick to call it a surrender, in which case the question I ask you is: who are we surrendering too? Definitely not the Chagouns we ethnically cleansed from Chagos, we are not even talking to them. So the nub of what sticks in the “Populist craw” is idea we are unnecessarily and pointlessly, without any reason or benefit, “surrendering” to what the UN is telling us what to do.
However, those saying just ignore the UN - if these people were actually in power in UK themselves, would they answer “what, in the round, does the UN actually do for us?” differently than the the simple black and white answer “just ignore it”? Finding themselves in a more complex and grey world of International power games - influence in UN we don’t yet wish to walk away from, for how being lead players and play callers in UN is in our strategic interest too. It doesn’t come with no consequence or harm does it - to your influence, by undermine the rules and required cooperation of members, the more you say: do as I say, not as I do, in clubs your are a senior and influential member of.
The US and UK Chagos deal is a future looking piece of necessary legal tidying up. We should support it for all my reasoning posted here.
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
So you're happy the government is giving away £18bn and territory to a hostile foreign power in league with China? You're also happy with the prospect of the government opening the door to hundreds of billions in liability for reparations?
I guess it's a view.
Question - if its an outrageous Labour thing to do that, why did this start *under the Tories*?
It’s like you're trying to embarrass yourselves and bring the party further into the gutter by advancing this argument. People aren't as stupid as you might like them to be - and the ones who are vote Reform already.
There’s a difference between a discussion and agreeing a bad deal.
The Tories started a conversation. It was right to start the conversation. They claim (they may be lying) that they wouldn’t have signed this deal. Starmer and Labour have agreed this deal (apparently). It is a bad deal.
On reparations I think that Starmer is making a mistake even starting a conversation. He doesn’t have to, and to even implicitly entertain the idea of reparations shows weakness. (By contrast, I think it was right to show that he was taking the advisory judgement of the ICJ seriously, even if the outcome was no deal).
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
So you're happy the government is giving away £18bn and territory to a hostile foreign power in league with China? You're also happy with the prospect of the government opening the door to hundreds of billions in liability for reparations?
I guess it's a view.
Question - if its an outrageous Labour thing to do that, why did this start *under the Tories*?
It’s like you're trying to embarrass yourselves and bring the party further into the gutter by advancing this argument. People aren't as stupid as you might like them to be - and the ones who are vote Reform already.
There’s a difference between a discussion and agreeing a bad deal.
The Tories started a conversation. It was right to start the conversation. They claim (they may be lying) that they wouldn’t have signed this deal. Starmer and Labour have agreed this deal (apparently). It is a bad deal.
On reparations I think that Starmer is making a mistake even starting a conversation. He doesn’t have to, and to even implicitly entertain the idea of reparations shows weakness. (By contrast, I think it was right to show that he was taking the advisory judgement of the ICJ seriously, even if the outcome was no deal).
Indeed. As soon as Cameron saw what was being proposed, he kiboshed the entire thing. It was resurrected under the current administration.
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
So you're happy the government is giving away £18bn and territory to a hostile foreign power in league with China? You're also happy with the prospect of the government opening the door to hundreds of billions in liability for reparations?
I guess it's a view.
Question - if its an outrageous Labour thing to do that, why did this start *under the Tories*?
It’s like you're trying to embarrass yourselves and bring the party further into the gutter by advancing this argument. People aren't as stupid as you might like them to be - and the ones who are vote Reform already.
There’s a difference between a discussion and agreeing a bad deal.
The Tories started a conversation. It was right to start the conversation. They claim (they may be lying) that they wouldn’t have signed this deal. Starmer and Labour have agreed this deal (apparently). It is a bad deal.
On reparations I think that Starmer is making a mistake even starting a conversation. He doesn’t have to, and to even implicitly entertain the idea of reparations shows weakness. (By contrast, I think it was right to show that he was taking the advisory judgement of the ICJ seriously, even if the outcome was no deal).
Doing *something* about Chagos is probably a good idea.
That doesn’t mean that every possible agreement is a good idea.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Keir Starmer sees Chagos Islands deal as block to China spy hubs
The prime minister thinks ceding the islands to Mauritius will create a ‘buffer zone’ around the US naval base on Diego Garcia"
There’s already a buffer zone. It’s called the British Indian Ocean Territory.
If we don’t have the balls, we should just gift the territory to the yanks. Were the ICJ to come calling I know what they would say, Republican or Democrat. It would be what we would have said once.
US have effectively been in control all along. US wanted it ethically cleansed of Chagouns, and as their bitch we ethnically cleansed it for them.
If you had the call, would you take on the responsibilities and brickbats of ownership, when you already have all the control you need via your bitch doing the work for you?
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
Absolutely deluded and very much not surprised by the likes you got. Amazing bias.
Go on point out where I have ever done that. Never voted Labour in my life and I'm 70!
Does it never cross your mind that if that were true we would be Labour supporters and not LD supporters.
The LDs have been around for quite some time now, yet there are plenty of Labour supporters even who do act like LDs not automatically supporting Labour is a kind of betrayal.
The average LD supporter probably does lean more Labour than Tory at the moment if pressed, and some LD voters may not been massively fervent supporters but live in an area where Labour are nowhere, but LDs don't owe Labour anything, or vice versa. Co-operation, overt or otherwise, might sometimes be worth it, but should be case by case.
When seats like Surrey Heath, Dorking, the South Cotswolds etc etc, are now comfortably Lib Dem, then you can see that the Lib Dems certainly are appealing to erstwhile Tories. Ed Davey, Mark Pack and the rest of the party leadership have progressive, even radical instincts, but actually so do a considerable section of the Tories- which is why Cameron was successful, at least for a while. Going to the kind of F*ck You politics of Trump or Farage will keep the Tories in an unelectable ghetto (and Farage will also ultimately crash and burn in my opinion too).
Trump is not a model, he´s a terrible warning, so the Fash-curious on this site may feel triumphant today, but they will see their performance cruelty politics fail both in the US and in the UK. Let us hope that the West has not shot its bolt with this betrayal of the principles of democracy and justice. Breaking the rule of law may seem like cutting the Gordian knot, but in fact it undermines the entire basis of our freedom and our prosperity.
This is why quite a lot of us will fight tooth and nail against the self serving and unprincipled media vermin trying to sell these crims as "our only hope" or some such crap.
The LibDems are the nimby waspi party.
They're the 'fuck you' party of the haves.
Of all the 6 main parties they’re the only ones I despise. The party of the southern counties, entrenched privilege and pulling up the ladder for future generations. They whored themselves to the Tories for power and abandoned their principles on tuition fees for power. A generation has a far greater debt thanks to them and any party who supports these WASPI leeches is totally unprincipled and cynically opportunistic
“Put you money where you mouth is. Reform will be looking for shoo-in candidates. A celebrity Spectator columnist? Drinks all round!”
*****
I am a tiny bit tempted, TBH
Obvs I don’t want to do any of the boring shit like actually meet constituents or care about poor people or spend much time in crappy old provincial Britain - esp November-March - but if I could find some vaguely agreeably constituency which is very easily won and where I can RFA - rule from abroad - I might be inclined
You would still be allowed to continue in your day job. Much like Farage. Like Farage with Clacton you would never be required to go to Hereford to meet your constituents once elected.
I wonder if parts of Cornwall might go Reform
I saw that massive marginal poll and it had Labour clinging on to two mid Cornwall seats. This seems unlikely to me
The anger about Labour is visceral down there, but the Tories are still likewise hated. The usual Cornish choice in this situation is to go Lib Dem
But the mood is really not “Lib Demmy”
Cornwall was also strong for UKIP
Mind bleach at the ready.
I do wonder as Trump crashes the World the obvious traces of excrement around Farage's bouche will work against Reform and also that branch of the Tories who likewise indulged in ri.ming Trump.
No, because if it goes to Hell in a handcart it'll be someone else's fault.
The only effective antidote to populism is a practical demonstration by the existing political establishment that it is able to improve the life circumstances of the less well-off. They must raise the wellbeing and standard of living of workers in the bottom half of the income distribution. That's exactly what Labour is trying to achieve by bolstering the minimum wage and setting ambitious targets for housebuilding, but even if they can get heroic numbers of new dwellings built (and a substantial fraction of those are available at social rates) then I still think they're likely to fail. Any extra money raised through taxes is going to be sucked up by elderly care and pensions whilst the remainder of the state continues to fall apart, the lack of commitment to tackling inflation properly means that the price of basic commodities and especially rents is going to run ahead of wages and, indeed, earned incomes are liable to resume falling in real terms - an accumulation of inflationary pressure and a fresh bout of wage suppression by businesses passing on the cost of the NI hike to their employees.
The Chancellor can bang on about growth til the end of time, but you're never going to get anything more than anaemic expansion out of an economy that's heavily burdened by an ageing population and built by design to funnel what wealth is available upwards and into unproductive forms of investment. The only effective way to bolster the prospects of the poor is, therefore, redistribution of wealth down rather than up through society, and Labour won't do that in any meaningful way. It means all they're left with is the laughable promise of massive economic growth with a negligible probability of actually getting there, coupled with the usual bidding war over who can be nastiest to the usual scapegoat groups, such as asylum seekers and benefit claimants (those under 65 at any rate,) which a faux right wing party can never win against real ones.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
“Put you money where you mouth is. Reform will be looking for shoo-in candidates. A celebrity Spectator columnist? Drinks all round!”
*****
I am a tiny bit tempted, TBH
Obvs I don’t want to do any of the boring shit like actually meet constituents or care about poor people or spend much time in crappy old provincial Britain - esp November-March - but if I could find some vaguely agreeably constituency which is very easily won and where I can RFA - rule from abroad - I might be inclined
You would still be allowed to continue in your day job. Much like Farage. Like Farage with Clacton you would never be required to go to Hereford to meet your constituents once elected.
I wonder if parts of Cornwall might go Reform
I saw that massive marginal poll and it had Labour clinging on to two mid Cornwall seats. This seems unlikely to me
The anger about Labour is visceral down there, but the Tories are still likewise hated. The usual Cornish choice in this situation is to go Lib Dem
But the mood is really not “Lib Demmy”
Cornwall was also strong for UKIP
Mind bleach at the ready.
I do wonder as Trump crashes the World the obvious traces of excrement around Farage's bouche will work against Reform and also that branch of the Tories who likewise indulged in ri.ming Trump.
No, because if it goes to Hell in a handcart it'll be someone else's fault.
The only effective antidote to populism is a practical demonstration by the existing political establishment that it is able to improve the life circumstances of the less well-off. They must raise the wellbeing and standard of living of workers in the bottom half of the income distribution. That's exactly what Labour is trying to achieve by bolstering the minimum wage and setting ambitious targets for housebuilding, but even if they can get heroic numbers of new dwellings built (and a substantial fraction of those are available at social rates) then I still think they're likely to fail. Any extra money raised through taxes is going to be sucked up by elderly care and pensions whilst the remainder of the state continues to fall apart, the lack of commitment to tackling inflation properly means that the price of basic commodities and especially rents is going to run ahead of wages and, indeed, earned incomes are liable to resume falling in real terms - an accumulation of inflationary pressure and a fresh bout of wage suppression by businesses passing on the cost of the NI hike to their employees.
The Chancellor can bang on about growth til the end of time, but you're never going to get anything more than anaemic expansion out of an economy that's heavily burdened by an ageing population and built by design to funnel what wealth is available upwards and into unproductive forms of investment. The only effective way to bolster the prospects of the poor is, therefore, redistribution of wealth down rather than up through society, and Labour won't do that in any meaningful way. It means all they're left with is the laughable promise of massive economic growth with a negligible probability of actually getting there, coupled with the usual bidding war over who can be nastiest to the usual scapegoat groups, such as asylum seekers and benefit claimants (those under 65 at any rate,) which a faux right wing party can never win against real ones.
I suspect you are right.
We saw that in the US. All the KPis were heading in the right direction but the voter still believed the price of eggs and gas was too high, and Trump promised them cheap eggs and gas. If he can Putinise/Mugabeise the next election the price of eggs and gas won't matter one jot anyway.
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
So you're happy the government is giving away £18bn and territory to a hostile foreign power in league with China? You're also happy with the prospect of the government opening the door to hundreds of billions in liability for reparations?
I guess it's a view.
I don't care about giving away small legacy colonial territories in a part of the world we have no geopolitical or military influence.
I also don't have a strong view on £90m pa being paid for leasing a military base for the Americans, where presumably we get various quid quo pros with them elsewhere in military terms.
I don't believe we will ever pay any reparations and it's all talk. There's no money left, whatever the politics or it. I will care if they are paid. Until that point, I don't care about talking.
I understand many on here yet excited by it. But I'm much more interested as to whether their positive noise on planning reform and building come to fruition. That was always going to take longer than 6 months to get right.
“I don't care about giving away small legacy colonial territories in a part of the world we have no geopolitical or military influence.”
I don’t agree with that line at all. Looking at the next hundred years, it’s part of the world that is growing economic powerhouse, which means we hold a key strategic security interest in it.
What is key about this Chagos work around, which none of you, the MSM nor LOTO seems to appreciate, is India likes it - Moldy telling Trump his like for it, is what imo seals Trump Admin backing. Through India is a key economic and strategic security interest in the region.
What US and UK are trying to do here is cuddle in with India - so India, with our backing, owns these waters in face of any Chinese future claims (that aren’t really there at the moment) but balanced with how things have shifted at the UN, against what we done to secure this set up in 1960s - which might have been a bit “clunky” measured against different standards for behaviour 60 years later.
There’s plenty around quick to call it a surrender, in which case the question I ask you is: who are we surrendering too? Definitely not the Chagouns we ethnically cleansed from Chagos, we are not even talking to them. So the nub of what sticks in the “Populist craw” is idea we are unnecessarily and pointlessly, without any reason or benefit, “surrendering” to what the UN is telling us what to do.
However, those saying just ignore the UN - if these people were actually in power in UK themselves, would they answer “what, in the round, does the UN actually do for us?” differently than the the simple black and white answer “just ignore it”? Finding themselves in a more complex and grey world of International power games - influence in UN we don’t yet wish to walk away from, for how being lead players and play callers in UN is in our strategic interest too. It doesn’t come with no consequence or harm does it - to your influence, by undermine the rules and required cooperation of members, the more you say: do as I say, not as I do, in clubs your are a senior and influential member of.
The US and UK Chagos deal is a future looking piece of necessary legal tidying up. We should support it for all my reasoning posted here.
Yes, but you're a fucking loony
But what we both agree on, we do need to look at this deal in the bigger picture, to see how different it appears to us in the bigger picture?
What happened in the 60’s and the 70’s. US wanted it ethically cleansed of Chagouns, and as their bitch UK ethnically cleansed it for them. How the UN was different then, views such behaviour different now. How US have effectively been in control all along. If you had the call as US President, would you take on the responsibilities and brickbats of ownership, when you already have all the control you need via your UK bitch doing the work for you, like owning this deal?
That as a key player in the UN, we still get an awful lot more back from membership, by taking the lead and setting the example to others, than a do what it asks, not as I would do, approach? The deal isn’t even doing what the UN wants, it’s throwing money around to bastardise the spirit of the UN judgements?
That we have to listen to India on this deal. The bottom line of the proposed Chagos deal it’s US and UK looking to a future of working with India for the security of these waters from China influence?
And, from that, addressing the bit you like least and why it’s part of it, quite importantly in the bigger picture, how India and the United States are not fans, but belligerent enemies, of British Colonialism. Have been dismantling our Empire for most of the last century?
You know the United States had plans to invade and free Hong Kong from British dominion? The “real James Bond” children’s author Roald Dahl unearthed them. None of this is loony, it’s all for real.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey CC are not responsible for Woking's debt.
And the funding appears to be from elsewhere, such as the Forestry Commission.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey CC are not responsible for Woking's debt.
.
Neither is the rest of the country yet people on here expect the country to bail Woking out.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey County Council isn't responsible for Woking's debt, and Woking itself isn't big enough ever to repay the debt.
If the Government is serious about unitarisation then it is going to have to pay off Woking's debt itself. It's not just that the council tax payers of Woking itself could spend the rest of time trying to clear it and never succeed; if the Woking debt isn't forgiven then it will be inherited by the successor authority and, therefore, it will immediately become bankrupt. You'd then be saddling the people in the surrounding areas with the unpayable debt too.
As with our old friend the state pension Triple Lock, idiot politicians can't continue to work against the fundamental rules of mathematics indefinitely. At some point, hiking pensions ahead of earnings will have to stop. At some point, Woking will have to be bailed. It's just a matter of how long the Government can get away with can kicking.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey CC are not responsible for Woking's debt.
.
Neither is the rest of the country yet people on here expect the country to bail Woking out.
If Woking goes bankrupt, the lenders will just have to write off the debt. There’s no justification for their receiving any taxpayer funding.
Corporate welfare should be viewed as a perversion.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
Do you have the cost benefit analysis to hand ?
A report during the Sunak government put the benefit of existing trees outside forests at a few billion a year;
The valuation is based on the important role they play in sequestering and storing carbon, regulating temperatures, strengthening flood resilience and reducing noise and air pollution. Together, these help to mitigate against climate change, reducing damage to infrastructure and people from the impact of flooding, cooling our cities in summer and improving health and wellbeing.
The thing about schemes like the Surrey one is that the trees themselves are pretty cheap- one to five pounds, depending on exactly how young they are. The expensive bit is getting them planted and cared for while they establish themselves.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
Do you have the cost benefit analysis to hand ?
The thing about schemes like the Surrey one is that the trees themselves are pretty cheap- one to five pounds, depending on exactly how young they are. The expensive bit is getting them planted and cared for while they establish themselves.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
Do you have the cost benefit analysis to hand ?
A report during the Sunak government put the benefit of existing trees outside forests at a few billion a year;
The valuation is based on the important role they play in sequestering and storing carbon, regulating temperatures, strengthening flood resilience and reducing noise and air pollution. Together, these help to mitigate against climate change, reducing damage to infrastructure and people from the impact of flooding, cooling our cities in summer and improving health and wellbeing.
The thing about schemes like the Surrey one is that the trees themselves are pretty cheap- one to five pounds, depending on exactly how young they are. The expensive bit is getting them planted and cared for while they establish themselves.
How do we know you aren't one? Your fur-curiosity is a revealing sign, no?
Probably one or two on PB. Or three or four.*
'"You probably know a furry and don't realise it because we are just everywhere," says Rock who, like Fennick, is not keen to reveal his human identity, preferring to be known by his "fursona".'
*Plus, of course, the ones who have furry birthday coats ab initio, just to put the matter in scale.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
Do you have the cost benefit analysis to hand ?
A report during the Sunak government put the benefit of existing trees outside forests at a few billion a year;
The valuation is based on the important role they play in sequestering and storing carbon, regulating temperatures, strengthening flood resilience and reducing noise and air pollution. Together, these help to mitigate against climate change, reducing damage to infrastructure and people from the impact of flooding, cooling our cities in summer and improving health and wellbeing.
The thing about schemes like the Surrey one is that the trees themselves are pretty cheap- one to five pounds, depending on exactly how young they are. The expensive bit is getting them planted and cared for while they establish themselves.
I meant for Surrey and this scheme.
National scheme, isn't it? (Seriously.)
And aren't Surrey people human, too? They live in places like, eesh, Croydon.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey CC are not responsible for Woking's debt.
.
Neither is the rest of the country yet people on here expect the country to bail Woking out.
If Woking goes bankrupt, the lenders will just have to write off the debt. There’s no justification for their receiving any taxpayer funding.
Corporate welfare should be viewed as a perversion.
Although we're all talking about bankruptcy this is, of course, a colloquialism in the case of a council. Woking Borough Council cannot go bankrupt, because it is a public body. It is an arm of the state and, as such, not to be regarded in quite the same manner as a chain of clothes shops or the local used car dealership.
The Government, I'm afraid, has to be seen to honour its debts. If it were that simple to resolve crippling indebtedness through default then the Treasury could transform the public finances at a stroke by cancelling the entire stock of gilts.
Woking's enormous debt is too large to be serviced through its tiny income so it'll have to be covered by a body with greater resources, i.e the Treasury. The more important thing to do going forward is to make sure that other authorities don't bet the house on questionable investments in future.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey CC are not responsible for Woking's debt.
.
Neither is the rest of the country yet people on here expect the country to bail Woking out.
If Woking goes bankrupt, the lenders will just have to write off the debt. There’s no justification for their receiving any taxpayer funding.
Corporate welfare should be viewed as a perversion.
Fine with that, as long as the taxpayers not on the hook
A Labour councillor in Dudley has been kicked out of the party after claiming Keir Starmer “lied to the British public and has turned his back on working-class people”.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey County Council isn't responsible for Woking's debt, and Woking itself isn't big enough ever to repay the debt.
If the Government is serious about unitarisation then it is going to have to pay off Woking's debt itself. It's not just that the council tax payers of Woking itself could spend the rest of time trying to clear it and never succeed; if the Woking debt isn't forgiven then it will be inherited by the successor authority and, therefore, it will immediately become bankrupt. You'd then be saddling the people in the surrounding areas with the unpayable debt too.
As with our old friend the state pension Triple Lock, idiot politicians can't continue to work against the fundamental rules of mathematics indefinitely. At some point, hiking pensions ahead of earnings will have to stop. At some point, Woking will have to be bailed. It's just a matter of how long the Government can get away with can kicking.
By the govt you mean taxpayers up and down the country. Why should taxpayers from poorer parts of the country bail out taxpayers in the wealthy south.
Fuck Woking.
As for the triple lock. Couldn’t agree more and I say that as someone a few years from getting the state pension.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey CC are not responsible for Woking's debt.
.
Neither is the rest of the country yet people on here expect the country to bail Woking out.
If Woking goes bankrupt, the lenders will just have to write off the debt. There’s no justification for their receiving any taxpayer funding.
Corporate welfare should be viewed as a perversion.
Although we're all talking about bankruptcy this is, of course, a colloquialism in the case of a council. Woking Borough Council cannot go bankrupt, because it is a public body. It is an arm of the state and, as such, not to be regarded in quite the same manner as a chain of clothes shops or the local used car dealership.
The Government, I'm afraid, has to be seen to honour its debts. If it were that simple to resolve crippling indebtedness through default then the Treasury could transform the public finances at a stroke by cancelling the entire stock of gilts.
Woking's enormous debt is too large to be serviced through its tiny income so it'll have to be covered by a body with greater resources, i.e the Treasury. The more important thing to do going forward is to make sure that other authorities don't bet the house on questionable investments in future.
Taz and I were discussing this report yesterday, which is prtobably why he's still upset (I can see the issues on both sides, FWIW).
Are councillors being pursued in such cases, as with the Homes for Votes Tory gerrymandering scandal at Westminster? But that last was declared illegal - I'm not sure that what the latter cases are was illegal so much as **** irresponsible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homes_for_votes_scandal#Legal_action
An interesting example of how some 'problem people' can cause huge cost to the public services:
The most recent data, from 2020-21, suggests a standard NHS hospital bed costs £345 per day. Adjusting for inflation, this would mean Jessie's hospital stay is likely to have cost more than £200,000. We do not know how much the legal action cost.
Ten days after Jessie's final hearing, 18 months after she arrived in hospital, the police arrested her. She spent several hours at a police station before being moved to the flat in the town that holds bad memories.
Police are investigating her for a number of alleged incidents, she told us, including for sending offensive emails shortly before she was evicted in October.
Since moving, Jessie says she has self-harmed and the police have been called on three occasions - once by Jessie, twice by staff.
"They don't know what to do with me," she says.
Jessie has recently been visited by a new advocate.
Classic example of those on benefits making a rational economic decision. Stay somewhere warm, with care and get fed rather than trying to exist day to day on benefits. People will criticise and make comments but each individual makes their own choices i.e. they have agency.
So to move people on to create space/beds you have the issue of applying the law (expensive); changing the law (very slow); or increasing the incentive to move out. However none of these will happen and politicians will simply use examples of these for their political ends (taking the mickey ...) rather than trying to solve the issues.
We get the politicians we vote for - good, bad or Trump fanbois
Ummm - if you actually read the story, she wasn't on benefits and that isn't what happened.
Essentially there seems to have been a failure of the care system, not helped by a simultaneous failure of the legal system, which left everybody stuck.
My reading comprehension must be a bit off. She also had an (mental health) advocate which are provided for free which is another cost to the system.
"Jessie - who is unable to work and reliant on benefits - became increasingly isolated stuck inside her hospital cubicle on the six-bedded ward. She says her mental health deteriorated further, people would stare at her and she felt safer with the curtains drawn."
How do we know you aren't one? Your fur-curiosity is a revealing sign, no?
Probably one or two on PB. Or three or four.*
'"You probably know a furry and don't realise it because we are just everywhere," says Rock who, like Fennick, is not keen to reveal his human identity, preferring to be known by his "fursona".'
*Plus, of course, the ones who have furry birthday coats ab initio, just to put the matter in scale.
I’ve cosplayed at a dr who convention as a rather rotund and short Cyberman, my physique is more sontaran than Cyberman. Furries weren’t n even a thing then.
I would not be sure how to answer that question. I am expecting a shallow recession but growth over the year as a whole (if not quite at the giddy heights of 0.75%). Does that make it better or worse? Per capita it will be worse but GDP will go up (as will taxes, whatever Reeves promises).
So, is that better or worse? I think the answer depends on compared with what? Growth won't match the modest growth achieved under the Conservatives but there will be growth. The more you think about it, the more meaningless the question becomes.
The problem is that just modest growth is not what is needed. The government's plans are for sustained above trend growth, perhaps back to levels last seen in the 1990s. Currently the forecasts suggest that they will be way off target.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
Do you have the cost benefit analysis to hand ?
A report during the Sunak government put the benefit of existing trees outside forests at a few billion a year;
The valuation is based on the important role they play in sequestering and storing carbon, regulating temperatures, strengthening flood resilience and reducing noise and air pollution. Together, these help to mitigate against climate change, reducing damage to infrastructure and people from the impact of flooding, cooling our cities in summer and improving health and wellbeing.
The thing about schemes like the Surrey one is that the trees themselves are pretty cheap- one to five pounds, depending on exactly how young they are. The expensive bit is getting them planted and cared for while they establish themselves.
I meant for Surrey and this scheme.
National scheme, isn't it? (Seriously.)
And aren't Surrey people human, too? They live in places like, eesh, Croydon.
How do we know you aren't one? Your fur-curiosity is a revealing sign, no?
Probably one or two on PB. Or three or four.*
'"You probably know a furry and don't realise it because we are just everywhere," says Rock who, like Fennick, is not keen to reveal his human identity, preferring to be known by his "fursona".'
*Plus, of course, the ones who have furry birthday coats ab initio, just to put the matter in scale.
I’ve cosplayed at a dr who convention as a rather rotund and short Cyberman, my physique is more sontaran than Cyberman. Furries weren’t n even a thing then.
Ha! I suspect it's part of the kawaii cuteness and manga culture from Japan, but don't really know.
How do we know you aren't one? Your fur-curiosity is a revealing sign, no?
Probably one or two on PB. Or three or four.*
'"You probably know a furry and don't realise it because we are just everywhere," says Rock who, like Fennick, is not keen to reveal his human identity, preferring to be known by his "fursona".'
*Plus, of course, the ones who have furry birthday coats ab initio, just to put the matter in scale.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey CC are not responsible for Woking's debt.
.
Neither is the rest of the country yet people on here expect the country to bail Woking out.
If Woking goes bankrupt, the lenders will just have to write off the debt. There’s no justification for their receiving any taxpayer funding.
Corporate welfare should be viewed as a perversion.
Although we're all talking about bankruptcy this is, of course, a colloquialism in the case of a council. Woking Borough Council cannot go bankrupt, because it is a public body. It is an arm of the state and, as such, not to be regarded in quite the same manner as a chain of clothes shops or the local used car dealership.
The Government, I'm afraid, has to be seen to honour its debts. If it were that simple to resolve crippling indebtedness through default then the Treasury could transform the public finances at a stroke by cancelling the entire stock of gilts.
Woking's enormous debt is too large to be serviced through its tiny income so it'll have to be covered by a body with greater resources, i.e the Treasury. The more important thing to do going forward is to make sure that other authorities don't bet the house on questionable investments in future.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but I can’t see how Woking Council’s liability can extend to anyone other than Woking Council. If the Council has insufficient assets to meet its debts, then the lenders have to write off the balance, as they would if they made loans to any other corporation.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey CC are not responsible for Woking's debt.
.
Neither is the rest of the country yet people on here expect the country to bail Woking out.
If Woking goes bankrupt, the lenders will just have to write off the debt. There’s no justification for their receiving any taxpayer funding.
Corporate welfare should be viewed as a perversion.
Although we're all talking about bankruptcy this is, of course, a colloquialism in the case of a council. Woking Borough Council cannot go bankrupt, because it is a public body. It is an arm of the state and, as such, not to be regarded in quite the same manner as a chain of clothes shops or the local used car dealership.
The Government, I'm afraid, has to be seen to honour its debts. If it were that simple to resolve crippling indebtedness through default then the Treasury could transform the public finances at a stroke by cancelling the entire stock of gilts.
Woking's enormous debt is too large to be serviced through its tiny income so it'll have to be covered by a body with greater resources, i.e the Treasury. The more important thing to do going forward is to make sure that other authorities don't bet the house on questionable investments in future.
The problem is the mix of Treasury responsibly (cheap, risk less loans) mixed with little comebacks to either the lender or the Local Authority.
Bit like the S&L thing in the US, back in the day. Or the cajas in Spain.
Risk and a total guarantee, make for a disaster.
In the US, states and local authorities can go bankrupt. There is no reason that council debts are backed the treasury.
Well, there is the issue of the cost of borrowing, for them, skyrocketing to match the risk…
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
Do you have the cost benefit analysis to hand ?
A report during the Sunak government put the benefit of existing trees outside forests at a few billion a year;
The valuation is based on the important role they play in sequestering and storing carbon, regulating temperatures, strengthening flood resilience and reducing noise and air pollution. Together, these help to mitigate against climate change, reducing damage to infrastructure and people from the impact of flooding, cooling our cities in summer and improving health and wellbeing.
The thing about schemes like the Surrey one is that the trees themselves are pretty cheap- one to five pounds, depending on exactly how young they are. The expensive bit is getting them planted and cared for while they establish themselves.
I meant for Surrey and this scheme.
National scheme, isn't it? (Seriously.)
And aren't Surrey people human, too? They live in places like, eesh, Croydon.
I thought Croydon was Sarf Lahndan.
Oops, so it is. Not keeping up to date. Woking, then!
Keir Starmer sees Chagos Islands deal as block to China spy hubs
The prime minister thinks ceding the islands to Mauritius will create a ‘buffer zone’ around the US naval base on Diego Garcia"
There’s already a buffer zone. It’s called the British Indian Ocean Territory.
If we don’t have the balls, we should just gift the territory to the yanks. Were the ICJ to come calling I know what they would say, Republican or Democrat. It would be what we would have said once.
US have effectively been in control all along. US wanted it ethically cleansed of Chagouns, and as their bitch we ethnically cleansed it for them.
If you had the call, would you take on the responsibilities and brickbats of ownership, when you already have all the control you need via your bitch doing the work for you?
Trump would take it. He might even be persuaded to buy it. Think of the condos!
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
So you're happy the government is giving away £18bn and territory to a hostile foreign power in league with China? You're also happy with the prospect of the government opening the door to hundreds of billions in liability for reparations?
I guess it's a view.
Question - if its an outrageous Labour thing to do that, why did this start *under the Tories*?
Its like you're trying to embarrass yourselves and bring the party further into the gutter by advancing this argument. People aren't as stupid as you might like them to be - and the ones who are vote Reform already.
It started under the simpleton Liz Truss, she got booted and then Dave spotted the traitors at the FCO trying to push their anti-Britain agenda as usual and told them to get fucked. Labour being the anti-Britain traitors the plans were picked up with glee.
It's also telling that few Labour supporters have come out and supported either of these policies, most are just as bothered by them as the rest but won't say so directly. Yet two Lib Dems have played their lickspittle roles just as expected and can't wait to get down on their knees with their mouths open for Labour.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey CC are not responsible for Woking's debt.
.
Neither is the rest of the country yet people on here expect the country to bail Woking out.
If Woking goes bankrupt, the lenders will just have to write off the debt. There’s no justification for their receiving any taxpayer funding.
Corporate welfare should be viewed as a perversion.
Although we're all talking about bankruptcy this is, of course, a colloquialism in the case of a council. Woking Borough Council cannot go bankrupt, because it is a public body. It is an arm of the state and, as such, not to be regarded in quite the same manner as a chain of clothes shops or the local used car dealership.
The Government, I'm afraid, has to be seen to honour its debts. If it were that simple to resolve crippling indebtedness through default then the Treasury could transform the public finances at a stroke by cancelling the entire stock of gilts.
Woking's enormous debt is too large to be serviced through its tiny income so it'll have to be covered by a body with greater resources, i.e the Treasury. The more important thing to do going forward is to make sure that other authorities don't bet the house on questionable investments in future.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but I can’t see how Woking Council’s liability can extend to anyone other than Woking Council. If the Council has insufficient assets to meet its debts, then the lenders have to write off the balance, as they would if they made loans to any other corporation.
If that was the UK government policy, then borrowing costs for councils would leap to cover the actual risks.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey County Council isn't responsible for Woking's debt, and Woking itself isn't big enough ever to repay the debt.
If the Government is serious about unitarisation then it is going to have to pay off Woking's debt itself. It's not just that the council tax payers of Woking itself could spend the rest of time trying to clear it and never succeed; if the Woking debt isn't forgiven then it will be inherited by the successor authority and, therefore, it will immediately become bankrupt. You'd then be saddling the people in the surrounding areas with the unpayable debt too.
As with our old friend the state pension Triple Lock, idiot politicians can't continue to work against the fundamental rules of mathematics indefinitely. At some point, hiking pensions ahead of earnings will have to stop. At some point, Woking will have to be bailed. It's just a matter of how long the Government can get away with can kicking.
By the govt you mean taxpayers up and down the country. Why should taxpayers from poorer parts of the country bail out taxpayers in the wealthy south.
Fuck Woking.
As for the triple lock. Couldn’t agree more and I say that as someone a few years from getting the state pension.
It's not about "fuck Woking" though, it's that the debt is so big it's not going to ever be cleared and there's no way of clearing it. The now Lib Dem council are scrambling to sell off everything and cut every service they are not legally obliged to provide to clear up the previous Tory administration's mess and it is unlikely to make much of a dent. As with a person or company that runs up astronomical debts there comes a point where you have to cut your losses, take the hit and move on.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey CC are not responsible for Woking's debt.
.
Neither is the rest of the country yet people on here expect the country to bail Woking out.
If Woking goes bankrupt, the lenders will just have to write off the debt. There’s no justification for their receiving any taxpayer funding.
Corporate welfare should be viewed as a perversion.
Although we're all talking about bankruptcy this is, of course, a colloquialism in the case of a council. Woking Borough Council cannot go bankrupt, because it is a public body. It is an arm of the state and, as such, not to be regarded in quite the same manner as a chain of clothes shops or the local used car dealership.
The Government, I'm afraid, has to be seen to honour its debts. If it were that simple to resolve crippling indebtedness through default then the Treasury could transform the public finances at a stroke by cancelling the entire stock of gilts.
Woking's enormous debt is too large to be serviced through its tiny income so it'll have to be covered by a body with greater resources, i.e the Treasury. The more important thing to do going forward is to make sure that other authorities don't bet the house on questionable investments in future.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but I can’t see how Woking Council’s liability can extend to anyone other than Woking Council. If the Council has insufficient assets to meet its debts, then the lenders have to write off the balance, as they would if they made loans to any other corporation.
Yup, it's the creditor's fault for lending money without doing proper due diligence. Let them take the losses, we need to stop socialising losses when lenders fuck up their due diligence. Thames Water is in the same boat. Shareholder and bondholders can go sing for their money. Either as debt for equity swap and let the lenders float the business once they have restructured the balance sheet or sell it to the government debt free or after a 75% haircut.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Surrey County Council isn't responsible for Woking's debt, and Woking itself isn't big enough ever to repay the debt.
If the Government is serious about unitarisation then it is going to have to pay off Woking's debt itself. It's not just that the council tax payers of Woking itself could spend the rest of time trying to clear it and never succeed; if the Woking debt isn't forgiven then it will be inherited by the successor authority and, therefore, it will immediately become bankrupt. You'd then be saddling the people in the surrounding areas with the unpayable debt too.
As with our old friend the state pension Triple Lock, idiot politicians can't continue to work against the fundamental rules of mathematics indefinitely. At some point, hiking pensions ahead of earnings will have to stop. At some point, Woking will have to be bailed. It's just a matter of how long the Government can get away with can kicking.
By the govt you mean taxpayers up and down the country. Why should taxpayers from poorer parts of the country bail out taxpayers in the wealthy south.
Fuck Woking.
As for the triple lock. Couldn’t agree more and I say that as someone a few years from getting the state pension.
It's not about "fuck Woking" though, it's that the debt is so big it's not going to ever be cleared and there's no way of clearing it. The now Lib Dem council are scrambling to sell off everything and cut every service they are not legally obliged to provide to clear up the previous Tory administration's mess and it is unlikely to make much of a dent. As with a person or company that runs up astronomical debts there comes a point where you have to cut your losses, take the hit and move on.
Fine. Let them. Don’t expect taxpayers up and down the country to have to pay it off. Especially when those of us in poorer areas whose councils have somehow managed through this and could genuinely do with the money for good rather than to pay off debts run up through ineptitude.
How do we know you aren't one? Your fur-curiosity is a revealing sign, no?
Probably one or two on PB. Or three or four.*
'"You probably know a furry and don't realise it because we are just everywhere," says Rock who, like Fennick, is not keen to reveal his human identity, preferring to be known by his "fursona".'
*Plus, of course, the ones who have furry birthday coats ab initio, just to put the matter in scale.
I’ve cosplayed at a dr who convention as a rather rotund and short Cyberman, my physique is more sontaran than Cyberman. Furries weren’t n even a thing then.
Ha! I suspect it's part of the kawaii cuteness and manga culture from Japan, but don't really know.
It’s a kink apparently. Just doesn’t strike me as news but the BBC news site of a weekend,apart from soccer, is full of magazine pap
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
So you're happy the government is giving away £18bn and territory to a hostile foreign power in league with China? You're also happy with the prospect of the government opening the door to hundreds of billions in liability for reparations?
I guess it's a view.
Question - if its an outrageous Labour thing to do that, why did this start *under the Tories*?
Its like you're trying to embarrass yourselves and bring the party further into the gutter by advancing this argument. People aren't as stupid as you might like them to be - and the ones who are vote Reform already.
It started under the simpleton Liz Truss, she got booted and then Dave spotted the traitors at the FCO trying to push their anti-Britain agenda as usual and told them to get fucked. Labour being the anti-Britain traitors the plans were picked up with glee.
It's also telling that few Labour supporters have come out and supported either of these policies, most are just as bothered by them as the rest but won't say so directly. Yet two Lib Dems have played their lickspittle roles just as expected and can't wait to get down on their knees with their mouths open for Labour.
Chagos deal is largely about currying favour with African countries and India from what I gather. Aside from handing our 'newly gained sovereignty' to Trump's US, Brexiteers seem to struggle who it is we are meant to be trying to cultivate stronger relationships with post-Brexit (aside from maybe Japan and Singapore). F*ck the Commonwealth doesn't exactly seem to help advocate the case for Brexit.
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
Anyone supporting a party with the word 'liberal' or indeed the word 'democrat' in its name should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for giving succour to an Orwellian Government that cancels elections and attempts to chill free speech.
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
Do you have the cost benefit analysis to hand ?
A report during the Sunak government put the benefit of existing trees outside forests at a few billion a year;
The valuation is based on the important role they play in sequestering and storing carbon, regulating temperatures, strengthening flood resilience and reducing noise and air pollution. Together, these help to mitigate against climate change, reducing damage to infrastructure and people from the impact of flooding, cooling our cities in summer and improving health and wellbeing.
The thing about schemes like the Surrey one is that the trees themselves are pretty cheap- one to five pounds, depending on exactly how young they are. The expensive bit is getting them planted and cared for while they establish themselves.
I meant for Surrey and this scheme.
National scheme, isn't it? (Seriously.)
And aren't Surrey people human, too? They live in places like, eesh, Croydon.
Croydon is in London, not Surrey I'll have you know!
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
Except they did attempt to show more moderation during the presidential campaign. Call it not enough, too late, or insincere, if you like, but don't pretend they campaigned on ultrawokism or whatever.
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
Anyone supporting a party with the word 'liberal' or indeed the word 'democrat' in its name should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for giving succour to an Orwellian Government that cancels elections and attempts to chill free speech.
?
Delayed, not cancelled - as normally happens during reorganisations.
(And happened multiple times under the last Government.)
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
So you're happy the government is giving away £18bn and territory to a hostile foreign power in league with China? You're also happy with the prospect of the government opening the door to hundreds of billions in liability for reparations?
I guess it's a view.
Question - if its an outrageous Labour thing to do that, why did this start *under the Tories*?
It’s like you're trying to embarrass yourselves and bring the party further into the gutter by advancing this argument. People aren't as stupid as you might like them to be - and the ones who are vote Reform already.
There’s a difference between a discussion and agreeing a bad deal.
The Tories started a conversation. It was right to start the conversation. They claim (they may be lying) that they wouldn’t have signed this deal. Starmer and Labour have agreed this deal (apparently). It is a bad deal.
On reparations I think that Starmer is making a mistake even starting a conversation. He doesn’t have to, and to even implicitly entertain the idea of reparations shows weakness. (By contrast, I think it was right to show that he was taking the advisory judgement of the ICJ seriously, even if the outcome was no deal).
Doing *something* about Chagos is probably a good idea.
That doesn’t mean that every possible agreement is a good idea.
Personally I think the Government should have appealed the "judgement". I will not use the word judgement without inverted commas because it is a specific condition of our participation in the ICJ that judgements between the UK and Commonwealth nations are advisory only. Appeal it and keep appealing it.
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
Many of Biden's economic policies (e.g. the CHIPS Act) were about trying to tackle the economic root causes of Trumpism.
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
Anyone supporting a party with the word 'liberal' or indeed the word 'democrat' in its name should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for giving succour to an Orwellian Government that cancels elections and attempts to chill free speech.
?
Delayed, not cancelled - as normally happens during reorganisations.
(And happened multiple times under the last Government.)
When the term is 4 years and the proposed change will take 3 years to implement, so the elected officials will serve three quarters of a full term without a fresh mandate, I call that a cancellation.
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
Many of Biden's economic policies (e.g. the CHIPS Act) were about trying to tackle the economic root causes of Trumpism.
Part of the problem was that Harris & Co. saw this as the wrong policy - too nationalistic.
Hence the platform did not capitalise on these efforts.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
Do you have the cost benefit analysis to hand ?
A report during the Sunak government put the benefit of existing trees outside forests at a few billion a year;
The valuation is based on the important role they play in sequestering and storing carbon, regulating temperatures, strengthening flood resilience and reducing noise and air pollution. Together, these help to mitigate against climate change, reducing damage to infrastructure and people from the impact of flooding, cooling our cities in summer and improving health and wellbeing.
The thing about schemes like the Surrey one is that the trees themselves are pretty cheap- one to five pounds, depending on exactly how young they are. The expensive bit is getting them planted and cared for while they establish themselves.
I meant for Surrey and this scheme.
National scheme, isn't it? (Seriously.)
And aren't Surrey people human, too? They live in places like, eesh, Croydon.
Croydon is in London, not Surrey I'll have you know!
Saw a stat yesterday that 30-odd percent of the population of Croydon have never been to London. Seemed hard to believe, mind, and I can't find any trace of it with a quick Google.
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
So you're happy the government is giving away £18bn and territory to a hostile foreign power in league with China? You're also happy with the prospect of the government opening the door to hundreds of billions in liability for reparations?
I guess it's a view.
Question - if its an outrageous Labour thing to do that, why did this start *under the Tories*?
Its like you're trying to embarrass yourselves and bring the party further into the gutter by advancing this argument. People aren't as stupid as you might like them to be - and the ones who are vote Reform already.
It started under the simpleton Liz Truss, she got booted and then Dave spotted the traitors at the FCO trying to push their anti-Britain agenda as usual and told them to get fucked. Labour being the anti-Britain traitors the plans were picked up with glee.
It's also telling that few Labour supporters have come out and supported either of these policies, most are just as bothered by them as the rest but won't say so directly. Yet two Lib Dems have played their lickspittle roles just as expected and can't wait to get down on their knees with their mouths open for Labour.
No it didn't, stop bullshitting. Liz Truss met the President of Mauritius on the fringes of a summit. We have no idea what was said, and the announcement that negotiations were to commence did not take place until after she left office.
Sunak's Government were not obliged even to commence negotiations, much less follow the Truss line, whatever that was. Either he wanted to (he was very fond of 'repairing international relations' by giving into everyone, see the Windsor Framework), or a bit less likely, just didn't give a shit and let Cleverly get on with it, who also didn't give a shit and let the Foreign Office get on with it.
Cameron deserves credit for booting it into the long grass, but he only came in because Rishi couldn't cope and the Government was in special measures.
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
Many of Biden's economic policies (e.g. the CHIPS Act) were about trying to tackle the economic root causes of Trumpism.
The CHIPS Act was the single most popular Biden policy with Republicans, genuine cross-party support.
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
The mistake they make is to treat privileges, or conditional rights, as absolute entitlements. And then, to double down, when people start pushing back.
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
To an extent but it was cost of living that elected Trump and the economy which will likely again be the decisive factor in 2028
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
And, by so doing, risk the roll back of normal liberalism, and not just the hyper type.
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
Anyone supporting a party with the word 'liberal' or indeed the word 'democrat' in its name should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for giving succour to an Orwellian Government that cancels elections and attempts to chill free speech.
?
Delayed, not cancelled - as normally happens during reorganisations.
(And happened multiple times under the last Government.)
I'm afraid there's a few people on here who are starting to succumb to Maga/reform/ cults .
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
What makes you say that Harris or Walz were "hyperliberals"?, whatever you mean by that term. They seemed quite mainstream to me. Indeed that was one reason they failed to sufficiently energise their voters.
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
Anyone supporting a party with the word 'liberal' or indeed the word 'democrat' in its name should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for giving succour to an Orwellian Government that cancels elections and attempts to chill free speech.
You mean just like Thatcher who cancelled* elections and banned the voice of elected MPs being used on television and radio?
How do we know you aren't one? Your fur-curiosity is a revealing sign, no?
Probably one or two on PB. Or three or four.*
'"You probably know a furry and don't realise it because we are just everywhere," says Rock who, like Fennick, is not keen to reveal his human identity, preferring to be known by his "fursona".'
*Plus, of course, the ones who have furry birthday coats ab initio, just to put the matter in scale.
I’ve cosplayed at a dr who convention as a rather rotund and short Cyberman, my physique is more sontaran than Cyberman. Furries weren’t n even a thing then.
I've never been to a convention. Never quite got the point. I don't have time in adulthood due to conference attendance, but even if I had gone to one in my youth I suspect I would not have enjoyed it. I can't be doing with this "fun" thing that people keep going on about...
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
And, by so doing, risk the roll back of normal liberalism, and not just the hyper type.
"risk"? How would you categorise the United States under Trump?
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
This just isn't true though - Harris did make major concessions to the centre and her right. Biden kept some of Trump's hardline immigration policies and so on.
She largely dropped the 'woke' stuff. It just wasn't good enough because of how late Biden got out of the race having done major damage to the brand by hanging on while struggling with age, inflation, and because you could quite easily go back to 2020 or 2019 and find Harris and other Democrats saying things they now wish they hadn't.
One of the ironies of Trump 2 is that it's liable to put rocket boosters under what you call 'hyperliberalism' at a time when it was in retreat on the wider left as moderates were winning the internal arguments on the liberal left. Now the attitude will be the right doesn't compromise or give an inch - we can't either.
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
Anyone supporting a party with the word 'liberal' or indeed the word 'democrat' in its name should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for giving succour to an Orwellian Government that cancels elections and attempts to chill free speech.
Perhaps you could remind us of the protest posts you made in response to the Conservative government’s change of local election year orders of 2018, 2019 and 2021?
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
Do you have the cost benefit analysis to hand ?
A report during the Sunak government put the benefit of existing trees outside forests at a few billion a year;
The valuation is based on the important role they play in sequestering and storing carbon, regulating temperatures, strengthening flood resilience and reducing noise and air pollution. Together, these help to mitigate against climate change, reducing damage to infrastructure and people from the impact of flooding, cooling our cities in summer and improving health and wellbeing.
The thing about schemes like the Surrey one is that the trees themselves are pretty cheap- one to five pounds, depending on exactly how young they are. The expensive bit is getting them planted and cared for while they establish themselves.
I meant for Surrey and this scheme.
National scheme, isn't it? (Seriously.)
And aren't Surrey people human, too? They live in places like, eesh, Croydon.
Croydon is in London, not Surrey I'll have you know!
Which larger entity X is the one which smaller entity Y is 'in' is a multi layered question. Middlesex does not exist in the current set up of things. But I was brought up there. I was born in a borough (Stoke Newington) that no longer exists even though it is still a place and is now part of Hackney.
Was I born in Hackney? Was I brought up in Greater London? Is Croyden (or come that, The Oval) 'really' in Surrey? is Middlesex still a place like Stoke Newington is still a place. These are tricky metaphysical questions.
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
Except they did attempt to show more moderation during the presidential campaign. Call it not enough, too late, or insincere, if you like, but don't pretend they campaigned on ultrawokism or whatever.
The culture war has been distinctly one-sided for years now. This stuff about ultra-libs comes from an inability to accept that Trump is pretty much as bad as the left expected him to be, from freeing the Jan 6th insurrectionists to cancelling medical trials. It's a fusion of self-justification, victim blaming and moral cowardice.
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
This just isn't true though - Harris did make major concessions to the centre and her right. Biden kept some of Trump's hardline immigration policies and so on.
She largely dropped the 'woke' stuff. It just wasn't good enough because of how late Biden got out of the race having done major damage to the brand by hanging on while struggling with age, inflation, and because you could quite easily go back to 2020 or 2019 and find Harris and other Democrats saying things they now wish they hadn't.
One of the ironies of Trump 2 is that it's liable to put rocket boosters under what you call 'hyperliberalism' at a time when it was in retreat on the wider left as moderates were winning the internal arguments on the liberal left. Now the attitude will be the right doesn't compromise or give an inch - we can't either.
tl;dr
The right blaming the left for the state of the right is self-serving bollocks and always has been.
How do we know you aren't one? Your fur-curiosity is a revealing sign, no?
Probably one or two on PB. Or three or four.*
'"You probably know a furry and don't realise it because we are just everywhere," says Rock who, like Fennick, is not keen to reveal his human identity, preferring to be known by his "fursona".'
*Plus, of course, the ones who have furry birthday coats ab initio, just to put the matter in scale.
I’ve cosplayed at a dr who convention as a rather rotund and short Cyberman, my physique is more sontaran than Cyberman. Furries weren’t n even a thing then.
I've never been to a convention. Never quite got the point. I don't have time in adulthood due to conference attendance, but even if I had gone to one in my youth I suspect I would not have enjoyed it. I can't be doing with this "fun" thing that people keep going on about...
Not been to one since the early nineties.
In the eighties it was more to see stories you couldn’t get on video or had only just been returned. I remember a DWAS event showing invasion of the dinosaurs after part 1 was recovered. Also seeing Masterplan 5,,10 and Toymaker 4 at one.
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
Like any such analysis, that works both ways.
I could rewrite it and say that "The Right" hasn't decided to make any concessions to the Centre, and that they are responsible for "hyperliberalism".
The polarization isn't just one sided, and to pick a side and blame them for causing it is just lazy.
I would also point out that in 2023/2024, where the Nationalist/Populist Right was in power and faced an elections, they got hit too: see Brazil, India and Poland.
It's almost like voters *everywhere* had a shitty time as economies emerged from Covid and dealt with the impacts of the Ukraine invasion on energy prices.
England ... about to be absolutely fuckwangled by France.
Happy days
Do you reckon Scotland are going to have a good day against Ireland tomorrow?
Nope
Fair play. IMHO Ireland are the favourites to win the Championship, and whoever wins tonight from England and France should be favourite for second place.
First they came for the librarians And I did nothing...
They refused to speak up.
I just collected a free tree from my library provided by Surrey County Council. I picked a crab apple tree. It is a green project. I think it is a plan to grow your own books and you have to be at the start of the process.
Not sure this is a good use of tax payers money. I'm guessing the only people collecting them are people who would go down to the garden centre to buy them anyway.
The queue was very long.
Perhaps they should be putting money aside to pay for Wokings debt instead of sponging from the taxpayer and needlessly pissing money away ?
Alternatively, why should they?
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
The same issue is true in the US: there are a huge number of municipalities with falling working age populations and historic generous pension provisions that are in very serious financial trouble. And there's an awful feedback loop in place: government cuts services to pay for legally obligated pensions; police and school system worsen while taxes rise; the most productive people leave; revenues falls... repeat.
It's a massive issue that no one is talking about, and is a key part of why the rust belt is such a disaster.
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
What makes you say that Harris or Walz were "hyperliberals"?, whatever you mean by that term. They seemed quite mainstream to me. Indeed that was one reason they failed to sufficiently energise their voters.
I suspect I will act as @Andy_JS translator in the same way that I act as @Dura_Ace translator, but here we go...
"Hyper-liberalism" is a term used by[1] (and coined by?) the philosopher John Gray. Gray characterises "liberalism" as a society which recognises subgroups of humanity but neither persecutes nor elevates them, instead merely tolerating them. Like Hope Street which, as any fule kno, has a Protestant Cathedral at one end and a Catholic cathedral at the other.
"Hyper-liberalism" occurs when a society recognises subgroups of humanity *and* elevates and defends them, and recognises the right of the individual to form such groups even if very small. Like liberalism on fast-forward with guns, if you will. The theory provides an intellectual underpinning for woke and unites it with identity politics under an umbrella, in the same way that transhumanism unites trans, suicide, assisted dying, surrogacy and abortion under its umbrella.
Andy contends that hyper-liberalism is dying and can point to the US for proof, where Trump/Musk are killing it with fire. I contend that it isn't dying in the UK and the discussion about trans is simply about whether it should be in the protected groups, not whether protected groups should exist.
I am available to translate for other conflicts, although the eternal @HYUFD/@Big_G_NorthWales war may be beyond even my humble powers
[1] See "The New Leviathans" by John Gray, available now from your bookshop or library
What's least surprising here is that Lib Dem voters are nothing more than Labour lickspittles. We see it on here all the time where Lib Dems try their hardest to stick up for this shit government despite all of the evidence.
That's because the last government was so crap for so long that I'm willing to give Labour more than 6 months before writing them off.
Certainly longer than that before considering the Tories the better of the two again. Again, considering how poorly (and inconsistently) they managed the economy over 12 years in power. Cancelling large projects that they started (HS2), starting with a promise to cut deficits, then leaving record national debt and cutting headline tax rates while running a large deficit outside of a recession being just two examples.
The PB Reform/Tories can criticise all they want, but they can't erase their own record. I didn't vote Labour but still happy they are in power rather than either the Tories or Reform.
So you're happy the government is giving away £18bn and territory to a hostile foreign power in league with China? You're also happy with the prospect of the government opening the door to hundreds of billions in liability for reparations?
I guess it's a view.
Question - if its an outrageous Labour thing to do that, why did this start *under the Tories*?
Its like you're trying to embarrass yourselves and bring the party further into the gutter by advancing this argument. People aren't as stupid as you might like them to be - and the ones who are vote Reform already.
It started under the simpleton Liz Truss, she got booted and then Dave spotted the traitors at the FCO trying to push their anti-Britain agenda as usual and told them to get fucked. Labour being the anti-Britain traitors the plans were picked up with glee.
It's also telling that few Labour supporters have come out and supported either of these policies, most are just as bothered by them as the rest but won't say so directly. Yet two Lib Dems have played their lickspittle roles just as expected and can't wait to get down on their knees with their mouths open for Labour.
Has Reform hit its ceiling? Could the electorate remember the Lib Dems exist?
The media are only interested in promoting Reform. That’s the Lib Dems’ problem.
Also, it feels as though Reform are very much 'angrier than thou'.
And that seems to be what (some) voters want at the moment.
It's very tempting, as a voter, to think "I really, really hate this lot - I will vote for the people who are shoutiest about them and/or the people who most annoy them." That isn't necessarily rational.
Couldn't agree more. It reminds me of @DavidL's rather plaintive 'who the hell do I vote for' question yesterday.
It is even possible to feel that the current government are really quite crap but still see them as the least worst of the available options. I *think* that's where I still am. It's not that I don't want to just drive the lot of them into the sea. It's just that it seems irresponsible to join the stampede without considering what will fill the vacuum that is left afterwards.
Reform. You vote for Reform
I feel fairly confident that @DavidL is never going to vote Reform. Why? Because he is sensible and has a brain.
I think it is the defining schism in political discussions at the moment (not least on here). Who still operates in the real world?
Cookie and DavidL are two whose politics I don't share but who have real world solutions to the problems we face.
Many, many others operate in the world of rage- (or more rarely hope-) filled fantasy. It's just childish. I suspect it is also not an accident - it serves the needs of populists. Anyone with a brain should resist it.
If you’re on the right and you think immigration is one of the main if not THE main issue facing the UK, who do you vote for?
It can’t be the Tories, they let in 2.5m people in 3 years
So it has to be Reform. It’s as simple as that
Sorry, missed this from earlier, I've spend a delightful four hours being fed deep in the Wye valley (dangerously close to Newent as it happens). Not to trigger our resident vegan hunter, but 'hedgerow findings' appeared on the menu at one point.
Believe it or not I do sympathise, both with a deep concern about the level of immigration and about how unfit the Tories are to receive a right-wingers' vote right now. It's a pretty poor choice all round.
My issue (aside from fundamentally disagreeing with their view of the world) is how much of a paper tiger Reform are. Both in their setup as a company not a membership party and their lack of seriousness when it comes to the economy, they aren't actually a solution for this country. I suspect you'll be as disappointed in them as you are in Labour if they run the next government because although they offer you some right-wing red meat, I think that underneath your sometimes overdramatic pronouncements on here you want this country to thrive just as much as I do.
So yes, I can relate to your temptation to go full guns for Reform. It's similar to how I feel about the Greens. But it's still fundamentally self-indulgent.
I don't think it's a good idea but I'm politically relaxed about it for two reasons:
(1) The 2019-2024 parliament shows that such "reforms" can't and don't save you (2) 16-18 years in the mid 2020s aren't voting as they would have done 10-20 years ago, and indeed are shifting Right rapidly
I think the single most important thing to understand about politics in most western countries today is the fact that the hyperliberals, or alt-liberals, have decided they're not going to compromise on anything. They'd rather go down to defeat to populists than make the slightest concessions. This is what happened with the Democrats and Trump.
Like any such analysis, that works both ways.
I could rewrite it and say that "The Right" hasn't decided to make any concessions to the Centre, and that they are responsible for "hyperliberalism".
The polarization isn't just one sided, and to pick a side and blame them for causing it is just lazy.
I would also point out that in 2023/2024, where the Nationalist/Populist Right was in power and faced an elections, they got hit too: see Brazil, India and Poland.
It's almost like voters *everywhere* had a shitty time as economies emerged from Covid and dealt with the impacts of the Ukraine invasion on energy prices.
Hyperliberalism is also in reality hyper wokeism and often quite intolerant of dissenting more traditional and socially conservative views. Wokeism is more hyper 'progressivism' in which gender, sexuality, race, nationhood etc is all seen through the prism of social injustice which must be rectified by redistrubution of wealth, income and power from those traditionally 'privileged' especially white heterosexual males. In some respects it is closer to socialism than liberalism.
True liberals are socially liberal but also more tolerant of others opinions and less eager to see everything through class, gender, sexuality and racial lines.
Your point on the cost of living being the main determinant of recent national elections is also correct
Comments
The Tories started a conversation. It was right to start the conversation. They claim (they may be lying) that they wouldn’t have signed this deal. Starmer and Labour have agreed this deal (apparently). It is a bad deal.
On reparations I think that Starmer is making a mistake even starting a conversation. He doesn’t have to, and to even implicitly entertain the idea of reparations shows weakness. (By contrast, I think it was right to show that he was taking the advisory judgement of the ICJ seriously, even if the outcome was no deal).
That doesn’t mean that every possible agreement is a good idea.
If you had the call, would you take on the responsibilities and brickbats of ownership, when you already have all the control you need via your bitch doing the work for you?
The only effective antidote to populism is a practical demonstration by the existing political establishment that it is able to improve the life circumstances of the less well-off. They must raise the wellbeing and standard of living of workers in the bottom half of the income distribution. That's exactly what Labour is trying to achieve by bolstering the minimum wage and setting ambitious targets for housebuilding, but even if they can get heroic numbers of new dwellings built (and a substantial fraction of those are available at social rates) then I still think they're likely to fail. Any extra money raised through taxes is going to be sucked up by elderly care and pensions whilst the remainder of the state continues to fall apart, the lack of commitment to tackling inflation properly means that the price of basic commodities and especially rents is going to run ahead of wages and, indeed, earned incomes are liable to resume falling in real terms - an accumulation of inflationary pressure and a fresh bout of wage suppression by businesses passing on the cost of the NI hike to their employees.
The Chancellor can bang on about growth til the end of time, but you're never going to get anything more than anaemic expansion out of an economy that's heavily burdened by an ageing population and built by design to funnel what wealth is available upwards and into unproductive forms of investment. The only effective way to bolster the prospects of the poor is, therefore, redistribution of wealth down rather than up through society, and Labour won't do that in any meaningful way. It means all they're left with is the laughable promise of massive economic growth with a negligible probability of actually getting there, coupled with the usual bidding war over who can be nastiest to the usual scapegoat groups, such as asylum seekers and benefit claimants (those under 65 at any rate,) which a faux right wing party can never win against real ones.
Most of Surrey isn't Woking, few if any of the councillors involved had anything to do with the terrible decisions Woking took a few years back.
(It's a tricky one. Tell the current citizens of Woking that they're on the hook via their council tax going through the roof and the only service provided being an annual bin collection... Anyone who can leave the district, will. Surcharging the guilty councillors and officers into bankruptcy might serve justice, but it won't begin to cover the debt. Best solution is not to get into this mess in the first place.)
And given the benefits of urban trees to air quality and drainage, giving saplings away so that you get them planted for free is probably a pretty cheap way of doing something which will save future Surrey a decent wedge.
We saw that in the US. All the KPis were heading in the right direction but the voter still believed the price of eggs and gas was too high, and Trump promised them cheap eggs and gas. If he can Putinise/Mugabeise the next election the price of eggs and gas won't matter one jot anyway.
What happened in the 60’s and the 70’s. US wanted it ethically cleansed of Chagouns, and as their bitch UK ethnically cleansed it for them. How the UN was different then, views such behaviour different now. How US have effectively been in control all along. If you had the call as US President, would you take on the responsibilities and brickbats of ownership, when you already have all the control you need via your UK bitch doing the work for you, like owning this deal?
That as a key player in the UN, we still get an awful lot more back from membership, by taking the lead and setting the example to others, than a do what it asks, not as I would do, approach? The deal isn’t even doing what the UN wants, it’s throwing money around to bastardise the spirit of the UN judgements?
That we have to listen to India on this deal. The bottom line of the proposed Chagos deal it’s US and UK looking to a future of working with India for the security of these waters from China influence?
And, from that, addressing the bit you like least and why it’s part of it, quite importantly in the bigger picture, how India and the United States are not fans, but belligerent enemies, of British Colonialism. Have been dismantling our Empire for most of the last century?
You know the United States had plans to invade and free Hong Kong from British dominion? The “real James Bond” children’s author Roald Dahl unearthed them. None of this is loony, it’s all for real.
And the funding appears to be from elsewhere, such as the Forestry Commission.
If the Government is serious about unitarisation then it is going to have to pay off Woking's debt itself. It's not just that the council tax payers of Woking itself could spend the rest of time trying to clear it and never succeed; if the Woking debt isn't forgiven then it will be inherited by the successor authority and, therefore, it will immediately become bankrupt. You'd then be saddling the people in the surrounding areas with the unpayable debt too.
As with our old friend the state pension Triple Lock, idiot politicians can't continue to work against the fundamental rules of mathematics indefinitely. At some point, hiking pensions ahead of earnings will have to stop. At some point, Woking will have to be bailed. It's just a matter of how long the Government can get away with can kicking.
Corporate welfare should be viewed as a perversion.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/economic-value-of-the-uks-individual-trees-revealed-for-first-time
The valuation is based on the important role they play in sequestering and storing carbon, regulating temperatures, strengthening flood resilience and reducing noise and air pollution. Together, these help to mitigate against climate change, reducing damage to infrastructure and people from the impact of flooding, cooling our cities in summer and improving health and wellbeing.
The thing about schemes like the Surrey one is that the trees themselves are pretty cheap- one to five pounds, depending on exactly how young they are. The expensive bit is getting them planted and cared for while they establish themselves.
A convention of ‘furries in Scotland’
Mary Poppins. What’s this !!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpqlpw2zv4wo
Probably one or two on PB. Or three or four.*
'"You probably know a furry and don't realise it because we are just everywhere," says Rock who, like Fennick, is not keen to reveal his human identity, preferring to be known by his "fursona".'
*Plus, of course, the ones who have furry birthday coats ab initio, just to put the matter in scale.
And aren't Surrey people human, too? They live in places like, eesh, Croydon.
The Government, I'm afraid, has to be seen to honour its debts. If it were that simple to resolve crippling indebtedness through default then the Treasury could transform the public finances at a stroke by cancelling the entire stock of gilts.
Woking's enormous debt is too large to be serviced through its tiny income so it'll have to be covered by a body with greater resources, i.e the Treasury. The more important thing to do going forward is to make sure that other authorities don't bet the house on questionable investments in future.
This is utterly extraordinary.
A Labour councillor in Dudley has been kicked out of the party after claiming Keir Starmer “lied to the British public and has turned his back on working-class people”.
This isn’t meant to happen less than a year in!
Fuck Woking.
As for the triple lock. Couldn’t agree more and I say that as someone a few years from getting the state pension.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/feb/07/watchdog-to-investigate-two-former-figures-at-bankrupt-woking-council
Are councillors being pursued in such cases, as with the Homes for Votes Tory gerrymandering scandal at Westminster? But that last was declared illegal - I'm not sure that what the latter cases are was illegal so much as **** irresponsible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homes_for_votes_scandal#Legal_action
"Jessie - who is unable to work and reliant on benefits - became increasingly isolated stuck inside her hospital cubicle on the six-bedded ward. She says her mental health deteriorated further, people would stare at her and she felt safer with the curtains drawn."
* Or, if German, "pandas" is more precise. **
** I'm sure that Loon can advise.
Bit like the S&L thing in the US, back in the day. Or the cajas in Spain.
Risk and a total guarantee, make for a disaster.
In the US, states and local authorities can go bankrupt. There is no reason that council debts are backed the treasury.
Well, there is the issue of the cost of borrowing, for them, skyrocketing to match the risk…
It's also telling that few Labour supporters have come out and supported either of these policies, most are just as bothered by them as the rest but won't say so directly. Yet two Lib Dems have played their lickspittle roles just as expected and can't wait to get down on their knees with their mouths open for Labour.
Which causes political problem.
Mendacious !!
https://x.com/fcdogovuk/status/1888234098629530016?s=61
Fine. Let them. Don’t expect taxpayers up and down the country to have to pay it off. Especially when those of us in poorer areas whose councils have somehow managed through this and could genuinely do with the money for good rather than to pay off debts run up through ineptitude.
https://x.com/lordashcroft/status/1888132054174347409
Delayed, not cancelled - as normally happens during reorganisations.
(And happened multiple times under the last Government.)
Hence the platform did not capitalise on these efforts.
Sunak's Government were not obliged even to commence negotiations, much less follow the Truss line, whatever that was. Either he wanted to (he was very fond of 'repairing international relations' by giving into everyone, see the Windsor Framework), or a bit less likely, just didn't give a shit and let Cleverly get on with it, who also didn't give a shit and let the Foreign Office get on with it.
Cameron deserves credit for booting it into the long grass, but he only came in because Rishi couldn't cope and the Government was in special measures.
Still Wales put in the worst performance against a side from Rome since the Battle of Zama.
*The correct term is postponed.
She largely dropped the 'woke' stuff. It just wasn't good enough because of how late Biden got out of the race having done major damage to the brand by hanging on while struggling with age, inflation, and because you could quite easily go back to 2020 or 2019 and find Harris and other Democrats saying things they now wish they hadn't.
One of the ironies of Trump 2 is that it's liable to put rocket boosters under what you call 'hyperliberalism' at a time when it was in retreat on the wider left as moderates were winning the internal arguments on the liberal left. Now the attitude will be the right doesn't compromise or give an inch - we can't either.
Was I born in Hackney? Was I brought up in Greater London? Is Croyden (or come that, The Oval) 'really' in Surrey? is Middlesex still a place like Stoke Newington is still a place. These are tricky metaphysical questions.
Considering the revenues of England etc Italy get more for their buck.
The right blaming the left for the state of the right is self-serving bollocks and always has been.
In the eighties it was more to see stories you couldn’t get on video or had only just been returned. I remember a DWAS event showing invasion of the dinosaurs after part 1 was recovered. Also seeing Masterplan 5,,10 and Toymaker 4 at one.
I could rewrite it and say that "The Right" hasn't decided to make any concessions to the Centre, and that they are responsible for "hyperliberalism".
The polarization isn't just one sided, and to pick a side and blame them for causing it is just lazy.
I would also point out that in 2023/2024, where the Nationalist/Populist Right was in power and faced an elections, they got hit too: see Brazil, India and Poland.
It's almost like voters *everywhere* had a shitty time as economies emerged from Covid and dealt with the impacts of the Ukraine invasion on energy prices.
It's a massive issue that no one is talking about, and is a key part of why the rust belt is such a disaster.
https://x.com/archrose90/status/1887959535123337501?s=61
"Hyper-liberalism" is a term used by[1] (and coined by?) the philosopher John Gray.
Gray characterises "liberalism" as a society which recognises subgroups of humanity but neither persecutes nor elevates them, instead merely tolerating them. Like Hope Street which, as any fule kno, has a Protestant Cathedral at one end and a Catholic cathedral at the other.
"Hyper-liberalism" occurs when a society recognises subgroups of humanity *and* elevates and defends them, and recognises the right of the individual to form such groups even if very small. Like liberalism on fast-forward with guns, if you will. The theory provides an intellectual underpinning for woke and unites it with identity politics under an umbrella, in the same way that transhumanism unites trans, suicide, assisted dying, surrogacy and abortion under its umbrella.
Andy contends that hyper-liberalism is dying and can point to the US for proof, where Trump/Musk are killing it with fire. I contend that it isn't dying in the UK and the discussion about trans is simply about whether it should be in the protected groups, not whether protected groups should exist.
I am available to translate for other conflicts, although the eternal @HYUFD/@Big_G_NorthWales war may be beyond even my humble powers
[1] See "The New Leviathans" by John Gray, available now from your bookshop or library
We should try to avoid the moral hazard of endemic Tory negligence.
Which makes me wonder if it's touched a nerve.
Filled with Commies, Pinkos and Traitors.
Believe it or not I do sympathise, both with a deep concern about the level of immigration and about how unfit the Tories are to receive a right-wingers' vote right now. It's a pretty poor choice all round.
My issue (aside from fundamentally disagreeing with their view of the world) is how much of a paper tiger Reform are. Both in their setup as a
company not a membership party and their lack of seriousness when it comes to the economy, they aren't actually a solution for this country. I suspect you'll be as disappointed in them as you are in Labour if they run the next government because although they offer you some right-wing red meat, I think that underneath your sometimes overdramatic pronouncements on here you want this country to thrive just as much as I do.
So yes, I can relate to your temptation to go full guns for Reform. It's similar to how I feel about the Greens. But it's still fundamentally self-indulgent.
Maybe it's just that the obviously untrue article was untrue!
Honestly you could write an article saying Keir Starmer was planning to sacrifice his firstborn to the devil and people on here would believe it.
(1) The 2019-2024 parliament shows that such "reforms" can't and don't save you
(2) 16-18 years in the mid 2020s aren't voting as they would have done 10-20 years ago, and indeed are shifting Right rapidly
So Labour won't benefit from this.
True liberals are socially liberal but also more tolerant of others opinions and less eager to see everything through class, gender, sexuality and racial lines.
Your point on the cost of living being the main determinant of recent national elections is also correct