We don’t do many polls on PB. I’ve set one up in one of the main questions of today - Labours dumb plan to Nationalise a steel plant in Scunthorpe. Is this poll for contributors and readers allowed?
And I’m so cross that it might happen due to Starmer’s huge majority, because it’s such lazy pathetic lefty government to even consider it. This Plants loss making because it can’t compete with competition for its expensively produced product, it also can’t comply with Net Zero so has to close anyway if it doesn’t do massively expensive electric refit. Labour are so out of touch if they think they can rush this through during an election campaign - they will break the ministerial code with this stunt - the British tax payer taking this ENORMOUS LIABILITY on.
UK government can’t use this steel in any UK projects, as it would make those projects massively more expensive and beyond affordable - Labour don’t have an answer to this reason British government always sensibly imports much much cheaper steel for all its projects - happy to import cheap steel from abroad for projects with public money is a policy that proves UK is hundreds of times smarter than Donald Trump.
Anyone saying yes Nationalise it are saying yes take seven hundred thousand pounds each week away from the NHS, and throwing the good money into a furnace - madness - only stupid people like Trump and Reform Supporters are saying Nationalise this money pit. Now let’s watch how many Labour MPs are going to stand up and flag up to their tax paying, NHS long time waiting list constituents how useless and stupid they are, taking our country back to nationalisation. Today the Thatcherite Conservative opposition will absolutely shred Labour in debate.
If I may put forward the contrary view.
Globalisation is either dead or dying. The belief that we can buy anything from anywhere and need only choose the cheapest is seeping away, day by day. The Ukraine war has taught us that we need to make our own steel for our own armed forces, because another country may simply refuse to sell to us. Since such strategic products cannot be left to the vicissitudes of the market, they must be nationalised.
If the country is descending into autarkic neurosis then there are far more important companies that should be taken into government control before we start worrying about steel. BAE, Babcock, and the British bits of Leonardo for a start.
We don’t do many polls on PB. I’ve set one up in one of the main questions of today - Labours dumb plan to Nationalise a steel plant in Scunthorpe. Is this poll for contributors and readers allowed?
And I’m so cross that it might happen due to Starmer’s huge majority, because it’s such lazy pathetic lefty government to even consider it. This Plants loss making because it can’t compete with competition for its expensively produced product, it also can’t comply with Net Zero so has to close anyway if it doesn’t do massively expensive electric refit. Labour are so out of touch if they think they can rush this through during an election campaign - they will break the ministerial code with this stunt - the British tax payer taking this ENORMOUS LIABILITY on.
UK government can’t use this steel in any UK projects, as it would make those projects massively more expensive and beyond affordable - Labour don’t have an answer to this reason British government always sensibly imports much much cheaper steel for all its projects - happy to import cheap steel from abroad for projects with public money is a policy that proves UK is hundreds of times smarter than Donald Trump.
Anyone saying yes Nationalise it are saying yes take seven hundred thousand pounds each week away from the NHS, and throwing the good money into a furnace - madness - only stupid people like Trump and Reform Supporters are saying Nationalise this money pit. Now let’s watch how many Labour MPs are going to stand up and flag up to their tax paying, NHS long time waiting list constituents how useless and stupid they are, taking our country back to nationalisation. Today the Thatcherite Conservative opposition will absolutely shred Labour in debate.
A yucky bowl of Pea Soup? We are smarter than this, PB!
Aren't you allowed to vote in your own poll, then?
13 votes and it’s still bowl of Pea Soup?
It’s one of those days I wake up and realise all my fellow PBers are total Trumpicons? Don’t you listen to me and Barty Bobbins?
In a sign of weakening confidence, the Bank of England on Thursday decided to postpone an auction of gilts “in light of recent market volatility”.
Telegraph
None of this helps my retirement income. Shares are down but so are bonds which are supposed to protect against stock market falls.
In the short term, this might not matter politically because, as a wise man once said, it started in America so no-one will blame our own government but further out it will have wrecked many retirement plans and left younger workers, especially those newly and compulsorily enrolled into DC pension schemes, wondering what on earth is the point if their savings are instantly eroded.
If we’d stayed in the EU and joined the Euro we would be enjoying ECB gilt yields of around 3.5% and the government could sell paper to its heart’s content.
The French bond yield has fallen by 0.3% this month. The Eurozone is a safe haven.
Even if we were Italy we’d be looking at a yield of only 3.8%.
Reform and the Greens are by far the most similar parties, because they don't believe in the physical universe in which we live.
They live in quite different alternative universes, though. The Reform one has a strong flavour of orange nuts.
Having met quite a number of Greens, I think they have plenty of nuts of their own.
The Greens have taken in a lot of the younger corbynites, and that support base was probably key to their recent win in Haringey.
Meanwhile it is emerging that Farage/Reform HQ seems to have been trying to get rid of their IOW East candidate because some of her views are quite extreme, hence her walking out as party chair and candidate, taking some of the committee with her. There's a council by-election on 1 May, which they stopped her standing for, so now Reform is putting up a candidate, and their former parliamentary candidate is also standing, now as an Independent. Should be interesting.
I don’t think Waugh is telling the whole story here, The Brexit Party in 2019 seemed to be saying the government should intervene. Very stilted autocue reading from Richard Tice
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
A massive problem with democracy is we now have huge cohorts of retired people many of who havent been in the workforce for 30 years. These are now the people blocking any real substantial change. Sure they may moan a bit but thats about it.
And this is where I had my dinner last night before going to see an excellent production of Far from the Madding Crowd by Conn Artists Touring Company, a small company which does adaptations of plays and novels and tours the many small theatres we still have in this country. We should treasure these outfits far more than we do.
As it’s football day, Exclusive Sports News. Liverpool FC have agreed to sign MONSTER striker Youssef En-Nesyri for just £35M. The best header in world football, and in Salah the best crosser in world football, what can go wrong. Done Deal, here we go etc - watch for the announcement, as the most penny wise master team builders already strengthen this seasons Prem winning team, to win even more next season.
In a sign of weakening confidence, the Bank of England on Thursday decided to postpone an auction of gilts “in light of recent market volatility”.
Telegraph
None of this helps my retirement income. Shares are down but so are bonds which are supposed to protect against stock market falls.
In the short term, this might not matter politically because, as a wise man once said, it started in America so no-one will blame our own government but further out it will have wrecked many retirement plans and left younger workers, especially those newly and compulsorily enrolled into DC pension schemes, wondering what on earth is the point if their savings are instantly eroded.
If we’d stayed in the EU and joined the Euro we would be enjoying ECB gilt yields of around 3.5% and the government could sell paper to its heart’s content.
The French bond yield has fallen by 0.3% this month. The Eurozone is a safe haven.
Even if we were Italy we’d be looking at a yield of only 3.8%.
Call it a Brexit bonus but without the bonus part.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
Stop it. It is most unnerving when you make a point that is both controversial and correct for once. It really makes me wonder if I have got it wrong.
We don’t do many polls on PB. I’ve set one up in one of the main questions of today - Labours dumb plan to Nationalise a steel plant in Scunthorpe. Is this poll for contributors and readers allowed?
And I’m so cross that it might happen due to Starmer’s huge majority, because it’s such lazy pathetic lefty government to even consider it. This Plants loss making because it can’t compete with competition for its expensively produced product, it also can’t comply with Net Zero so has to close anyway if it doesn’t do massively expensive electric refit. Labour are so out of touch if they think they can rush this through during an election campaign - they will break the ministerial code with this stunt - the British tax payer taking this ENORMOUS LIABILITY on.
UK government can’t use this steel in any UK projects, as it would make those projects massively more expensive and beyond affordable - Labour don’t have an answer to this reason British government always sensibly imports much much cheaper steel for all its projects - happy to import cheap steel from abroad for projects with public money is a policy that proves UK is hundreds of times smarter than Donald Trump.
Anyone saying yes Nationalise it are saying yes take seven hundred thousand pounds each week away from the NHS, and throwing the good money into a furnace - madness - only stupid people like Trump and Reform Supporters are saying Nationalise this money pit. Now let’s watch how many Labour MPs are going to stand up and flag up to their tax paying, NHS long time waiting list constituents how useless and stupid they are, taking our country back to nationalisation. Today the Thatcherite Conservative opposition will absolutely shred Labour in debate.
If I may put forward the contrary view.
Globalisation is either dead or dying. The belief that we can buy anything from anywhere and need only choose the cheapest is seeping away, day by day. The Ukraine war has taught us that we need to make our own steel for our own armed forces, because another country may simply refuse to sell to us. Since such strategic products cannot be left to the vicissitudes of the market, they must be nationalised.
If the country is descending into autarkic neurosis then there are far more important companies that should be taken into government control before we start worrying about steel. BAE, Babcock, and the British bits of Leonardo for a start.
Absolutely.
Exactly.
The notion that SKS is using our money to buy us a steelworks to guard against the risk that no other country on Earth will sell us steel at a time when steel is coincidentally and urgently required for reasons of natty secs is so transparently facile that you need to have the simple-minded credulity of a Ukrainian Ultra to fall for it.
He's doing it to stop the Fukkers using the issue as political HIMARS in the locals. That's it.
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
Stop it. It is most unnerving when you make a point that is both controversial and correct for once. It really makes me wonder if I have got it wrong.
I’m doing a Gazette piece about it. So you’ll be able to luxuriate in the unnervingness at even greater length
Right. Fuck the “Tien Shan foothills and canyons”. Most boring place on earth. It’s Gooly Archypoo on the car stereo and back to places that understand “gin”
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
What does better off actually mean anyway?
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
They're not similar. Labour have raised taxes more and far more inclined to Statist solutions.
What they have done is take centre-right positions on defence and welfare spending, however - and more effectively than the Conservatives did - which is a sweet place to be electorally.
Polling seems to suggest that Labour are far from being in an electoral sweet spot.
They are simultaneously alienating their own voters and failing to win back former voters gone to Reform. Hence falling Labour polling, rising Reform polling, rising LD and Green polling and the Conservatives watching the world pass them by.
Mid-term is mid-term.
They are right where they need to be to capture swing voters in English marginals in a GE.
Er, no.
They won in July 24 with wide but shallow support, as I am sure you recognise. As such they are highly geared. They have lots of safe seats (though some are not as safe as they thought, see Leicester South and Leicester East), but very many more vulnerable ones when the tide goes out. I reckon that Labour will have 150-200 seats after the next GE.
Who gets the other 450 then?
My guess is that Starmer will win comfortably. I can see the 80's repeating themselves with Starmer playing Thatcher. He's turning out to be a very astute politician. Certainly not to everybody's taste (including mine) but by a distance better than all of his possible opponents
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
What does better off actually mean anyway?
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
Electronic goods are cheaper yes in real terms but going out and housing are more expensive in real terms. And whilst flights are relatively cheap since covid hotels are certainly not.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
Stop it. It is most unnerving when you make a point that is both controversial and correct for once. It really makes me wonder if I have got it wrong.
People don’t know what they’ve got, till it’s gone.
We have a marvellous ability, as a species, to foul our own nests.
If democracy is replaced by autocracy, what we’ll get is both less freedom and a worse standard of living.
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
Perhaps we are better off, but the perception is that we are worse off? A combination of seeing the past through rose-tinted glasses, and the Internet telling us that everything is cr@p, often fed through foreign influence and bots?
This is in no way saying that there are not big problems that need fixing; but I'd argue that if we were to go back to 1995, people would have been saying the same then.
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
The immigration one is tricky as it comes down to what sort of country you want to live in. On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be .
They're not similar. Labour have raised taxes more and far more inclined to Statist solutions.
What they have done is take centre-right positions on defence and welfare spending, however - and more effectively than the Conservatives did - which is a sweet place to be electorally.
Polling seems to suggest that Labour are far from being in an electoral sweet spot.
They are simultaneously alienating their own voters and failing to win back former voters gone to Reform. Hence falling Labour polling, rising Reform polling, rising LD and Green polling and the Conservatives watching the world pass them by.
Mid-term is mid-term.
They are right where they need to be to capture swing voters in English marginals in a GE.
Er, no.
They won in July 24 with wide but shallow support, as I am sure you recognise. As such they are highly geared. They have lots of safe seats (though some are not as safe as they thought, see Leicester South and Leicester East), but very many more vulnerable ones when the tide goes out. I reckon that Labour will have 150-200 seats after the next GE.
There was a great graphic produced just after the election which showed the winning margins for all seats on a scatter graph. I’m sure John Burn-Murdoch shared it, but I can’t find it now. A female staticician from a university made it I think
Basically, hundreds of seats are a coin toss. I hope someone else on here knows what I’m referring to and can share it
We don’t do many polls on PB. I’ve set one up in one of the main questions of today - Labours dumb plan to Nationalise a steel plant in Scunthorpe. Is this poll for contributors and readers allowed?
And I’m so cross that it might happen due to Starmer’s huge majority, because it’s such lazy pathetic lefty government to even consider it. This Plants loss making because it can’t compete with competition for its expensively produced product, it also can’t comply with Net Zero so has to close anyway if it doesn’t do massively expensive electric refit. Labour are so out of touch if they think they can rush this through during an election campaign - they will break the ministerial code with this stunt - the British tax payer taking this ENORMOUS LIABILITY on.
UK government can’t use this steel in any UK projects, as it would make those projects massively more expensive and beyond affordable - Labour don’t have an answer to this reason British government always sensibly imports much much cheaper steel for all its projects - happy to import cheap steel from abroad for projects with public money is a policy that proves UK is hundreds of times smarter than Donald Trump.
Anyone saying yes Nationalise it are saying yes take seven hundred thousand pounds each week away from the NHS, and throwing the good money into a furnace - madness - only stupid people like Trump and Reform Supporters are saying Nationalise this money pit. Now let’s watch how many Labour MPs are going to stand up and flag up to their tax paying, NHS long time waiting list constituents how useless and stupid they are, taking our country back to nationalisation. Today the Thatcherite Conservative opposition will absolutely shred Labour in debate.
What's all this stupid fucking shit about steel and money? None of this has anything to do with that.
SKS doesn't want to go into the locals with Nigel Paul banging on about how 2TK has killed the Great British Steel Industry so we have to import inferior, "woke" steel from Neutral Moresnet. The government is just neutralising the issue so it's not a political problem. The financial and strategic implications can take care of themselves or go and fuck themselves. Whichever is easier.
I think you are on my side, so I given it a like, though not wholly sure.
Where’s the autobiography Ace? At least one chapter of diamond smuggling too now. You need to type it up before you lose rest of your fingers in your workshop.
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
The immigration one is tricky as it comes down to what sort of country you want to live in. On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be .
"On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be ."
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
What does better off actually mean anyway?
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
Electronic goods are cheaper yes in real terms but going out and housing are more expensive in real terms. And whilst flights are relatively cheap since covid hotels are certainly not.
Hotels in the UK are more expensive. Plenty of cheap decent hotels a cheap short haul away.
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
What does better off actually mean anyway?
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
More stupid shit like porn, games and gamer chairs. Less important shit like sex, relationships, housing and babies. This is not an improvement.
And this is where I had my dinner last night before going to see an excellent production of Far from the Madding Crowd by Conn Artists Touring Company, a small company which does adaptations of plays and novels and tours the many small theatres we still have in this country. We should treasure these outfits far more than we do.
Consider whether they might be eligible for our forthcoming Unesco list.
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
The immigration one is tricky as it comes down to what sort of country you want to live in. On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be .
I don't know where you get your figures, but they do not match the 2021 census. In all age ranges British children are 71% or more white. Many of the others are completely integrated 3rd or more generation Britons of migrant descent, with the growing group being mixed ethnicity again confirming integration.
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
The immigration one is tricky as it comes down to what sort of country you want to live in. On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be .
"On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be ."
Do you have a source for that?
White schoolchildren have long been a minority in some places. It turns out that ethnic minority mummies and daddies have ethnic minority children and send them to local schools in ethnic minority areas.
Ironically, it is recent immigration from Eastern Europe that has evened things up a bit.
"Twelve men and a woman have been arrested on suspicion of alleged historical child sexual exploitation offences.
West Yorkshire Police said the men, aged between 42 and 59, and a 60-year-old woman were arrested at a series of addresses in Bradford in March and April.
The force said the alleged offences were said to have been committed against a single victim between 2000 and 2005 when she was aged between 13 and 17."
It never ends,.
It never will, all that can be done is to reduce opportunity, increase recognition. reporting and law enforcement. The funding cuts to the latter have drastically reduced the effectiveness of the latter.
That's a poor characterisation of the history of police funding. Funding was cut by ~20% 2010-2016 by Osborne and Cameron, but has been increased back in years since then. In the first period the force was pithed of around 15% of officers, many of them the core, experienced cadre I think.
It will take years to recover; however funding in real terms has built since 2018. I think the difference wrt the Starmer Govt is that we can expect them to plan further than the end of their nose, rather than run in headless chicken mode. The increase in the Local Authority component of funding is notable.
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
What does better off actually mean anyway?
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
More stupid shit like porn, games and gamer chairs. Less important shit like sex, relationships, housing and babies. This is not an improvement.
Yes, I think that true, but we can't go back to the 90's. The Internet and smartphone genie won't go back in it's bottle. We have to learn to manage it better as a species.
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
What does better off actually mean anyway?
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
More stupid shit like porn, games and gamer chairs. Less important shit like sex, relationships, housing and babies. This is not an improvement.
Gaming is one of the most sociable things I do. I'm currently battling one of my friends in strategy games even as I help him through a devastating break-up with his long term partner.
Huge opportunity for UK. Are we going to drop the ball yet again?
"And what about a government fund to support UK universities to attract US scientists whose funding and research are now being attacked by Trump? This week, Cornell and Northwestern joined Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and the National Institutes of Health among the victims. Starmer should offer government support for programmes and laboratory building in UK universities aimed at attracting the US’s top scientists in things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and life sciences. Visas would be fast-tracked. The larger goal would be to turbocharge new UK industries with global potential. Perhaps it’s a job for Kate Bingham, who headed the Covid vaccine drive."
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
What does better off actually mean anyway?
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
More stupid shit like porn, games and gamer chairs. Less important shit like sex, relationships, housing and babies. This is not an improvement.
Yes, I think that true, but we can't go back to the 90's. The Internet and smartphone genie won't go back in it's bottle. We have to learn to manage it better as a species.
If we don't get a bloody move on, "it" will learn to manage our species better.....
"Twelve men and a woman have been arrested on suspicion of alleged historical child sexual exploitation offences.
West Yorkshire Police said the men, aged between 42 and 59, and a 60-year-old woman were arrested at a series of addresses in Bradford in March and April.
The force said the alleged offences were said to have been committed against a single victim between 2000 and 2005 when she was aged between 13 and 17."
It never ends,.
It never will, all that can be done is to reduce opportunity, increase recognition. reporting and law enforcement. The funding cuts to the latter have drastically reduced the effectiveness of the latter.
That's a poor characterisation of the history of police funding. Funding was cut by ~20% 2010-2016 by Osborne and Cameron, but has been increased back in years since then. In the first period the force was pithed of around 15% of officers, many of them the core, experienced cadre I think.
It will take years to recover; however funding in real terms has built since 2018. I think the difference wrt the Starmer Govt is that we can expect them to plan further than the end of their nose, rather than run in headless chicken mode. The increase in the Local Authority component of funding is notable.
The real damage to police funding and operations, at least in my part of the world, has come from the closure and selling off of property assets which was started by Osborne and the Coalition and aided and abetted by the Mayor of London at the time, Boris Johnson and all because of Cameron's stupidity around protecting the NHS and Education from public spending cuts.
East Ham Police Station was sold - bought by the University of East London, I believe. The problem with selling a Police station is the operational impact. If someone is arrested, they now have to go to Manor Park to be processed which takes offices off patrol for an inordinate amount of time reducing cover and that's before we get into the whole issue of translators etc, etc. When the offender could be dropped off at a local station, the time spent not doing the job was much reduced.
Absolutely we had that.
We lost our town (45k pop) police station which used to have about 3 dozen coppers based there around the same time. One noticeable loss is there weren't police casually popping out for a sandwich and so on - just reduces presence.
They now have an annex in the Local Authority offices, which is 3 miles away.
I think it's time to remove our taxes on industrial electricity. Our generation is increasingly green and it's obviously holding our economy back, particularly compared with other European countries.
If we want to do it on a fiscally neutral basis, increase fuel duties and taxes on gas. They are now much cheaper than other countries and doing so has serious green credentials too.
We don’t do many polls on PB. I’ve set one up in one of the main questions of today - Labours dumb plan to Nationalise a steel plant in Scunthorpe. Is this poll for contributors and readers allowed?
And I’m so cross that it might happen due to Starmer’s huge majority, because it’s such lazy pathetic lefty government to even consider it. This Plants loss making because it can’t compete with competition for its expensively produced product, it also can’t comply with Net Zero so has to close anyway if it doesn’t do massively expensive electric refit. Labour are so out of touch if they think they can rush this through during an election campaign - they will break the ministerial code with this stunt - the British tax payer taking this ENORMOUS LIABILITY on.
UK government can’t use this steel in any UK projects, as it would make those projects massively more expensive and beyond affordable - Labour don’t have an answer to this reason British government always sensibly imports much much cheaper steel for all its projects - happy to import cheap steel from abroad for projects with public money is a policy that proves UK is hundreds of times smarter than Donald Trump.
Anyone saying yes Nationalise it are saying yes take seven hundred thousand pounds each week away from the NHS, and throwing the good money into a furnace - madness - only stupid people like Trump and Reform Supporters are saying Nationalise this money pit. Now let’s watch how many Labour MPs are going to stand up and flag up to their tax paying, NHS long time waiting list constituents how useless and stupid they are, taking our country back to nationalisation. Today the Thatcherite Conservative opposition will absolutely shred Labour in debate.
If I may put forward the contrary view.
Globalisation is either dead or dying. The belief that we can buy anything from anywhere and need only choose the cheapest is seeping away, day by day. The Ukraine war has taught us that we need to make our own steel for our own armed forces, because another country may simply refuse to sell to us. Since such strategic products cannot be left to the vicissitudes of the market, they must be nationalised.
I think I fall slightly between the two camps. I am regretfully in favour of nationalisation (or any form of keeping it open) for strategic reasons - it's fundamentally unserious to suggest we can give up virgin steel-making capacity. However, I deplore the Government policies over decades that have led us to this decision - Net Zero being the straw that broke this particular camel's back. It's a shame that anything has to be taken into public ownership, but we are where we are. I hope we can restore sanity in this country so that it's plausible to run a steelmaking BUSINESS here again.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
Stop it. It is most unnerving when you make a point that is both controversial and correct for once. It really makes me wonder if I have got it wrong.
I’m doing a Gazette piece about it. So you’ll be able to luxuriate in the unnervingness at even greater length
Right. Fuck the “Tien Shan foothills and canyons”. Most boring place on earth. It’s Gooly Archypoo on the car stereo and back to places that understand “gin”
"Twelve men and a woman have been arrested on suspicion of alleged historical child sexual exploitation offences.
West Yorkshire Police said the men, aged between 42 and 59, and a 60-year-old woman were arrested at a series of addresses in Bradford in March and April.
The force said the alleged offences were said to have been committed against a single victim between 2000 and 2005 when she was aged between 13 and 17."
It never ends,.
It never will, all that can be done is to reduce opportunity, increase recognition. reporting and law enforcement. The funding cuts to the latter have drastically reduced the effectiveness of the latter.
That's a poor characterisation of the history of police funding. Funding was cut by ~20% 2010-2016 by Osborne and Cameron, but has been increased back in years since then. In the first period the force was pithed of around 15% of officers, many of them the core, experienced cadre I think.
It will take years to recover; however funding in real terms has built since 2018. I think the difference wrt the Starmer Govt is that we can expect them to plan further than the end of their nose, rather than run in headless chicken mode. The increase in the Local Authority component of funding is notable.
The real damage to police funding and operations, at least in my part of the world, has come from the closure and selling off of property assets which was started by Osborne and the Coalition and aided and abetted by the Mayor of London at the time, Boris Johnson and all because of Cameron's stupidity around protecting the NHS and Education from public spending cuts.
East Ham Police Station was sold - bought by the University of East London, I believe. The problem with selling a Police station is the operational impact. If someone is arrested, they now have to go to Manor Park to be processed which takes offices off patrol for an inordinate amount of time reducing cover and that's before we get into the whole issue of translators etc, etc. When the offender could be dropped off at a local station, the time spent not doing the job was much reduced.
Absolutely we had that.
We lost our town (45k pop) police station which used to have about 3 dozen coppers based there around the same time. One noticeable loss is there weren't police casually popping out for a sandwich and so on - just reduces presence.
They now have an annex in the Local Authority offices, which is 3 miles away.
I listened to Peter Hitchens and Sarah Vine's podcast last night, in which Hitchens lamented the lack of a visible police presence on the streets. Surprisingly enough, to me, he is anti stop and search. But the closure of police stations, on top of the lack of foot patrols really does make it seem as if the police aren't really around. I think it would be better if they patrolled the streets and were stationed in areas of high crime.
They're not similar. Labour have raised taxes more and far more inclined to Statist solutions.
What they have done is take centre-right positions on defence and welfare spending, however - and more effectively than the Conservatives did - which is a sweet place to be electorally.
Polling seems to suggest that Labour are far from being in an electoral sweet spot.
They are simultaneously alienating their own voters and failing to win back former voters gone to Reform. Hence falling Labour polling, rising Reform polling, rising LD and Green polling and the Conservatives watching the world pass them by.
Mid-term is mid-term.
They are right where they need to be to capture swing voters in English marginals in a GE.
Er, no.
They won in July 24 with wide but shallow support, as I am sure you recognise. As such they are highly geared. They have lots of safe seats (though some are not as safe as they thought, see Leicester South and Leicester East), but very many more vulnerable ones when the tide goes out. I reckon that Labour will have 150-200 seats after the next GE.
There was a great graphic produced just after the election which showed the winning margins for all seats on a scatter graph. I’m sure John Burn-Murdoch shared it, but I can’t find it now. A female staticician from a university made it I think
Basically, hundreds of seats are a coin toss. I hope someone else on here knows what I’m referring to and can share it
Here is one I've just generated. It shows the seats in order of % majority. You can use the x axis to see how many seats have less than some % majority. For example 225 seats have a majority of less than 10%. It's a bit crude but ...
"Twelve men and a woman have been arrested on suspicion of alleged historical child sexual exploitation offences.
West Yorkshire Police said the men, aged between 42 and 59, and a 60-year-old woman were arrested at a series of addresses in Bradford in March and April.
The force said the alleged offences were said to have been committed against a single victim between 2000 and 2005 when she was aged between 13 and 17."
It never ends,.
It never will, all that can be done is to reduce opportunity, increase recognition. reporting and law enforcement. The funding cuts to the latter have drastically reduced the effectiveness of the latter.
That's a poor characterisation of the history of police funding. Funding was cut by ~20% 2010-2016 by Osborne and Cameron, but has been increased back in years since then. In the first period the force was pithed of around 15% of officers, many of them the core, experienced cadre I think.
It will take years to recover; however funding in real terms has built since 2018. I think the difference wrt the Starmer Govt is that we can expect them to plan further than the end of their nose, rather than run in headless chicken mode. The increase in the Local Authority component of funding is notable.
The real damage to police funding and operations, at least in my part of the world, has come from the closure and selling off of property assets which was started by Osborne and the Coalition and aided and abetted by the Mayor of London at the time, Boris Johnson and all because of Cameron's stupidity around protecting the NHS and Education from public spending cuts.
East Ham Police Station was sold - bought by the University of East London, I believe. The problem with selling a Police station is the operational impact. If someone is arrested, they now have to go to Manor Park to be processed which takes offices off patrol for an inordinate amount of time reducing cover and that's before we get into the whole issue of translators etc, etc. When the offender could be dropped off at a local station, the time spent not doing the job was much reduced.
Absolutely we had that.
We lost our town (45k pop) police station which used to have about 3 dozen coppers based there around the same time. One noticeable loss is there weren't police casually popping out for a sandwich and so on - just reduces presence.
They now have an annex in the Local Authority offices, which is 3 miles away.
I listened to Peter Hitchens and Sarah Vine's podcast last night, in which Hitchens lamented the lack of a visible police presence on the streets. Surprisingly enough, to me, he is anti stop and search. But the closure of police stations, on top of the lack of foot patrols really does make it seem as if the police aren't really around. I think it would be better if they patrolled the streets and were stationed in areas of high crime.
Having police visible and much faster justice processing would make a huge difference to public perception of crime. Which is almost as important as the actual crime numbers.
Huge opportunity for UK. Are we going to drop the ball yet again?
"And what about a government fund to support UK universities to attract US scientists whose funding and research are now being attacked by Trump? This week, Cornell and Northwestern joined Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and the National Institutes of Health among the victims. Starmer should offer government support for programmes and laboratory building in UK universities aimed at attracting the US’s top scientists in things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and life sciences. Visas would be fast-tracked. The larger goal would be to turbocharge new UK industries with global potential. Perhaps it’s a job for Kate Bingham, who headed the Covid vaccine drive."
"Twelve men and a woman have been arrested on suspicion of alleged historical child sexual exploitation offences.
West Yorkshire Police said the men, aged between 42 and 59, and a 60-year-old woman were arrested at a series of addresses in Bradford in March and April.
The force said the alleged offences were said to have been committed against a single victim between 2000 and 2005 when she was aged between 13 and 17."
It never ends,.
It never will, all that can be done is to reduce opportunity, increase recognition. reporting and law enforcement. The funding cuts to the latter have drastically reduced the effectiveness of the latter.
That's a poor characterisation of the history of police funding. Funding was cut by ~20% 2010-2016 by Osborne and Cameron, but has been increased back in years since then. In the first period the force was pithed of around 15% of officers, many of them the core, experienced cadre I think.
It will take years to recover; however funding in real terms has built since 2018. I think the difference wrt the Starmer Govt is that we can expect them to plan further than the end of their nose, rather than run in headless chicken mode. The increase in the Local Authority component of funding is notable.
The real damage to police funding and operations, at least in my part of the world, has come from the closure and selling off of property assets which was started by Osborne and the Coalition and aided and abetted by the Mayor of London at the time, Boris Johnson and all because of Cameron's stupidity around protecting the NHS and Education from public spending cuts.
East Ham Police Station was sold - bought by the University of East London, I believe. The problem with selling a Police station is the operational impact. If someone is arrested, they now have to go to Manor Park to be processed which takes offices off patrol for an inordinate amount of time reducing cover and that's before we get into the whole issue of translators etc, etc. When the offender could be dropped off at a local station, the time spent not doing the job was much reduced.
Absolutely we had that.
We lost our town (45k pop) police station which used to have about 3 dozen coppers based there around the same time. One noticeable loss is there weren't police casually popping out for a sandwich and so on - just reduces presence.
They now have an annex in the Local Authority offices, which is 3 miles away.
I listened to Peter Hitchens and Sarah Vine's podcast last night, in which Hitchens lamented the lack of a visible police presence on the streets. Surprisingly enough, to me, he is anti stop and search. But the closure of police stations, on top of the lack of foot patrols really does make it seem as if the police aren't really around. I think it would be better if they patrolled the streets and were stationed in areas of high crime.
You latter point is part of the reason why you don't see them very often. I cycle through the rough parts of Edinburgh (Pilton, Muirhouse, Niddrie etc) and there are loads of cops. Policing is much better targeted.
(A very large proportion are serving warrants and patrolling the Sheriff Court too).
Talking of autocracies I’m still listening to the Gooly Archipoo by Solzhenitsyn, as I drive the endless tedious wastes of Kazakhstan
I’ve just discovered that one gulag here - just one camp - Karlag - was 60,000 square km in size (arguably larger). That is to say: almost the size of Scotland
(Insert joke about Wick, here)
Even the USA does not do that, though their Louisiana State Penitentiary is 28 square miles (=72 square km). The area of the City of Nottingham is 74 sq km.
Random factoid: there are just over 200,000 prisoners in the USA serving life sentences. The population of the City of Nottingham is 320,000.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
Stop it. It is most unnerving when you make a point that is both controversial and correct for once. It really makes me wonder if I have got it wrong.
I’m doing a Gazette piece about it. So you’ll be able to luxuriate in the unnervingness at even greater length
Right. Fuck the “Tien Shan foothills and canyons”. Most boring place on earth. It’s Gooly Archypoo on the car stereo and back to places that understand “gin”
And this is where I had my dinner last night before going to see an excellent production of Far from the Madding Crowd by Conn Artists Touring Company, a small company which does adaptations of plays and novels and tours the many small theatres we still have in this country. We should treasure these outfits far more than we do.
Consider whether they might be eligible for our forthcoming Unesco list.
Will they protect the longish tradition of British governments rolling out various wankeries to reinforce their fragile sense of nationhood? Scrub that, no need cos they’ll always be doing it.
I think it's time to remove our taxes on industrial electricity. Our generation is increasingly green and it's obviously holding our economy back, particularly compared with other European countries.
If we want to do it on a fiscally neutral basis, increase fuel duties and taxes on gas. They are now much cheaper than other countries and doing so has serious green credentials too.
Linking electricity costs to marginal gas fluctuations is stupid anyway but cripples industry.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
Stop it. It is most unnerving when you make a point that is both controversial and correct for once. It really makes me wonder if I have got it wrong.
One has only to look at the way in which the South Koreans dealt with a wannabe dictator to realise that, no, democracy isn't dwindling.
Most of the "democracy is doomed" commentary is based on the current situation in the United States.
The situation has arisen largely because the previous Democratic administration (1) failed to control the border & (2) tried to run Biden for a 2nd term. The opinion polls had been clear for a long time that US voters were concerned about the border & felt that Biden was too old. The Democratic establishment tried to ignore the clear will of the voters & failed in this attempt.
If they had actually looked the opinion polls and (1) acted promptly in 2021 to implement border control measures and (2) forced Biden to retire in 2023, so there was a proper primary process & a new candidate, then Trump would have most likely lost the election.
Anyway, democracy is still alive and well in the United States. The Democrats have done very well in the Wisconsin court election & the Florida special elections have recorded a significant anti-Republican swing. Trump's favourable numbers are sinking rapidly & he will lose control of the House in the 2026 midterms.
Morning all. Things are better here today. Mrs C is recovering from her hospital trip; fell and took some of the skin off her shin. Lots of blood and general tissue damage, but she's all bandaged up now and she's walking as little as possible.
On topic, or at least one of those currently discussed when I look at my family, are they living better or worse than we were thirty (say) years ago. Eldest son, I would say yes, but he didn't make the commercial mistakes I did, so he's quite comfortably off, working part-time/semi retired although he's worried about his 'children' who aren't settled in either education or employment. Younger son, maybe; he is moving toward semi-retirement, although because of where he lives education of his children is expensive and it'll probably be ten years before his youngest is earning. In other words they've got worries and problems as we did, but they're different.
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
The immigration one is tricky as it comes down to what sort of country you want to live in. On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be .
I don't know where you get your figures, but they do not match the 2021 census. In all age ranges British children are 71% or more white. Many of the others are completely integrated 3rd or more generation Britons of migrant descent, with the growing group being mixed ethnicity again confirming integration.
It's just the usual Great Replacement Theory bollocks so beloved of the far right.
It was an article in conservative home. Here.
Before proceeding, I should clarify what White British refers to, it is an ethnic category used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and other Governmental departments to refer to those who are white and are English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, or British – effectively the group you could call the native or indigenous population.
Every year the ONS releases data on births in England & Wales for the previous year, the latest data is available for 2023. If you want to see data on births for previous years, you have to download a different dataset that contains the ethnicity of births in England & Wales from 2007 to 2022, I do not believe this data was collected prior to 2007.
Using the data from these documents, I have created a chart showing the percentage of births in England & Wales that are White British, from 2007 to 2023.
If we look at 2013 to 2023, White British births, as a percentage, have declined by 8.49 per cent and if we go from the peak in 2010 at 66.25 per cent, White British births have declined by 10.69 per cent — I’m no statistician, but on current course, I would not be surprised if we see White British births fall below 50 per cent before 2030.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
That's fine as a generalisation, and is a trope of a million thoughful editorials and comment pieces.
Can flesh be put on the skeleton beyond the truism that we need policies X, Y and Z but don't want the price. In other words, do pointy headed people work on and publish detailed manifestos of what policies X, Y and Z are, how much they cost, how the money would be raised, what society would look like in the 5, 10, 15 year term and so on?
For what you say is often said. But does anyone tekll me what it looks like in detail, both the pluses and the downsides?
Without it, it remains a truism only.
Perhaps there are no acceptable answers and that is why nobody is able to put flesh on the skeleton.
We assume there are solutions that will satisfy a majority of voters. What if there aren't?
The dissatisfied will continue to grasp at ever-more extreme solutions without bothering to really think any of it through as they have done with Trump.
Whilst democracy might be the least worst form of government it doesn't mean that it is bound to succeed. I suspect many voters in the UK would ditch democracy in a nano-second if they believed it would be to their advantage.
Talking of autocracies I’m still listening to the Gooly Archipoo by Solzhenitsyn, as I drive the endless tedious wastes of Kazakhstan
I’ve just discovered that one gulag here - just one camp - Karlag - was 60,000 square km in size (arguably larger). That is to say: almost the size of Scotland
(Insert joke about Wick, here)
Even the USA does not do that, though their Louisiana State Penitentiary is 28 square miles (=72 square km). The area of the City of Nottingham is 74 sq km.
Random factoid: there are just over 200,000 prisoners in the USA serving life sentences. The population of the City of Nottingham is 320,000.
And this is where I had my dinner last night before going to see an excellent production of Far from the Madding Crowd by Conn Artists Touring Company, a small company which does adaptations of plays and novels and tours the many small theatres we still have in this country. We should treasure these outfits far more than we do.
Consider whether they might be eligible for our forthcoming Unesco list.
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
The immigration one is tricky as it comes down to what sort of country you want to live in. On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be .
I don't know where you get your figures, but they do not match the 2021 census. In all age ranges British children are 71% or more white. Many of the others are completely integrated 3rd or more generation Britons of migrant descent, with the growing group being mixed ethnicity again confirming integration.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
Stop it. It is most unnerving when you make a point that is both controversial and correct for once. It really makes me wonder if I have got it wrong.
One has only to look at the way in which the South Koreans dealt with a wannabe dictator to realise that, no, democracy isn't dwindling.
Most of the "democracy is doomed" commentary is based on the current situation in the United States.
The situation has arisen largely because the previous Democratic administration (1) failed to control the border & (2) tried to run Biden for a 2nd term. The opinion polls had been clear for a long time that US voters were concerned about the border & felt that Biden was too old. The Democratic establishment tried to ignore the clear will of the voters & failed in this attempt.
If they had actually looked the opinion polls and (1) acted promptly in 2021 to implement border control measures and (2) forced Biden to retire in 2023, so there was a proper primary process & a new candidate, then Trump would have most likely lost the election.
Anyway, democracy is still alive and well in the United States. The Democrats have done very well in the Wisconsin court election & the Florida special elections have recorded a significant anti-Republican swing. Trump's favourable numbers are sinking rapidly & he will lose control of the House in the 2026 midterms.
Every Western democracy has seen the governing power lose seats (vast majority lose power), since covid. Modi one of the very few leaders to survice and he is very much an authoritarian democract. This is not just USA specific.
Huge opportunity for UK. Are we going to drop the ball yet again?
"And what about a government fund to support UK universities to attract US scientists whose funding and research are now being attacked by Trump? This week, Cornell and Northwestern joined Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and the National Institutes of Health among the victims. Starmer should offer government support for programmes and laboratory building in UK universities aimed at attracting the US’s top scientists in things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and life sciences. Visas would be fast-tracked. The larger goal would be to turbocharge new UK industries with global potential. Perhaps it’s a job for Kate Bingham, who headed the Covid vaccine drive."
Could be but American academic salaries are higher than ours. It is not just about laboratory infrastructure and a few laptops.
It's not going to happen unless our government bails out the universities in some way. Many are suffering major financial difficulties and making redundancies rather than hiring.
The policy to exclude overseas postgraduate is particularly bad in this context, and completely misses the point of sort of immigration that gets people fuming. It isn't students doing postgraduate degrees.
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
What does better off actually mean anyway?
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
More stupid shit like porn, games and gamer chairs. Less important shit like sex, relationships, housing and babies. This is not an improvement.
Yes, I think that true, but we can't go back to the 90's. The Internet and smartphone genie won't go back in it's bottle. We have to learn to manage it better as a species.
In the long run population decline leads to the end of industrial manufacturing and therefore of the internet and all phones.
However humanity has a very large population and it makes up the majority of all the animal mass on the planet. Evolutionary forces will likely stop human extinction. This could be due to the advent of new cultures that will have different attitudes to society or that will not use computers at all.
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
The immigration one is tricky as it comes down to what sort of country you want to live in. On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be .
I don't know where you get your figures, but they do not match the 2021 census. In all age ranges British children are 71% or more white. Many of the others are completely integrated 3rd or more generation Britons of migrant descent, with the growing group being mixed ethnicity again confirming integration.
Huge opportunity for UK. Are we going to drop the ball yet again?
"And what about a government fund to support UK universities to attract US scientists whose funding and research are now being attacked by Trump? This week, Cornell and Northwestern joined Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and the National Institutes of Health among the victims. Starmer should offer government support for programmes and laboratory building in UK universities aimed at attracting the US’s top scientists in things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and life sciences. Visas would be fast-tracked. The larger goal would be to turbocharge new UK industries with global potential. Perhaps it’s a job for Kate Bingham, who headed the Covid vaccine drive."
Could be but American academic salaries are higher than ours. It is not just about laboratory infrastructure and a few laptops.
They might decide it is better to be getting on with leading edge research in an open and free country but on a lower salary rather than waiting for a knock on the door from a DOGE script kid saying it is all being closed so please pack up your desk.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
Stop it. It is most unnerving when you make a point that is both controversial and correct for once. It really makes me wonder if I have got it wrong.
One has only to look at the way in which the South Koreans dealt with a wannabe dictator to realise that, no, democracy isn't dwindling.
Most of the "democracy is doomed" commentary is based on the current situation in the United States.
The situation has arisen largely because the previous Democratic administration (1) failed to control the border & (2) tried to run Biden for a 2nd term. The opinion polls had been clear for a long time that US voters were concerned about the border & felt that Biden was too old. The Democratic establishment tried to ignore the clear will of the voters & failed in this attempt.
If they had actually looked the opinion polls and (1) acted promptly in 2021 to implement border control measures and (2) forced Biden to retire in 2023, so there was a proper primary process & a new candidate, then Trump would have most likely lost the election.
Anyway, democracy is still alive and well in the United States. The Democrats have done very well in the Wisconsin court election & the Florida special elections have recorded a significant anti-Republican swing. Trump's favourable numbers are sinking rapidly & he will lose control of the House in the 2026 midterms.
Every Western democracy has seen the governing power lose seats (vast majority lose power), since covid. Modi one of the very few leaders to survice and he is very much an authoritarian democract. This is not just USA specific.
"Twelve men and a woman have been arrested on suspicion of alleged historical child sexual exploitation offences.
West Yorkshire Police said the men, aged between 42 and 59, and a 60-year-old woman were arrested at a series of addresses in Bradford in March and April.
The force said the alleged offences were said to have been committed against a single victim between 2000 and 2005 when she was aged between 13 and 17."
It never ends,.
It never will, all that can be done is to reduce opportunity, increase recognition. reporting and law enforcement. The funding cuts to the latter have drastically reduced the effectiveness of the latter.
That's a poor characterisation of the history of police funding. Funding was cut by ~20% 2010-2016 by Osborne and Cameron, but has been increased back in years since then. In the first period the force was pithed of around 15% of officers, many of them the core, experienced cadre I think.
It will take years to recover; however funding in real terms has built since 2018. I think the difference wrt the Starmer Govt is that we can expect them to plan further than the end of their nose, rather than run in headless chicken mode. The increase in the Local Authority component of funding is notable.
The real damage to police funding and operations, at least in my part of the world, has come from the closure and selling off of property assets which was started by Osborne and the Coalition and aided and abetted by the Mayor of London at the time, Boris Johnson and all because of Cameron's stupidity around protecting the NHS and Education from public spending cuts.
East Ham Police Station was sold - bought by the University of East London, I believe. The problem with selling a Police station is the operational impact. If someone is arrested, they now have to go to Manor Park to be processed which takes offices off patrol for an inordinate amount of time reducing cover and that's before we get into the whole issue of translators etc, etc. When the offender could be dropped off at a local station, the time spent not doing the job was much reduced.
Absolutely we had that.
We lost our town (45k pop) police station which used to have about 3 dozen coppers based there around the same time. One noticeable loss is there weren't police casually popping out for a sandwich and so on - just reduces presence.
They now have an annex in the Local Authority offices, which is 3 miles away.
I listened to Peter Hitchens and Sarah Vine's podcast last night, in which Hitchens lamented the lack of a visible police presence on the streets. Surprisingly enough, to me, he is anti stop and search. But the closure of police stations, on top of the lack of foot patrols really does make it seem as if the police aren't really around. I think it would be better if they patrolled the streets and were stationed in areas of high crime.
We do have an emphasis on patrolling. But the other noticeable loss to me was that all the PCSOs suddenly vanished around 2015.
That undermines local intelligence work, and stopping little crooks growing up to be bigger crooks.
There are excellent models of something as simple as addressing problem parking leading to impacts on more serious crime, which can be done by PCSOs.
They're not similar. Labour have raised taxes more and far more inclined to Statist solutions.
What they have done is take centre-right positions on defence and welfare spending, however - and more effectively than the Conservatives did - which is a sweet place to be electorally.
Conservative Governments have also raised taxes. They may not do it as overtly as Labour but you're not telling me the freezing of personal allowances is anything other than a tax rise for those dragged into the higher rate of tax. It was also a Conservative Government which raised VAT from 17.5% to 20%.
Labour rarely cut taxes though they have in the past.
The Conservatives often cut public spending but it's Labour who do it more brutally whether now or back under Healey in the mid 70s.
It's not a question of being two sides of the same coin or two cheeks of the same arse - it's the circumstances in which they find themselves and the responses they are able to put forward. If you are having issues with the public finances what are your options? Some argue for raising taxes and cutting spending, others argue for cutting taxes and spending to generate growth. It's not however an either/or or even a both/and.
At a fundamental level, it's about the kind of life and society we all want or are willing to pay for. It's also about some form of longer term vision for what the country could or should be in terms of what it provides for its citizens and the obligations placed on its citizens in return. I'd rather we'd spent 2016 discussing that than whether we should be in the European Union.
Yes, Conservatives raised taxes.
Labour have raised them much more.
The difference is that Conservatives will raise if they think they must, whereas Labour will raise as far as they can so they can achieve their social and public policy objectives.
Labour hasn't done that at all. Carrying the ming vase, they boxed themselves in by ruling out all of the obvious ways of raising significant funding, have raised a few extra dribs and drabs by tinkering, and as the money is proving inadequate, semi-broke their promise by going for employers' NI. But there's still nowhere enough resources to both tackle the mess the Tories left almost everywhere and pay a lot more for defence.
I filled up the car this morning. Diesel 135.9p, petrol 129.9p. Ridiculously and criminally cheap. Across in France it’s about 165-169 cents. A 10p hike in fuel duty would raise around 12 billion per year and bring pump prices back to where they were only a year or so ago.
Never mind 1 year ago, prices were higher in 2012.
Huge opportunity for UK. Are we going to drop the ball yet again?
"And what about a government fund to support UK universities to attract US scientists whose funding and research are now being attacked by Trump? This week, Cornell and Northwestern joined Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and the National Institutes of Health among the victims. Starmer should offer government support for programmes and laboratory building in UK universities aimed at attracting the US’s top scientists in things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and life sciences. Visas would be fast-tracked. The larger goal would be to turbocharge new UK industries with global potential. Perhaps it’s a job for Kate Bingham, who headed the Covid vaccine drive."
Could be but American academic salaries are higher than ours. It is not just about laboratory infrastructure and a few laptops.
It's not going to happen unless our government bails out the universities in some way. Many are suffering major financial difficulties and making redundancies rather than hiring.
The policy to exclude overseas postgraduate is particularly bad in this context, and completely misses the point of sort of immigration that gets people fuming. It isn't students doing postgraduate degrees.
It is all bonkers. I have no idea what Philipson is thinking or whether she is thinking at all about HEIs.
There are plenty of midland and northern towns were the collapse of their local uni will bring down the main employer and driver of the local economy.
They're not similar. Labour have raised taxes more and far more inclined to Statist solutions.
What they have done is take centre-right positions on defence and welfare spending, however - and more effectively than the Conservatives did - which is a sweet place to be electorally.
Conservative Governments have also raised taxes. They may not do it as overtly as Labour but you're not telling me the freezing of personal allowances is anything other than a tax rise for those dragged into the higher rate of tax. It was also a Conservative Government which raised VAT from 17.5% to 20%.
Labour rarely cut taxes though they have in the past.
The Conservatives often cut public spending but it's Labour who do it more brutally whether now or back under Healey in the mid 70s.
It's not a question of being two sides of the same coin or two cheeks of the same arse - it's the circumstances in which they find themselves and the responses they are able to put forward. If you are having issues with the public finances what are your options? Some argue for raising taxes and cutting spending, others argue for cutting taxes and spending to generate growth. It's not however an either/or or even a both/and.
At a fundamental level, it's about the kind of life and society we all want or are willing to pay for. It's also about some form of longer term vision for what the country could or should be in terms of what it provides for its citizens and the obligations placed on its citizens in return. I'd rather we'd spent 2016 discussing that than whether we should be in the European Union.
Yes, Conservatives raised taxes.
Labour have raised them much more.
The difference is that Conservatives will raise if they think they must, whereas Labour will raise as far as they can so they can achieve their social and public policy objectives.
Labour hasn't done that at all. Carrying the ming vase, they boxed themselves in by ruling out all of the obvious ways of raising significant funding, have raised a few extra dribs and drabs by tinkering, and as the money is proving inadequate, semi-broke their promise by going for employers' NI. But there's still nowhere enough resources to both tackle the mess the Tories left almost everywhere and pay a lot more for defence.
I filled up the car this morning. Diesel 135.9p, petrol 129.9p. Ridiculously and criminally cheap. Across in France it’s about 165-169 cents. A 10p hike in fuel duty would raise around 12 billion per year and bring pump prices back to where they were only a year or so ago.
Never mind 1 year ago, prices were higher in 2012.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
Stop it. It is most unnerving when you make a point that is both controversial and correct for once. It really makes me wonder if I have got it wrong.
I’m doing a Gazette piece about it. So you’ll be able to luxuriate in the unnervingness at even greater length
Right. Fuck the “Tien Shan foothills and canyons”. Most boring place on earth. It’s Gooly Archypoo on the car stereo and back to places that understand “gin”
I have read the draft bill. Interestingly (although maybe this is the usual course of these things) this isn’t a direct nationalisation of the particular steelworks but rather broad powers enabling the Government to exercise broad control over any steelworks in England and Wales
Huge opportunity for UK. Are we going to drop the ball yet again?
"And what about a government fund to support UK universities to attract US scientists whose funding and research are now being attacked by Trump? This week, Cornell and Northwestern joined Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and the National Institutes of Health among the victims. Starmer should offer government support for programmes and laboratory building in UK universities aimed at attracting the US’s top scientists in things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and life sciences. Visas would be fast-tracked. The larger goal would be to turbocharge new UK industries with global potential. Perhaps it’s a job for Kate Bingham, who headed the Covid vaccine drive."
Could be but American academic salaries are higher than ours. It is not just about laboratory infrastructure and a few laptops.
It's not going to happen unless our government bails out the universities in some way. Many are suffering major financial difficulties and making redundancies rather than hiring.
The policy to exclude overseas postgraduate is particularly bad in this context, and completely misses the point of sort of immigration that gets people fuming. It isn't students doing postgraduate degrees.
It is all bonkers. I have no idea what Philipson is thinking or whether she is thinking at all about HEIs.
There are plenty of midland and northern towns were the collapse of their local uni will bring down the main employer and driver of the local economy.
Yes, it's the University led knowledge economy that has revived northern and midlands cities like Newcastle, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Leicester etc. It has been responsible for a lot of levelling up in what would otherwise be a post industrial economic desert.
Future jobs are either going to be low level service jobs or knowledge based and it is essential that we match our Tertiary education system to that economy. Spending on Universities spins off a lot of other local start up businesses too, and has always been a major engine of growth in London.
There are issues about the poor quality of many courses, but having 50% go on to tertiary education is pretty much the norm in other developed economies. I don't think Britons are thicker than other nations and we should do the same.
Lawyers talk a good game on protecting the rights of the oppressed, but the moment there is a threat to their fees, or above all their precious licenses, 99% of their high principles collapse more quickly than Keir Starmer can claim a freebie.
Everybody knows that virtually the whole profession is a bunch of greedy parasites, long overdue for competition and deregulation, but they are obviously spineless cowards as well.
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
The levelling up of much of what we used to call the third world isn't the issue, and is great news as Tim says.
The issue is the growing inequality and narrowing ownership of the assets within western democracies, which is a consequence both of the financial system and of those Third World folks making a better living doing the stuff that our working classes used to do.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
Stop it. It is most unnerving when you make a point that is both controversial and correct for once. It really makes me wonder if I have got it wrong.
I’m doing a Gazette piece about it. So you’ll be able to luxuriate in the unnervingness at even greater length
Right. Fuck the “Tien Shan foothills and canyons”. Most boring place on earth. It’s Gooly Archypoo on the car stereo and back to places that understand “gin”
Lawyers talk a good game on protecting the rights of the oppressed, but the moment there is a threat to their fees, or above all their precious licenses, 99% of their high principles collapse more quickly than Keir Starmer can claim a freebie.
Everybody knows that virtually the whole profession is a bunch of greedy parasites, long overdue for competition and deregulation, but they are obviously spineless cowards as well.
Your comment doesn’t really make sense. Yes where there’s a threat to fees their high principles seem to disappear but lawyers are regularly struck off for breaches of principles, at least in England and Wales. I can’t talk for the States.
I am not sure why you think deregulation would be further helpful. The legal profession is already deregulated in England other than a few protected rights (not very lucrative work) and the protected titles of solicitor and barrister.
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
What does better off actually mean anyway?
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
More stupid shit like porn, games and gamer chairs. Less important shit like sex, relationships, housing and babies. This is not an improvement.
Yes, I think that true, but we can't go back to the 90's. The Internet and smartphone genie won't go back in it's bottle. We have to learn to manage it better as a species.
In the long run population decline leads to the end of industrial manufacturing and therefore of the internet and all phones.
However humanity has a very large population and it makes up the majority of all the animal mass on the planet. Evolutionary forces will likely stop human extinction. This could be due to the advent of new cultures that will have different attitudes to society or that will not use computers at all.
The next phase of replacing Malaysian women and children with robots back here in the West will presumably shift, or at least share, the problem with those Asian countries now doing what women and children in Yorkshire used to do.
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
The immigration one is tricky as it comes down to what sort of country you want to live in. On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be .
I don't know where you get your figures, but they do not match the 2021 census. In all age ranges British children are 71% or more white. Many of the others are completely integrated 3rd or more generation Britons of migrant descent, with the growing group being mixed ethnicity again confirming integration.
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
The immigration one is tricky as it comes down to what sort of country you want to live in. On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be .
I don't know where you get your figures, but they do not match the 2021 census. In all age ranges British children are 71% or more white. Many of the others are completely integrated 3rd or more generation Britons of migrant descent, with the growing group being mixed ethnicity again confirming integration.
It's just the usual Great Replacement Theory bollocks so beloved of the far right.
Redbridge London Borough (Ilford N, Ilford S, parts of Chingford & Woodford Green, parts of Leyton & Wanstead)
White British+Irish+White Other:
2001: 63.5% 2011: 42.6% 2021: 34.9%
Asian:
2001: 25.8% 2011: 41.7% 2021: 47.3%
Black:
2001: 7.6% 2011: 8.8% 2021: 8.4%
Other:
2001: 4.8% 2011: 6.8% 2021: 9.5%
I am in those top two statistics but not in the third.
But it's not a new thing. Both sets of my grandparents lived in Hounslow, moving away in the 1970s, in one case as the last White household in their road. They themselves having moved out there from central London after the war.
In a sign of weakening confidence, the Bank of England on Thursday decided to postpone an auction of gilts “in light of recent market volatility”.
Telegraph
None of this helps my retirement income. Shares are down but so are bonds which are supposed to protect against stock market falls.
In the short term, this might not matter politically because, as a wise man once said, it started in America so no-one will blame our own government but further out it will have wrecked many retirement plans and left younger workers, especially those newly and compulsorily enrolled into DC pension schemes, wondering what on earth is the point if their savings are instantly eroded.
If we’d stayed in the EU and joined the Euro we would be enjoying ECB gilt yields of around 3.5% and the government could sell paper to its heart’s content.
The French bond yield has fallen by 0.3% this month. The Eurozone is a safe haven.
Even if we were Italy we’d be looking at a yield of only 3.8%.
So with debt redemption rounded to £170bn, and the deficit over £130bn, that's £300bn of debt sales every year.
So just in debt interest, Brexit could be costing us an extra £3bn this year - and every year thereafter. And we could conceivably be adding the same again next year.
Huge opportunity for UK. Are we going to drop the ball yet again?
"And what about a government fund to support UK universities to attract US scientists whose funding and research are now being attacked by Trump? This week, Cornell and Northwestern joined Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and the National Institutes of Health among the victims. Starmer should offer government support for programmes and laboratory building in UK universities aimed at attracting the US’s top scientists in things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and life sciences. Visas would be fast-tracked. The larger goal would be to turbocharge new UK industries with global potential. Perhaps it’s a job for Kate Bingham, who headed the Covid vaccine drive."
Could be but American academic salaries are higher than ours. It is not just about laboratory infrastructure and a few laptops.
It's not going to happen unless our government bails out the universities in some way. Many are suffering major financial difficulties and making redundancies rather than hiring.
The policy to exclude overseas postgraduate is particularly bad in this context, and completely misses the point of sort of immigration that gets people fuming. It isn't students doing postgraduate degrees.
It is all bonkers. I have no idea what Philipson is thinking or whether she is thinking at all about HEIs.
There are plenty of midland and northern towns were the collapse of their local uni will bring down the main employer and driver of the local economy.
It’s your classic zoom from one extreme to the other. The previous policy was More Overseas Students Good. The abuse of the system for selling immigration was ignored.
Once the abuse became too big to ignore, the policy zoomed to Overseas Students Bad Until Proven Good.
Because of a particular fear in The Apparatus of The State, profiling couldn’t be used.
So someone doing a PhD at Imperial *had* to be treated just like someone doing a 5 day correspondence course from the University of Something (Address, just about the American sweat shop).
In a really stupid movies from the 80s, a booby trap expert stated that his genius was getting a group of people to panic when they hit the first booby trap - then jump and hit the next. At the end of the movie he manages to get some mooks to hit 7 different booby traps - panicking from one to the next.
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
What does better off actually mean anyway?
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
More stupid shit like porn, games and gamer chairs. Less important shit like sex, relationships, housing and babies. This is not an improvement.
Yes, I think that true, but we can't go back to the 90's. The Internet and smartphone genie won't go back in it's bottle. We have to learn to manage it better as a species.
Better to let the species disappear than let it become homo ex-sapiens but now computerus.
The muck that is twatstick world is not managed by us as a species at all, and so it can't be better managed by us a species. It's been imposed by one part of the species on another part, which sadly laps it up.
Things may be described as terrible for the current PM but the streets don’t reflect it
That’s been the case across the West for a few years, and it’s dangerous (not in Australia, but certainly in the US and Europe).
Populations that are generally comfortable, but aware of a slow loss of ethno-national supremacy and a little bored, talking themselves into revolution on social media.
It's more fundamental than that. The free market economic liberalism we have been 'enjoying' since the tail end of the Cold War has led to growing inequality, but appears impossible for the political mainstream to change because the winners from it are all the folks in charge. Trump, Reform and the rest of the far right are peddling the snake oil of their backward time machines, few would vote for Chinese-type communism, and the rest of the centre-left hasn't yet found the answer.
Either the centre-left finds an answer, or the far right will get the chance to prove yet again to history that the snake oil doesn't work, or there will come a tipping point where the younger mostly losers from the current economic settlement become the majority and vote for something much more radical on the left.
It’s led to unprecedented reductions in inequality globally. An absolutely stunning achievement of civilisation.
In USA, which just elected a fascist government, the median household income is still higher, and living standards better, than a decade or two decades ago. And even in stagnating Western economies, with the possible exception of Japan, the average person is better off now with higher life expectancy, higher literacy, cleaner air and water than during the supposed peak of Western supremacy in the 1990s.
Thanks to global liberal capitalism, reinforced in Europe by sensible regulation and social programmes. The main fly in the ointment is the galloping warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
It’s easy to criticise “neoliberalism” and globalisation but frankly nobody has made any real effort to explain what would be better. It struck me in Mexico this week. A country that has doubled real GDP per capita in 20 years.
There are other problems - big ones - but they are cultural and societal, not economic.
I would dispute the average person is better off than the 1990s. Your class certainly is but the average lower middle class worker with a big mortgage i seriously doubt. In the 90s people did go out a lot more as it was much cheaper for example.
What does better off actually mean anyway?
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
More stupid shit like porn, games and gamer chairs. Less important shit like sex, relationships, housing and babies. This is not an improvement.
Yes, I think that true, but we can't go back to the 90's. The Internet and smartphone genie won't go back in it's bottle. We have to learn to manage it better as a species.
In the long run population decline leads to the end of industrial manufacturing and therefore of the internet and all phones.
However humanity has a very large population and it makes up the majority of all the animal mass on the planet. Evolutionary forces will likely stop human extinction. This could be due to the advent of new cultures that will have different attitudes to society or that will not use computers at all.
Why is having large numbers and mass an evolutionary advantage? Look at how things have developed in the past few decades and it's obvious the species is headed for the dustbin. Majority adult literacy was achieved in the 1960s and look where we are now - voluntary twatstickery almost whenever there's a choice between twatstickery and real life.
Lawyers talk a good game on protecting the rights of the oppressed, but the moment there is a threat to their fees, or above all their precious licenses, 99% of their high principles collapse more quickly than Keir Starmer can claim a freebie.
Everybody knows that virtually the whole profession is a bunch of greedy parasites, long overdue for competition and deregulation, but they are obviously spineless cowards as well.
Actually, yesterday the first US Law firm stuck their head above the parapet after being subject to one of Trump's lawless executive orders, and intend to take their case to the Supreme Court.
How about you - would you risk shutting down three quarters of your business to take the government to court ?
Huge opportunity for UK. Are we going to drop the ball yet again?
"And what about a government fund to support UK universities to attract US scientists whose funding and research are now being attacked by Trump? This week, Cornell and Northwestern joined Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and the National Institutes of Health among the victims. Starmer should offer government support for programmes and laboratory building in UK universities aimed at attracting the US’s top scientists in things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and life sciences. Visas would be fast-tracked. The larger goal would be to turbocharge new UK industries with global potential. Perhaps it’s a job for Kate Bingham, who headed the Covid vaccine drive."
Could be but American academic salaries are higher than ours. It is not just about laboratory infrastructure and a few laptops.
It's not going to happen unless our government bails out the universities in some way. Many are suffering major financial difficulties and making redundancies rather than hiring.
The policy to exclude overseas postgraduate is particularly bad in this context, and completely misses the point of sort of immigration that gets people fuming. It isn't students doing postgraduate degrees.
It is all bonkers. I have no idea what Philipson is thinking or whether she is thinking at all about HEIs.
There are plenty of midland and northern towns were the collapse of their local uni will bring down the main employer and driver of the local economy.
Yes, it's the University led knowledge economy that has revived northern and midlands cities like Newcastle, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Leicester etc. It has been responsible for a lot of levelling up in what would otherwise be a post industrial economic desert.
Future jobs are either going to be low level service jobs or knowledge based and it is essential that we match our Tertiary education system to that economy. Spending on Universities spins off a lot of other local start up businesses too, and has always been a major engine of growth in London.
There are issues about the poor quality of many courses, but having 50% go on to tertiary education is pretty much the norm in other developed economies. I don't think Britons are thicker than other nations and we should do the same.
I think we need to lead in the next step - merge “intellectual” and “hands on” education.
Make apprenticeships part time degrees with a big onsite component. Encourage the “intellectual” cohorts to mix and match.
Degrees for all.
Many small and medium sized companies can’t run a proper apprenticeship scheme all by themselves. They can provide work placements - but there’s a lot more than that required. So get the universities on the job.
I have read the draft bill. Interestingly (although maybe this is the usual course of these things) this isn’t a direct nationalisation of the particular steelworks but rather broad powers enabling the Government to exercise broad control over any steelworks in England and Wales
Surprised they haven’t extended this broad control to steelworks in Scotland.
Oh.
I suspect we’re going to see painful contortions as the government makes every effort to avoid defining whatever they do with Scunthorpe as definitely not nationalisation, oh no, definitely not.
Huge opportunity for UK. Are we going to drop the ball yet again?
"And what about a government fund to support UK universities to attract US scientists whose funding and research are now being attacked by Trump? This week, Cornell and Northwestern joined Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and the National Institutes of Health among the victims. Starmer should offer government support for programmes and laboratory building in UK universities aimed at attracting the US’s top scientists in things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and life sciences. Visas would be fast-tracked. The larger goal would be to turbocharge new UK industries with global potential. Perhaps it’s a job for Kate Bingham, who headed the Covid vaccine drive."
Could be but American academic salaries are higher than ours. It is not just about laboratory infrastructure and a few laptops.
It's not going to happen unless our government bails out the universities in some way. Many are suffering major financial difficulties and making redundancies rather than hiring.
The policy to exclude overseas postgraduate is particularly bad in this context, and completely misses the point of sort of immigration that gets people fuming. It isn't students doing postgraduate degrees.
A fair proportion of US tech is built on the work of overseas post grads. It's a daft policy.
A simple principle is if ID is required to vote, it should be available for free.
You regular reminder that the problem with ID cards in the U.K. is not the ID cards.
It’s the mentally ill people in the Home Office who think that connecting all the government databases together, without proper access controls, is the way to go. That’s the problem.
A simple principle is if ID is required to vote, it should be available for free.
ID is available for free. The problem is more subtle. Some people already have ID but others need to jump through hoops to acquire it so there is a differential impact.
I have read the draft bill. Interestingly (although maybe this is the usual course of these things) this isn’t a direct nationalisation of the particular steelworks but rather broad powers enabling the Government to exercise broad control over any steelworks in England and Wales
As I said yesterday, the government hadn't made its mind up, and has had its hand forced by the Chinese owners.
Though having taken these powers, it's hard to see them just deciding to shut it down anyway. They'll probably have to pay for a few years massive losses before they come round to that.
A simple principle is if ID is required to vote, it should be available for free.
ID is available for free. The problem is more subtle. Some people already have ID but others need to jump through hoops to acquire it so there is a differential impact.
Which ID is available for free, defined as a state document that proves the bearer's identity and therefore doesn't include a national insurance card? Passport, no. Driving licence, no. (A full one is, but the provisional one without which a full one won't be issued isn't. Besides, many people don't drive.)
Edit: okay, the Voter Authority Certificate is free. I stand corrected.
Totally off topic, but a brief note in praise of some traditional print media.
The Times Saturday magazine today is a masterpiece. Every single article fascinating, sometimes disturbing, sometimes amusing and occasionally infuriating. That’s equally true of the Made in Chelsea celeb cover story as the excoriating account of decades as an NHS patient or the amusing and surreal retrospective of John Le Carre and his writer son.
Worth buying if you’re in a newsagent today (or have an online subscription).
I apologise if this point has already been made, I haven't had time to read the thread yet, but this polling shows how little the general public understand about the world and position we are in.
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
A simple principle is if ID is required to vote, it should be available for free.
ID is available for free. The problem is more subtle. Some people already have ID but others need to jump through hoops to acquire it so there is a differential impact.
Which ID is available for free, defined as a state document that proves the bearer's identity and therefore doesn't include a national insurance card? Passport, no. Driving licence, no. (A full one is, but the provisional one without which a full one won't be issued isn't. Besides, many people don't drive.)
Edit: okay, the Voter Authority Certificate is free. I stand corrected.
A provisional licence is full photo ID as all the ID checks are done when you apply for the licence. That's why, when you pass your driving test, you can start driving immediately.
(I believe some banks may not accept them but that's just their stupidity)
What is odd is that a Voter Certificate is not generally accepted as ID, yet it is considered sufficient to allow you to vote
A simple principle is if ID is required to vote, it should be available for free.
ID is available for free. The problem is more subtle. Some people already have ID but others need to jump through hoops to acquire it so there is a differential impact.
Which ID is available for free, defined as a state document that proves the bearer's identity and therefore doesn't include a national insurance card? Passport, no. Driving licence, no. (A full one is, but the provisional one without which a full one won't be issued isn't. Besides, many people don't drive.)
Edit: okay, the Voter Authority Certificate is free. I stand corrected.
That's the problem though. It is free in monetary terms but not free of hassle. People with cars and passports can vote as normal. Those without have to jump through hoops before they can vote. Unsurprisingly, the intention was to disadvantage voters for the other party. Whether it worked out that way is less clear.
Totally off topic, but a brief note in praise of some traditional print media.
The Times Saturday magazine today is a masterpiece. Every single article fascinating, sometimes disturbing, sometimes amusing and occasionally infuriating. That’s equally true of the Made in Chelsea celeb cover story as the excoriating account of decades as an NHS patient or the amusing and surreal retrospective of John Le Carre and his writer son.
Worth buying if you’re in a newsagent today (or have an online subscription).
3.50 to buy it. No thanks. I can get a decent book on amazon for a fiver.
Comments
https://edconway.substack.com/p/the-strange-unsettling-story-of-british
The French bond yield has fallen by 0.3% this month. The Eurozone is a safe haven.
Even if we were Italy we’d be looking at a yield of only 3.8%.
https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1910799587813585245?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
What’s the point in being a brutally repressed Soviet republic for 70 years if you can’t even get alcohol afterwards?
Bad move, Kazakhstan. Your bad
The notion that SKS is using our money to buy us a steelworks to guard against the risk that no other country on Earth will sell us steel at a time when steel is coincidentally and urgently required for reasons of natty secs is so transparently facile that you need to have the simple-minded credulity of a Ukrainian Ultra to fall for it.
He's doing it to stop the Fukkers using the issue as political HIMARS in the locals. That's it.
Right. Fuck the “Tien Shan foothills and canyons”. Most boring place on earth. It’s Gooly Archypoo on the car stereo and back to places that understand “gin”
Your average worker can probably afford more things, services and holidays than the 1990s but struggles more with housing. I think that makes them less content.
My guess is that Starmer will win comfortably. I can see the 80's repeating themselves with Starmer playing Thatcher. He's turning out to be a very astute politician. Certainly not to everybody's taste (including mine) but by a distance better than all of his possible opponents
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
We have a marvellous ability, as a species, to foul our own nests.
If democracy is replaced by autocracy, what we’ll get is both less freedom and a worse standard of living.
This is in no way saying that there are not big problems that need fixing; but I'd argue that if we were to go back to 1995, people would have been saying the same then.
Basically, hundreds of seats are a coin toss. I hope someone else on here knows what I’m referring to and can share it
Do you have a source for that?
Hogmanay, cheese rolling and London’s Notting Hill Carnival could be protected in a new UK heritage list
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/uk/hogmanay-cheese-rolling-and-londons-notting-hill-carnival-could-be-protected-in/
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/demographics/age-groups/latest/#age-profile-by-ethnicity
It's just the usual Great Replacement Theory bollocks so beloved of the far right.
Ironically, it is recent immigration from Eastern Europe that has evened things up a bit.
(real terms; financial year ending 31 March 2025 prices)
"And what about a government fund to support UK universities to attract US scientists whose funding and research are now being attacked by Trump? This week, Cornell and Northwestern joined Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and the National Institutes of Health among the victims. Starmer should offer government support for programmes and laboratory building in UK universities aimed at attracting the US’s top scientists in things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and life sciences. Visas would be fast-tracked. The larger goal would be to turbocharge new UK industries with global potential. Perhaps it’s a job for Kate Bingham, who headed the Covid vaccine drive."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/10/keir-starmer-donald-trump-trade-tariffs
We lost our town (45k pop) police station which used to have about 3 dozen coppers based there around the same time. One noticeable loss is there weren't police casually popping out for a sandwich and so on - just reduces presence.
They now have an annex in the Local Authority offices, which is 3 miles away.
If we want to do it on a fiscally neutral basis, increase fuel duties and taxes on gas. They are now much cheaper than other countries and doing so has serious green credentials too.
If you combine that with Applebaum's work on "The Twilight Of Democracy" and "Autocracies Inc" the article writes itself.
Knowing your prediction for AI you may already have done that, of course. 😀
It shows the seats in order of % majority.
You can use the x axis to see how many seats have less than some % majority. For example 225 seats have a majority of less than 10%.
It's a bit crude but ...
(A very large proportion are serving warrants and patrolling the Sheriff Court too).
Random factoid: there are just over 200,000 prisoners in the USA serving life sentences. The population of the City of Nottingham is 320,000.
Scrub that, no need cos they’ll always be doing it.
Most of the "democracy is doomed" commentary is based on the current situation in the United States.
The situation has arisen largely because the previous Democratic administration (1) failed to control the border & (2) tried to run Biden for a 2nd term. The opinion polls had been clear for a long time that US voters were concerned about the border & felt that Biden was too old. The Democratic establishment tried to ignore the clear will of the voters & failed in this attempt.
If they had actually looked the opinion polls and (1) acted promptly in 2021 to implement border control measures and (2) forced Biden to retire in 2023, so there was a proper primary process & a new candidate, then Trump would have most likely lost the election.
Anyway, democracy is still alive and well in the United States. The Democrats have done very well in the Wisconsin court election & the Florida special elections have recorded a significant anti-Republican swing. Trump's favourable numbers are sinking rapidly & he will lose control of the House in the 2026 midterms.
On topic, or at least one of those currently discussed when I look at my family, are they living better or worse than we were thirty (say) years ago. Eldest son, I would say yes, but he didn't make the commercial mistakes I did, so he's quite comfortably off, working part-time/semi retired although he's worried about his 'children' who aren't settled in either education or employment. Younger son, maybe; he is moving toward semi-retirement, although because of where he lives education of his children is expensive and it'll probably be ten years before his youngest is earning.
In other words they've got worries and problems as we did, but they're different.
Before proceeding, I should clarify what White British refers to, it is an ethnic category used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and other Governmental departments to refer to those who are white and are English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, or British – effectively the group you could call the native or indigenous population.
Every year the ONS releases data on births in England & Wales for the previous year, the latest data is available for 2023. If you want to see data on births for previous years, you have to download a different dataset that contains the ethnicity of births in England & Wales from 2007 to 2022, I do not believe this data was collected prior to 2007.
Using the data from these documents, I have created a chart showing the percentage of births in England & Wales that are White British, from 2007 to 2023.
If we look at 2013 to 2023, White British births, as a percentage, have declined by 8.49 per cent and if we go from the peak in 2010 at 66.25 per cent, White British births have declined by 10.69 per cent — I’m no statistician, but on current course, I would not be surprised if we see White British births fall below 50 per cent before 2030.
We assume there are solutions that will satisfy a majority of voters. What if there aren't?
The dissatisfied will continue to grasp at ever-more extreme solutions without bothering to really think any of it through as they have done with Trump.
Whilst democracy might be the least worst form of government it doesn't mean that it is bound to succeed. I suspect many voters in the UK would ditch democracy in a nano-second if they believed it would be to their advantage.
We demand that the Lewes burn-models-of-slebs festival be protected.
The policy to exclude overseas postgraduate is particularly bad in this context, and completely misses the point of sort of immigration that gets people fuming. It isn't students doing postgraduate degrees.
However humanity has a very large population and it makes up the majority of all the animal mass on the planet. Evolutionary forces will likely stop human extinction. This could be due to the advent of new cultures that will have different attitudes to society or that will not use computers at all.
https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=all&year=2025
That undermines local intelligence work, and stopping little crooks growing up to be bigger crooks.
There are excellent models of something as simple as addressing problem parking leading to impacts on more serious crime, which can be done by PCSOs.
There are plenty of midland and northern towns were the collapse of their local uni will bring down the main employer and driver of the local economy.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/voter-photo-id-elections-labour-government-kcl-research-bromley-trial-tom-barton-b1222093.html
Future jobs are either going to be low level service jobs or knowledge based and it is essential that we match our Tertiary education system to that economy. Spending on Universities spins off a lot of other local start up businesses too, and has always been a major engine of growth in London.
There are issues about the poor quality of many courses, but having 50% go on to tertiary education is pretty much the norm in other developed economies. I don't think Britons are thicker than other nations and we should do the same.
Lawyers talk a good game on protecting the rights of the oppressed, but the moment there is a threat to their fees, or above all their precious licenses, 99% of their high principles collapse more quickly than Keir Starmer can claim a freebie.
Everybody knows that virtually the whole profession is a bunch of greedy parasites, long overdue for competition and deregulation, but they are obviously spineless cowards as well.
The issue is the growing inequality and narrowing ownership of the assets within western democracies, which is a consequence both of the financial system and of those Third World folks making a better living doing the stuff that our working classes used to do.
I am not sure why you think deregulation would be further helpful. The legal profession is already deregulated in England other than a few protected rights (not very lucrative work) and the protected titles of solicitor and barrister.
White British+Irish+White Other:
2001: 63.5%
2011: 42.6%
2021: 34.9%
Asian:
2001: 25.8%
2011: 41.7%
2021: 47.3%
Black:
2001: 7.6%
2011: 8.8%
2021: 8.4%
Other:
2001: 4.8%
2011: 6.8%
2021: 9.5%
But it's not a new thing. Both sets of my grandparents lived in Hounslow, moving away in the 1970s, in one case as the last White household in their road. They themselves having moved out there from central London after the war.
So just in debt interest, Brexit could be costing us an extra £3bn this year - and every year thereafter.
And we could conceivably be adding the same again next year.
After a while that would become very costly.
Once the abuse became too big to ignore, the policy zoomed to Overseas Students Bad Until Proven Good.
Because of a particular fear in The Apparatus of The State, profiling couldn’t be used.
So someone doing a PhD at Imperial *had* to be treated just like someone doing a 5 day correspondence course from the University of Something (Address, just about the American sweat shop).
In a really stupid movies from the 80s, a booby trap expert stated that his genius was getting a group of people to panic when they hit the first booby trap - then jump and hit the next. At the end of the movie he manages to get some mooks to hit 7 different booby traps - panicking from one to the next.
The muck that is twatstick world is not managed by us as a species at all, and so it can't be better managed by us a species. It's been imposed by one part of the species on another part, which sadly laps it up.
Why is having large numbers and mass an evolutionary advantage? Look at how things have developed in the past few decades and it's obvious the species is headed for the dustbin. Majority adult literacy was achieved in the 1960s and look where we are now - voluntary twatstickery almost whenever there's a choice between twatstickery and real life.
How about you - would you risk shutting down three quarters of your business to take the government to court ?
Make apprenticeships part time degrees with a big onsite component. Encourage the “intellectual” cohorts to mix and match.
Degrees for all.
Many small and medium sized companies can’t run a proper apprenticeship scheme all by themselves. They can provide work placements - but there’s a lot more than that required. So get the universities on the job.
Oh.
I suspect we’re going to see painful contortions as the government makes every effort to avoid defining whatever they do with Scunthorpe as definitely not nationalisation, oh no, definitely not.
It's a daft policy.
It’s the mentally ill people in the Home Office who think that connecting all the government databases together, without proper access controls, is the way to go. That’s the problem.
Though having taken these powers, it's hard to see them just deciding to shut it down anyway. They'll probably have to pay for a few years massive losses before they come round to that.
Edit: okay, the Voter Authority Certificate is free. I stand corrected.
The Times Saturday magazine today is a masterpiece. Every single article fascinating, sometimes disturbing, sometimes amusing and occasionally infuriating. That’s equally true of the Made in Chelsea celeb cover story as the excoriating account of decades as an NHS patient or the amusing and surreal retrospective of John Le Carre and his writer son.
Worth buying if you’re in a newsagent today (or have an online subscription).
I can’t believe Badenoch would instruct her MPs to do this .
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
https://x.com/esjesjesj/status/1910914930917679178?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
(I believe some banks may not accept them but that's just their stupidity)
What is odd is that a Voter Certificate is not generally accepted as ID, yet it is considered sufficient to allow you to vote