A simple principle is if ID is required to vote, it should be available for free.
It is, you can apply for a Voter Authority Certificate which is completely free. My sister had to get one of these at the last election because she's too physically disabled to be issued even a provisional licence and ran into issues getting a passport.
As an aside, my sister's situation has made it very clear to me how may things are almost impossible to do in the UK now without government photo ID. We effectively have ID cards, they're just not called 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.
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.
Anyone who is unemployed and looking for work can get the Jobcentre to pay for a provisional licence, as you need ID to prove your entitlement to work in the UK. Although not if you have a driving ban I suppose.
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.
There were plenty of Leon style catastrophists saying the same thing in the 30s. I suspect democracy will surprise all over 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.
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.
There were plenty of Leon style catastrophes saying the same thing in the 30s. I suspect democracy will surprise all over again.
People actually get bored with prosperity. Thats why you get a period of decadence for a while then people get sick of that too. Then they think it will be less boring if we tear our societies down and start to struggle again. Circle of life.
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.
The extent to which all GB national parties are similar is not noticed because it is taken for granted. All (though bear in mind the flux of events since January) support with variable degrees of success in outcomes of course: NATO, cradle to grave welfare state in health and relief from absolute poverty, pension provision, free education to 18, highly regulated private enterprise, international trade, international obligations, democracy with universal franchise, constitutional monarchy, planning controls.
These govern our lives and spend the money. Almost all the differences are window dressing or trivial, or (as today) driven by a crisis.
To be picky, the Greens don’t support the monarchy.
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.
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.
There were plenty of Leon style catastrophes saying the same thing in the 30s. I suspect democracy will surprise all over again.
People actually get bored with prosperity. Thats why you get a period of decadence for a while then people get sick of that too. Then they think it will be less boring if we tear our societies down and start to struggle again. Circle of life.
Autocorrect changed that to 'catastrophe'. I was tempted not to correct it.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
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.
No, the forty-somethings of my son and his friends are better off than their parents were at their age. But this is Scotland and housing is cheaper than England.
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.
The Welsh and Scottish being two of the worst offending British governments doing it.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
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.
No, the forty-somethings of my son and his friends are better off than their parents were at their age. But this is Scotland and housing is cheaper than England.
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 ?
They are, though, a firm with very deep pockets, having made a mint suing Fox News. And my mistake, they are not the first.
Law firm targeted by Trump sues as five other top firms make deals https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-says-law-firms-agree-pro-bono-work-common-causes-2025-04-11/ U.S. President Donald Trump's administration was hit with another lawsuit on Friday over his executive orders sanctioning prominent law firms, even as five other firms offered costly concessions to avoid the president's crackdowns. Susman Godfrey filed the lawsuit in Washington to challenge an executive order that it said violated its rights under the U.S. Constitution, becoming the fourth firm targeted by Trump to sue the administration in response...
So not "virtually the whole profession", just a large proportion of it.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
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.
After a while that would become very costly.
Alternatively we could have a competent central bank.
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.
There were plenty of Leon style catastrophists saying the same thing in the 30s. I suspect democracy will surprise all over again.
The advocates of both Stalinism and the Third Way were big on “we will sweep aside all the objectors and build all the roads, tanks, concentration camps with no delay”.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
Chris Mason suggests the Tories might abstain and not back the Bill .
I can’t believe Badenoch would instruct her MPs to do this .
Interesting.
If they have a better idea they should surely put down an ammendment.
I wonder if Kemi realises she just has too many eco-zealots on her benches who want the steelworks to close.
An amendment to change what?
No idea. Is there a 'Tory' way of saving the steelworks? Probably not at this point. Certainly nothing that would keep Tories who are very much mainstream Lib Dems and Tories who are right wing Tories all happy.
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.
The same price as a flat white at your local cafe.
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.
If they include steelworks in Scotland they may be asked why they aren’t trying to keep refineries in Scotland open.
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.
If they include steelworks in Scotland they may be asked why they aren’t trying to keep refineries in Scotland open.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
Problem is many who think themselves insulated would rapidly find that they werent if things started to seriously decline. For example hyperinflation could easily wipe out all your assets.
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?
MAybe we're just winding you up?
Deservedly so given the loaded question wording. The BPC would be ashamed.
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.
After a while that would become very costly.
Alternatively we could have a competent central bank.
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.
Democracies are way more successful than autocracies, in terms of growth and living standards. Democracy has continued to spread in recent decades, albeit with some backsliding in places. China has seen impressive economic growth, but that’s because of industrialisation, not any genius by the Communist Party.
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.
Democracies are way more successful than autocracies, in terms of growth and living standards. Democracy has continued to spread in recent decades, albeit with some backsliding in places. China has seen impressive economic growth, but that’s because of industrialisation, not any genius by the Communist Party.
I know I’ve been joking about Solzhenitsyn and the Terror and the “Gooly Archypoo” but - incredibly - I’ve just had a real proper taste of what life was like under that police state
I overtook a slow lorry on the steppes - crossing a solid line - and I was IMMEDIATELY pulled over. Almost brutally. The copper swaggered out and we couldn’t understand each other. Then he made serious threats about bad stuff happening to me
So then he got in my car - got in my car!!! - and we drove to a nearby place with decent cell signal. And we used google translate. With that it became clear I was either going to jail or I could bribe him
I offered a bribe. He said yes. Then we drove back to his friend in the cop car and the copper got out of my car and he shrugged and changed his mind and said into Google translate “nah, what the hell, you’re a guest, we don’t want a bribe - on you go. Enjoy Kazakhstan”
The whole ordeal must have taken 12-14 minutes
Now I can look the great Russian dissidents in the eye. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, the many that died in the camps. I’ve been there
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 .
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.
No, the forty-somethings of my son and his friends are better off than their parents were at their age. But this is Scotland and housing is cheaper than England.
Even in Edinburgh and Glasgow?
You would presumably compare Edinburgh and Glasgow with London, as the largest city and capital respectively.
The extent to which all GB national parties are similar is not noticed because it is taken for granted. All (though bear in mind the flux of events since January) support with variable degrees of success in outcomes of course: NATO, cradle to grave welfare state in health and relief from absolute poverty, pension provision, free education to 18, highly regulated private enterprise, international trade, international obligations, democracy with universal franchise, constitutional monarchy, planning controls.
These govern our lives and spend the money. Almost all the differences are window dressing or trivial, or (as today) driven by a crisis.
To be picky, the Greens don’t support the monarchy.
They just assume it will stay. What's that if not supporting it?
See several uncritical mentions of the kingdom in their manifesto:
Cf Tory manifesto. No difference between the two docs where the monarchy is concerned. Neither of them say "We support retaining the monarchy". Both say the UK this, the UK that and the other.
I know I’ve been joking about Solzhenitsyn and the Terror and the “Gooly Archypoo” but - incredibly - I’ve just had a real proper taste of what life was like under that police state
I overtook a slow lorry on the steppes - crossing a solid line - and I was IMMEDIATELY pulled over. Almost brutally. The copper swaggered out and we couldn’t understand each other. Then he made serious threats about bad stuff happening to me
So then he got in my car - got in my car!!! - and we drove to a nearby place with decent cell signal. And we used google translate. With that it became clear I was either going to jail or I could bribe him
I offered a bribe. He said yes. Then we drove back to his friend in the cop car and the copper got out of my car and he shrugged and changed his mind and said into Google translate “nah, what the hell, you’re a guest, we don’t want a bribe - on you go. Enjoy Kazakhstan”
The whole ordeal must have taken 12-14 minutes
Now I can look the great Russian dissidents in the eye. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, the many that died in the camps. I’ve been there
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
I think its pretty on the mark. It was in conservative home this week. I dont think you will have issues with this anyway so whats the problem.
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.
These are the usual tricks of the Great Replacement Theory brigade. Note the switch from “white” to “white British”, which mean different things.
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
Even if you take issue with whether it’s true nationally (and including the Celtic fringe means the UK figures give a misleading impression of England), it’s undoubtedly true in large subsections of the country. Why deny it?
Although Farage presents the Conservatives and Labour as the uniparty more voters see the Conservatives and Reform or Labour and the LDs as similar than the Conservatives and Labour on that Yougov poll.
Which is not surprising as the next general election on most polls will be a choice between a Conservative and Reform government or a Labour and LD and maybe SNP government or confidence and supply deal in a hung parliament.
There will be no Conservative and Labour German style grand coalition
I know I’ve been joking about Solzhenitsyn and the Terror and the “Gooly Archypoo” but - incredibly - I’ve just had a real proper taste of what life was like under that police state
I overtook a slow lorry on the steppes - crossing a solid line - and I was IMMEDIATELY pulled over. Almost brutally. The copper swaggered out and we couldn’t understand each other. Then he made serious threats about bad stuff happening to me
So then he got in my car - got in my car!!! - and we drove to a nearby place with decent cell signal. And we used google translate. With that it became clear I was either going to jail or I could bribe him
I offered a bribe. He said yes. Then we drove back to his friend in the cop car and the copper got out of my car and he shrugged and changed his mind and said into Google translate “nah, what the hell, you’re a guest, we don’t want a bribe - on you go. Enjoy Kazakhstan”
The whole ordeal must have taken 12-14 minutes
Now I can look the great Russian dissidents in the eye. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, the many that died in the camps. I’ve been there
The moral of this story. When in an ex soviet state, don’t steppe over the line.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
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.
These are the usual tricks of the Great Replacement Theory brigade. Note the switch from “white” to “white British”, which mean different things.
Oh sure. Because polish people for example are classified as white. However the great replacement theory is that jews are orchestrating this to replace white gentiles who are seen as their main competitors. But that has no bearing on the statistical trends which are happening even if there isnt any active conspiracy.
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.
These are the usual tricks of the Great Replacement Theory brigade. Note the switch from “white” to “white British”, which mean different things.
The latter excludes white Eastern Europeans living and working in the UK yes
I know I’ve been joking about Solzhenitsyn and the Terror and the “Gooly Archypoo” but - incredibly - I’ve just had a real proper taste of what life was like under that police state
I overtook a slow lorry on the steppes - crossing a solid line - and I was IMMEDIATELY pulled over. Almost brutally. The copper swaggered out and we couldn’t understand each other. Then he made serious threats about bad stuff happening to me
So then he got in my car - got in my car!!! - and we drove to a nearby place with decent cell signal. And we used google translate. With that it became clear I was either going to jail or I could bribe him
I offered a bribe. He said yes. Then we drove back to his friend in the cop car and the copper got out of my car and he shrugged and changed his mind and said into Google translate “nah, what the hell, you’re a guest, we don’t want a bribe - on you go. Enjoy Kazakhstan”
The whole ordeal must have taken 12-14 minutes
Now I can look the great Russian dissidents in the eye. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, the many that died in the camps. I’ve been there
The moral of this story. When in an ex soviet state, don’t steppe over the line.
Which is ironic as Russians are particularly poor at keeping within the (border) lines.
Perhaps their kindergartens are not teaching colouring properly.
I know I’ve been joking about Solzhenitsyn and the Terror and the “Gooly Archypoo” but - incredibly - I’ve just had a real proper taste of what life was like under that police state
I overtook a slow lorry on the steppes - crossing a solid line - and I was IMMEDIATELY pulled over. Almost brutally. The copper swaggered out and we couldn’t understand each other. Then he made serious threats about bad stuff happening to me
So then he got in my car - got in my car!!! - and we drove to a nearby place with decent cell signal. And we used google translate. With that it became clear I was either going to jail or I could bribe him
I offered a bribe. He said yes. Then we drove back to his friend in the cop car and the copper got out of my car and he shrugged and changed his mind and said into Google translate “nah, what the hell, you’re a guest, we don’t want a bribe - on you go. Enjoy Kazakhstan”
The whole ordeal must have taken 12-14 minutes
Now I can look the great Russian dissidents in the eye. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, the many that died in the camps. I’ve been there
Albeit you could be arrested for careless driving overtaking and crossing a solid white line even in the UK
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.
When and how is this data collected? If it's when a baby is born, who says whether the baby is white or some other colour, and whether they're Welsh, non-specific British, etc., or is there just a generic "E W S NI or B" category? The data can't be from the census, because you're citing 2023 and the most recent census was in 2021. How many Don't Knows, Won't Says, and Fuck Offs are there?
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
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.
These are the usual tricks of the Great Replacement Theory brigade. Note the switch from “white” to “white British”, which mean different things.
Oh sure. Because polish people for example are classified as white. However the great replacement theory is that jews are orchestrating this to replace white gentiles who are seen as their main competitors. But that has no bearing on the statistical trends which are happening even if there isnt any active conspiracy.
The real question is this - if a plane crashes on the Ukraine/Republic of China border, which side do you bury
- White British survivors - White survivors - Other survivors
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.
If they include steelworks in Scotland they may be asked why they aren’t trying to keep refineries in Scotland open.
As the SNP and Labour want to scrap them as oil is a fossil fuel not eco friendly
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.
These are the usual tricks of the Great Replacement Theory brigade. Note the switch from “white” to “white British”, which mean different things.
The latter excludes white Eastern Europeans living and working in the UK yes
It doesn’t really. I am white Eastern European by descent (third generation) but describe myself as white British because what’s the difference?
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.
Some facts about retirement from the ONS:
The average retirement age in the UK is 66.
There are approximately 11 million people aged 65 and above in the UK, accounting for around 16% of the overall population.
Of these, around 7 in 10 (70.3%) women and 3 in 5 (61.4%) men are retired in the UK.
With 1.7 million, the South East has more retired people than any other region, with almost 1 in 5 (19.45%) residents aged 65 and above. By 2041, almost a quarter (24.64%) of the North East could be retired – the highest across all UK regions.
Around 1 in 10 (9%) UK baby boomers have no intention of giving up work beyond the age of 66
Some interesting numbers and the key take for me is the larger number of retired women. As to the "huge cohort of retired people who haven't been in the work force for 30 years", that's just your usual unadulterated bollocks. yes, people are living longer but there are only about 550,000 people over 90 - yes, that number is rising both as an absolute asnd as a proporion but it's a small proportion and the overwhelming majority of the "huge cohort" of 90+ are aged between 90 and 95.
There are 15,000 centenarians, historically a huge number but set against the whole proportion, it remains a tiny proportion.
Now, what's this "real substantial change" you're blethering on about? What do you mean by a throwaway sentence like that?
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
Private owners having to pay for maintenance and upgrades? Don’t be silly. Perhaps Sir Keir could sort of nationalise Ardrossan.
The extent to which all GB national parties are similar is not noticed because it is taken for granted. All (though bear in mind the flux of events since January) support with variable degrees of success in outcomes of course: NATO, cradle to grave welfare state in health and relief from absolute poverty, pension provision, free education to 18, highly regulated private enterprise, international trade, international obligations, democracy with universal franchise, constitutional monarchy, planning controls.
These govern our lives and spend the money. Almost all the differences are window dressing or trivial, or (as today) driven by a crisis.
To be picky, the Greens don’t support the monarchy.
They just assume it will stay. What's that if not supporting it?
See several uncritical mentions of the kingdom in their manifesto:
Cf Tory manifesto. No difference between the two docs where the monarchy is concerned. Neither of them say "We support retaining the monarchy". Both say the UK this, the UK that and the other.
“Another tricky issue for the Greens is the role of the monarchy in the British constitution.
“Caroline Lucas, formerly the only Green MP, advocated for removing the monarchy when she was leader but the party position appears to have shifted - especially since the new head of state, King Charles, is a passionate environmentalist.
“When asked about the King's role in the UK, Ramsay pointed out his party "didn't have any proposals in our general election manifesto in terms of changing the head of state", adding: "We're focused on the policies that will make a difference to people over these next five years."”
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.
If they include steelworks in Scotland they may be asked why they aren’t trying to keep refineries in Scotland open.
As the SNP and Labour want to scrap them as oil is a fossil fuel not eco friendly
Steelworks are not eco friendly either. As fossil fuels will continue to be needed for purposes other than vehicles, the question with both is, should we ensure that we keep control of strategic assets, and, if so, how?
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
I think its pretty on the mark. It was in conservative home this week. I dont think you will have issues with this anyway so whats the problem.
You said it was in Conservative Home, but your link didn’t work. If you’d like to try again providing that link, go for it. Not that Conservative Home seems like a particularly reliable source of information! You gave an explanation that was obviously flawed as you confused “white” with the ONS category “White British”, and that was after you had jumped from “immigrant” to “not white”. So, it looks to me like you are telling race-baiting porkies.
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
Even if you take issue with whether it’s true nationally (and including the Celtic fringe means the UK figures give a misleading impression of England), it’s undoubtedly true in large subsections of the country. Why deny it?
Something being true of a subset doesn’t mean it’s true of the whole.
Why deny it? Because the truth matters. I realise that’s a difficult concept for a Trump supporter to understand. But when I say “truth”, I mean something that corresponds with objective reality, not a social media post by Donald Trump.
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.
These are the usual tricks of the Great Replacement Theory brigade. Note the switch from “white” to “white British”, which mean different things.
The latter excludes white Eastern Europeans living and working in the UK yes
It doesn’t really. I am white Eastern European by descent (third generation) but describe myself as white British because what’s the difference?
I am as English as the late Duke of Edinburgh.
Like him, I would need several pages of A4 to explain my ethnicity.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
Private owners having to pay for maintenance and upgrades? Don’t be silly. Perhaps Sir Keir could sort of nationalise Ardrossan.
I have already suggested to my MSP that the Scottish Government should compulsorily purchase Ardrossan Harbour, and that a fair price would be £1. If anyone knows Ardrossan, they will realise the whole town is worth about £5.
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
I think its pretty on the mark. It was in conservative home this week. I dont think you will have issues with this anyway so whats the problem.
You said it was in Conservative Home, but your link didn’t work. If you’d like to try again providing that link, go for it. Not that Conservative Home seems like a particularly reliable source of information! You gave an explanation that was obviously flawed as you confused “white” with the ONS category “White British”, and that was after you had jumped from “immigrant” to “not white”. So, it looks to me like you are telling race-baiting porkies.
Im referring to white british so obviously not e europeans. Heres the link.
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
Even if you take issue with whether it’s true nationally (and including the Celtic fringe means the UK figures give a misleading impression of England), it’s undoubtedly true in large subsections of the country. Why deny it?
Something being true of a subset doesn’t mean it’s true of the whole.
Why deny it? Because the truth matters. I realise that’s a difficult concept for a Trump supporter to understand. But when I say “truth”, I mean something that corresponds with objective reality, not a social media post by Donald Trump.
Why does it matter to you anyway. If you are happy with mass immigration you should not care if whites become a minority . Your position is totally justifiable by the way
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
I think its pretty on the mark. It was in conservative home this week. I dont think you will have issues with this anyway so whats the problem.
You said it was in Conservative Home, but your link didn’t work. If you’d like to try again providing that link, go for it. Not that Conservative Home seems like a particularly reliable source of information! You gave an explanation that was obviously flawed as you confused “white” with the ONS category “White British”, and that was after you had jumped from “immigrant” to “not white”. So, it looks to me like you are telling race-baiting porkies.
Im referring to white british so obviously not e europeans. Heres the link.
Great. So, that article does not support the claim you made. The claim you made was false. The only question left is whether you made a mistake or were deliberately being misleading.
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”
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. 😀
Lord Sumption has a new book out on defending democracy and rule of law.
I once gave a talk on his judgment in Hughes-Holland-v-BPE Solicitors and another, a case concerning the extent of liability for professional negligence by professional advisors. I said: "At the risk of bringing on deep feelings of inadequacy and insecurity I would commend a careful reading of the whole judgment. It is a magisterial piece of work. "
He writes with the extraordinary clarity of the truly brilliant. This, of course, does not mean that he is right all the time, especially when he goes beyond his own competence in the law into more political matters. But he really isn't someone who you have to puzzle what he really means. I have a pile of unread books right now but I am seriously tempted.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
Private owners having to pay for maintenance and upgrades? Don’t be silly. Perhaps Sir Keir could sort of nationalise Ardrossan.
I have already suggested to my MSP that the Scottish Government should compulsorily purchase Ardrossan Harbour, and that a fair price would be £1. If anyone knows Ardrossan, they will realise the whole town is worth about £5.
There was much chortling from the usual suspects when the SG bought Prestwick for £1 but it seems to have worked out ok.
China has integrated its digiatal yuan into the payment systems of 10 Asean countries and six countries in the ME. And 38% of world trade can now by-pass the US dominated SWIFT system...
All after Trump imposed fresh tarrifs.
The start of the inexorable slide of the greenback?
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
Even if you take issue with whether it’s true nationally (and including the Celtic fringe means the UK figures give a misleading impression of England), it’s undoubtedly true in large subsections of the country. Why deny it?
Something being true of a subset doesn’t mean it’s true of the whole.
Why deny it? Because the truth matters. I realise that’s a difficult concept for a Trump supporter to understand. But when I say “truth”, I mean something that corresponds with objective reality, not a social media post by Donald Trump.
Why does it matter to you anyway. If you are happy with mass immigration you should not care if whites become a minority . Your position is totally justifiable by the way
It matters because I don’t like people inventing race-baiting statistics to mislead and scare the electorate. You’re doing all the usual tricks. You start by talking about immigration and then switch to talking about skin colour, as if a black or brown person born in this country, often to parents born in this country, should somehow not count as British. You then confuse “white” with a narrower ONS category “white British” so that you can come up with a statistic that sounds scarier.
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.
Democracies are way more successful than autocracies, in terms of growth and living standards. Democracy has continued to spread in recent decades, albeit with some backsliding in places. China has seen impressive economic growth, but that’s because of industrialisation, not any genius by the Communist Party.
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
I think its pretty on the mark. It was in conservative home this week. I dont think you will have issues with this anyway so whats the problem.
You said it was in Conservative Home, but your link didn’t work. If you’d like to try again providing that link, go for it. Not that Conservative Home seems like a particularly reliable source of information! You gave an explanation that was obviously flawed as you confused “white” with the ONS category “White British”, and that was after you had jumped from “immigrant” to “not white”. So, it looks to me like you are telling race-baiting porkies.
Im referring to white british so obviously not e europeans. Heres the link.
Great. So, that article does not support the claim you made. The claim you made was false. The only question left is whether you made a mistake or were deliberately being misleading.
Clearly you havent read the article.
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.
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.
After a while that would become very costly.
Alternatively we could have a competent central bank.
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
Even if you take issue with whether it’s true nationally (and including the Celtic fringe means the UK figures give a misleading impression of England), it’s undoubtedly true in large subsections of the country. Why deny it?
Something being true of a subset doesn’t mean it’s true of the whole.
Why deny it? Because the truth matters. I realise that’s a difficult concept for a Trump supporter to understand. But when I say “truth”, I mean something that corresponds with objective reality, not a social media post by Donald Trump.
Why does it matter to you anyway. If you are happy with mass immigration you should not care if whites become a minority . Your position is totally justifiable by the way
It matters because I don’t like people inventing race-baiting statistics to mislead and scare the electorate. You’re doing all the usual tricks. You start by talking about immigration and then switch to talking about skin colour, as if a black or brown person born in this country, often to parents born in this country, should somehow not count as British. You then confuse “white” with a narrower ONS category “white British” so that you can come up with a statistic that sounds scarier.
Well obviously white british is an ethnic classification. Whether a 2nd generation pakistani immigrant counts as british is a value judgement that varies from person to person. Viva la difference. Look many people are happy with these levels of immigration including yourself so i dont see the problem.
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
I think its pretty on the mark. It was in conservative home this week. I dont think you will have issues with this anyway so whats the problem.
You said it was in Conservative Home, but your link didn’t work. If you’d like to try again providing that link, go for it. Not that Conservative Home seems like a particularly reliable source of information! You gave an explanation that was obviously flawed as you confused “white” with the ONS category “White British”, and that was after you had jumped from “immigrant” to “not white”. So, it looks to me like you are telling race-baiting porkies.
Im referring to white british so obviously not e europeans. Heres the link.
Great. So, that article does not support the claim you made. The claim you made was false. The only question left is whether you made a mistake or were deliberately being misleading.
Clearly you havent read the article.
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.
You claimed, “white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032”. Your numbers above relate to the ONS White British category. There are lots of white people in the UK who are not White British, but fall into one of the other White groups: Irish, Gypsy/Romany/Traveller or White Other.
(Also, if births fell below 50% in 2030, it would be many years before you saw a minority among schoolchildren.)
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
So, a nationalised ferry company orders replacement ferries, under a completely inadequate contract which they continually mess around with, ferries that the existing facilities can't cope with in the knowledge that they need upgraded and which are in private hands without a deal as to how that is going to happen years after the ferries were supposed to be in service and you think that isn't their fault?
I'd offer to sell you a bridge that is at the planning stage without any clear idea of where or how it is to be built at what cost if you are interested.
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
I think its pretty on the mark. It was in conservative home this week. I dont think you will have issues with this anyway so whats the problem.
You said it was in Conservative Home, but your link didn’t work. If you’d like to try again providing that link, go for it. Not that Conservative Home seems like a particularly reliable source of information! You gave an explanation that was obviously flawed as you confused “white” with the ONS category “White British”, and that was after you had jumped from “immigrant” to “not white”. So, it looks to me like you are telling race-baiting porkies.
Im referring to white british so obviously not e europeans. Heres the link.
Great. So, that article does not support the claim you made. The claim you made was false. The only question left is whether you made a mistake or were deliberately being misleading.
Clearly you havent read the article.
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.
You claimed, “white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032”. Your numbers above relate to the ONS White British category. There are lots of white people in the UK who are not White British, but fall into one of the other White groups: Irish, Gypsy/Romany/Traveller or White Other.
(Also, if births fell below 50% in 2030, it would be many years before you saw a minority among schoolchildren.)
Chill. Yes i was referring to the white british category as many people would see a white polish person as a different ethnicity. Vive la difference. Why does it matter to you so much anyway. It shouldnt.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
So, a nationalised ferry company orders replacement ferries, under a completely inadequate contract which they continually mess around with, ferries that the existing facilities can't cope with in the knowledge that they need upgraded and which are in private hands without a deal as to how that is going to happen years after the ferries were supposed to be in service and you think that isn't their fault?
I'd offer to sell you a bridge that is at the planning stage without any clear idea of where or how it is to be built at what cost if you are interested.
When the ferries were ordered, the Irish Berth was suitable. The question is how does the Scottish Government, or any government, force a private company to maintain its assets, Thames Water also comes to mind.
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
100 years ago most nations were not democracies but Fascist, Communist or absolute monarchies.
Now with a few exceptions like China, North Korea and Saudi Arabia most nations are democracies of some form.
Autocracies are also slow to react sometimes to change and rely on the military and secret police to keep control
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
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
The ability to make difficult long term decisions is usually outweighed by the inability to distinguish right from wrong and efficient from inefficient. However polling organisations, social credit and mass observation now enable autocracies to "consult the people" constantly and make popular decisions without changing governments, reducing the historic problem of autocracy. This has been tried and tested in Russia and has worked for over twenty years now.
Russia also has multi party elections for president and parliament
I know I’ve been joking about Solzhenitsyn and the Terror and the “Gooly Archypoo” but - incredibly - I’ve just had a real proper taste of what life was like under that police state
I overtook a slow lorry on the steppes - crossing a solid line - and I was IMMEDIATELY pulled over. Almost brutally. The copper swaggered out and we couldn’t understand each other. Then he made serious threats about bad stuff happening to me
So then he got in my car - got in my car!!! - and we drove to a nearby place with decent cell signal. And we used google translate. With that it became clear I was either going to jail or I could bribe him
I offered a bribe. He said yes. Then we drove back to his friend in the cop car and the copper got out of my car and he shrugged and changed his mind and said into Google translate “nah, what the hell, you’re a guest, we don’t want a bribe - on you go. Enjoy Kazakhstan”
The whole ordeal must have taken 12-14 minutes
Now I can look the great Russian dissidents in the eye. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, the many that died in the camps. I’ve been there
Pitiful to compare being pulled over for what sounds like a legitimate driving offence with the millions of people sent to labour camps for years for no reason whatsoever.
If you are reading the Gulag Archipelago for the first time during your travels - which I’d wager many PB’ers read years ago - it’s shameful that your only reaction to it is to try and draw some trite comparison with your being pulled over for bad driving.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
Private owners having to pay for maintenance and upgrades? Don’t be silly. Perhaps Sir Keir could sort of nationalise Ardrossan.
I look forward to the state subsidising the South Beach.
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
Even if you take issue with whether it’s true nationally (and including the Celtic fringe means the UK figures give a misleading impression of England), it’s undoubtedly true in large subsections of the country. Why deny it?
Something being true of a subset doesn’t mean it’s true of the whole.
Why deny it? Because the truth matters. I realise that’s a difficult concept for a Trump supporter to understand. But when I say “truth”, I mean something that corresponds with objective reality, not a social media post by Donald Trump.
Why does it matter to you anyway. If you are happy with mass immigration you should not care if whites become a minority . Your position is totally justifiable by the way
It matters because I don’t like people inventing race-baiting statistics to mislead and scare the electorate. You’re doing all the usual tricks. You start by talking about immigration and then switch to talking about skin colour, as if a black or brown person born in this country, often to parents born in this country, should somehow not count as British. You then confuse “white” with a narrower ONS category “white British” so that you can come up with a statistic that sounds scarier.
Well obviously white british is an ethnic classification. Whether a 2nd generation pakistani immigrant counts as british is a value judgement that varies from person to person. Viva la difference. Look many people are happy with these levels of immigration including yourself so i dont see the problem.
I consider the previous Duke of Edinburgh to be British. I consider Freddie Mercury to be British. I consider George Michael to be British. I consider Joanna Lumley to be British. I consider Mo Farah to be British. I consider Bradley Wiggins to be British. I consider Andi Oliver to be British. I consider Sadiq Khan to be British. I consider Rishi Sunak to be British. I consider Michael Howard to be British. I consider Ed and David Miliband to be British. I consider Suella Braverman to be British. I consider Anna Lo to be British. I am beginning to consider you to be a racist.
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
I think its pretty on the mark. It was in conservative home this week. I dont think you will have issues with this anyway so whats the problem.
You said it was in Conservative Home, but your link didn’t work. If you’d like to try again providing that link, go for it. Not that Conservative Home seems like a particularly reliable source of information! You gave an explanation that was obviously flawed as you confused “white” with the ONS category “White British”, and that was after you had jumped from “immigrant” to “not white”. So, it looks to me like you are telling race-baiting porkies.
Im referring to white british so obviously not e europeans. Heres the link.
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”
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. 😀
Lord Sumption has a new book out on defending democracy and rule of law.
I once gave a talk on his judgment in Hughes-Holland-v-BPE Solicitors and another, a case concerning the extent of liability for professional negligence by professional advisors. I said: "At the risk of bringing on deep feelings of inadequacy and insecurity I would commend a careful reading of the whole judgment. It is a magisterial piece of work. "
He writes with the extraordinary clarity of the truly brilliant. This, of course, does not mean that he is right all the time, especially when he goes beyond his own competence in the law into more political matters. But he really isn't someone who you have to puzzle what he really means. I have a pile of unread books right now but I am seriously tempted.
Since he retired, he's had too much time on his hands, and seems to have become a pundit, as a hobby. He doesn't half come out with some bollocks these days in amongst the brilliance.
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
Private owners having to pay for maintenance and upgrades? Don’t be silly. Perhaps Sir Keir could sort of nationalise Ardrossan.
I have already suggested to my MSP that the Scottish Government should compulsorily purchase Ardrossan Harbour, and that a fair price would be £1. If anyone knows Ardrossan, they will realise the whole town is worth about £5.
There was much chortling from the usual suspects when the SG bought Prestwick for £1 but it seems to have worked out ok.
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 .
That’s not true. Don’t tell porkies.
Even if you take issue with whether it’s true nationally (and including the Celtic fringe means the UK figures give a misleading impression of England), it’s undoubtedly true in large subsections of the country. Why deny it?
Something being true of a subset doesn’t mean it’s true of the whole.
Why deny it? Because the truth matters. I realise that’s a difficult concept for a Trump supporter to understand. But when I say “truth”, I mean something that corresponds with objective reality, not a social media post by Donald Trump.
Why does it matter to you anyway. If you are happy with mass immigration you should not care if whites become a minority . Your position is totally justifiable by the way
It matters because I don’t like people inventing race-baiting statistics to mislead and scare the electorate. You’re doing all the usual tricks. You start by talking about immigration and then switch to talking about skin colour, as if a black or brown person born in this country, often to parents born in this country, should somehow not count as British. You then confuse “white” with a narrower ONS category “white British” so that you can come up with a statistic that sounds scarier.
"Why does it matter to you anyway?" sounds like a troller trick too.
The idea that the proportion of babies who are "White British" is too small is obviously racist. It should be neither respected nor debated. It is akin to the "14 words". Incidentally it also implies there's something wrong with interracial marriage, given that not all "White British" parents have "White British" children.
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
The ability to make difficult long term decisions is usually outweighed by the inability to distinguish right from wrong and efficient from inefficient. However polling organisations, social credit and mass observation now enable autocracies to "consult the people" constantly and make popular decisions without changing governments, reducing the historic problem of autocracy. This has been tried and tested in Russia and has worked for over twenty years now.
Russia also has multi party elections for president and parliament
"free and fair" would wave hello, but is locked in a cell in Siberia...
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 Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
Private owners having to pay for maintenance and upgrades? Don’t be silly. Perhaps Sir Keir could sort of nationalise Ardrossan.
I have already suggested to my MSP that the Scottish Government should compulsorily purchase Ardrossan Harbour, and that a fair price would be £1. If anyone knows Ardrossan, they will realise the whole town is worth about £5.
There was much chortling from the usual suspects when the SG bought Prestwick for £1 but it seems to have worked out ok.
A simple principle is if ID is required to vote, it should be available for free.
It is, you can apply for a Voter Authority Certificate which is completely free. My sister had to get one of these at the last election because she's too physically disabled to be issued even a provisional licence and ran into issues getting a passport.
As an aside, my sister's situation has made it very clear to me how may things are almost impossible to do in the UK now without government photo ID. We effectively have ID cards, they're just not called that.
The issue with ID cards was never the card itself (the vast majority already have government IDs via drivers licences and passports and you have to show them for opening bank accounts etc), it was the proposal to develop one massive central database will all your records from tax to health kept in one place. It would be one massive honeypot that not if, when, it got hacked, could be absolutely disastrous.
And we were also supposed to believe (at the same time the government was in the middle of the shit show that was the NHS IT system) that this mega IT project would definitely work 100% and there definitely would not have any flaws like for instance see a nosy civil servant in say the NHS not see your tax records etc.
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
The ability to make difficult long term decisions is usually outweighed by the inability to distinguish right from wrong and efficient from inefficient. However polling organisations, social credit and mass observation now enable autocracies to "consult the people" constantly and make popular decisions without changing governments, reducing the historic problem of autocracy. This has been tried and tested in Russia and has worked for over twenty years now.
Russia also has multi party elections for president and parliament
But they are NOT free and fair elections.
"Power in Russia’s authoritarian political system is concentrated in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. With loyalist security forces, a subservient judiciary, a controlled media environment, and a legislature consisting of a ruling party and pliable opposition factions, the Kremlin manipulates elections and suppresses genuine dissent." https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia
"The Russian government continued to crack down on domestic dissent, adding to a total of nearly 20,000 detentions for alleged antiwar activities since February 2022. Concerns over the well-being of two political prisoners, opposition politicians Aleksey Gorinov and Aleksey Navalny, grew in December, when both disappeared from the prisons where they had been serving their sentences. They were located weeks later, having been secretly transferred to different facilities. "In November, the Supreme Court designated the “international LGBT public movement” as an extremist organization, intensifying the regime’s persecution of LGBT+ people and effectively prohibiting any advocacy on their behalf." https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-world/2024
Comments
As an aside, my sister's situation has made it very clear to me how may things are almost impossible to do in the UK now without government photo ID. We effectively have ID cards, they're just not called that.
I suspect democracy will surprise all over again.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
Law firm targeted by Trump sues as five other top firms make deals
https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-says-law-firms-agree-pro-bono-work-common-causes-2025-04-11/
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration was hit with another lawsuit on Friday over his executive orders sanctioning prominent law firms, even as five other firms offered costly concessions to avoid the president's crackdowns.
Susman Godfrey filed the lawsuit in Washington to challenge an executive order that it said violated its rights under the U.S. Constitution, becoming the fourth firm targeted by Trump to sue the administration in response...
So not "virtually the whole profession", just a large proportion of it.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
If they have a better idea they should surely put down an ammendment.
I wonder if Kemi realises she just has too many eco-zealots on her benches who want the steelworks to close.
Sure.
So there will be many affected in his constituency.
I overtook a slow lorry on the steppes - crossing a solid line - and I was IMMEDIATELY pulled over. Almost brutally. The copper swaggered out and we couldn’t understand each other. Then he made serious threats about bad stuff happening to me
So then he got in my car - got in my car!!! - and we drove to a nearby place with decent cell signal. And we used google translate. With that it became clear I was either going to jail or I could bribe him
I offered a bribe. He said yes. Then we drove back to his friend in the cop car and the copper got out of my car and he shrugged and changed his mind and said into Google translate “nah, what the hell, you’re a guest, we don’t want a bribe - on you go. Enjoy Kazakhstan”
The whole ordeal must have taken 12-14 minutes
Now I can look the great Russian dissidents in the eye. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, the many that died in the camps. I’ve been there
See several uncritical mentions of the kingdom in their manifesto:
https://greenparty.org.uk/app/uploads/2024/06/Green-Party-2024-General-Election-Manifesto-Long-version-with-cover.pdf
Cf Tory manifesto. No difference between the two docs where the monarchy is concerned. Neither of them say "We support retaining the monarchy". Both say the UK this, the UK that and the other.
https://public.conservatives.com/publicweb/GE2024/Accessible-Manifesto/Accessible-PDF-Conservative-Manifesto-2024.pdf
Seen any ancient ruins in Kazakhstan?
Which is not surprising as the next general election on most polls will be a choice between a Conservative and Reform government or a Labour and LD and maybe SNP government or confidence and supply deal in a hung parliament.
There will be no Conservative and Labour German style grand coalition
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
Perhaps their kindergartens are not teaching colouring properly.
- White British survivors
- White survivors
- Other survivors
The average retirement age in the UK is 66.
There are approximately 11 million people aged 65 and above in the UK, accounting for around 16% of the overall population.
Of these, around 7 in 10 (70.3%) women and 3 in 5 (61.4%) men are retired in the UK.
With 1.7 million, the South East has more retired people than any other region, with almost 1 in 5 (19.45%) residents aged 65 and above. By 2041, almost a quarter (24.64%) of the North East could be retired – the highest across all UK regions.
Around 1 in 10 (9%) UK baby boomers have no intention of giving up work beyond the age of 66
Some interesting numbers and the key take for me is the larger number of retired women. As to the "huge cohort of retired people who haven't been in the work force for 30 years", that's just your usual unadulterated bollocks. yes, people are living longer but there are only about 550,000 people over 90 - yes, that number is rising both as an absolute asnd as a proporion but it's a small proportion and the overwhelming majority of the "huge cohort" of 90+ are aged between 90 and 95.
There are 15,000 centenarians, historically a huge number but set against the whole proportion, it remains a tiny proportion.
Now, what's this "real substantial change" you're blethering on about? What do you mean by a throwaway sentence like that?
Perhaps Sir Keir could sort of nationalise Ardrossan.
“Another tricky issue for the Greens is the role of the monarchy in the British constitution.
“Caroline Lucas, formerly the only Green MP, advocated for removing the monarchy when she was leader but the party position appears to have shifted - especially since the new head of state, King Charles, is a passionate environmentalist.
“When asked about the King's role in the UK, Ramsay pointed out his party "didn't have any proposals in our general election manifesto in terms of changing the head of state", adding: "We're focused on the policies that will make a difference to people over these next five years."”
Why deny it? Because the truth matters. I realise that’s a difficult concept for a Trump supporter to understand. But when I say “truth”, I mean something that corresponds with objective reality, not a social media post by Donald Trump.
Like him, I would need several pages of A4 to explain my ethnicity.
https://conservativehome.com/2025/04/11/charlie-cole-jenrick-is-right-to-highlight-the-pace-of-immigration-induced-demographic-change/
Anyone so inclined can read it here: https://supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2014-0026
He writes with the extraordinary clarity of the truly brilliant. This, of course, does not mean that he is right all the time, especially when he goes beyond his own competence in the law into more political matters. But he really isn't someone who you have to puzzle what he really means. I have a pile of unread books right now but I am seriously tempted.
https://www.insider.co.uk/company-results-forecasts/prestwick-airport-posts-fifth-consecutive-34081260
All after Trump imposed fresh tarrifs.
The start of the inexorable slide of the greenback?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ce0ZgBQn6A
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.
(Also, if births fell below 50% in 2030, it would be many years before you saw a minority among schoolchildren.)
I'd offer to sell you a bridge that is at the planning stage without any clear idea of where or how it is to be built at what cost if you are interested.
Now with a few exceptions like China, North Korea and Saudi Arabia most nations are democracies of some form.
Autocracies are also slow to react sometimes to change and rely on the military and secret police to keep control
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peel_Group#Controversies
If you are reading the Gulag Archipelago for the first time during your travels - which I’d wager many PB’ers read years ago - it’s shameful that your only reaction to it is to try and draw some trite comparison with your being pulled over for bad driving.
White British *are* Europeans.
He doesn't half come out with some bollocks these days in amongst the brilliance.
The idea that the proportion of babies who are "White British" is too small is obviously racist.
It should be neither respected nor debated. It is akin to the "14 words".
Incidentally it also implies there's something wrong with interracial marriage, given that not all "White British" parents have "White British" children.
DRAMA!!
Ed Miliband has left the Commons Chamber.
The steel debate has only been going just over an hour.
Ed was getting a roasting for his crippling Net Zero levies and the damage they have done to British Steel.
The folk that roughed up Turnberry would be first on the shit list.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r5wkee8z5o
And we were also supposed to believe (at the same time the government was in the middle of the shit show that was the NHS IT system) that this mega IT project would definitely work 100% and there definitely would not have any flaws like for instance see a nosy civil servant in say the NHS not see your tax records etc.
"Power in Russia’s authoritarian political system is concentrated in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. With loyalist security forces, a subservient judiciary, a controlled media environment, and a legislature consisting of a ruling party and pliable opposition factions, the Kremlin manipulates elections and suppresses genuine dissent."
https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia
"The Russian government continued to crack down on domestic dissent, adding to a total of nearly 20,000 detentions for alleged antiwar activities since February 2022. Concerns over the well-being of two political prisoners, opposition politicians Aleksey Gorinov and Aleksey Navalny, grew in December, when both disappeared from the prisons where they had been serving their sentences. They were located weeks later, having been secretly transferred to different facilities.
"In November, the Supreme Court designated the “international LGBT public movement” as an extremist organization, intensifying the regime’s persecution of LGBT+ people and effectively prohibiting any advocacy on their behalf."
https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-world/2024
https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats?ref=nucleo.jor.br
If anyone on PB wants adding to the Starter Pack, drop me a PM.
Political Betting People
https://bsky.app/starter-pack/mattwardman.bsky.social/3lfk4fvp5yv26