1. The manufacturing sector is a vast category. I know what the poll’s getting at, but you could be in manufacturing as an aeronautical engineer or a materials scientist for AI chips, or you could be screwing on the heads of plastic dolls on a production line or gutting fish for a frozen food producer. Some jobs are more useful for an economy than others.
2. I am now working in the energy generation industry as I’ve got 10kw of solar panels on the French house. Since we arrived for the first time since installing the weather has been crap and overcast and they’re hardly generating anything.
3. How do they get the grass at Augusta so perfectly smooth and deep green? Always amazes me watching the Masters how the entire course looks AI-generated. No other championship course I can think of does it quite so extremely.
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
Holyrood waves hello...
And the Send, but do you get the same amount of jeering and fist-waving? Or is that a male thing?
I think that's just how our political culture works. I'm not sure who described the House of Commons as the "cockpit of the nation" (that's a cockpit as in where you watch cocks fighting, not the aeronautical term) and some of those were semicircular.
I think the key fact from that poll is more Americans want to work in a factory than currently do.
That also explains the vote for Trump as in the rustbelt manufacturing jobs were better paid than most jobs
Not quite what the question asked. It asks if they would be better off. I'd have been better off if I'd gone into investment banking rather than the civil service but I'd spend my entire working day hating it so I didn't.
US manufacturing accounts for about 8% of US jobs. If you eliminate the trade deficit entirely it would be about 10% of jobs. So you don't actually need many people at all to move into them, so the polling is fairly irrelevant.
The bigger point is that 100% will be paying more for goods for a max of 2-3% to get new manufacturing work. And of those 2-3% some won't enjoy their work, some will be illegal immigrants, and few will be well paid. The jobs may end up in the areas already with a decent economy rather than the hollowed out post industrial towns that need them.
All this is if you completely eliminated the trade deficit which is pretty unlikely. As public policy this is just bonkers.
That’s the final bit of the puzzle which I don’t get. Factories were usually built where the raw materials used to be (I.e. your steel works is where coal or the raw materials for steel is mined).
After that the next issue is logistics to get the raw materials in and the finished goods out - there is no point building a factory in nowhereville Kansas because the cost of the extra logistics is going to further increase the final cost of the products.
Trump has offered his voters an impossible dream, something that at the end of the day can’t exist
Well he does enjoy tilting at windmills.
No love for my awesome pun ? Tough crowd this morning.
We’re still waiting to hear what Trump will do with the 200,000 Ukrainians who came to the USA after the war started .
Most people with a shred of humanity wouldn’t even think of sending them back to a war zone , but with the current administration where cruelty is the number one game who knows!
Sending back his fellow draft dodgers would be a net positive for Ukraine.
US manufacturing accounts for about 8% of US jobs. If you eliminate the trade deficit entirely it would be about 10% of jobs. So you don't actually need many people at all to move into them, so the polling is fairly irrelevant.
The bigger point is that 100% will be paying more for goods for a max of 2-3% to get new manufacturing work. And of those 2-3% some won't enjoy their work, some will be illegal immigrants, and few will be well paid. The jobs may end up in the areas already with a decent economy rather than the hollowed out post industrial towns that need them.
All this is if you completely eliminated the trade deficit which is pretty unlikely. As public policy this is just bonkers.
That’s the final bit of the puzzle which I don’t get. Factories were usually built where the raw materials used to be (I.e. your steel works is where coal or the raw materials for steel is mined).
After that the next issue is logistics to get the raw materials in and the finished goods out - there is no point building a factory in nowhereville Kansas because the cost of the extra logistics is going to further increase the final cost of the products.
Trump has offered his voters an impossible dream, something that at the end of the day can’t exist
Well he does enjoy tilting at windmills.
No love for my awesome pun ? Tough crowd this morning.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
US manufacturing accounts for about 8% of US jobs. If you eliminate the trade deficit entirely it would be about 10% of jobs. So you don't actually need many people at all to move into them, so the polling is fairly irrelevant.
The bigger point is that 100% will be paying more for goods for a max of 2-3% to get new manufacturing work. And of those 2-3% some won't enjoy their work, some will be illegal immigrants, and few will be well paid. The jobs may end up in the areas already with a decent economy rather than the hollowed out post industrial towns that need them.
All this is if you completely eliminated the trade deficit which is pretty unlikely. As public policy this is just bonkers.
That’s the final bit of the puzzle which I don’t get. Factories were usually built where the raw materials used to be (I.e. your steel works is where coal or the raw materials for steel is mined).
After that the next issue is logistics to get the raw materials in and the finished goods out - there is no point building a factory in nowhereville Kansas because the cost of the extra logistics is going to further increase the final cost of the products.
Trump has offered his voters an impossible dream, something that at the end of the day can’t exist
Well he does enjoy tilting at windmills.
No love for my awesome pun ? Tough crowd this morning.
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
UK-focused or looking overseas too?
Very much UK focused. Not planning to discuss the whys and wherefores of foreign crises unless they are directly impacting onto the UK.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
It's sometimes suggested that part of the 'British Problem' is our parliamentary structure; a chamber with two sides, Government facing Opposition, two swords (!) length apart. A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
Don't they have a semi-circle in Congress? And Germany, where the AfD is rising?
News also full of images of smoke flares being set off in the elongated semicircle of the Hungarian parliament...
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
UK-focused or looking overseas too?
Very much UK focused. Not planning to discuss the whys and wherefores of foreign crises unless they are directly impacting onto the UK.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
It's sometimes suggested that part of the 'British Problem' is our parliamentary structure; a chamber with two sides, Government facing Opposition, two swords (!) length apart. A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
I find it hard to imagine that it's a strong effect. Perhaps stronger to my mind is the sense of tradition and responsibility that are represented by the current distinguished set-up.
(Even the daftest of MPs generally behave in the HoC)
I would be interested to see Churchill's comments when he supported retaining the face to face arrangement over a circular setup in a restored HoC after WW2. I can't find them. They were pointed out to us at school by the history master, before we went on "The London Trip", which included a visit to Parliament for some.
During the war the HoC met at Church House, where the main chamber is circular - in the CofE the houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity debate together then vote by houses.
Were Churchill's views informed by the experience of Parliament being in Church House compared to the Commons Chamber, or eg the Hemicycle arrangement of the Weimer Republic's Bundestag?
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
So they'll end up blaming Trump for not bringing back the past because those jobs are not going to come back.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
So they'll end up blaming Trump for not bringing back the past because those jobs are not going to come back.
No they support Trump whacking cheap Chinese imports with tariffs to bring some of the production of those goods back to the US
I think the key fact from that poll is more Americans want to work in a factory than currently do.
That also explains the vote for Trump as in the rustbelt manufacturing jobs were better paid than most jobs
But he's sold them a pup. If Nike or Apple moved to Michigan or Illinois the factories would be so automated that employment opportunities would be sparse. The actual benefit to the US economy over and above the uplift from the Chinese product to retail point of sale would be minimal for the US economy in the grand scheme of things, and more expensive domestic manufacturing would be inflationary. Now the negative impact of exporting manufacturing to China has merit for discussion, as has the sale of key assets to potential enemy nations, but perhaps those are debates we should have had thirty five years ago. We are where we are.
As to the notion that we can rebuild Elbert Gary's steelworks to compete with the Chinese or the Indians is for the birds. Equally the golden days of Dearborn are gone forever. For context, Ford in Dagenham in 1960 employed around 40,000 workers, Nissan in Sunderland today employs 6,000 people and automation means that number is declining.
Listening to Today and they are talking about the problem with bots taking all tue driving test slots.
Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.
Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?
Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.
Nope - I could use DVLAs preferred tool and give them a system within 6 months fully tested - and probably in a lot less time.
But the fix is simple - cancelled appointments go back into a pool and are available to everyone - don’t let instructors change the id on a test
Or add another question to the current system "What is your driving licence number?" And state that only someone with that licence can use that appointment, and heavily publicise that restriction. It would take less than a day to implement.
I think the key fact from that poll is more Americans want to work in a factory than currently do.
That also explains the vote for Trump as in the rustbelt manufacturing jobs were better paid than most jobs
Not quite what the question asked. It asks if they would be better off. I'd have been better off if I'd gone into investment banking rather than the civil service but I'd spend my entire working day hating it so I didn't.
Most of them likely work in call centres or warehouses or as delivery drivers etc and hate that too
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
So they'll end up blaming Trump for not bringing back the past because those jobs are not going to come back.
No they support Trump whacking cheap Chinese imports with tariffs to bring some of the production of those goods back to the US
Yes but will they still support Trump's tariffs if it becomes clear they've not worked as intended? It may be the ‘end’ they support rather than the ‘means’.
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
So they'll end up blaming Trump for not bringing back the past because those jobs are not going to come back.
No they support Trump whacking cheap Chinese imports with tariffs to bring some of the production of those goods back to the US
So they'll get higher prices but they wont get any more jobs.
And there certainly will not be any manufacturing jobs for these unskilled Trump voters you keep talking about.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
So they'll end up blaming Trump for not bringing back the past because those jobs are not going to come back.
No they support Trump whacking cheap Chinese imports with tariffs to bring some of the production of those goods back to the US
They won't support paying the higher prices this implies though.
Average hourly wage in the US: $24.10, while in China it was around $3.60 (2022 figures).
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
Dr. Jessica M. DeWitt @jessicamdewitt.bsky.social · 9h I just attended a conference in the US. We had one speaker detained and two others turned away at the border.
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
UK-focused or looking overseas too?
Very much UK focused. Not planning to discuss the whys and wherefores of foreign crises unless they are directly impacting onto the UK.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
It's sometimes suggested that part of the 'British Problem' is our parliamentary structure; a chamber with two sides, Government facing Opposition, two swords (!) length apart. A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
I find it hard to imagine that it's a strong effect. Perhaps stronger to my mind is the sense of tradition and responsibility that are represented by the current distinguished set-up.
(Even the daftest of MPs generally behave in the HoC)
I would be interested to see Churchill's comments when he supported retaining the face to face arrangement over a circular setup in a restored HoC after WW2. I can't find them. They were pointed out to us at school by the history master, before we went on "The London Trip", which included a visit to Parliament for some.
During the war the HoC met at Church House, where the main chamber is circular - in the CofE the houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity debate together then vote by houses.
Were Churchill's views informed by the experience of Parliament being in Church House compared to the Commons Chamber, or eg the Hemicycle arrangement of the Weimer Republic's Bundestag?
Sitting in Church House didn't last for long, though, did it? About a year if I remember rightly. After June 1941 the Commons met in the Lords instead, and continued to do so until the Commons chamber had been rebuilt in 1950.
That suggests perhaps they didn't really like the layout?
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
Hang on. Spell checkers change misspelt words to ones that are in its dictionary or are used on a regular basis...
I deed, my spellchecker just suggested bull or Buckley
My father once had an early spellcheck change all of his 'Charolais' bulls to 'cheerless bulls.'
Why they were miserable was not explained.
Although that was not quite as good as the one that changed 'we cannot currently permit pigs on site' which weirdly became 'we cannot permit piss on site.'
This caused much hilarity at the committee meeting in question...including a suggestion that it didn't hold water.
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
So they'll end up blaming Trump for not bringing back the past because those jobs are not going to come back.
Foreman says, "These jobs are going, boys And they ain't coming back
Listening to Today and they are talking about the problem with bots taking all tue driving test slots.
Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.
Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?
Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.
Nope - I could use DVLAs preferred tool and give them a system within 6 months fully tested - and probably in a lot less time.
But the fix is simple - cancelled appointments go back into a pool and are available to everyone - don’t let instructors change the id on a test
Or add another question to the current system "What is your driving licence number?" And state that only someone with that licence can use that appointment, and heavily publicise that restriction. It would take less than a day to implement.
And that would help how? The problem is there are not enough test slots because there are not enough examiners. It is the same as with popular concerts. Arenas won't magically get bigger if you ban Ticketmaster. There won't be more driving tests available if you ban bots.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
So they'll end up blaming Trump
I'll believe that when I see it.
They'll end up thinking Trump was a NYC degenerate who tricked/used/cheated them - which he is in fact - and that what they need is 'one of their own' to change things.
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
UK-focused or looking overseas too?
Very much UK focused. Not planning to discuss the whys and wherefores of foreign crises unless they are directly impacting onto the UK.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
It's sometimes suggested that part of the 'British Problem' is our parliamentary structure; a chamber with two sides, Government facing Opposition, two swords (!) length apart. A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
I find it hard to imagine that it's a strong effect. Perhaps stronger to my mind is the sense of tradition and responsibility that are represented by the current distinguished set-up.
(Even the daftest of MPs generally behave in the HoC)
I would be interested to see Churchill's comments when he supported retaining the face to face arrangement over a circular setup in a restored HoC after WW2. I can't find them. They were pointed out to us at school by the history master, before we went on "The London Trip", which included a visit to Parliament for some.
During the war the HoC met at Church House, where the main chamber is circular - in the CofE the houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity debate together then vote by houses.
Were Churchill's views informed by the experience of Parliament being in Church House compared to the Commons Chamber, or eg the Hemicycle arrangement of the Weimer Republic's Bundestag?
Sitting in Church House didn't last for long, though, did it? About a year if I remember rightly. After June 1941 the Commons met in the Lords instead, and continued to do so until the Commons chamber had been rebuilt in 1950.
That suggests perhaps they didn't really like the layout?
Not sure. June 1941 also correlates with the Blitz ending.
And since they had moved to avoid being where they could be detected, and moved times, and I think had secrecy regs in place, they could equally have judged the risk balance to have shifted.
There was a low spy risk since we controlled German spy networks in the UK.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
Mainsteam Research have Conservatives 2% ahead in Canada, not enough to form a Government but back into no party control territory?
The Mainstream Research poll is a daily rolling poll (remember the one Sky News did?) and to be fair it has shown the gap between Liberals and Conservatives closing over recent day - I think the preceding days were Liberals +7, Liberals +5, Liberals +1 so may be it's seeing a trend but it's not being seen in other polls at the moment.
The Liaison Strategies rolling daily poll is going the other way - last three days, Liberals +5, then +7 and yesterday +8.
The daily Nanos Research Poll has a Liberal lead of around +6. The weekly MQO Research poll has shown a very small reduction in the Liberal lead - yesterday's was +9, previous was +10, the one before that +11.
Mainstreet looks an outlier to be honest but it may not be.
The overnight polls from Australia continue to show a strengthening in the Labor position with the two party polling showing Labor leads of 7 points (Resolve) and 9 points (Roy Morgan). Last time, Labor beat the Coalition by 4 points in the two party polling so we could even be looking at an increase in the Labor majority on the current polling numbers.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
Hang on. Spell checkers change misspelt words to ones that are in its dictionary or are used on a regular basis...
I deed, my spellchecker just suggested bull or Buckley
Mine did something similar in an earlier post where I typed Senedd, referring to the Welsh Assembly. Didn't notice that the 'helpful' little imp had turned it to Send.
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
So they'll end up blaming Trump for not bringing back the past because those jobs are not going to come back.
Foreman says, "These jobs are going, boys And they ain't coming back
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
UK-focused or looking overseas too?
Very much UK focused. Not planning to discuss the whys and wherefores of foreign crises unless they are directly impacting onto the UK.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
It's sometimes suggested that part of the 'British Problem' is our parliamentary structure; a chamber with two sides, Government facing Opposition, two swords (!) length apart. A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
I find it hard to imagine that it's a strong effect. Perhaps stronger to my mind is the sense of tradition and responsibility that are represented by the current distinguished set-up.
(Even the daftest of MPs generally behave in the HoC)
I would be interested to see Churchill's comments when he supported retaining the face to face arrangement over a circular setup in a restored HoC after WW2. I can't find them. They were pointed out to us at school by the history master, before we went on "The London Trip", which included a visit to Parliament for some.
During the war the HoC met at Church House, where the main chamber is circular - in the CofE the houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity debate together then vote by houses.
Were Churchill's views informed by the experience of Parliament being in Church House compared to the Commons Chamber, or eg the Hemicycle arrangement of the Weimer Republic's Bundestag?
Sitting in Church House didn't last for long, though, did it? About a year if I remember rightly. After June 1941 the Commons met in the Lords instead, and continued to do so until the Commons chamber had been rebuilt in 1950.
That suggests perhaps they didn't really like the layout?
Not sure. June 1941 was also when the Blitz ended.
And since they had moved to avoid being where they could be detected, and moved times, and I think had secrecy regs in place, they could equally have judged the risk balance to have shifted.
There was a low spy risk since we controlled German spy networks in the UK.
If it had been for security, it would have been illogical to move back into the Houses of Parliament at all - which were fairly clearly identifiable! That said, it would of course have been quite hard to find a building large enough to take them all.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
Dr. Jessica M. DeWitt @jessicamdewitt.bsky.social · 9h I just attended a conference in the US. We had one speaker detained and two others turned away at the border.
Nationality is a funny thing. I have lived in the UK all my life but thanks to St Tony of Blair, I am entitled to an Irish passport. It’s my default as I go to Europe a lot.
Just been asked by the airline in Singapore to provide a UK Electronic Travel Authorisation to get back into the UK. Came as a bit of a surprise but a deeper look into the Gov site showed I didn’t need one. Glad I turned up early as it might have been a bit of a hassle if I had a queue behind me .
Wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few Daily Mail stories about Border checks changing in 2025.
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
UK-focused or looking overseas too?
Very much UK focused. Not planning to discuss the whys and wherefores of foreign crises unless they are directly impacting onto the UK.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
It's sometimes suggested that part of the 'British Problem' is our parliamentary structure; a chamber with two sides, Government facing Opposition, two swords (!) length apart. A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
I find it hard to imagine that it's a strong effect. Perhaps stronger to my mind is the sense of tradition and responsibility that are represented by the current distinguished set-up.
(Even the daftest of MPs generally behave in the HoC)
I would be interested to see Churchill's comments when he supported retaining the face to face arrangement over a circular setup in a restored HoC after WW2. I can't find them. They were pointed out to us at school by the history master, before we went on "The London Trip", which included a visit to Parliament for some.
During the war the HoC met at Church House, where the main chamber is circular - in the CofE the houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity debate together then vote by houses.
Were Churchill's views informed by the experience of Parliament being in Church House compared to the Commons Chamber, or eg the Hemicycle arrangement of the Weimer Republic's Bundestag?
Sitting in Church House didn't last for long, though, did it? About a year if I remember rightly. After June 1941 the Commons met in the Lords instead, and continued to do so until the Commons chamber had been rebuilt in 1950.
That suggests perhaps they didn't really like the layout?
Not sure. June 1941 was also when the Blitz ended.
And since they had moved to avoid being where they could be detected, and moved times, and I think had secrecy regs in place, they could equally have judged the risk balance to have shifted.
There was a low spy risk since we controlled German spy networks in the UK.
If it had been for security, it would have been illogical to move back into the Houses of Parliament at all - which were fairly clearly identifiable! That said, it would of course have been quite hard to find a building large enough to take them all.
When was the Commons bombed? I know I could look it up, but there's quite a lot on this morning.
"Two Liberal staffers made fake, Trump-style buttons and planted them at a conference of Canadian conservatives last week. But they were exposed after they discussed the plot at an Ottawa bar and were overheard by a CBC reporter."
Which is stupid, given that the Liberals are winning.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
UK-focused or looking overseas too?
Very much UK focused. Not planning to discuss the whys and wherefores of foreign crises unless they are directly impacting onto the UK.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
It's sometimes suggested that part of the 'British Problem' is our parliamentary structure; a chamber with two sides, Government facing Opposition, two swords (!) length apart. A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
I find it hard to imagine that it's a strong effect. Perhaps stronger to my mind is the sense of tradition and responsibility that are represented by the current distinguished set-up.
(Even the daftest of MPs generally behave in the HoC)
I would be interested to see Churchill's comments when he supported retaining the face to face arrangement over a circular setup in a restored HoC after WW2. I can't find them. They were pointed out to us at school by the history master, before we went on "The London Trip", which included a visit to Parliament for some.
During the war the HoC met at Church House, where the main chamber is circular - in the CofE the houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity debate together then vote by houses.
Were Churchill's views informed by the experience of Parliament being in Church House compared to the Commons Chamber, or eg the Hemicycle arrangement of the Weimer Republic's Bundestag?
Sitting in Church House didn't last for long, though, did it? About a year if I remember rightly. After June 1941 the Commons met in the Lords instead, and continued to do so until the Commons chamber had been rebuilt in 1950.
That suggests perhaps they didn't really like the layout?
Not sure. June 1941 was also when the Blitz ended.
And since they had moved to avoid being where they could be detected, and moved times, and I think had secrecy regs in place, they could equally have judged the risk balance to have shifted.
There was a low spy risk since we controlled German spy networks in the UK.
If it had been for security, it would have been illogical to move back into the Houses of Parliament at all - which were fairly clearly identifiable! That said, it would of course have been quite hard to find a building large enough to take them all.
I don't have a list of venues, but I expect that in London there are quite a number. It would be supporting buildings and close to Westminster for centrality / wider workforce being able to stay in their locations.
For the chamber itself, there are any number of London CofE Churches that take around 1000, perhaps 40 or 50 just in a small area of Central London. It's (reaching for a rabbit hole) one physical feature that makes a difference to how Church Growth works in London.
I think the Lords were in the Lords' Chamber throughout, weren't they, and then moved to Westminster Hall?
Incidentally, do we have full Hansard records of the Commons sitting in secret in WW2?
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
UK-focused or looking overseas too?
Very much UK focused. Not planning to discuss the whys and wherefores of foreign crises unless they are directly impacting onto the UK.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
It's sometimes suggested that part of the 'British Problem' is our parliamentary structure; a chamber with two sides, Government facing Opposition, two swords (!) length apart. A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
I find it hard to imagine that it's a strong effect. Perhaps stronger to my mind is the sense of tradition and responsibility that are represented by the current distinguished set-up.
(Even the daftest of MPs generally behave in the HoC)
I would be interested to see Churchill's comments when he supported retaining the face to face arrangement over a circular setup in a restored HoC after WW2. I can't find them. They were pointed out to us at school by the history master, before we went on "The London Trip", which included a visit to Parliament for some.
During the war the HoC met at Church House, where the main chamber is circular - in the CofE the houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity debate together then vote by houses.
Were Churchill's views informed by the experience of Parliament being in Church House compared to the Commons Chamber, or eg the Hemicycle arrangement of the Weimer Republic's Bundestag?
Sitting in Church House didn't last for long, though, did it? About a year if I remember rightly. After June 1941 the Commons met in the Lords instead, and continued to do so until the Commons chamber had been rebuilt in 1950.
That suggests perhaps they didn't really like the layout?
Not sure. June 1941 was also when the Blitz ended.
And since they had moved to avoid being where they could be detected, and moved times, and I think had secrecy regs in place, they could equally have judged the risk balance to have shifted.
There was a low spy risk since we controlled German spy networks in the UK.
If it had been for security, it would have been illogical to move back into the Houses of Parliament at all - which were fairly clearly identifiable! That said, it would of course have been quite hard to find a building large enough to take them all.
When was the Commons bombed? I know I could look it up, but there's quite a lot on this morning.
You know, I would have a lot more time for people saying we should cancel net zero if these weren’t the same people that used to say that climate change is a hoax.
I think the key fact from that poll is more Americans want to work in a factory than currently do.
That also explains the vote for Trump as in the rustbelt manufacturing jobs were better paid than most jobs
Not quite what the question asked. It asks if they would be better off. I'd have been better off if I'd gone into investment banking rather than the civil service but I'd spend my entire working day hating it so I didn't.
Most of them likely work in call centres or warehouses or as delivery drivers etc and hate that too
Quite possibly but nevertheless the question was whether they would be better off with a factory job not whether they would take one if offered. As the header says the actual polling question matters.
Listening to Today and they are talking about the problem with bots taking all tue driving test slots.
Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.
Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?
Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.
Nope - I could use DVLAs preferred tool and give them a system within 6 months fully tested - and probably in a lot less time.
But the fix is simple - cancelled appointments go back into a pool and are available to everyone - don’t let instructors change the id on a test
Or add another question to the current system "What is your driving licence number?" And state that only someone with that licence can use that appointment, and heavily publicise that restriction. It would take less than a day to implement.
And that would help how? The problem is there are not enough test slots because there are not enough examiners. It is the same as with popular concerts. Arenas won't magically get bigger if you ban Ticketmaster. There won't be more driving tests available if you ban bots.
Concert tickets are a commercial matter. Driving tests are one of the infinity of things the government takes to itself to oversee, and taxes us to ensure it can do so. The absolute minimum proper expectation is that it does this, and all the other things, very well.
I wonder, if government focussed remorselessly on a 'do all our boring duties really well' instead of 'reform, change, dead cats, third runway, this week's new wheeze' we might like them better.
Reflects little more than 90% of local elections are protest votes against the incumbent government
It's been two years since the last Finnish election and the Governing coalition is trailing the Opposition bloc by 14 points in recent polling - nothing unusual about that as you say.
However, in Norway, where they vote on September 8th, after a long period where the Opposition bloc, lead by the Conservatives (Hojre) had established huge leads over the ruling Social Democrat led Government (as much as 18 points at one point), a combination of the departure of the Centre Party from the Government and the coming of Trump, has propelled Labour back into an overall nine point lead and the Government bloc of parties to a five point lead which would see them re-elected.
Trump has had an impact on global politics and so far it's a positive for parties of the "centre left" and negative for parties of the "centre right". To be fair, that's not universal - in Spain and Italy, the parties of what we would call the "centre right" are still polling well in Opposition and Government respectively.
Another country's polling worth watching currently is Greece.
Listening to Today and they are talking about the problem with bots taking all tue driving test slots.
Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.
Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?
Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.
Nope - I could use DVLAs preferred tool and give them a system within 6 months fully tested - and probably in a lot less time.
But the fix is simple - cancelled appointments go back into a pool and are available to everyone - don’t let instructors change the id on a test
Or add another question to the current system "What is your driving licence number?" And state that only someone with that licence can use that appointment, and heavily publicise that restriction. It would take less than a day to implement.
And that would help how? The problem is there are not enough test slots because there are not enough examiners. It is the same as with popular concerts. Arenas won't magically get bigger if you ban Ticketmaster. There won't be more driving tests available if you ban bots.
Concert tickets are a commercial matter. Driving tests are one of the infinity of things the government takes to itself to oversee, and taxes us to ensure it can do so. The absolute minimum proper expectation is that it does this, and all the other things, very well.
I wonder, if government focussed remorselessly on a 'do all our boring duties really well' instead of 'reform, change, dead cats, third runway, this week's new wheeze' we might like them better.
Which can be done, to an extent- see passports. Whether that works for everything is another question.
It's also what Starmer is meant to be good at, though it's not something that's going to be quick.
You know, I would have a lot more time for people saying we should cancel net zero if these weren’t the same people that used to say that climate change is a hoax.
I'm not sure why. The more skeptical you are about the settled view of climate science of course the more upset you'd be about trashing the economy in a Canute-like attempt to reverse the crisis.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
Scott - this is clearly a parody account. There’s no 54th Congressional district in California; the state has 52 districts. There are no U.S. representatives named Jack Kimble.
California has a State Assembly, not a House of Representatives, there are no Assembly members named Jack Kimble either, and the one representing the 54th is a Democrat.
The bio for the @RepJackKimble’s account says he’s a "Republican representing CA’s 54th Dist. & co-sponsor of Poe’s Law." Suggest you look up Poe's Law maybe.
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
UK-focused or looking overseas too?
Very much UK focused. Not planning to discuss the whys and wherefores of foreign crises unless they are directly impacting onto the UK.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
It's sometimes suggested that part of the 'British Problem' is our parliamentary structure; a chamber with two sides, Government facing Opposition, two swords (!) length apart. A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
I find it hard to imagine that it's a strong effect. Perhaps stronger to my mind is the sense of tradition and responsibility that are represented by the current distinguished set-up.
(Even the daftest of MPs generally behave in the HoC)
I would be interested to see Churchill's comments when he supported retaining the face to face arrangement over a circular setup in a restored HoC after WW2. I can't find them. They were pointed out to us at school by the history master, before we went on "The London Trip", which included a visit to Parliament for some.
During the war the HoC met at Church House, where the main chamber is circular - in the CofE the houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity debate together then vote by houses.
Were Churchill's views informed by the experience of Parliament being in Church House compared to the Commons Chamber, or eg the Hemicycle arrangement of the Weimer Republic's Bundestag?
Sitting in Church House didn't last for long, though, did it? About a year if I remember rightly. After June 1941 the Commons met in the Lords instead, and continued to do so until the Commons chamber had been rebuilt in 1950.
That suggests perhaps they didn't really like the layout?
Not sure. June 1941 was also when the Blitz ended.
And since they had moved to avoid being where they could be detected, and moved times, and I think had secrecy regs in place, they could equally have judged the risk balance to have shifted.
There was a low spy risk since we controlled German spy networks in the UK.
If it had been for security, it would have been illogical to move back into the Houses of Parliament at all - which were fairly clearly identifiable! That said, it would of course have been quite hard to find a building large enough to take them all.
Reflecting on that, the bloody Commons' Chamber doesn't take all the MPs !!!
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
Scott - this is clearly a parody account. There’s no 54th Congressional district in California; the state has 52 districts. There are no U.S. representatives named Jack Kimble.
California has a State Assembly, not a House of Representatives, there are no Assembly members named Jack Kimble either, and the one representing the 54th is a Democrat.
The bio for the @RepJackKimble’s account says he’s a "Republican representing CA’s 54th Dist. & co-sponsor of Poe’s Law." Suggest you look up Poe's Law maybe.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
Scott - this is clearly a parody account. There’s no 54th Congressional district in California; the state has 52 districts. There are no U.S. representatives named Jack Kimble.
California has a State Assembly, not a House of Representatives, there are no Assembly members named Jack Kimble either, and the one representing the 54th is a Democrat.
The bio for the @RepJackKimble’s account says he’s a "Republican representing CA’s 54th Dist. & co-sponsor of Poe’s Law." Suggest you look up Poe's Law maybe.
Quite a good parodic joke, however
Not denying that, but Scott gets a bit carried away with his copy paste, and felt he needed to be disabused of this one ASAP. It's been posted on here twice this AM.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
Scott - this is clearly a parody account. There’s no 54th Congressional district in California; the state has 52 districts. There are no U.S. representatives named Jack Kimble.
California has a State Assembly, not a House of Representatives, there are no Assembly members named Jack Kimble either, and the one representing the 54th is a Democrat.
The bio for the @RepJackKimble’s account says he’s a "Republican representing CA’s 54th Dist. & co-sponsor of Poe’s Law." Suggest you look up Poe's Law maybe.
You know, I would have a lot more time for people saying we should cancel net zero if these weren’t the same people that used to say that climate change is a hoax.
I'm not sure why. The more skeptical you are about the settled view of climate science of course the more upset you'd be about trashing the economy in a Canute-like attempt to reverse the crisis.
Much as I disagree with @Luckyguy1983 views on climate change (and most else) his point here is completely logical. The more you disagree with the climate change, the less logical it is to aim for net zero.
Listening to Today and they are talking about the problem with bots taking all tue driving test slots.
Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.
Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?
Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.
Nope - I could use DVLAs preferred tool and give them a system within 6 months fully tested - and probably in a lot less time.
But the fix is simple - cancelled appointments go back into a pool and are available to everyone - don’t let instructors change the id on a test
Or add another question to the current system "What is your driving licence number?" And state that only someone with that licence can use that appointment, and heavily publicise that restriction. It would take less than a day to implement.
And that would help how? The problem is there are not enough test slots because there are not enough examiners. It is the same as with popular concerts. Arenas won't magically get bigger if you ban Ticketmaster. There won't be more driving tests available if you ban bots.
What there might be, is a better way of managing the slots that do exist, and not allowing the people who run the bots a risk-free profit at public expense.
It wouldn't seem unreasonable to get the DfT Perm Sec into the SOS's office and tell him to have a solution by this time next week. In the meantime, maybe they should suspend bookings.
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
Scott - this is clearly a parody account. There’s no 54th Congressional district in California; the state has 52 districts. There are no U.S. representatives named Jack Kimble.
California has a State Assembly, not a House of Representatives, there are no Assembly members named Jack Kimble either, and the one representing the 54th is a Democrat.
The bio for the @RepJackKimble’s account says he’s a "Republican representing CA’s 54th Dist. & co-sponsor of Poe’s Law." Suggest you look up Poe's Law maybe.
There are clues in the tweet too. He said he would complain to Apple rather than have them nuked from orbit and forced to make iPhones in Sacramento using wage slaves.
Far too sane to be a real politician in the US right now.
Listening to Today and they are talking about the problem with bots taking all tue driving test slots.
Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.
Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?
Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.
Nope - I could use DVLAs preferred tool and give them a system within 6 months fully tested - and probably in a lot less time.
But the fix is simple - cancelled appointments go back into a pool and are available to everyone - don’t let instructors change the id on a test
Or add another question to the current system "What is your driving licence number?" And state that only someone with that licence can use that appointment, and heavily publicise that restriction. It would take less than a day to implement.
And that would help how? The problem is there are not enough test slots because there are not enough examiners. It is the same as with popular concerts. Arenas won't magically get bigger if you ban Ticketmaster. There won't be more driving tests available if you ban bots.
Concert tickets are a commercial matter. Driving tests are one of the infinity of things the government takes to itself to oversee, and taxes us to ensure it can do so. The absolute minimum proper expectation is that it does this, and all the other things, very well.
I wonder, if government focussed remorselessly on a 'do all our boring duties really well' instead of 'reform, change, dead cats, third runway, this week's new wheeze' we might like them better.
Which can be done, to an extent- see passports. Whether that works for everything is another question.
It's also what Starmer is meant to be good at, though it's not something that's going to be quick.
It's the 'everything' which is the point. Government/state takes over a massive array of responsibilities. and spends about half of all expenditure to do it. It has an array of monopoly powers and monopoly responsibilities. All should be at least 'very good' at all times outside of war and plague.
Listening to Today and they are talking about the problem with bots taking all tue driving test slots.
Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.
Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?
Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.
Nope - I could use DVLAs preferred tool and give them a system within 6 months fully tested - and probably in a lot less time.
But the fix is simple - cancelled appointments go back into a pool and are available to everyone - don’t let instructors change the id on a test
Or add another question to the current system "What is your driving licence number?" And state that only someone with that licence can use that appointment, and heavily publicise that restriction. It would take less than a day to implement.
Just turn off the portal which allows businesses to block book driving lessons. 60 seconds.
EDIT: When individuals book a test, it is linked to your personal details and can't be transferred. That is the current system, right now.
You know, I would have a lot more time for people saying we should cancel net zero if these weren’t the same people that used to say that climate change is a hoax.
I'm not sure why. The more skeptical you are about the settled view of climate science of course the more upset you'd be about trashing the economy in a Canute-like attempt to reverse the crisis.
Much as I disagree with @Luckyguy1983 views on climate change (and most else) his point here is completely logical. The more you disagree with the climate change, the less logical it is to aim for net zero.
Horse wasn't saying their position is illogical. He was saying he "would have a lot more time" for them if they weren't climate change deniers. Their position is logical based on their beliefs. The point is their beliefs are flat out wrong.
Listening to Today and they are talking about the problem with bots taking all tue driving test slots.
Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.
Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?
Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.
Nope - I could use DVLAs preferred tool and give them a system within 6 months fully tested - and probably in a lot less time.
But the fix is simple - cancelled appointments go back into a pool and are available to everyone - don’t let instructors change the id on a test
Or add another question to the current system "What is your driving licence number?" And state that only someone with that licence can use that appointment, and heavily publicise that restriction. It would take less than a day to implement.
And that would help how? The problem is there are not enough test slots because there are not enough examiners. It is the same as with popular concerts. Arenas won't magically get bigger if you ban Ticketmaster. There won't be more driving tests available if you ban bots.
It helps because it means you don’t have someone booking appointments (as a tout) trying to make money from it.
If you can’t make money from it the touts would stop booking appointments because they wouldn’t be able to sell them to for £200 more.
Now granted it would screw up a few honest driving instructors but it’s a necessary evil.
The lack of test examiners is completely separate to the fact people can currently operate as touts - and while more examiners would reduce the market value of a test it won’t fix the problem that people can currently profit from it
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
UK-focused or looking overseas too?
Very much UK focused. Not planning to discuss the whys and wherefores of foreign crises unless they are directly impacting onto the UK.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
It's sometimes suggested that part of the 'British Problem' is our parliamentary structure; a chamber with two sides, Government facing Opposition, two swords (!) length apart. A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
I find it hard to imagine that it's a strong effect. Perhaps stronger to my mind is the sense of tradition and responsibility that are represented by the current distinguished set-up.
(Even the daftest of MPs generally behave in the HoC)
I would be interested to see Churchill's comments when he supported retaining the face to face arrangement over a circular setup in a restored HoC after WW2. I can't find them. They were pointed out to us at school by the history master, before we went on "The London Trip", which included a visit to Parliament for some.
During the war the HoC met at Church House, where the main chamber is circular - in the CofE the houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity debate together then vote by houses.
Were Churchill's views informed by the experience of Parliament being in Church House compared to the Commons Chamber, or eg the Hemicycle arrangement of the Weimer Republic's Bundestag?
Sitting in Church House didn't last for long, though, did it? About a year if I remember rightly. After June 1941 the Commons met in the Lords instead, and continued to do so until the Commons chamber had been rebuilt in 1950.
That suggests perhaps they didn't really like the layout?
Not sure. June 1941 was also when the Blitz ended.
And since they had moved to avoid being where they could be detected, and moved times, and I think had secrecy regs in place, they could equally have judged the risk balance to have shifted.
There was a low spy risk since we controlled German spy networks in the UK.
If it had been for security, it would have been illogical to move back into the Houses of Parliament at all - which were fairly clearly identifiable! That said, it would of course have been quite hard to find a building large enough to take them all.
I don't have a list of venues, but I expect that in London there are quite a number. It would be supporting buildings and close to Westminster for centrality / wider workforce being able to stay in their locations.
For the chamber itself, there are any number of London CofE Churches that take around 1000, perhaps 40 or 50 just in a small area of Central London. It's (reaching for a rabbit hole) one physical feature that makes a difference to how Church Growth works in London.
I think the Lords were in the Lords' Chamber throughout, weren't they, and then moved to Westminster Hall?
Incidentally, do we have full Hansard records of the Commons sitting in secret in WW2?
While the Commons moved to the Lords Chamber, Peers transferred (I think) to the Robing Room; it's mentioned a number of times in the marvellous 2nd volume of the Chips Channon diaries.
You know, I would have a lot more time for people saying we should cancel net zero if these weren’t the same people that used to say that climate change is a hoax.
I'm not sure why. The more skeptical you are about the settled view of climate science of course the more upset you'd be about trashing the economy in a Canute-like attempt to reverse the crisis.
Much as I disagree with @Luckyguy1983 views on climate change (and most else) his point here is completely logical. The more you disagree with the climate change, the less logical it is to aim for net zero.
I think Horse didn't appreciate that Lucky is still in a state of what he'd term denial, about climate change.
It's not the law, it's the judgments. Equal value is fine but lawyers' arbitrary decisions on knocking off when the round ends, or customer-facing retail versus warehouse is bordering on the absurd.
Judges and the legal profession are a good deal less sensible than they once were, but I think I need some substantiation that the Equality Act merely 'consolidated' the Equal Pay Act. The latter seems to be the legal basis for these grotesque judgements.
My freeform rant could probably have done with some actual research to be honest.
But where would PB be if we all carefully fact checked our every thought before committing it to history?
It's not the law, it's the judgments. Equal value is fine but lawyers' arbitrary decisions on knocking off when the round ends, or customer-facing retail versus warehouse is bordering on the absurd.
Judges and the legal profession are a good deal less sensible than they once were, but I think I need some substantiation that the Equality Act merely 'consolidated' the Equal Pay Act. The latter seems to be the legal basis for these grotesque judgements.
My freeform rant could probably have done with some actual research to be honest.
But where would PB be if we all carefully fact checked our every thought before committing it to history?
"Equal pay for equal value" certainly has its problems. For example, bin man jobs tend to get a premium over office jobs on the basis that you have to work outdoors in all weathers. But if you have ever worked in a job centre you will lose count of the number of people who say "I couldn't work indoors". For some people, working outdoors in all weathers is actually a benefit. (Of course bin man jobs used to be popular because you knocked off early and could do something else on the side, but I am not sure that is the case now the work is mostly done by private contractors)
Listening to Today and they are talking about the problem with bots taking all tue driving test slots.
Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.
Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?
Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.
Nope - I could use DVLAs preferred tool and give them a system within 6 months fully tested - and probably in a lot less time.
But the fix is simple - cancelled appointments go back into a pool and are available to everyone - don’t let instructors change the id on a test
Or add another question to the current system "What is your driving licence number?" And state that only someone with that licence can use that appointment, and heavily publicise that restriction. It would take less than a day to implement.
And that would help how? The problem is there are not enough test slots because there are not enough examiners. It is the same as with popular concerts. Arenas won't magically get bigger if you ban Ticketmaster. There won't be more driving tests available if you ban bots.
It helps because it means you don’t have someone booking appointments (as a tout) trying to make money from it.
If you can’t make money from it the touts would stop booking appointments because they wouldn’t be able to sell them to for £200 more.
Now granted it would screw up a few honest driving instructors but it’s a necessary evil.
The lack of test examiners is completely separate to the fact people can currently operate as touts - and while more examiners would reduce the market value of a test it won’t fix the problem that people can currently profit from it
At my youngest’s driving test (which he passed, fortunately!) I was chatting to one of the examiners who told me that on one day earlier in the week no one had turned up to take any of the booked slots.
Obviously completely anecdotal, but something is going seriously wrong in the system if examiners (or students) are letting paid for tests go unused.
Tariffs are non-negotiable, negotiable, but not a negotiating tactic. They are permanent until they are paused but they will never be paused, until they are paused which means they increase. Permanent exemptions already announced are temporary, but nothing has been announced. 🤡🎪
Tariffs are non-negotiable, negotiable, but not a negotiating tactic. They are permanent until they are paused but they will never be paused, until they are paused which means they increase. Permanent exemptions already announced are temporary, but nothing has been announced. 🤡🎪
Tariffs are non-negotiable, negotiable, but not a negotiating tactic. They are permanent until they are paused but they will never be paused, until they are paused which means they increase. Permanent exemptions already announced are temporary, but nothing has been announced. 🤡🎪
New: The Gambling Commission has charged 15 people - including former MP Craig Williams and ex-CCHQ campaigning boss Tony Lee - over bets placed on the timing of the 2024 general election.
You know, I would have a lot more time for people saying we should cancel net zero if these weren’t the same people that used to say that climate change is a hoax.
I'm not sure why. The more skeptical you are about the settled view of climate science of course the more upset you'd be about trashing the economy in a Canute-like attempt to reverse the crisis.
Much as I disagree with @Luckyguy1983 views on climate change (and most else) his point here is completely logical. The more you disagree with the climate change, the less logical it is to aim for net zero.
I think Horse didn't appreciate that Lucky is still in a state of what he'd term denial, about climate change.
Sticking with "there isn't a problem with the climate" has a certain integrity.
Sashaying fron "there isn't a problem" to "there is a problem but we shouldn't do anything about it" is a move so old and so cynical that the writers of Yes, Minister gave it to Foreign Office mandarins.
Usually followed by "perhaps we could have done something, but it's too late now."
It's not the law, it's the judgments. Equal value is fine but lawyers' arbitrary decisions on knocking off when the round ends, or customer-facing retail versus warehouse is bordering on the absurd.
Judges and the legal profession are a good deal less sensible than they once were, but I think I need some substantiation that the Equality Act merely 'consolidated' the Equal Pay Act. The latter seems to be the legal basis for these grotesque judgements.
My freeform rant could probably have done with some actual research to be honest.
But where would PB be if we all carefully fact checked our every thought before committing it to history?
"Equal pay for equal value" certainly has its problems. For example, bin man jobs tend to get a premium over office jobs on the basis that you have to work outdoors in all weathers. But if you have ever worked in a job centre you will lose count of the number of people who say "I couldn't work indoors". For some people, working outdoors in all weathers is actually a benefit. (Of course bin man jobs used to be popular because you knocked off early and could do something else on the side, but I am not sure that is the case now the work is mostly done by private contractors)
It's not the law, it's the judgments. Equal value is fine but lawyers' arbitrary decisions on knocking off when the round ends, or customer-facing retail versus warehouse is bordering on the absurd.
Judges and the legal profession are a good deal less sensible than they once were, but I think I need some substantiation that the Equality Act merely 'consolidated' the Equal Pay Act. The latter seems to be the legal basis for these grotesque judgements.
My freeform rant could probably have done with some actual research to be honest.
But where would PB be if we all carefully fact checked our every thought before committing it to history?
"Equal pay for equal value" certainly has its problems. For example, bin man jobs tend to get a premium over office jobs on the basis that you have to work outdoors in all weathers. But if you have ever worked in a job centre you will lose count of the number of people who say "I couldn't work indoors". For some people, working outdoors in all weathers is actually a benefit. (Of course bin man jobs used to be popular because you knocked off early and could do something else on the side, but I am not sure that is the case now the work is mostly done by private contractors)
The main issue here is that the law has been extended far beyond it’s original intent to get judges to make determinations over whether jobs are equal based on a kind of quasi-Marxist “Labour Theory of Value” approach to whether a job has “equal worth” to another. But the entire point of a neoliberal market economy is that we let the market carry out that determination. We let the individual decisions of people deciding whether a given package of work & benefits offered by an employer makes working for them worthwhile, with the state intervening to prevent employers abusing their market advantages over employees, precisely because we don’t know a priori which jobs are equal to others, because we cannot see inside people’s hearts to their own individual preferences.
The Labour Theory of Value is bunk & using the law to bring a weird version of it in through the backdoor is going to bite us in the future.
Reflects little more than 90% of local elections are protest votes against the incumbent government
It's been two years since the last Finnish election and the Governing coalition is trailing the Opposition bloc by 14 points in recent polling - nothing unusual about that as you say.
However, in Norway, where they vote on September 8th, after a long period where the Opposition bloc, lead by the Conservatives (Hojre) had established huge leads over the ruling Social Democrat led Government (as much as 18 points at one point), a combination of the departure of the Centre Party from the Government and the coming of Trump, has propelled Labour back into an overall nine point lead and the Government bloc of parties to a five point lead which would see them re-elected.
Trump has had an impact on global politics and so far it's a positive for parties of the "centre left" and negative for parties of the "centre right". To be fair, that's not universal - in Spain and Italy, the parties of what we would call the "centre right" are still polling well in Opposition and Government respectively.
Another country's polling worth watching currently is Greece.
In France Le Pen's party also leads half the polls, in Germany the AfD lead the latest poll, in Canada (where the Trump effect was worst for the right) the Conservatives may have lost their lead but are still neck and neck with the Liberals and in Australia too Labor are still likely to lose their majority in their election next month even if they can form a government with the Teals. In the UK half the polls predict a Reform and Tory government.
The Trump effect is not very evident as far as I can see and most Nordic nations normally vote for centre left governments most of the time. Right of centre governments like Finland has now are the exception rather than the rule
Dr. Jessica M. DeWitt @jessicamdewitt.bsky.social · 9h I just attended a conference in the US. We had one speaker detained and two others turned away at the border.
This again is nothing new. I have been to loads of conferences in the US where people have been refused visas, had their visa decline upon entry, etc. It has been a constant source of annoyance for donkeys years that how can world class academics attending a top tier academic conference with an accepted paper not get entry.
Some have even set up virtual sessions for exactly these people to be able to present.
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
So they'll end up blaming Trump for not bringing back the past because those jobs are not going to come back.
No they support Trump whacking cheap Chinese imports with tariffs to bring some of the production of those goods back to the US
They won't support paying the higher prices this implies though.
Average hourly wage in the US: $24.10, while in China it was around $3.60 (2022 figures).
The more they buy American goods, the less the tariffs rise hits them too
I think she just meant "Hold on - I know where you're going to go with that", rather than having a problem with him being of Jewish descent. (Not that I know anything about this woman. She also looked as though she was acting.)
What he was saying was pretty stupid. Not all ethnic groups who come to Britain relate to the culture they come to, the culture they bring with them, and the culture in the region where maybe their cousins continue to live, in the same way, and religion crosses all of that. It varies a lot. It varies a lot even within ethnic groups. E.g. there are many of Pakistani, Irish, or Jewish descent who couldn't give a toss about Pakistan, Ireland, or Israel. Similarly people of British descent living in Australia vary a lot in their level of interest in Britain. Personally I can't stand it when someone who has emigrated keeps talking about the country they left. Fabricant is right that Islam is proselytic and Judaism is not, but the huge majority of Muslims are not proselytic person-to-person unless a non-Muslim expresses an interest. (They are similar to most Christians in that respect.) Fabricant himself is of course proselytic for his politics. He should grow up and recognise Britain doesn't belong to white natives.
So why don't those people who think they would be better off working in a factory actually get a job in a factory ?
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
What was the point in training them to do something Chinese workers have been trained for decades to do - with great manual dexterity - for a small fraction of the cost required of an American? Who would possibly put money into that?
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
There will be plenty of vacancies for skilled workers in US manufacturing, and the US economy generally, right now.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
Most Trump voters do not have the level of high skill required for the non automated manufacturing jobs still on offer in the US.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
So they'll end up blaming Trump for not bringing back the past because those jobs are not going to come back.
No they support Trump whacking cheap Chinese imports with tariffs to bring some of the production of those goods back to the US
But HY Trump bringing jobs back to Illinois is not going to happen. Tim Cook doesn't want it, shareholders don't want it. Consumers don't want it. It's a chimera.
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
UK-focused or looking overseas too?
Very much UK focused. Not planning to discuss the whys and wherefores of foreign crises unless they are directly impacting onto the UK.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
It's sometimes suggested that part of the 'British Problem' is our parliamentary structure; a chamber with two sides, Government facing Opposition, two swords (!) length apart. A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
I find it hard to imagine that it's a strong effect. Perhaps stronger to my mind is the sense of tradition and responsibility that are represented by the current distinguished set-up.
(Even the daftest of MPs generally behave in the HoC)
I would be interested to see Churchill's comments when he supported retaining the face to face arrangement over a circular setup in a restored HoC after WW2. I can't find them. They were pointed out to us at school by the history master, before we went on "The London Trip", which included a visit to Parliament for some.
During the war the HoC met at Church House, where the main chamber is circular - in the CofE the houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity debate together then vote by houses.
Were Churchill's views informed by the experience of Parliament being in Church House compared to the Commons Chamber, or eg the Hemicycle arrangement of the Weimer Republic's Bundestag?
Sitting in Church House didn't last for long, though, did it? About a year if I remember rightly. After June 1941 the Commons met in the Lords instead, and continued to do so until the Commons chamber had been rebuilt in 1950.
That suggests perhaps they didn't really like the layout?
Not sure. June 1941 was also when the Blitz ended.
And since they had moved to avoid being where they could be detected, and moved times, and I think had secrecy regs in place, they could equally have judged the risk balance to have shifted.
There was a low spy risk since we controlled German spy networks in the UK.
If it had been for security, it would have been illogical to move back into the Houses of Parliament at all - which were fairly clearly identifiable! That said, it would of course have been quite hard to find a building large enough to take them all.
Rehash the Ford Engine plant in Bridgend. Loads of room there. Job's a good 'un!
You know, I would have a lot more time for people saying we should cancel net zero if these weren’t the same people that used to say that climate change is a hoax.
I'm not sure why. The more skeptical you are about the settled view of climate science of course the more upset you'd be about trashing the economy in a Canute-like attempt to reverse the crisis.
Much as I disagree with @Luckyguy1983 views on climate change (and most else) his point here is completely logical. The more you disagree with the climate change, the less logical it is to aim for net zero.
We do seem to have a habit of (at times) trying to throw out the house, bathroom and bath alongside the bath water
There is this strange idea that we have to be 100% perfect when we should be aiming for 100% in the areas where it’s possible and accepting that the last 5% is impossible so we just mitigate the issues as best we can
I think she just meant "Hold on - I know where you're going to go with that", rather than having a problem with him being of Jewish descent. (Not that I know anything about this woman. She also looked as though she was acting.)
What he was saying was pretty stupid. Not all ethnic groups who come to Britain relate to the culture they come to, the culture they bring with them, and the culture in the region where maybe their cousins continue to live, in the same way, and religion crosses all of that. It varies a lot. It varies a lot even within ethnic groups. E.g. there are many of Pakistani, Irish, or Jewish descent who couldn't give a toss about Pakistan, Ireland, or Israel. Similarly people of British descent living in Australia vary a lot in their level of interest in Britain. Personally I can't stand it when someone who has emigrated keeps talking about the country they left. Fabricant is right that Islam is proselytic and Judaism is not, but the huge majority of Muslims are not proselytic person-to-person unless a non-Muslim expresses an interest. Fabricant himself is of course proselytic for his politics. He should grow up and recognise Britain doesn't belong to white natives.
It does however belong to British culture and that includes learning the language, respecting our laws and traditions.
You know, I would have a lot more time for people saying we should cancel net zero if these weren’t the same people that used to say that climate change is a hoax.
I'm not sure why. The more skeptical you are about the settled view of climate science of course the more upset you'd be about trashing the economy in a Canute-like attempt to reverse the crisis.
Much as I disagree with @Luckyguy1983 views on climate change (and most else) his point here is completely logical. The more you disagree with the climate change, the less logical it is to aim for net zero.
Horse wasn't saying their position is illogical. He was saying he "would have a lot more time" for them if they weren't climate change deniers. Their position is logical based on their beliefs. The point is their beliefs are flat out wrong.
Such certainty..😏 When I look out of my window I don't instantly think/see "climate emergency"
I think the key fact from that poll is more Americans want to work in a factory than currently do.
That also explains the vote for Trump as in the rustbelt manufacturing jobs were better paid than most jobs
But he's sold them a pup. If Nike or Apple moved to Michigan or Illinois the factories would be so automated that employment opportunities would be sparse. The actual benefit to the US economy over and above the uplift from the Chinese product to retail point of sale would be minimal for the US economy in the grand scheme of things, and more expensive domestic manufacturing would be inflationary. Now the negative impact of exporting manufacturing to China has merit for discussion, as has the sale of key assets to potential enemy nations, but perhaps those are debates we should have had thirty five years ago. We are where we are.
As to the notion that we can rebuild Elbert Gary's steelworks to compete with the Chinese or the Indians is for the birds. Equally the golden days of Dearborn are gone forever. For context, Ford in Dagenham in 1960 employed around 40,000 workers, Nissan in Sunderland today employs 6,000 people and automation means that number is declining.
Perhaps Trump also needs a tax on robots and automation by corporations, even if Musk and Bezos would go mad
It's not the law, it's the judgments. Equal value is fine but lawyers' arbitrary decisions on knocking off when the round ends, or customer-facing retail versus warehouse is bordering on the absurd.
Judges and the legal profession are a good deal less sensible than they once were, but I think I need some substantiation that the Equality Act merely 'consolidated' the Equal Pay Act. The latter seems to be the legal basis for these grotesque judgements.
My freeform rant could probably have done with some actual research to be honest.
But where would PB be if we all carefully fact checked our every thought before committing it to history?
"Equal pay for equal value" certainly has its problems. For example, bin man jobs tend to get a premium over office jobs on the basis that you have to work outdoors in all weathers. But if you have ever worked in a job centre you will lose count of the number of people who say "I couldn't work indoors". For some people, working outdoors in all weathers is actually a benefit. (Of course bin man jobs used to be popular because you knocked off early and could do something else on the side, but I am not sure that is the case now the work is mostly done by private contractors)
The main issue here is that the law has been extended far beyond it’s original intent to get judges to make determinations over whether jobs are equal based on a kind of quasi-Marxist “Labour Theory of Value” approach to whether a job has “equal worth” to another. But the entire point of a neoliberal market economy is that we let the market carry out that determination. We let the individual decisions of people deciding whether a given package of work & benefits offered by an employer makes working for them worthwhile, with the state intervening to prevent employers abusing their market advantages over employees, precisely because we don’t know a priori which jobs are equal to others, because we cannot see inside people’s hearts to their own individual preferences.
The Labour Theory of Value is bunk & using the law to bring a weird version of it in through the backdoor is going to bite us in the future.
NB. On the Labour Theory of Value - I always found it quite amusing that one of the local universities to me had to put a heavy thumb on the scale for IT salaries as otherwise they found that the pay they were offering would get them precisely no applicants whatsoever.
Yes, congratulations - you can assert that a librarian is equivalent to a systems administrator & put them on the same pay grades based on your internal assessment of their qualities all you like, but Mr Market disagrees & you can either pay more or you can get no systems administrators: Which is it going to be?
The problem is that having established case law there’s now going to be a law firm sniffing around the university sector looking for cases like this to argue that all those librarians & IT staff should have been paid the same after all, potentially bankrupting the university in question. I don’t think the government appreciates the potential for this to blow up multiple industries if it gets out of hand.
I've just watched through the pilot episode of our new politics YouTube channel. Just like the launch of GBeebies there are some technical tweaks to make, but broadly I think it works.
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
I don't envy you having to choose your audience there. It seems to need:
A - Some other platform or reputation to build a brand. Examples: Rest is Politics, News Agents, various comedians.
B - A carefully defined vertical or social niche, to be dominant within.
C - Providing comms within a pre-existing community.
or D - A willingness to go for outrage / trolling.
and being eclectic, combining pillar content with instant commentary, can be difficult - as can breaking out.
This is an interesting pair of vids from A DIfferent Bias (motto: non torsii subligarium ), looking at why indy commentators do better than political parties. One of my current occasional watches - lefty but not (too) heavily party aligned.
New: The Gambling Commission has charged 15 people - including former MP Craig Williams and ex-CCHQ campaigning boss Tony Lee - over bets placed on the timing of the 2024 general election.
Comments
The right wing in general performed pretty poorly and the PS especially poorly.
If more in Ontario swing seats than Alberta Poilievre could become PM.
Though most polls still have the Liberals ahead
1. The manufacturing sector is a vast category. I know what the poll’s getting at, but you could be in manufacturing as an aeronautical engineer or a materials scientist for AI chips, or you could be screwing on the heads of plastic dolls on a production line or gutting fish for a frozen food producer. Some jobs are more useful for an economy than others.
2. I am now working in the energy generation industry as I’ve got 10kw of solar panels on the French house. Since we arrived for the first time since installing the weather has been crap and overcast and they’re hardly generating anything.
3. How do they get the grass at Augusta so perfectly smooth and deep green? Always amazes me watching the Masters how the entire course looks AI-generated. No other championship course I can think of does it quite so extremely.
Many of their fathers worked on mass production line jobs though robots or Chinese workers now do
Reflects little more than 90% of local elections are protest votes against the incumbent government
Tough crowd this morning.
@RepJackKimble
I wanted to make a quick apology. Last night, I referred to President Bukele of El Salvador as President Bukkake. This was the fault of spell check and not me. When you type a word a lot spellcheck will start to change words that are close to it. I will be complaining to Apple
https://x.com/RepJackKimble/status/1911466178838773781
During the war the HoC met at Church House, where the main chamber is circular - in the CofE the houses of Bishops, Clergy and Laity debate together then vote by houses.
Were Churchill's views informed by the experience of Parliament being in Church House compared to the Commons Chamber, or eg the Hemicycle arrangement of the Weimer Republic's Bundestag?
As to the notion that we can rebuild Elbert Gary's steelworks to compete with the Chinese or the Indians is for the birds. Equally the golden days of Dearborn are gone forever. For context, Ford in Dagenham in 1960 employed around 40,000 workers, Nissan in Sunderland today employs 6,000 people and automation means that number is declining.
"What is your driving licence number?"
And state that only someone with that licence can use that appointment, and heavily publicise that restriction.
It would take less than a day to implement.
And there certainly will not be any manufacturing jobs for these unskilled Trump voters you keep talking about.
https://www.prwatch.org/spin/2010/09/9423/washington-post-duped-fake-congressman
Average hourly wage in the US: $24.10, while in China it was around $3.60 (2022 figures).
Dr. Jessica M. DeWitt @jessicamdewitt.bsky.social
·
9h
I just attended a conference in the US. We had one speaker detained and two others turned away at the border.
https://bsky.app/profile/jessicamdewitt.bsky.social/post/3lmq67exs5c26
That suggests perhaps they didn't really like the layout?
Why they were miserable was not explained.
Although that was not quite as good as the one that changed 'we cannot currently permit pigs on site' which weirdly became 'we cannot permit piss on site.'
This caused much hilarity at the committee meeting in question...including a suggestion that it didn't hold water.
And they ain't coming back
Enter, or re-enter in 2032 / 2036, Vance.
And since they had moved to avoid being where they could be detected, and moved times, and I think had secrecy regs in place, they could equally have judged the risk balance to have shifted.
There was a low spy risk since we controlled German spy networks in the UK.
Is there anything in Churchill's War Diaries?
Rep. Jack Kimble
@RepJackKimble Apr 13
When did this country suddenly turn against speaking loudly and slowly. I've gotten by in life with only English and that simple trick. I don't need to learn woke languages.
https://x.com/RepJackKimble/status/1911193923906592967
The Liaison Strategies rolling daily poll is going the other way - last three days, Liberals +5, then +7 and yesterday +8.
The daily Nanos Research Poll has a Liberal lead of around +6. The weekly MQO Research poll has shown a very small reduction in the Liberal lead - yesterday's was +9, previous was +10, the one before that +11.
Mainstreet looks an outlier to be honest but it may not be.
The overnight polls from Australia continue to show a strengthening in the Labor position with the two party polling showing Labor leads of 7 points (Resolve) and 9 points (Roy Morgan). Last time, Labor beat the Coalition by 4 points in the two party polling so we could even be looking at an increase in the Labor majority on the current polling numbers.
Must be a problem for Plaid Cymru.
Commendably honest, if nothing else.
Just been asked by the airline in Singapore to provide a UK Electronic Travel Authorisation to get back into the UK. Came as a bit of a surprise but a deeper look into the Gov site showed I didn’t need one. Glad I turned up early as it might have been a bit of a hassle if I had a queue behind me .
Wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few Daily Mail stories about Border checks changing in 2025.
For the chamber itself, there are any number of London CofE Churches that take around 1000, perhaps 40 or 50 just in a small area of Central London. It's (reaching for a rabbit hole) one physical feature that makes a difference to how Church Growth works in London.
I think the Lords were in the Lords' Chamber throughout, weren't they, and then moved to Westminster Hall?
Incidentally, do we have full Hansard records of the Commons sitting in secret in WW2?
I wonder, if government focussed remorselessly on a 'do all our boring duties really well' instead of 'reform, change, dead cats, third runway, this week's new wheeze' we might like them better.
However, in Norway, where they vote on September 8th, after a long period where the Opposition bloc, lead by the Conservatives (Hojre) had established huge leads over the ruling Social Democrat led Government (as much as 18 points at one point), a combination of the departure of the Centre Party from the Government and the coming of Trump, has propelled Labour back into an overall nine point lead and the Government bloc of parties to a five point lead which would see them re-elected.
Trump has had an impact on global politics and so far it's a positive for parties of the "centre left" and negative for parties of the "centre right". To be fair, that's not universal - in Spain and Italy, the parties of what we would call the "centre right" are still polling well in Opposition and Government respectively.
Another country's polling worth watching currently is Greece.
Other contenders
Sihanoukville
The capital of Transnistria
Odessa in wartime (if that counts)
Mompox (if it’s a city)
https://x.com/TicTocTick/status/1911403555468042496
It's also what Starmer is meant to be good at, though it's not something that's going to be quick.
California has a State Assembly, not a House of Representatives, there are no Assembly members named Jack Kimble either, and the one representing the 54th is a Democrat.
The bio for the @RepJackKimble’s account says he’s a "Republican representing CA’s 54th Dist. & co-sponsor of Poe’s Law." Suggest you look up Poe's Law maybe.
It wouldn't seem unreasonable to get the DfT Perm Sec into the SOS's office and tell him to have a solution by this time next week. In the meantime, maybe they should suspend bookings.
Far too sane to be a real politician in the US right now.
EDIT: When individuals book a test, it is linked to your personal details and can't be transferred. That is the current system, right now.
If you can’t make money from it the touts would stop booking appointments because they wouldn’t be able to sell them to for £200 more.
Now granted it would screw up a few honest driving instructors but it’s a necessary evil.
The lack of test examiners is completely separate to the fact people can currently operate as touts - and while more examiners would reduce the market value of a test it won’t fix the problem that people can currently profit from it
Trisha accuses Fabricant of slipping into Islamophobia moments after she shouts “Oi” when he says he is of Jewish extraction:
https://x.com/nicolelampert/status/1910975709989794010
But where would PB be if we all carefully fact checked our every thought before committing it to history?
Obviously completely anecdotal, but something is going seriously wrong in the system if examiners (or students) are letting paid for tests go unused.
🚨TARIFF UPDATE:
Tariffs are non-negotiable, negotiable, but not a negotiating tactic. They are permanent until they are paused but they will never be paused, until they are paused which means they increase. Permanent exemptions already announced are temporary, but nothing has been announced.
🤡🎪
https://bsky.app/profile/newseye.bsky.social/post/3lmpuvlhhfc2j
https://x.com/rasmusjarlov/status/1911359707916234817?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Complete disaster.
New: The Gambling Commission has charged 15 people - including former MP Craig Williams and ex-CCHQ campaigning boss Tony Lee - over bets placed on the timing of the 2024 general election.
https://x.com/Geri_E_L_Scott/status/1911722226442699067
Sashaying fron "there isn't a problem" to "there is a problem but we shouldn't do anything about it" is a move so old and so cynical that the writers of Yes, Minister gave it to Foreign Office mandarins.
Usually followed by "perhaps we could have done something, but it's too late now."
The Labour Theory of Value is bunk & using the law to bring a weird version of it in through the backdoor is going to bite us in the future.
The Trump effect is not very evident as far as I can see and most Nordic nations normally vote for centre left governments most of the time. Right of centre governments like Finland has now are the exception rather than the rule
Some have even set up virtual sessions for exactly these people to be able to present.
I suspect $10k a year - for nothing - will be tempting for an awful lot of Greenlanders. As it would be for almost anyone
However the problem will be: can they believe Trump, how will it work, etc - he’s made himself look so unreliably volatile he can’t be trusted
What he was saying was pretty stupid. Not all ethnic groups who come to Britain relate to the culture they come to, the culture they bring with them, and the culture in the region where maybe their cousins continue to live, in the same way, and religion crosses all of that. It varies a lot. It varies a lot even within ethnic groups. E.g. there are many of Pakistani, Irish, or Jewish descent who couldn't give a toss about Pakistan, Ireland, or Israel. Similarly people of British descent living in Australia vary a lot in their level of interest in Britain. Personally I can't stand it when someone who has emigrated keeps talking about the country they left. Fabricant is right that Islam is proselytic and Judaism is not, but the huge majority of Muslims are not proselytic person-to-person unless a non-Muslim expresses an interest. (They are similar to most Christians in that respect.) Fabricant himself is of course proselytic for his politics. He should grow up and recognise Britain doesn't belong to white natives.
There is this strange idea that we have to be 100% perfect when we should be aiming for 100% in the areas where it’s possible and accepting that the last 5% is impossible so we just mitigate the issues as best we can
Otherwise Reform will surge even further
Yes, congratulations - you can assert that a librarian is equivalent to a systems administrator & put them on the same pay grades based on your internal assessment of their qualities all you like, but Mr Market disagrees & you can either pay more or you can get no systems administrators: Which is it going to be?
The problem is that having established case law there’s now going to be a law firm sniffing around the university sector looking for cases like this to argue that all those librarians & IT staff should have been paid the same after all, potentially bankrupting the university in question. I don’t think the government appreciates the potential for this to blow up multiple industries if it gets out of hand.
A - Some other platform or reputation to build a brand. Examples: Rest is Politics, News Agents, various comedians.
B - A carefully defined vertical or social niche, to be dominant within.
C - Providing comms within a pre-existing community.
or D - A willingness to go for outrage / trolling.
and being eclectic, combining pillar content with instant commentary, can be difficult - as can breaking out.
This is an interesting pair of vids from A DIfferent Bias (motto: non torsii subligarium ), looking at why indy commentators do better than political parties. One of my current occasional watches - lefty but not (too) heavily party aligned.
You Won't Believe the Right-Wing Media Reach Today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAJNx1KwPak
Biggest YouTube Mistakes Made by Progressive Politicians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJeTypJyWHQ