In this one-minute clip from The Rest is Politics, Rory suggests most pundits are wrongly framing Trump's position on Ukraine, which leads them to say he was outmanoeuvred. Looked at from another angle, Trump might be succeeding.
FWIW I think Rory is about right. He has been on this line for a time.
Two things, one certain, the other likely. Certain: Trump thinks Europe is two power blocs, Russian and western and that exactly where the dividing line comes somewhere in central Europe - which is in fact what the current war is about in his mind - is a matter for Europe and he doesn't care.
Likely: That Trump is actively pro Russia.
Realist conclusion: It is obvious that USA is not willing to risk a single soldier's life over where that boundary is drawn in this war.
Next realist conclusion: It is not yet obvious that a single large 'western' (NATO) country is willing to either.
'Security guarantees' means risking your soldiers' lives. No western leader has yet said so. When they do we shall know they are serious.
Rory is such a loss to front line politics. We desperately need people like him, people capable of actually thinking and analysing the problems we have.
I agree with him that Trump really doesn't care about Europe, the Ukraine or NATO. As far as he is concerned why should US resources be wasted on this? What's in it for them? As Charles De Gaulle said, "countries have interests, not friends." On this it is us that are deluding ourselves, not Trump. If Europe decides it has an interest in preventing Russia's aggression in Ukraine succeeding, and we do, we must do something about it. Expecting the Americans to bail us out is both pathetic and unrealistic.
This Rory Stewart:
Kamala Harris will win comfortably, because:
• Biden’s admin has been solid • Trump’s lost ground since 2016 • The young Black male votes which Trump needs didn’t turn out in 16, 18, 20, or 22 • Young women like Kamala + vote ✴️Ignore polls—they’re herding, after past misses
Stewart is the type of 'expert' who sees nothing wrong with unrestricted illegal immigration but gets upset about the possibility of them being deported.
RS getting one prediction wrong is a single data point and says nothing about him except that occasion.
Your last para is straw manning a touch.
He's been arguing for a deal with France to send all people from small boats back instantly, alongside opening legal routes, on the basis that that will then remove any incentive for small boat crossings.
PS The problem I see with that position is that there is no immediate upside for France, which will cause Macron's party problems with their far right opponents.
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
I’ve made his profile public again.
Leon, for the final time stop making your profile private.
But others are allowed to be private
If this is a rule for all, fair enough. If you are singling out me, alone, and applying this rule solely to me, then we have an issue
It applies to everybody.
When I am in front of the laptop I’ll see who else is private and update their profiles accordingly.
There are quite a lot of PBers who are private. Several on here right now
Including me.
I didn’t know it was a rule to be honest.
It makes searching for comments in relation to moderation difficult.
In the past Vanilla allowed us to disable private profiles then they had an upgrade.
All a public profile will show is your username and your past comments (and the last time you logged on).
It will not allow others to see your email/IP addresses.
I see you’ve now switched my profile to public, for me
As you’ve done that, you can also do it to @Eabhal and @Dura_Ace and @Roger and @Taz - as they are also private. Nothing is stopping you doing that right now as you have done it to me
Don Estelle had an incredible voice. By all accounts, he was strapped for cash in his later years once his star had faded. The same is true of many former politicians, and every landslide brings stories of unemployed ex-MPs as reliably as it does of paper candidates surprisingly elected.
Yes, he was typecast. He used to go round shopping centres singing and selling his cassettes of his songs. Just to earn a living. Residuals from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum were not great as it did not get the repeat viewings other Perry/croft stuff did. He was Similar to faded seventies comedians playing holiday parks and flogging their cassettes.
I do not mix in showbiz circles but a foaf was a soap regular back in the 1980s and I was surprised to learn she was paid only a middle class professional salary. What the red-tops might pay for a single juicy leak. Adverts and ‘corporates’ were where the big money was. Things are probably different now, and not necessarily in a good way.
I do mix in showbiz circles and I hear some amazing stories of huge money
Eg an acquaintance of mine - a British actor - has just landed a minor role in a popular US sitcom. He appears in each programme for about a minute, on average
He was quite broke til he landed this gig. Now? He’s making $300,000 a year. For about twenty minutes work, on a screen, per year
And don’t get me onto writers. I heard the other day about the writer of a very well known tv series. A big hit in the UK, then the USA
It was so big Hollywood was determined to make multiple movies out of it and new tv adaptations and so on
Then holywood discovered that his canny agent had put - in his very first contract - that he would get a hefty percentage of the worldwide GROSS the movies and new tv stuff made. Plus a huge fee simply for agreeing to this
As a result he has made - I kid you not - HUNDREDS of millions of pounds. Not just a lot of millions. Hundreds
Me? Jealous? No! I’m happy in flint world
🤯
Didn’t that happen to Alec Guinness with Star Wars. He took a small salary but ended with a percentage of the gross which was millions. Earned more from that than his entire career beforehand.
Didn’t know that. Hope it’s true. Fine actor
On checking his IMDb profile it looks like it was.
It’s not “$300,000” for 20 mins work.
Assuming it’s 1m per episode, that’s at least 20 days work and more likely 40 on set (say 400 hours but possibly more). Plus travel time, etc.
It’s still very well paid, obviously at around £600 per hour but that’s only about the same as a partner at a second tier law firm in London.
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
I’ve made his profile public again.
Leon, for the final time stop making your profile private.
But others are allowed to be private
If this is a rule for all, fair enough. If you are singling out me, alone, and applying this rule solely to me, then we have an issue
It applies to everybody.
When I am in front of the laptop I’ll see who else is private and update their profiles accordingly.
There are quite a lot of PBers who are private. Several on here right now
Including me.
I didn’t know it was a rule to be honest.
It makes searching for comments in relation to moderation difficult.
In the past Vanilla allowed us to disable private profiles then they had an upgrade.
All a public profile will show is your username and your past comments (and the last time you logged on).
It will not allow others to see your email/IP addresses.
I see you’ve now switched my profile to public, for me
As you’ve done that, you can also do it to @Eabhal and @Dura_Ace and @Roger and @Taz - as they are also private. Nothing is stopping you doing that right now as you have done it to me
Don Estelle had an incredible voice. By all accounts, he was strapped for cash in his later years once his star had faded. The same is true of many former politicians, and every landslide brings stories of unemployed ex-MPs as reliably as it does of paper candidates surprisingly elected.
Yes, he was typecast. He used to go round shopping centres singing and selling his cassettes of his songs. Just to earn a living. Residuals from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum were not great as it did not get the repeat viewings other Perry/croft stuff did. He was Similar to faded seventies comedians playing holiday parks and flogging their cassettes.
I do not mix in showbiz circles but a foaf was a soap regular back in the 1980s and I was surprised to learn she was paid only a middle class professional salary. What the red-tops might pay for a single juicy leak. Adverts and ‘corporates’ were where the big money was. Things are probably different now, and not necessarily in a good way.
I do mix in showbiz circles and I hear some amazing stories of huge money
Eg an acquaintance of mine - a British actor - has just landed a minor role in a popular US sitcom. He appears in each programme for about a minute, on average
He was quite broke til he landed this gig. Now? He’s making $300,000 a year. For about twenty minutes work, on a screen, per year
And don’t get me onto writers. I heard the other day about the writer of a very well known tv series. A big hit in the UK, then the USA
It was so big Hollywood was determined to make multiple movies out of it and new tv adaptations and so on
Then holywood discovered that his canny agent had put - in his very first contract - that he would get a hefty percentage of the worldwide GROSS the movies and new tv stuff made. Plus a huge fee simply for agreeing to this
As a result he has made - I kid you not - HUNDREDS of millions of pounds. Not just a lot of millions. Hundreds
Me? Jealous? No! I’m happy in flint world
🤯
My sister in law and brother in law are both actors. They get by ok, but only with additional jobs. He was largely in the West End and was nominated for an Olivier award sometime ago. He would play major roles in musicals and the year he got nominated he was the lead in a well known musical. She does do a lot of theatre but is more well known for TV and has played the lead in a couple of dramas and subsidiary roles in a lot (particularly soaps), but has also had a major role in an American (I suspect made for TV) film. Her most notable roles, for me anyway, were a murderer in Taggart and a floozy in Blackadder.
We have met a number of their friends whom we see on TV a lot. They all get by but none are rich. Like a few professions those at the top command high salaries, the vast majority less so.
If you want to make insane money, guaranteed, come up with a great TV concept that sells around the world
My flint work agent represents the guy who invented Masterchef. Which has been adapted and remade in about 30 countries. They have to pay him every time they adapt it, and he gets a fee - from each country - every time an episode is broadcast
He basically sits under an Iguazu Falls of cash. Doesn’t do anything and the cheques roll in. Vast torrents of moolah. Many many millions
I don’t know why kids are worrying about the robots taking all the jobs. All they gotta do is come up with a genius TV idea that can be exported worldwide
But you need to make sure you own the rights to it. I was reading a Twitter thread from a guy who worked with a tv channel on a format for a car show (no, not Top Gear) for daytime TV. Cut a long story short they ran with it, he got zip.
TV is utterly ruthless for stitching up the humble creatives. Or indeed anyone. Worse than Hollywood. People will shamelessly steal ideas and backstab colleagues on a whim
Get a really good agent. And get a rock solid contract
I came up with an idea where you would circumnavigate the globe by car, but only in countries where you drive on the left. Was nicked by Alan Partridge. Still gutted by that.
It's annoying how obvious ideas for TV shows like Millionaire and Masterchef are once they're being produced. Yet if someone else had come up with the idea first, they'd be getting the royalties instead.
How about Deal or No Deal? Half an hour of an overweight lady from Wolverhampton opening boxes with Noel Edmonds? Obvious winner. If only I'd seen that blatant truth.
The genius in that is how after the result the game goes on to see what the person would have won if they hadn't settled. It's just as tense as the first bit. It plays on psychology in that winning say £50k when you would have won £250k feels gutting even though you're £50k richer. And the contestant always trying to stay cheerful and not bothered. Bit nasty, really, but very effective. And of course Edmonds, strange little man in many ways but really knows his way around a tv studio.
Look at what you could have won.....copyright Jim Bowen.
Yes it's a naunced and prolonged version of that.
I once spent half an hour interviewing Tim Harford on the economics of sustainable development whilst on secondment at the FT. We had a rich and mutually respectful discussion until, as my last question, I challenged his latest column panning Deal or No Deal as TV for idiots.
My argument, which I still stand by, is that it is brilliant TV precisely because it is a psychological game in which you are trying to convince the banker that you are stupid enough to go to the end regardless. If you win this psychological struggle then the banker will offer you higher deals in order to try to sway you from your commitment. Your actual objective is to deal at peak appearance of stupidity.
Harford wasn't buying it and, having spent half an hour building up quite a bit of credibility for my unconventional economic arguments, he almost instantaneously reverted to "why have I just wasted half an hour with this imbecile?"
That's a very teacher way of looking at it. Are Year 9 saying "I don't know" because they really don't know, or because it's easier to say that than the alternative?
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
I’ve made his profile public again.
Leon, for the final time stop making your profile private.
But others are allowed to be private
If this is a rule for all, fair enough. If you are singling out me, alone, and applying this rule solely to me, then we have an issue
It applies to everybody.
When I am in front of the laptop I’ll see who else is private and update their profiles accordingly.
There are quite a lot of PBers who are private. Several on here right now
Including me.
I didn’t know it was a rule to be honest.
It makes searching for comments in relation to moderation difficult.
In the past Vanilla allowed us to disable private profiles then they had an upgrade.
All a public profile will show is your username and your past comments (and the last time you logged on).
It will not allow others to see your email/IP addresses.
I see you’ve now switched my profile to public, for me
As you’ve done that, you can also do it to @Eabhal and @Dura_Ace and @Roger and @Taz - as they are also private. Nothing is stopping you doing that right now as you have done it to me
Don Estelle had an incredible voice. By all accounts, he was strapped for cash in his later years once his star had faded. The same is true of many former politicians, and every landslide brings stories of unemployed ex-MPs as reliably as it does of paper candidates surprisingly elected.
Yes, he was typecast. He used to go round shopping centres singing and selling his cassettes of his songs. Just to earn a living. Residuals from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum were not great as it did not get the repeat viewings other Perry/croft stuff did. He was Similar to faded seventies comedians playing holiday parks and flogging their cassettes.
I do not mix in showbiz circles but a foaf was a soap regular back in the 1980s and I was surprised to learn she was paid only a middle class professional salary. What the red-tops might pay for a single juicy leak. Adverts and ‘corporates’ were where the big money was. Things are probably different now, and not necessarily in a good way.
I do mix in showbiz circles and I hear some amazing stories of huge money
Eg an acquaintance of mine - a British actor - has just landed a minor role in a popular US sitcom. He appears in each programme for about a minute, on average
He was quite broke til he landed this gig. Now? He’s making $300,000 a year. For about twenty minutes work, on a screen, per year
And don’t get me onto writers. I heard the other day about the writer of a very well known tv series. A big hit in the UK, then the USA
It was so big Hollywood was determined to make multiple movies out of it and new tv adaptations and so on
Then holywood discovered that his canny agent had put - in his very first contract - that he would get a hefty percentage of the worldwide GROSS the movies and new tv stuff made. Plus a huge fee simply for agreeing to this
As a result he has made - I kid you not - HUNDREDS of millions of pounds. Not just a lot of millions. Hundreds
Me? Jealous? No! I’m happy in flint world
🤯
Didn’t that happen to Alec Guinness with Star Wars. He took a small salary but ended with a percentage of the gross which was millions. Earned more from that than his entire career beforehand.
Didn’t know that. Hope it’s true. Fine actor
On checking his IMDb profile it looks like it was.
It’s not “$300,000” for 20 mins work.
Assuming it’s 1m per episode, that’s at least 20 days work and more likely 40 on set (say 400 hours but possibly more). Plus travel time, etc.
It’s still very well paid, obviously at around £600 per hour but that’s only about the same as a partner at a second tier law firm in London.
What are you on about episodes ?
We’re discussing the deal he negotiated for Star Wars which gave him a low basic and a percentage of the gross profits. As the profits were huge and he made milllions from that.
This was the IMDb Comment I’m referring to
‘Guinness had a 2.25% interest in the revenue from Star Wars (1977), which would be the highest grossing movie at the time (and second only to Gone with the Wind (1939) when adjusted for inflation). Guinness had agreed to a 2% interest to make the film, but he reported that just before release during a telephone conversation George Lucas had offered an additional 0.5% because of how supportive and helpful Guinness had been (with dialogue, other actors, etc.). After the release and stunning results at the box office, Guinness asked to confirm the additional 0.5% in writing, but was told it was (reduced to) 0.25%, although it is not clear who had decided this. This was revealed by Guinness in the 1977 interview with BBC's Michael Parkinson on the series "Talking Pictures". It was in general supported by many public comments by Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher all speaking highly of Guinness' professionalism and impact on the set. Apparently, Guinness did not quibble the 1977 worldwide revenue for Star Wars of $400+ million making Guinness' 2.25% probably around $9m for that year alone, with additional revenue well into 1979. In comparison, that exceeds other British actor high-water marks for Sean Connery and Roger Moore in the 1970s playing James Bond ($1m salary + $3-5m depending on revenue interests per film e.g. 5-12%).’
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
Well it looks like you’re about to drive me off the site, as @TSE is imposing a unique rule, solely for me, that if I post on here my profile must be public. But this only applies to me
If so, well done
No desire to do so @leon. See my response to @TheScreamingEagles made before I saw your post. You should not be treated differently. My motive was that I was unable to see a post of yours that I wanted to reference which is perfectly reasonable.
Fair enough
By the way you do realise you can search vanilla by keyword? So, if you remember a comment well enough, it’s really not hard to find. And “privacy” does not stop you searching any comments with that method
I wrote a scraper, a little time ago. Turned PB, going back to the available start into a database.
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
I’ve made his profile public again.
Leon, for the final time stop making your profile private.
But others are allowed to be private
If this is a rule for all, fair enough. If you are singling out me, alone, and applying this rule solely to me, then we have an issue
It applies to everybody.
When I am in front of the laptop I’ll see who else is private and update their profiles accordingly.
There are quite a lot of PBers who are private. Several on here right now
Including me.
I didn’t know it was a rule to be honest.
It makes searching for comments in relation to moderation difficult.
In the past Vanilla allowed us to disable private profiles then they had an upgrade.
All a public profile will show is your username and your past comments (and the last time you logged on).
It will not allow others to see your email/IP addresses.
I see you’ve now switched my profile to public, for me
As you’ve done that, you can also do it to @Eabhal and @Dura_Ace and @Roger and @Taz - as they are also private. Nothing is stopping you doing that right now as you have done it to me
Don Estelle had an incredible voice. By all accounts, he was strapped for cash in his later years once his star had faded. The same is true of many former politicians, and every landslide brings stories of unemployed ex-MPs as reliably as it does of paper candidates surprisingly elected.
Yes, he was typecast. He used to go round shopping centres singing and selling his cassettes of his songs. Just to earn a living. Residuals from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum were not great as it did not get the repeat viewings other Perry/croft stuff did. He was Similar to faded seventies comedians playing holiday parks and flogging their cassettes.
I do not mix in showbiz circles but a foaf was a soap regular back in the 1980s and I was surprised to learn she was paid only a middle class professional salary. What the red-tops might pay for a single juicy leak. Adverts and ‘corporates’ were where the big money was. Things are probably different now, and not necessarily in a good way.
I do mix in showbiz circles and I hear some amazing stories of huge money
Eg an acquaintance of mine - a British actor - has just landed a minor role in a popular US sitcom. He appears in each programme for about a minute, on average
He was quite broke til he landed this gig. Now? He’s making $300,000 a year. For about twenty minutes work, on a screen, per year
And don’t get me onto writers. I heard the other day about the writer of a very well known tv series. A big hit in the UK, then the USA
It was so big Hollywood was determined to make multiple movies out of it and new tv adaptations and so on
Then holywood discovered that his canny agent had put - in his very first contract - that he would get a hefty percentage of the worldwide GROSS the movies and new tv stuff made. Plus a huge fee simply for agreeing to this
As a result he has made - I kid you not - HUNDREDS of millions of pounds. Not just a lot of millions. Hundreds
Me? Jealous? No! I’m happy in flint world
🤯
Didn’t that happen to Alec Guinness with Star Wars. He took a small salary but ended with a percentage of the gross which was millions. Earned more from that than his entire career beforehand.
Didn’t know that. Hope it’s true. Fine actor
I doubt many actors really manage to improve on their material, but he did with Smiley.
There's a version of "A Murder of Quality" on BBC Sounds with Smiley played by George Cole. George Cole was not a bad actor but his Smiley is nowhere near as good as Guinness's. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002gm43
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
I’ve made his profile public again.
Leon, for the final time stop making your profile private.
But others are allowed to be private
If this is a rule for all, fair enough. If you are singling out me, alone, and applying this rule solely to me, then we have an issue
It applies to everybody.
When I am in front of the laptop I’ll see who else is private and update their profiles accordingly.
There are quite a lot of PBers who are private. Several on here right now
Including me.
I didn’t know it was a rule to be honest.
It makes searching for comments in relation to moderation difficult.
In the past Vanilla allowed us to disable private profiles then they had an upgrade.
All a public profile will show is your username and your past comments (and the last time you logged on).
It will not allow others to see your email/IP addresses.
I see you’ve now switched my profile to public, for me
As you’ve done that, you can also do it to @Eabhal and @Dura_Ace and @Roger and @Taz - as they are also private. Nothing is stopping you doing that right now as you have done it to me
Don Estelle had an incredible voice. By all accounts, he was strapped for cash in his later years once his star had faded. The same is true of many former politicians, and every landslide brings stories of unemployed ex-MPs as reliably as it does of paper candidates surprisingly elected.
Yes, he was typecast. He used to go round shopping centres singing and selling his cassettes of his songs. Just to earn a living. Residuals from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum were not great as it did not get the repeat viewings other Perry/croft stuff did. He was Similar to faded seventies comedians playing holiday parks and flogging their cassettes.
I do not mix in showbiz circles but a foaf was a soap regular back in the 1980s and I was surprised to learn she was paid only a middle class professional salary. What the red-tops might pay for a single juicy leak. Adverts and ‘corporates’ were where the big money was. Things are probably different now, and not necessarily in a good way.
I do mix in showbiz circles and I hear some amazing stories of huge money
Eg an acquaintance of mine - a British actor - has just landed a minor role in a popular US sitcom. He appears in each programme for about a minute, on average
He was quite broke til he landed this gig. Now? He’s making $300,000 a year. For about twenty minutes work, on a screen, per year
And don’t get me onto writers. I heard the other day about the writer of a very well known tv series. A big hit in the UK, then the USA
It was so big Hollywood was determined to make multiple movies out of it and new tv adaptations and so on
Then holywood discovered that his canny agent had put - in his very first contract - that he would get a hefty percentage of the worldwide GROSS the movies and new tv stuff made. Plus a huge fee simply for agreeing to this
As a result he has made - I kid you not - HUNDREDS of millions of pounds. Not just a lot of millions. Hundreds
Me? Jealous? No! I’m happy in flint world
🤯
Didn’t that happen to Alec Guinness with Star Wars. He took a small salary but ended with a percentage of the gross which was millions. Earned more from that than his entire career beforehand.
Didn’t know that. Hope it’s true. Fine actor
On checking his IMDb profile it looks like it was.
It’s not “$300,000” for 20 mins work.
Assuming it’s 1m per episode, that’s at least 20 days work and more likely 40 on set (say 400 hours but possibly more). Plus travel time, etc.
It’s still very well paid, obviously at around £600 per hour but that’s only about the same as a partner at a second tier law firm in London.
What are you on about episodes ?
We’re discussing the deal he negotiated for Star Wars which gave him a low basic and a percentage of the gross profits. As the profits were huge and he made milllions from that.
This was the IMDb Comment I’m referring to
‘Guinness had a 2.25% interest in the revenue from Star Wars (1977), which would be the highest grossing movie at the time (and second only to Gone with the Wind (1939) when adjusted for inflation). Guinness had agreed to a 2% interest to make the film, but he reported that just before release during a telephone conversation George Lucas had offered an additional 0.5% because of how supportive and helpful Guinness had been (with dialogue, other actors, etc.). After the release and stunning results at the box office, Guinness asked to confirm the additional 0.5% in writing, but was told it was (reduced to) 0.25%, although it is not clear who had decided this. This was revealed by Guinness in the 1977 interview with BBC's Michael Parkinson on the series "Talking Pictures". It was in general supported by many public comments by Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher all speaking highly of Guinness' professionalism and impact on the set. Apparently, Guinness did not quibble the 1977 worldwide revenue for Star Wars of $400+ million making Guinness' 2.25% probably around $9m for that year alone, with additional revenue well into 1979. In comparison, that exceeds other British actor high-water marks for Sean Connery and Roger Moore in the 1970s playing James Bond ($1m salary + $3-5m depending on revenue interests per film e.g. 5-12%).’
Alec Guinness was my grandparents' lodger in the 1930s. They said he was very nice.
In this one-minute clip from The Rest is Politics, Rory suggests most pundits are wrongly framing Trump's position on Ukraine, which leads them to say he was outmanoeuvred. Looked at from another angle, Trump might be succeeding.
FWIW I think Rory is about right. He has been on this line for a time.
Two things, one certain, the other likely. Certain: Trump thinks Europe is two power blocs, Russian and western and that exactly where the dividing line comes somewhere in central Europe - which is in fact what the current war is about in his mind - is a matter for Europe and he doesn't care.
Likely: That Trump is actively pro Russia.
Realist conclusion: It is obvious that USA is not willing to risk a single soldier's life over where that boundary is drawn in this war.
Next realist conclusion: It is not yet obvious that a single large 'western' (NATO) country is willing to either.
'Security guarantees' means risking your soldiers' lives. No western leader has yet said so. When they do we shall know they are serious.
Rory is such a loss to front line politics. We desperately need people like him, people capable of actually thinking and analysing the problems we have.
I agree with him that Trump really doesn't care about Europe, the Ukraine or NATO. As far as he is concerned why should US resources be wasted on this? What's in it for them? As Charles De Gaulle said, "countries have interests, not friends." On this it is us that are deluding ourselves, not Trump. If Europe decides it has an interest in preventing Russia's aggression in Ukraine succeeding, and we do, we must do something about it. Expecting the Americans to bail us out is both pathetic and unrealistic.
This Rory Stewart:
Kamala Harris will win comfortably, because:
• Biden’s admin has been solid • Trump’s lost ground since 2016 • The young Black male votes which Trump needs didn’t turn out in 16, 18, 20, or 22 • Young women like Kamala + vote ✴️Ignore polls—they’re herding, after past misses
Stewart is the type of 'expert' who sees nothing wrong with unrestricted illegal immigration but gets upset about the possibility of them being deported.
RS getting one prediction wrong is a single data point and says nothing about him except that occasion.
Your last para is straw manning a touch.
He's been arguing for a deal with France to send all people from small boats back instantly, alongside opening legal routes, on the basis that that will then remove any incentive for small boat crossings.
You don't do a deal with France to send the boats back for the same reason you don't do a deal with a burglar to get your goods back. You send them back without French consent. This belief that there must be a deal will always fail, because it's not in French interests to do so.
Professor Google says El Salvador spent $100m building its biggest mega prison, which holds 40,000 inmates
Let’s multiply that by 5 as doing it on ascension will be much harder. $500m. But once it’s built it’s built
Then you have to staff it. The Salvador jail apparently has 850 staff - guards and soldiers. That’s 850 salaries - pay them generously for a hardship posting -
Give them £50k a year tax free. A big incentive. That’s £40m a year. Fuck it give them £100k. £80m
Then you’ve got to build housing for them. £100m? £200m? Seems a lot but let’s err on the side of overstatement again
Then the annual cost of running it. The jail in El Salvador supposedly costs about $100m a year (but that’s probably including salaries) but let’s use it anyway
Total to build and run for the first year about £900m? Add in £100m for flights. That’s £1bn
ie 20% of what we spent on asylum seekers in 2023-2024
So it can be done quite easily and it would be much cheaper than the present system. Costs would also plunge after the first year (the building is done) and besides, after six months the boats would stop. End of problem
You forgot the special tunnel that would have to be dug underneath the prison so that migrating Ascension newt can continue to cross the island safely.
Given that it's an oceanic island with over 70 known endemic species, your joke has meat.
Plenty of meat on the rather intimidating land crabs.
The Ascension Island thing has to be the most batshit crazy thing said by any politician in a long while. The cost of building the infrastructure and administering it would be eye watering. And you'd be severely limited in numbers. Its just nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
Coming up with a worse idea than Rwanda was a challenge but it is a mistake to underestimate our political classes in this context.
I genuinely don't get why he'd even bring it up. It absolutely will not happen.
Here's a theory on that, which sounds plausible, even if it comes from someone at not The New European;
But he [Farage] isn’t setting the agenda. The online far right in the UK don’t particularly trust him. They’re not sure he’s really onside or extreme enough for them. His position has had to shift rapidly in response. He’s not at the tiller, he’s responding to events.
In this one-minute clip from The Rest is Politics, Rory suggests most pundits are wrongly framing Trump's position on Ukraine, which leads them to say he was outmanoeuvred. Looked at from another angle, Trump might be succeeding.
FWIW I think Rory is about right. He has been on this line for a time.
Two things, one certain, the other likely. Certain: Trump thinks Europe is two power blocs, Russian and western and that exactly where the dividing line comes somewhere in central Europe - which is in fact what the current war is about in his mind - is a matter for Europe and he doesn't care.
Likely: That Trump is actively pro Russia.
Realist conclusion: It is obvious that USA is not willing to risk a single soldier's life over where that boundary is drawn in this war.
Next realist conclusion: It is not yet obvious that a single large 'western' (NATO) country is willing to either.
'Security guarantees' means risking your soldiers' lives. No western leader has yet said so. When they do we shall know they are serious.
Rory is such a loss to front line politics. We desperately need people like him, people capable of actually thinking and analysing the problems we have.
I agree with him that Trump really doesn't care about Europe, the Ukraine or NATO. As far as he is concerned why should US resources be wasted on this? What's in it for them? As Charles De Gaulle said, "countries have interests, not friends." On this it is us that are deluding ourselves, not Trump. If Europe decides it has an interest in preventing Russia's aggression in Ukraine succeeding, and we do, we must do something about it. Expecting the Americans to bail us out is both pathetic and unrealistic.
This Rory Stewart:
Kamala Harris will win comfortably, because:
• Biden’s admin has been solid • Trump’s lost ground since 2016 • The young Black male votes which Trump needs didn’t turn out in 16, 18, 20, or 22 • Young women like Kamala + vote ✴️Ignore polls—they’re herding, after past misses
Stewart is the type of 'expert' who sees nothing wrong with unrestricted illegal immigration but gets upset about the possibility of them being deported.
RS getting one prediction wrong is a single data point and says nothing about him except that occasion.
Your last para is straw manning a touch.
He's been arguing for a deal with France to send all people from small boats back instantly, alongside opening legal routes, on the basis that that will then remove any incentive for small boat crossings.
You don't do a deal with France to send the boats back for the same reason you don't do a deal with a burglar to get your goods back. You send them back without French consent. This belief that there must be a deal will always fail, because it's not in French interests to do so.
You don't burn bridges with one of your nearest neighbours, like Trump has with Canada and Mexico.
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
I’ve made his profile public again.
Leon, for the final time stop making your profile private.
But others are allowed to be private
If this is a rule for all, fair enough. If you are singling out me, alone, and applying this rule solely to me, then we have an issue
It applies to everybody.
When I am in front of the laptop I’ll see who else is private and update their profiles accordingly.
There are quite a lot of PBers who are private. Several on here right now
Including me.
I didn’t know it was a rule to be honest.
It makes searching for comments in relation to moderation difficult.
In the past Vanilla allowed us to disable private profiles then they had an upgrade.
All a public profile will show is your username and your past comments (and the last time you logged on).
It will not allow others to see your email/IP addresses.
I see you’ve now switched my profile to public, for me
As you’ve done that, you can also do it to @Eabhal and @Dura_Ace and @Roger and @Taz - as they are also private. Nothing is stopping you doing that right now as you have done it to me
Don Estelle had an incredible voice. By all accounts, he was strapped for cash in his later years once his star had faded. The same is true of many former politicians, and every landslide brings stories of unemployed ex-MPs as reliably as it does of paper candidates surprisingly elected.
Yes, he was typecast. He used to go round shopping centres singing and selling his cassettes of his songs. Just to earn a living. Residuals from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum were not great as it did not get the repeat viewings other Perry/croft stuff did. He was Similar to faded seventies comedians playing holiday parks and flogging their cassettes.
I do not mix in showbiz circles but a foaf was a soap regular back in the 1980s and I was surprised to learn she was paid only a middle class professional salary. What the red-tops might pay for a single juicy leak. Adverts and ‘corporates’ were where the big money was. Things are probably different now, and not necessarily in a good way.
I do mix in showbiz circles and I hear some amazing stories of huge money
Eg an acquaintance of mine - a British actor - has just landed a minor role in a popular US sitcom. He appears in each programme for about a minute, on average
He was quite broke til he landed this gig. Now? He’s making $300,000 a year. For about twenty minutes work, on a screen, per year
And don’t get me onto writers. I heard the other day about the writer of a very well known tv series. A big hit in the UK, then the USA
It was so big Hollywood was determined to make multiple movies out of it and new tv adaptations and so on
Then holywood discovered that his canny agent had put - in his very first contract - that he would get a hefty percentage of the worldwide GROSS the movies and new tv stuff made. Plus a huge fee simply for agreeing to this
As a result he has made - I kid you not - HUNDREDS of millions of pounds. Not just a lot of millions. Hundreds
Me? Jealous? No! I’m happy in flint world
🤯
Didn’t that happen to Alec Guinness with Star Wars. He took a small salary but ended with a percentage of the gross which was millions. Earned more from that than his entire career beforehand.
Didn’t know that. Hope it’s true. Fine actor
On checking his IMDb profile it looks like it was.
It’s not “$300,000” for 20 mins work.
Assuming it’s 1m per episode, that’s at least 20 days work and more likely 40 on set (say 400 hours but possibly more). Plus travel time, etc.
It’s still very well paid, obviously at around £600 per hour but that’s only about the same as a partner at a second tier law firm in London.
What are you on about episodes ?
We’re discussing the deal he negotiated for Star Wars which gave him a low basic and a percentage of the gross profits. As the profits were huge and he made milllions from that.
This was the IMDb Comment I’m referring to
‘Guinness had a 2.25% interest in the revenue from Star Wars (1977), which would be the highest grossing movie at the time (and second only to Gone with the Wind (1939) when adjusted for inflation). Guinness had agreed to a 2% interest to make the film, but he reported that just before release during a telephone conversation George Lucas had offered an additional 0.5% because of how supportive and helpful Guinness had been (with dialogue, other actors, etc.). After the release and stunning results at the box office, Guinness asked to confirm the additional 0.5% in writing, but was told it was (reduced to) 0.25%, although it is not clear who had decided this. This was revealed by Guinness in the 1977 interview with BBC's Michael Parkinson on the series "Talking Pictures". It was in general supported by many public comments by Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher all speaking highly of Guinness' professionalism and impact on the set. Apparently, Guinness did not quibble the 1977 worldwide revenue for Star Wars of $400+ million making Guinness' 2.25% probably around $9m for that year alone, with additional revenue well into 1979. In comparison, that exceeds other British actor high-water marks for Sean Connery and Roger Moore in the 1970s playing James Bond ($1m salary + $3-5m depending on revenue interests per film e.g. 5-12%).’
Sorry replied to the wrong one - @Leon posted in that thread about an actor being paid $300k for 20 mins of screen time.
Alec’s case is famous - demonstrates the importance of equity upside - but it’s a classic example of survivor bias. We aren’t talking about all the cases where the actors made no money from their points…
Professor Google says El Salvador spent $100m building its biggest mega prison, which holds 40,000 inmates
Let’s multiply that by 5 as doing it on ascension will be much harder. $500m. But once it’s built it’s built
Then you have to staff it. The Salvador jail apparently has 850 staff - guards and soldiers. That’s 850 salaries - pay them generously for a hardship posting -
Give them £50k a year tax free. A big incentive. That’s £40m a year. Fuck it give them £100k. £80m
Then you’ve got to build housing for them. £100m? £200m? Seems a lot but let’s err on the side of overstatement again
Then the annual cost of running it. The jail in El Salvador supposedly costs about $100m a year (but that’s probably including salaries) but let’s use it anyway
Total to build and run for the first year about £900m? Add in £100m for flights. That’s £1bn
ie 20% of what we spent on asylum seekers in 2023-2024
So it can be done quite easily and it would be much cheaper than the present system. Costs would also plunge after the first year (the building is done) and besides, after six months the boats would stop. End of problem
There's pelnty of land around the airport, often just with rusty bits of kit dumped there. The only issue are the "wideawake" (sooty) terns that nest there in profusion, but they seem to have coped with jets taking off on an irregular basis. It could easily be done as an extension of the airport. You don't have to spend much on security - there' no where to go. It was owned by the Dutch, until we nicked it off them to create a supply base for the four man-of-war which went round St Helena 24/7. Both measures were taken to prevent the French having an Elba-like go at springing Napoleon. At the time St. Helena was the arse end of nowhere - Ascension next to it. Not much has changed in 200 years.
Word would soon get out. They'd join the Sex Pistols, frigging in the rigging, "cuz there's fuck all else to do..."
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
I’ve made his profile public again.
Leon, for the final time stop making your profile private.
But others are allowed to be private
If this is a rule for all, fair enough. If you are singling out me, alone, and applying this rule solely to me, then we have an issue
It applies to everybody.
When I am in front of the laptop I’ll see who else is private and update their profiles accordingly.
There are quite a lot of PBers who are private. Several on here right now
Including me.
I didn’t know it was a rule to be honest.
It makes searching for comments in relation to moderation difficult.
In the past Vanilla allowed us to disable private profiles then they had an upgrade.
All a public profile will show is your username and your past comments (and the last time you logged on).
It will not allow others to see your email/IP addresses.
I see you’ve now switched my profile to public, for me
As you’ve done that, you can also do it to @Eabhal and @Dura_Ace and @Roger and @Taz - as they are also private. Nothing is stopping you doing that right now as you have done it to me
Don Estelle had an incredible voice. By all accounts, he was strapped for cash in his later years once his star had faded. The same is true of many former politicians, and every landslide brings stories of unemployed ex-MPs as reliably as it does of paper candidates surprisingly elected.
Yes, he was typecast. He used to go round shopping centres singing and selling his cassettes of his songs. Just to earn a living. Residuals from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum were not great as it did not get the repeat viewings other Perry/croft stuff did. He was Similar to faded seventies comedians playing holiday parks and flogging their cassettes.
I do not mix in showbiz circles but a foaf was a soap regular back in the 1980s and I was surprised to learn she was paid only a middle class professional salary. What the red-tops might pay for a single juicy leak. Adverts and ‘corporates’ were where the big money was. Things are probably different now, and not necessarily in a good way.
I do mix in showbiz circles and I hear some amazing stories of huge money
Eg an acquaintance of mine - a British actor - has just landed a minor role in a popular US sitcom. He appears in each programme for about a minute, on average
He was quite broke til he landed this gig. Now? He’s making $300,000 a year. For about twenty minutes work, on a screen, per year
And don’t get me onto writers. I heard the other day about the writer of a very well known tv series. A big hit in the UK, then the USA
It was so big Hollywood was determined to make multiple movies out of it and new tv adaptations and so on
Then holywood discovered that his canny agent had put - in his very first contract - that he would get a hefty percentage of the worldwide GROSS the movies and new tv stuff made. Plus a huge fee simply for agreeing to this
As a result he has made - I kid you not - HUNDREDS of millions of pounds. Not just a lot of millions. Hundreds
Me? Jealous? No! I’m happy in flint world
🤯
Didn’t that happen to Alec Guinness with Star Wars. He took a small salary but ended with a percentage of the gross which was millions. Earned more from that than his entire career beforehand.
Didn’t know that. Hope it’s true. Fine actor
I doubt many actors really manage to improve on their material, but he did with Smiley.
There's a version of "A Murder of Quality" on BBC Sounds with Smiley played by George Cole. George Cole was not a bad actor but his Smiley is nowhere near as good as Guinness's. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002gm43
George Cole ‘not a bad actor’, that’s some understatement.
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
I’ve made his profile public again.
Leon, for the final time stop making your profile private.
But others are allowed to be private
If this is a rule for all, fair enough. If you are singling out me, alone, and applying this rule solely to me, then we have an issue
It applies to everybody.
When I am in front of the laptop I’ll see who else is private and update their profiles accordingly.
There are quite a lot of PBers who are private. Several on here right now
Including me.
I didn’t know it was a rule to be honest.
It makes searching for comments in relation to moderation difficult.
In the past Vanilla allowed us to disable private profiles then they had an upgrade.
All a public profile will show is your username and your past comments (and the last time you logged on).
It will not allow others to see your email/IP addresses.
I see you’ve now switched my profile to public, for me
As you’ve done that, you can also do it to @Eabhal and @Dura_Ace and @Roger and @Taz - as they are also private. Nothing is stopping you doing that right now as you have done it to me
Don Estelle had an incredible voice. By all accounts, he was strapped for cash in his later years once his star had faded. The same is true of many former politicians, and every landslide brings stories of unemployed ex-MPs as reliably as it does of paper candidates surprisingly elected.
Yes, he was typecast. He used to go round shopping centres singing and selling his cassettes of his songs. Just to earn a living. Residuals from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum were not great as it did not get the repeat viewings other Perry/croft stuff did. He was Similar to faded seventies comedians playing holiday parks and flogging their cassettes.
I do not mix in showbiz circles but a foaf was a soap regular back in the 1980s and I was surprised to learn she was paid only a middle class professional salary. What the red-tops might pay for a single juicy leak. Adverts and ‘corporates’ were where the big money was. Things are probably different now, and not necessarily in a good way.
I do mix in showbiz circles and I hear some amazing stories of huge money
Eg an acquaintance of mine - a British actor - has just landed a minor role in a popular US sitcom. He appears in each programme for about a minute, on average
He was quite broke til he landed this gig. Now? He’s making $300,000 a year. For about twenty minutes work, on a screen, per year
And don’t get me onto writers. I heard the other day about the writer of a very well known tv series. A big hit in the UK, then the USA
It was so big Hollywood was determined to make multiple movies out of it and new tv adaptations and so on
Then holywood discovered that his canny agent had put - in his very first contract - that he would get a hefty percentage of the worldwide GROSS the movies and new tv stuff made. Plus a huge fee simply for agreeing to this
As a result he has made - I kid you not - HUNDREDS of millions of pounds. Not just a lot of millions. Hundreds
Me? Jealous? No! I’m happy in flint world
🤯
Didn’t that happen to Alec Guinness with Star Wars. He took a small salary but ended with a percentage of the gross which was millions. Earned more from that than his entire career beforehand.
Didn’t know that. Hope it’s true. Fine actor
I doubt many actors really manage to improve on their material, but he did with Smiley.
There's a version of "A Murder of Quality" on BBC Sounds with Smiley played by George Cole. George Cole was not a bad actor but his Smiley is nowhere near as good as Guinness's. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002gm43
George Cole ‘not a bad actor’, that’s some understatement.
Yes. That doesn't contradict my point - in fact it reinforces it. Guinness's Smiley was really good.
In this one-minute clip from The Rest is Politics, Rory suggests most pundits are wrongly framing Trump's position on Ukraine, which leads them to say he was outmanoeuvred. Looked at from another angle, Trump might be succeeding.
FWIW I think Rory is about right. He has been on this line for a time.
Two things, one certain, the other likely. Certain: Trump thinks Europe is two power blocs, Russian and western and that exactly where the dividing line comes somewhere in central Europe - which is in fact what the current war is about in his mind - is a matter for Europe and he doesn't care.
Likely: That Trump is actively pro Russia.
Realist conclusion: It is obvious that USA is not willing to risk a single soldier's life over where that boundary is drawn in this war.
Next realist conclusion: It is not yet obvious that a single large 'western' (NATO) country is willing to either.
'Security guarantees' means risking your soldiers' lives. No western leader has yet said so. When they do we shall know they are serious.
Rory is such a loss to front line politics. We desperately need people like him, people capable of actually thinking and analysing the problems we have.
I agree with him that Trump really doesn't care about Europe, the Ukraine or NATO. As far as he is concerned why should US resources be wasted on this? What's in it for them? As Charles De Gaulle said, "countries have interests, not friends." On this it is us that are deluding ourselves, not Trump. If Europe decides it has an interest in preventing Russia's aggression in Ukraine succeeding, and we do, we must do something about it. Expecting the Americans to bail us out is both pathetic and unrealistic.
This Rory Stewart:
Kamala Harris will win comfortably, because:
• Biden’s admin has been solid • Trump’s lost ground since 2016 • The young Black male votes which Trump needs didn’t turn out in 16, 18, 20, or 22 • Young women like Kamala + vote ✴️Ignore polls—they’re herding, after past misses
Stewart is the type of 'expert' who sees nothing wrong with unrestricted illegal immigration but gets upset about the possibility of them being deported.
RS getting one prediction wrong is a single data point and says nothing about him except that occasion.
Your last para is straw manning a touch.
He's been arguing for a deal with France to send all people from small boats back instantly, alongside opening legal routes, on the basis that that will then remove any incentive for small boat crossings.
You don't do a deal with France to send the boats back for the same reason you don't do a deal with a burglar to get your goods back. You send them back without French consent. This belief that there must be a deal will always fail, because it's not in French interests to do so.
You don't burn bridges with one of your nearest neighbours, like Trump has with Canada and Mexico.
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
The left revelled in "rubbing the right's nose in diversity" didn't they.
The Ascension Island thing has to be the most batshit crazy thing said by any politician in a long while. The cost of building the infrastructure and administering it would be eye watering. And you'd be severely limited in numbers. Its just nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
Coming up with a worse idea than Rwanda was a challenge but it is a mistake to underestimate our political classes in this context.
I genuinely don't get why he'd even bring it up. It absolutely will not happen.
Here's a theory on that, which sounds plausible, even if it comes from someone at not The New European;
But he [Farage] isn’t setting the agenda. The online far right in the UK don’t particularly trust him. They’re not sure he’s really onside or extreme enough for them. His position has had to shift rapidly in response. He’s not at the tiller, he’s responding to events.
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
I’ve made his profile public again.
Leon, for the final time stop making your profile private.
But others are allowed to be private
If this is a rule for all, fair enough. If you are singling out me, alone, and applying this rule solely to me, then we have an issue
It applies to everybody.
When I am in front of the laptop I’ll see who else is private and update their profiles accordingly.
There are quite a lot of PBers who are private. Several on here right now
Including me.
I didn’t know it was a rule to be honest.
It makes searching for comments in relation to moderation difficult.
In the past Vanilla allowed us to disable private profiles then they had an upgrade.
All a public profile will show is your username and your past comments (and the last time you logged on).
It will not allow others to see your email/IP addresses.
I see you’ve now switched my profile to public, for me
As you’ve done that, you can also do it to @Eabhal and @Dura_Ace and @Roger and @Taz - as they are also private. Nothing is stopping you doing that right now as you have done it to me
Don Estelle had an incredible voice. By all accounts, he was strapped for cash in his later years once his star had faded. The same is true of many former politicians, and every landslide brings stories of unemployed ex-MPs as reliably as it does of paper candidates surprisingly elected.
Yes, he was typecast. He used to go round shopping centres singing and selling his cassettes of his songs. Just to earn a living. Residuals from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum were not great as it did not get the repeat viewings other Perry/croft stuff did. He was Similar to faded seventies comedians playing holiday parks and flogging their cassettes.
I do not mix in showbiz circles but a foaf was a soap regular back in the 1980s and I was surprised to learn she was paid only a middle class professional salary. What the red-tops might pay for a single juicy leak. Adverts and ‘corporates’ were where the big money was. Things are probably different now, and not necessarily in a good way.
I do mix in showbiz circles and I hear some amazing stories of huge money
Eg an acquaintance of mine - a British actor - has just landed a minor role in a popular US sitcom. He appears in each programme for about a minute, on average
He was quite broke til he landed this gig. Now? He’s making $300,000 a year. For about twenty minutes work, on a screen, per year
And don’t get me onto writers. I heard the other day about the writer of a very well known tv series. A big hit in the UK, then the USA
It was so big Hollywood was determined to make multiple movies out of it and new tv adaptations and so on
Then holywood discovered that his canny agent had put - in his very first contract - that he would get a hefty percentage of the worldwide GROSS the movies and new tv stuff made. Plus a huge fee simply for agreeing to this
As a result he has made - I kid you not - HUNDREDS of millions of pounds. Not just a lot of millions. Hundreds
Me? Jealous? No! I’m happy in flint world
🤯
Didn’t that happen to Alec Guinness with Star Wars. He took a small salary but ended with a percentage of the gross which was millions. Earned more from that than his entire career beforehand.
Didn’t know that. Hope it’s true. Fine actor
On checking his IMDb profile it looks like it was.
It’s not “$300,000” for 20 mins work.
Assuming it’s 1m per episode, that’s at least 20 days work and more likely 40 on set (say 400 hours but possibly more). Plus travel time, etc.
It’s still very well paid, obviously at around £600 per hour but that’s only about the same as a partner at a second tier law firm in London.
What are you on about episodes ?
We’re discussing the deal he negotiated for Star Wars which gave him a low basic and a percentage of the gross profits. As the profits were huge and he made milllions from that.
This was the IMDb Comment I’m referring to
‘Guinness had a 2.25% interest in the revenue from Star Wars (1977), which would be the highest grossing movie at the time (and second only to Gone with the Wind (1939) when adjusted for inflation). Guinness had agreed to a 2% interest to make the film, but he reported that just before release during a telephone conversation George Lucas had offered an additional 0.5% because of how supportive and helpful Guinness had been (with dialogue, other actors, etc.). After the release and stunning results at the box office, Guinness asked to confirm the additional 0.5% in writing, but was told it was (reduced to) 0.25%, although it is not clear who had decided this. This was revealed by Guinness in the 1977 interview with BBC's Michael Parkinson on the series "Talking Pictures". It was in general supported by many public comments by Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher all speaking highly of Guinness' professionalism and impact on the set. Apparently, Guinness did not quibble the 1977 worldwide revenue for Star Wars of $400+ million making Guinness' 2.25% probably around $9m for that year alone, with additional revenue well into 1979. In comparison, that exceeds other British actor high-water marks for Sean Connery and Roger Moore in the 1970s playing James Bond ($1m salary + $3-5m depending on revenue interests per film e.g. 5-12%).’
Alec Guinness was my grandparents' lodger in the 1930s. They said he was very nice.
I hope they didn't lodge him in a small, hot, tin box.
What is the point of BBC News? Why do we still bother checking it?
I just have. It doesn't have the biggest story of the day anywhere on its leading page that's easy to find, whereas the Times, Telegraph, Sun, Mail and even The Guardian all do.
Instead there's some shit about "How Israel is causing famine in Gaza", which it probably is but that's entirely besides the point.
I now have next to zero confidence in it as the flagship national broadcaster. It's like its edited by Starmey/JoePolitics/YourParty interns.
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
I’ve made his profile public again.
Leon, for the final time stop making your profile private.
But others are allowed to be private
If this is a rule for all, fair enough. If you are singling out me, alone, and applying this rule solely to me, then we have an issue
It applies to everybody.
When I am in front of the laptop I’ll see who else is private and update their profiles accordingly.
There are quite a lot of PBers who are private. Several on here right now
Including me.
I didn’t know it was a rule to be honest.
It makes searching for comments in relation to moderation difficult.
In the past Vanilla allowed us to disable private profiles then they had an upgrade.
All a public profile will show is your username and your past comments (and the last time you logged on).
It will not allow others to see your email/IP addresses.
I see you’ve now switched my profile to public, for me
As you’ve done that, you can also do it to @Eabhal and @Dura_Ace and @Roger and @Taz - as they are also private. Nothing is stopping you doing that right now as you have done it to me
Don Estelle had an incredible voice. By all accounts, he was strapped for cash in his later years once his star had faded. The same is true of many former politicians, and every landslide brings stories of unemployed ex-MPs as reliably as it does of paper candidates surprisingly elected.
Yes, he was typecast. He used to go round shopping centres singing and selling his cassettes of his songs. Just to earn a living. Residuals from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum were not great as it did not get the repeat viewings other Perry/croft stuff did. He was Similar to faded seventies comedians playing holiday parks and flogging their cassettes.
I do not mix in showbiz circles but a foaf was a soap regular back in the 1980s and I was surprised to learn she was paid only a middle class professional salary. What the red-tops might pay for a single juicy leak. Adverts and ‘corporates’ were where the big money was. Things are probably different now, and not necessarily in a good way.
I do mix in showbiz circles and I hear some amazing stories of huge money
Eg an acquaintance of mine - a British actor - has just landed a minor role in a popular US sitcom. He appears in each programme for about a minute, on average
He was quite broke til he landed this gig. Now? He’s making $300,000 a year. For about twenty minutes work, on a screen, per year
And don’t get me onto writers. I heard the other day about the writer of a very well known tv series. A big hit in the UK, then the USA
It was so big Hollywood was determined to make multiple movies out of it and new tv adaptations and so on
Then holywood discovered that his canny agent had put - in his very first contract - that he would get a hefty percentage of the worldwide GROSS the movies and new tv stuff made. Plus a huge fee simply for agreeing to this
As a result he has made - I kid you not - HUNDREDS of millions of pounds. Not just a lot of millions. Hundreds
Me? Jealous? No! I’m happy in flint world
🤯
Didn’t that happen to Alec Guinness with Star Wars. He took a small salary but ended with a percentage of the gross which was millions. Earned more from that than his entire career beforehand.
Didn’t know that. Hope it’s true. Fine actor
On checking his IMDb profile it looks like it was.
It’s not “$300,000” for 20 mins work.
Assuming it’s 1m per episode, that’s at least 20 days work and more likely 40 on set (say 400 hours but possibly more). Plus travel time, etc.
It’s still very well paid, obviously at around £600 per hour but that’s only about the same as a partner at a second tier law firm in London.
What are you on about episodes ?
We’re discussing the deal he negotiated for Star Wars which gave him a low basic and a percentage of the gross profits. As the profits were huge and he made milllions from that.
This was the IMDb Comment I’m referring to
‘Guinness had a 2.25% interest in the revenue from Star Wars (1977), which would be the highest grossing movie at the time (and second only to Gone with the Wind (1939) when adjusted for inflation). Guinness had agreed to a 2% interest to make the film, but he reported that just before release during a telephone conversation George Lucas had offered an additional 0.5% because of how supportive and helpful Guinness had been (with dialogue, other actors, etc.). After the release and stunning results at the box office, Guinness asked to confirm the additional 0.5% in writing, but was told it was (reduced to) 0.25%, although it is not clear who had decided this. This was revealed by Guinness in the 1977 interview with BBC's Michael Parkinson on the series "Talking Pictures". It was in general supported by many public comments by Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher all speaking highly of Guinness' professionalism and impact on the set. Apparently, Guinness did not quibble the 1977 worldwide revenue for Star Wars of $400+ million making Guinness' 2.25% probably around $9m for that year alone, with additional revenue well into 1979. In comparison, that exceeds other British actor high-water marks for Sean Connery and Roger Moore in the 1970s playing James Bond ($1m salary + $3-5m depending on revenue interests per film e.g. 5-12%).’
Alec Guinness was my grandparents' lodger in the 1930s. They said he was very nice.
I hope they didn't lodge him in a small, hot, tin box.
They wouldn't treat lodgers that way by convention.
FPT - I've basically given up trying to see or talk to my GP.
On the rare occasions when I need to now I pay for a private one - I simply don't have the time to play the games.
But lots of people don't have that option. And probably don't get their cancer caught earlier enough as a consequence.
How sad. And I've come across this before. In-laws practice seems amateurish.
However, must say ours is now excellent. Can normally get a same day appointment if required. Pleasant, supportive GP's too, which is VERY much better than when we moved here.
The Ascension Island thing has to be the most batshit crazy thing said by any politician in a long while. The cost of building the infrastructure and administering it would be eye watering. And you'd be severely limited in numbers. Its just nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
Coming up with a worse idea than Rwanda was a challenge but it is a mistake to underestimate our political classes in this context.
I genuinely don't get why he'd even bring it up. It absolutely will not happen.
Here's a theory on that, which sounds plausible, even if it comes from someone at not The New European;
But he [Farage] isn’t setting the agenda. The online far right in the UK don’t particularly trust him. They’re not sure he’s really onside or extreme enough for them. His position has had to shift rapidly in response. He’s not at the tiller, he’s responding to events.
Farage has made a career out of pulling the Conservatives to the right whilst standing outside. Power without responsibility, as the saying goes.
Now, someone else is doing it to him. Heart of stone not to laugh, as a different saying almost goes.
Though also what needs to be noted is that Farage might be Prime Minister, and Lowe won't. I do not think there is sufficient appreciation of the narrow gate through which the route for Farage (if he really wants it) to PM goes. He has to resolutely renounce the extremes, while also promoting as well as possible fantasy solutions which sound possible and non extreme and effective at the same time. This is hard, especially as it probably can't be done
He also - and this bit has hardly started but Farage is aware of it - has to pivot to giving the voters of Reform seats what they want. What they want is high spend (and therefore high tax) free stuff of the post war social democrat state, and don't believe anyone who says different. They are lying, and don't want to win the election.
The non extremism will disappoint the violent overweight pink people. The high spend stuff will upset the Singapore on Thames wide boys.
it will be an interesting ride. What could possibly go wrong?
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
One can challenge an asylum refusal now in the courts. An indefinite number of times.
Indeed you can and the non activist, impartial judges, many of whom on these cases have worked in asylum in prior roles will let you stay. Like this chap who, after several prior attempts, a happy marriage and siring a child with another lady, discovered he was actually gay and had a fear of persecution for his new found sexuality.
What is the point of BBC News? Why do we still bother checking it?
I just have. It doesn't have the biggest story of the day anywhere on its leading page that's easy to find, whereas the Times, Telegraph, Sun, Mail and even The Guardian all do.
Instead there's some shit about "How Israel is causing famine in Gaza", which it probably is but that's entirely besides the point.
I now have next to zero confidence in it as the flagship national broadcaster. It's like its edited by Starmey/JoePolitics/YourParty interns.
BBC News is a waste of time. Weekends it’s crap from overseas feeds. During the week it’s drivel from special interest groups, charities, NGOs and lobbyists. Churnalism presented as news.
What is the point of BBC News? Why do we still bother checking it?
I just have. It doesn't have the biggest story of the day anywhere on its leading page that's easy to find, whereas the Times, Telegraph, Sun, Mail and even The Guardian all do.
Instead there's some shit about "How Israel is causing famine in Gaza", which it probably is but that's entirely besides the point.
I now have next to zero confidence in it as the flagship national broadcaster. It's like its edited by Starmey/JoePolitics/YourParty interns.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The Ascension Island thing has to be the most batshit crazy thing said by any politician in a long while. The cost of building the infrastructure and administering it would be eye watering. And you'd be severely limited in numbers. Its just nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
Coming up with a worse idea than Rwanda was a challenge but it is a mistake to underestimate our political classes in this context.
I genuinely don't get why he'd even bring it up. It absolutely will not happen.
Here's a theory on that, which sounds plausible, even if it comes from someone at not The New European;
But he [Farage] isn’t setting the agenda. The online far right in the UK don’t particularly trust him. They’re not sure he’s really onside or extreme enough for them. His position has had to shift rapidly in response. He’s not at the tiller, he’s responding to events.
Farage has made a career out of pulling the Conservatives to the right whilst standing outside. Power without responsibility, as the saying goes.
Now, someone else is doing it to him. Heart of stone not to laugh, as a different saying almost goes.
Though also what needs to be noted is that Farage might be Prime Minister, and Lowe won't. I do not think there is sufficient appreciation of the narrow gate through which the route for Farage (if he really wants it) to PM goes. He has to resolutely renounce the extremes, while also promoting as well as possible fantasy solutions which sound possible and non extreme and effective at the same time. This is hard, especially as it probably can't be done
He also - and this bit has hardly started but Farage is aware of it - has to pivot to giving the voters of Reform seats what they want. What they want is high spend (and therefore high tax) free stuff of the post war social democrat state, and don't believe anyone who says different. They are lying, and don't want to win the election.
The non extremism will disappoint the violent overweight pink people. The high spend stuff will upset the Singapore on Thames wide boys.
it will be an interesting ride. What could possibly go wrong?
He also has to hold the 10% of voters who prefer Lowe's and Tommy R's views on immigration to his ie basically deport them all and shut the borders, otherwise while 30% of the vote gets him most seats, only 20% does not.
On tax and spend Reform voters are actually still pretty small state, 47% of Reform voters back the government avoiding tax rises even if that means cutting spending or borrowing more. That is more even than the 39% of Tory voters who back that.
What is the point of BBC News? Why do we still bother checking it?
I just have. It doesn't have the biggest story of the day anywhere on its leading page that's easy to find, whereas the Times, Telegraph, Sun, Mail and even The Guardian all do.
Instead there's some shit about "How Israel is causing famine in Gaza", which it probably is but that's entirely besides the point.
I now have next to zero confidence in it as the flagship national broadcaster. It's like its edited by Starmey/JoePolitics/YourParty interns.
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
One can challenge an asylum refusal now in the courts. An indefinite number of times.
Any evidence to back that up. The process will be court, appeal that's it unless you have a point of law to argue over..
So it's not over then is it? You claim that I need to provide evidence for my point, yet you actually agree with it.
When your claim is exhausted, you can simply make a fresh claim, either for some other reason, or because you argue that fresh evidence supports your original claim:
You may have new evidence because of your activity in the UK, since your asylum appeal was refused. This might be involvement in LGBT+ groups in the UK, or political activity. How can you evidence this activity?
So if you have come from a strict Muslim country, you could criticise the regime, discover your latent homosexuality, or convert to Christianity, and providing you have pronounced these things publicly, they would be considered grounds for a fresh claim.
You could also make a human rights claim under Article 8:
All these additional claims would be subject to the same process of claim, refusal, appeal, refusal, and if they failed, you could simply make another claim based on other fresh circumstances or evidence.
So what I said was completely factual, and you were talking utter mince.
What is the point of BBC News? Why do we still bother checking it?
I just have. It doesn't have the biggest story of the day anywhere on its leading page that's easy to find, whereas the Times, Telegraph, Sun, Mail and even The Guardian all do.
Instead there's some shit about "How Israel is causing famine in Gaza", which it probably is but that's entirely besides the point.
I now have next to zero confidence in it as the flagship national broadcaster. It's like its edited by Starmey/JoePolitics/YourParty interns.
Professor David “there’s gonna be a civil war” Betz might be feeling smug this morning
Looks like some flag hangers were attacked with petrol bombs last night. We can’t know for sure but the video is convincing
If this is true this is exactly what he’s been predicting. The “locals” will react with displays of anger and protests, but then THOSE will be met with violence from others. And so it spirals
I don't know why you encourage this. It is appalling. It is also very sad if the flag of St George and Union Jack become associated with extreme right wing groups once more. For decades from the 70s it was an embarrassment to hang out these flags without being associated with the BNP or football thugs. They had hijacked them. Finally we got to the stage where you could display these flags with pride without being a racist or thug. You are encouraging the undoing of all of that once more. Shame on you and those doing this.
To add evidence to that it is clearly localised in areas where conflict is more likely. Where I live in a posh bit of Surrey there is not a single flag to be seen. In Southwold the only flags are the ones that have always been there.
Again, how am I “encouraging” violent attacks on flag hangers? Show me
The centrist Dorks on PB want to blame me for what is happening out there in the UK, and for me telling them about it. I like to think I’m a powerful and influential figure in the lithic sex toy carving business, but no I do not control the actions and beliefs of millions of people around the UK. Get a grip
Well you are certainly encouraging it. Definition: 'giving someone support or confidence; supportive'
There you go. I have shown you. That was easy. Next.
I accept you are not very good at it, but that wasn't the challenge.
At most, I’m encouraging people to put up patriotic flags. But I’m not even sure I’ve done that particularly. I’ve noted that it’s happening, is more the case
You’ll be pushed to find a comment where I encourage people to attack the flag hangers
You are revelling in it. And let's be clear you are not encouraging them to put up patriotic flags for patriotic reasons, you are doing it to provoke a response and you said so in one of your posts the other days. You were enjoying the prospect of such. But you have made your account private so I can't easily go and find that post. How about unprivatising your posts so we can see these posts and compare to your claim here.
I’ve made his profile public again.
Leon, for the final time stop making your profile private.
But others are allowed to be private
If this is a rule for all, fair enough. If you are singling out me, alone, and applying this rule solely to me, then we have an issue
It applies to everybody.
When I am in front of the laptop I’ll see who else is private and update their profiles accordingly.
There are quite a lot of PBers who are private. Several on here right now
Including me.
I didn’t know it was a rule to be honest.
It makes searching for comments in relation to moderation difficult.
In the past Vanilla allowed us to disable private profiles then they had an upgrade.
All a public profile will show is your username and your past comments (and the last time you logged on).
It will not allow others to see your email/IP addresses.
I see you’ve now switched my profile to public, for me
As you’ve done that, you can also do it to @Eabhal and @Dura_Ace and @Roger and @Taz - as they are also private. Nothing is stopping you doing that right now as you have done it to me
Don Estelle had an incredible voice. By all accounts, he was strapped for cash in his later years once his star had faded. The same is true of many former politicians, and every landslide brings stories of unemployed ex-MPs as reliably as it does of paper candidates surprisingly elected.
Yes, he was typecast. He used to go round shopping centres singing and selling his cassettes of his songs. Just to earn a living. Residuals from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum were not great as it did not get the repeat viewings other Perry/croft stuff did. He was Similar to faded seventies comedians playing holiday parks and flogging their cassettes.
I do not mix in showbiz circles but a foaf was a soap regular back in the 1980s and I was surprised to learn she was paid only a middle class professional salary. What the red-tops might pay for a single juicy leak. Adverts and ‘corporates’ were where the big money was. Things are probably different now, and not necessarily in a good way.
I do mix in showbiz circles and I hear some amazing stories of huge money
Eg an acquaintance of mine - a British actor - has just landed a minor role in a popular US sitcom. He appears in each programme for about a minute, on average
He was quite broke til he landed this gig. Now? He’s making $300,000 a year. For about twenty minutes work, on a screen, per year
And don’t get me onto writers. I heard the other day about the writer of a very well known tv series. A big hit in the UK, then the USA
It was so big Hollywood was determined to make multiple movies out of it and new tv adaptations and so on
Then holywood discovered that his canny agent had put - in his very first contract - that he would get a hefty percentage of the worldwide GROSS the movies and new tv stuff made. Plus a huge fee simply for agreeing to this
As a result he has made - I kid you not - HUNDREDS of millions of pounds. Not just a lot of millions. Hundreds
Me? Jealous? No! I’m happy in flint world
🤯
Didn’t that happen to Alec Guinness with Star Wars. He took a small salary but ended with a percentage of the gross which was millions. Earned more from that than his entire career beforehand.
Didn’t know that. Hope it’s true. Fine actor
On checking his IMDb profile it looks like it was.
It’s not “$300,000” for 20 mins work.
Assuming it’s 1m per episode, that’s at least 20 days work and more likely 40 on set (say 400 hours but possibly more). Plus travel time, etc.
It’s still very well paid, obviously at around £600 per hour but that’s only about the same as a partner at a second tier law firm in London.
What are you on about episodes ?
We’re discussing the deal he negotiated for Star Wars which gave him a low basic and a percentage of the gross profits. As the profits were huge and he made milllions from that.
This was the IMDb Comment I’m referring to
‘Guinness had a 2.25% interest in the revenue from Star Wars (1977), which would be the highest grossing movie at the time (and second only to Gone with the Wind (1939) when adjusted for inflation). Guinness had agreed to a 2% interest to make the film, but he reported that just before release during a telephone conversation George Lucas had offered an additional 0.5% because of how supportive and helpful Guinness had been (with dialogue, other actors, etc.). After the release and stunning results at the box office, Guinness asked to confirm the additional 0.5% in writing, but was told it was (reduced to) 0.25%, although it is not clear who had decided this. This was revealed by Guinness in the 1977 interview with BBC's Michael Parkinson on the series "Talking Pictures". It was in general supported by many public comments by Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher all speaking highly of Guinness' professionalism and impact on the set. Apparently, Guinness did not quibble the 1977 worldwide revenue for Star Wars of $400+ million making Guinness' 2.25% probably around $9m for that year alone, with additional revenue well into 1979. In comparison, that exceeds other British actor high-water marks for Sean Connery and Roger Moore in the 1970s playing James Bond ($1m salary + $3-5m depending on revenue interests per film e.g. 5-12%).’
Alec Guinness was my grandparents' lodger in the 1930s. They said he was very nice.
I hope they didn't lodge him in a small, hot, tin box.
I worked with somebody who fell off the bridge over the river Kwai. He developed pleurisy whilst visiting and collapsed over the edge. Remarkable it didn't kill him, but he spent an age in hospital.
The gorgeousness of the nurses wasn't exactly an incentive to leave, he said...
What is the point of BBC News? Why do we still bother checking it?
I just have. It doesn't have the biggest story of the day anywhere on its leading page that's easy to find, whereas the Times, Telegraph, Sun, Mail and even The Guardian all do.
Instead there's some shit about "How Israel is causing famine in Gaza", which it probably is but that's entirely besides the point.
I now have next to zero confidence in it as the flagship national broadcaster. It's like its edited by Starmey/JoePolitics/YourParty interns.
The BBC's recent Gaza coverage has been piss poor until yesterday. It was all hotels and Lucy Connolly before that.
The Ascension Island thing has to be the most batshit crazy thing said by any politician in a long while. The cost of building the infrastructure and administering it would be eye watering. And you'd be severely limited in numbers. Its just nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
Coming up with a worse idea than Rwanda was a challenge but it is a mistake to underestimate our political classes in this context.
I genuinely don't get why he'd even bring it up. It absolutely will not happen.
Here's a theory on that, which sounds plausible, even if it comes from someone at not The New European;
But he [Farage] isn’t setting the agenda. The online far right in the UK don’t particularly trust him. They’re not sure he’s really onside or extreme enough for them. His position has had to shift rapidly in response. He’s not at the tiller, he’s responding to events.
Farage has made a career out of pulling the Conservatives to the right whilst standing outside. Power without responsibility, as the saying goes.
Now, someone else is doing it to him. Heart of stone not to laugh, as a different saying almost goes.
Though also what needs to be noted is that Farage might be Prime Minister, and Lowe won't. I do not think there is sufficient appreciation of the narrow gate through which the route for Farage (if he really wants it) to PM goes. He has to resolutely renounce the extremes, while also promoting as well as possible fantasy solutions which sound possible and non extreme and effective at the same time. This is hard, especially as it probably can't be done
He also - and this bit has hardly started but Farage is aware of it - has to pivot to giving the voters of Reform seats what they want. What they want is high spend (and therefore high tax) free stuff of the post war social democrat state, and don't believe anyone who says different. They are lying, and don't want to win the election.
The non extremism will disappoint the violent overweight pink people. The high spend stuff will upset the Singapore on Thames wide boys.
it will be an interesting ride. What could possibly go wrong?
He also has to hold the 10% of voters who prefer Lowe's and Tommy R's views on immigration to his ie basically deport them all and shut the borders, otherwise while 30% of the vote gets him most seats, only 20% does not.
On tax and spend Reform voters are actually still pretty small state, 47% of Reform voters back the government avoiding tax rises even if that means cutting spending or borrowing more. That is more even than the 39% of Tory voters who back that.
To be meaningful, polling on views about cutting state expenditure needs to be qualitative. Counting noses isn't enough. Lots of dimmer people (and Reform have a few among their supporters) think that cuts in expenditure are about people and things they don't know or care about. On the whole they actually care about the expensive bits: NHS, pensions, welfare safety net, state schools, infrastructure, transport, housing.
Abolition of lanyards, DEI officers and rainbow flags won't quite get the £300 billion or whatever it is Reform will save.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
The Ascension Island thing has to be the most batshit crazy thing said by any politician in a long while. The cost of building the infrastructure and administering it would be eye watering. And you'd be severely limited in numbers. Its just nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
Coming up with a worse idea than Rwanda was a challenge but it is a mistake to underestimate our political classes in this context.
I genuinely don't get why he'd even bring it up. It absolutely will not happen.
Here's a theory on that, which sounds plausible, even if it comes from someone at not The New European;
But he [Farage] isn’t setting the agenda. The online far right in the UK don’t particularly trust him. They’re not sure he’s really onside or extreme enough for them. His position has had to shift rapidly in response. He’s not at the tiller, he’s responding to events.
Farage has made a career out of pulling the Conservatives to the right whilst standing outside. Power without responsibility, as the saying goes.
Now, someone else is doing it to him. Heart of stone not to laugh, as a different saying almost goes.
Though also what needs to be noted is that Farage might be Prime Minister, and Lowe won't. I do not think there is sufficient appreciation of the narrow gate through which the route for Farage (if he really wants it) to PM goes. He has to resolutely renounce the extremes, while also promoting as well as possible fantasy solutions which sound possible and non extreme and effective at the same time. This is hard, especially as it probably can't be done
He also - and this bit has hardly started but Farage is aware of it - has to pivot to giving the voters of Reform seats what they want. What they want is high spend (and therefore high tax) free stuff of the post war social democrat state, and don't believe anyone who says different. They are lying, and don't want to win the election.
The non extremism will disappoint the violent overweight pink people. The high spend stuff will upset the Singapore on Thames wide boys.
it will be an interesting ride. What could possibly go wrong?
He also has to hold the 10% of voters who prefer Lowe's and Tommy R's views on immigration to his ie basically deport them all and shut the borders, otherwise while 30% of the vote gets him most seats, only 20% does not.
On tax and spend Reform voters are actually still pretty small state, 47% of Reform voters back the government avoiding tax rises even if that means cutting spending or borrowing more. That is more even than the 39% of Tory voters who back that.
To be meaningful, polling on views about cutting state expenditure needs to be qualitative. Counting noses isn't enough. Lots of dimmer people (and Reform have a few among their supporters) think that cuts in expenditure are about people and things they don't know or care about. On the whole they actually care about the expensive bits: NHS, pensions, welfare safety net, state schools, infrastructure, transport, housing.
Abolition of lanyards, DEI officers and rainbow flags won't quite get the £300 billion or whatever it is Reform will save.
But they won't realise that until after they've voted in a Reform UK govt.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The Ascension Island thing has to be the most batshit crazy thing said by any politician in a long while. The cost of building the infrastructure and administering it would be eye watering. And you'd be severely limited in numbers. Its just nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
Coming up with a worse idea than Rwanda was a challenge but it is a mistake to underestimate our political classes in this context.
I genuinely don't get why he'd even bring it up. It absolutely will not happen.
Here's a theory on that, which sounds plausible, even if it comes from someone at not The New European;
But he [Farage] isn’t setting the agenda. The online far right in the UK don’t particularly trust him. They’re not sure he’s really onside or extreme enough for them. His position has had to shift rapidly in response. He’s not at the tiller, he’s responding to events.
Farage has made a career out of pulling the Conservatives to the right whilst standing outside. Power without responsibility, as the saying goes.
Now, someone else is doing it to him. Heart of stone not to laugh, as a different saying almost goes.
Though also what needs to be noted is that Farage might be Prime Minister, and Lowe won't. I do not think there is sufficient appreciation of the narrow gate through which the route for Farage (if he really wants it) to PM goes. He has to resolutely renounce the extremes, while also promoting as well as possible fantasy solutions which sound possible and non extreme and effective at the same time. This is hard, especially as it probably can't be done
He also - and this bit has hardly started but Farage is aware of it - has to pivot to giving the voters of Reform seats what they want. What they want is high spend (and therefore high tax) free stuff of the post war social democrat state, and don't believe anyone who says different. They are lying, and don't want to win the election.
The non extremism will disappoint the violent overweight pink people. The high spend stuff will upset the Singapore on Thames wide boys.
it will be an interesting ride. What could possibly go wrong?
He also has to hold the 10% of voters who prefer Lowe's and Tommy R's views on immigration to his ie basically deport them all and shut the borders, otherwise while 30% of the vote gets him most seats, only 20% does not.
On tax and spend Reform voters are actually still pretty small state, 47% of Reform voters back the government avoiding tax rises even if that means cutting spending or borrowing more. That is more even than the 39% of Tory voters who back that.
To be meaningful, polling on views about cutting state expenditure needs to be qualitative. Counting noses isn't enough. Lots of dimmer people (and Reform have a few among their supporters) think that cuts in expenditure are about people and things they don't know or care about. On the whole they actually care about the expensive bits: NHS, pensions, welfare safety net, state schools, infrastructure, transport, housing.
Abolition of lanyards, DEI officers and rainbow flags won't quite get the £300 billion or whatever it is Reform will save.
Most Reform voters are white working class private sector workers or own their own small businesses, very few work in the public sector or are out of work on benefits.
What is the point of BBC News? Why do we still bother checking it?
I just have. It doesn't have the biggest story of the day anywhere on its leading page that's easy to find, whereas the Times, Telegraph, Sun, Mail and even The Guardian all do.
Instead there's some shit about "How Israel is causing famine in Gaza", which it probably is but that's entirely besides the point.
I now have next to zero confidence in it as the flagship national broadcaster. It's like its edited by Starmey/JoePolitics/YourParty interns.
The BBC's recent Gaza coverage has been piss poor until yesterday. It was all hotels and Lucy Connolly before that.
Lol. The BBC has more Gaza on its pages than a Palestine Action Twitter feed.
What is the point of BBC News? Why do we still bother checking it?
I just have. It doesn't have the biggest story of the day anywhere on its leading page that's easy to find, whereas the Times, Telegraph, Sun, Mail and even The Guardian all do.
Instead there's some shit about "How Israel is causing famine in Gaza", which it probably is but that's entirely besides the point.
I now have next to zero confidence in it as the flagship national broadcaster. It's like its edited by Starmey/JoePolitics/YourParty interns.
The BBC's recent Gaza coverage has been piss poor until yesterday. It was all hotels and Lucy Connolly before that.
Lol. The BBC has more Gaza on its pages than a Palestine Action Twitter feed.
Compared to Channel 4 News, which is obsessed with it, the BBC just has a casual interest.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
What problem is who not recognising? You appear to be caught in some strange persecutory fantasy. The current Govt is very aware of many problems and are clearly trying to do something about them. Now, you may conclude that they're not doing a very good job, but the idea that they refuse to recognise problems and are doubling down on "hyperliberalism" is entirely at odds with reality. Indeed, part of Labour's polling woes is because they've lost the "hyperliberal" vote on their left, while not convincing those in the centre that they're delivering.
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
Yes, nearly all of them.
Where are you getting your evidence from, because the Oxford Migration Observatory's figures from 2024 show a 51% initial grant rate for Pakistan. That's not including appeals or subsequent legal challenges. That is not being 'routinely refused' and it's certainly not 'nearly all of them' being deported. It is in fact an eye-watering grant rate from a relatively safe country.
No flags in my street, just plenty happy children of different races playing together. It's nice when looking out of the window makes you happier than turning on the news.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
The one thing we need to continue to resist is ID cards imo.
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
Yes, nearly all of them.
Where are you getting your evidence from, because the Oxford Migration Observatory's figures from 2024 show a 51% initial grant rate for Pakistan. That's not including appeals or subsequent legal challenges. That is not being 'routinely refused' and it's certainly not 'nearly all of them' being deported. It is in fact an eye-watering grant rate from a relatively safe country.
The question was about Pakistan and Bangladesh, and I was thinking about South Asia more general. As per that link, the acceptance rate is India 2% and Bangladesh 18%. Yes, Pakistan has a higher acceptance rate.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
What problem is who not recognising? You appear to be caught in some strange persecutory fantasy. The current Govt is very aware of many problems and are clearly trying to do something about them. Now, you may conclude that they're not doing a very good job, but the idea that they refuse to recognise problems and are doubling down on "hyperliberalism" is entirely at odds with reality. Indeed, part of Labour's polling woes is because they've lost the "hyperliberal" vote on their left, while not convincing those in the centre that they're delivering.
You are an absolutely perfect example of the phenomenon.
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
Yes, nearly all of them.
Where are you getting your evidence from, because the Oxford Migration Observatory's figures from 2024 show a 51% initial grant rate for Pakistan. That's not including appeals or subsequent legal challenges. That is not being 'routinely refused' and it's certainly not 'nearly all of them' being deported. It is in fact an eye-watering grant rate from a relatively safe country.
On topic this is a lay for me. I cannot see Reform having this sort of breakthrough, notwithstanding the pathetic performances of both Labour and the Tories. I still bear the scars of the SDP when we naively believed that we could break through the old duopoly and provide Thatcherite economics with Labour compassion. I think the SDP were far, far more user friendly than Reform will ever be, able to gain votes from both the left and the right. And yet we failed.
Reform show signs of winning over the socially conservative Labour element, the sort that voted for Brexit despite the attitudes of the Labour metropolitan elite. But I can't believe that they can win enough from that segment or the Tory right to give them the plurality they need. We shall see, maybe this is just wishful thinking. I believe the UK is better than this.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
The one thing we need to continue to resist is ID cards imo.
Sarah Pochin recently came out in favour of ID cards.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
What problem is who not recognising? You appear to be caught in some strange persecutory fantasy. The current Govt is very aware of many problems and are clearly trying to do something about them. Now, you may conclude that they're not doing a very good job, but the idea that they refuse to recognise problems and are doubling down on "hyperliberalism" is entirely at odds with reality. Indeed, part of Labour's polling woes is because they've lost the "hyperliberal" vote on their left, while not convincing those in the centre that they're delivering.
You are an absolutely perfect example of the phenomenon.
In fact, you encapsulate it.
But you can't give actual examples. Because it's in your head.
Not seen a single flag on my road journey from Newcastle to Manchester via Sunderland and Middlesbrough. Correction. Did see a giant Union flag. But it was an advert for supermarket veg.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
The one thing we need to continue to resist is ID cards imo.
I've somewhat changed my mind. These are normal in Bulgaria, where my wife is from, and just like a driving licence. People aren't reguarly demanded to supply them.
And we don't really have any privacy anyway. We are all tracked and monitored with our data and phones wherever we go, and our ISPs and Chatbots know everything about us.
If an ID card could be disaggregated from all other databases and shown to make it impossible to work as an illegal migrant, and aid deportations, and deter new arrivals, I might take a different view now to what I did in 2006-2008.
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
Yes, nearly all of them.
Where are you getting your evidence from, because the Oxford Migration Observatory's figures from 2024 show a 51% initial grant rate for Pakistan. That's not including appeals or subsequent legal challenges. That is not being 'routinely refused' and it's certainly not 'nearly all of them' being deported. It is in fact an eye-watering grant rate from a relatively safe country.
No flags in my street, just plenty happy children of different races playing together. It's nice when looking out of the window makes you happier than turning on the news.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
What problem is who not recognising? You appear to be caught in some strange persecutory fantasy. The current Govt is very aware of many problems and are clearly trying to do something about them. Now, you may conclude that they're not doing a very good job, but the idea that they refuse to recognise problems and are doubling down on "hyperliberalism" is entirely at odds with reality. Indeed, part of Labour's polling woes is because they've lost the "hyperliberal" vote on their left, while not convincing those in the centre that they're delivering.
You are an absolutely perfect example of the phenomenon.
In fact, you encapsulate it.
But you can't give actual examples. Because it's in your head.
You just provided one. You claimed “nearly all” Pakistani asylum seekers are refused. You denied there was a problem. Indeed you denied it by lying about it. Because what you said is a lie
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
What problem is who not recognising? You appear to be caught in some strange persecutory fantasy. The current Govt is very aware of many problems and are clearly trying to do something about them. Now, you may conclude that they're not doing a very good job, but the idea that they refuse to recognise problems and are doubling down on "hyperliberalism" is entirely at odds with reality. Indeed, part of Labour's polling woes is because they've lost the "hyperliberal" vote on their left, while not convincing those in the centre that they're delivering.
You are an absolutely perfect example of the phenomenon.
In fact, you encapsulate it.
But you can't give actual examples. Because it's in your head.
In this one-minute clip from The Rest is Politics, Rory suggests most pundits are wrongly framing Trump's position on Ukraine, which leads them to say he was outmanoeuvred. Looked at from another angle, Trump might be succeeding.
FWIW I think Rory is about right. He has been on this line for a time.
Two things, one certain, the other likely. Certain: Trump thinks Europe is two power blocs, Russian and western and that exactly where the dividing line comes somewhere in central Europe - which is in fact what the current war is about in his mind - is a matter for Europe and he doesn't care.
Likely: That Trump is actively pro Russia.
Realist conclusion: It is obvious that USA is not willing to risk a single soldier's life over where that boundary is drawn in this war.
Next realist conclusion: It is not yet obvious that a single large 'western' (NATO) country is willing to either.
'Security guarantees' means risking your soldiers' lives. No western leader has yet said so. When they do we shall know they are serious.
Rory is such a loss to front line politics. We desperately need people like him, people capable of actually thinking and analysing the problems we have.
I agree with him that Trump really doesn't care about Europe, the Ukraine or NATO. As far as he is concerned why should US resources be wasted on this? What's in it for them? As Charles De Gaulle said, "countries have interests, not friends." On this it is us that are deluding ourselves, not Trump. If Europe decides it has an interest in preventing Russia's aggression in Ukraine succeeding, and we do, we must do something about it. Expecting the Americans to bail us out is both pathetic and unrealistic.
This Rory Stewart:
Kamala Harris will win comfortably, because:
• Biden’s admin has been solid • Trump’s lost ground since 2016 • The young Black male votes which Trump needs didn’t turn out in 16, 18, 20, or 22 • Young women like Kamala + vote ✴️Ignore polls—they’re herding, after past misses
Stewart is the type of 'expert' who sees nothing wrong with unrestricted illegal immigration but gets upset about the possibility of them being deported.
RS getting one prediction wrong is a single data point and says nothing about him except that occasion.
Your last para is straw manning a touch.
He's been arguing for a deal with France to send all people from small boats back instantly, alongside opening legal routes, on the basis that that will then remove any incentive for small boat crossings.
You don't do a deal with France to send the boats back for the same reason you don't do a deal with a burglar to get your goods back. You send them back without French consent. This belief that there must be a deal will always fail, because it's not in French interests to do so.
You don't burn bridges with one of your nearest neighbours, like Trump has with Canada and Mexico.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
The one thing we need to continue to resist is ID cards imo.
I've somewhat changed my mind. These are normal in Bulgaria, where my wife is from, and just like a driving licence. People aren't reguarly demanded to supply them.
And we don't really have any privacy anyway. We are all tracked and monitored with our data and phones wherever we go, and our ISPs and Chatbots know everything about us.
If an ID card could be disaggregated from all other databases and shown to make it impossible to work as an illegal migrant, and aid deportations, and deter new arrivals, I might take a different view now to what I did in 2006-2008.
I haven't changed my mind. The State should have no right to demand to know my identity unless I am trying to claim something from them.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
I think it is incompetence, rather than malice. (Or a refusal to compromise.)
Take the Conservative administrations under Johnson and Sunak and the issue of immigration.
They miscalculated how many people would come on the skilled worker program, and set the salary limits far too low. They miscalculated how many visa dependents would come when they opened up academic study visas. And they allowed themselves to be scared by representatives of the care homes community about worker shortages.
All of those mistakes were recognised, and changes were made. But changes were made three years after it became clear there was a problem.
The number of student visas is down sharply. The minimum salary is up dramatically.
The errors were (a) miscalculation, and (b) taking years to correct their errors.
Good businesses run on incrementalism. We have targets. If we see numbers are way out of line from what we expected, we don't commission a study, that reports back at some point in the future. We say "this number is out of whack: what is the simplest, quickest, easiest way of solving it, without causing issues down the line."
So, for the salary limit, when it was clear we were getting 3x the expected number of people, the salary limit should have ben increased by (say) 10% after three months. And if that didn't change the numbers enough, you can move it by a further 20% two months after that.
The difference between successful and unsuccessful businesses is being responsive to data.
And the Conservative government was woefully slow to respond. The models said [x] people would come, and - such is human nature - you say "oh, it's temporary, it will change". No! Be responsive, because responsiveness works in two ways.
Not getting any student visa applications, and you expected 25,000: well, maybe we can loosen up the requirements. But be constantly responsive to the data, while being very open about your targets.
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
Yes, nearly all of them.
Where are you getting your evidence from, because the Oxford Migration Observatory's figures from 2024 show a 51% initial grant rate for Pakistan. That's not including appeals or subsequent legal challenges. That is not being 'routinely refused' and it's certainly not 'nearly all of them' being deported. It is in fact an eye-watering grant rate from a relatively safe country.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
I think it is incompetence, rather than malice. (Or a refusal to compromise.)
Take the Conservative administrations under Johnson and Sunak and the issue of immigration.
They miscalculated how many people would come on the skilled worker program, and set the salary limits far too low. They miscalculated how many visa dependents would come when they opened up academic study visas. And they allowed themselves to be scared by representatives of the care homes community about worker shortages.
All of those mistakes were recognised, and changes were made. But changes were made three years after it became clear there was a problem.
The number of student visas is down sharply. The minimum salary is up dramatically.
The errors were (a) miscalculation, and (b) taking years to correct their errors.
Good businesses run on incrementalism. We have targets. If we see numbers are way out of line from what we expected, we don't commission a study, that reports back at some point in the future. We say "this number is out of whack: what is the simplest, quickest, easiest way of solving it, without causing issues down the line."
So, for the salary limit, when it was clear we were getting 3x the expected number of people, the salary limit should have ben increased by (say) 10% after three months. And if that didn't change the numbers enough, you can move it by a further 20% two months after that.
The difference between successful and unsuccessful businesses is being responsive to data.
And the Conservative government was woefully slow to respond. The models said [x] people would come, and - such is human nature - you say "oh, it's temporary, it will change". No! Be responsive, because responsiveness works in two ways.
Not getting any student visa applications, and you expected 25,000: well, maybe we can loosen up the requirements. But be constantly responsive to the data, while being very open about your targets.
When did we last have a Government that was in any way really competent to that extent?
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
What problem is who not recognising? You appear to be caught in some strange persecutory fantasy. The current Govt is very aware of many problems and are clearly trying to do something about them. Now, you may conclude that they're not doing a very good job, but the idea that they refuse to recognise problems and are doubling down on "hyperliberalism" is entirely at odds with reality. Indeed, part of Labour's polling woes is because they've lost the "hyperliberal" vote on their left, while not convincing those in the centre that they're delivering.
You are an absolutely perfect example of the phenomenon.
In fact, you encapsulate it.
But you can't give actual examples. Because it's in your head.
You're like a man with a fork in a world of soup.
You're like a man who still can't give actual examples.
Can you give me a concrete example of a problem facing the country where there is "an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform"?
Come on, what problem? People coming over in boats? The government is very clear that this is a problem and they want to stop it happening. Asylum seekers in hotels? Government policy is to end this practice as soon as possible. Overall net immigration being high? The Government has committed to reducing it from the levels seen in the last few years of the previous administration.
As I said, you might well think the Government is shit at handling any of these. Fair enough. But they're not refusing to acknowledge that there is a problem.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
The one thing we need to continue to resist is ID cards imo.
I've somewhat changed my mind. These are normal in Bulgaria, where my wife is from, and just like a driving licence. People aren't reguarly demanded to supply them.
And we don't really have any privacy anyway. We are all tracked and monitored with our data and phones wherever we go, and our ISPs and Chatbots know everything about us.
If an ID card could be disaggregated from all other databases and shown to make it impossible to work as an illegal migrant, and aid deportations, and deter new arrivals, I might take a different view now to what I did in 2006-2008.
You approve of ID cards? What kind of Communism is this?
On topic this is a lay for me. I cannot see Reform having this sort of breakthrough, notwithstanding the pathetic performances of both Labour and the Tories. I still bear the scars of the SDP when we naively believed that we could break through the old duopoly and provide Thatcherite economics with Labour compassion. I think the SDP were far, far more user friendly than Reform will ever be, able to gain votes from both the left and the right. And yet we failed.
Reform show signs of winning over the socially conservative Labour element, the sort that voted for Brexit despite the attitudes of the Labour metropolitan elite. But I can't believe that they can win enough from that segment or the Tory right to give them the plurality they need. We shall see, maybe this is just wishful thinking. I believe the UK is better than this.
Completely see your point. However I think the rules change when there is no strong sets of affirmatibe support for any party at all that is founded on the basic opinion that the party is clear about its principles and objectives, and fundamentally can field a team that can run a country.
The SDP at its height were facing both a Labour party seriously more credible than the current lot, despite its left lurch under Foot, and a Tory party in full pomp. Both parties has comprehensible principles and programmes.
Reform could win (I give them a 30% chance of majority government, that number on a rising trajectory) by being the least worst option for 34% or thereabouts of voters. On current form no-one will win on merit in 2029. So the rules have changed form the 1980s!
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
The one thing we need to continue to resist is ID cards imo.
I've somewhat changed my mind. These are normal in Bulgaria, where my wife is from, and just like a driving licence. People aren't reguarly demanded to supply them.
And we don't really have any privacy anyway. We are all tracked and monitored with our data and phones wherever we go, and our ISPs and Chatbots know everything about us.
If an ID card could be disaggregated from all other databases and shown to make it impossible to work as an illegal migrant, and aid deportations, and deter new arrivals, I might take a different view now to what I did in 2006-2008.
why not just use driving licence, even if you don't drive you can get a provisional. Our lot will squander billions on a shit solution
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
One can challenge an asylum refusal now in the courts. An indefinite number of times.
You cannot challenge an indefinite number of times, no. Even after challenges, most applicants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are refused.
Please find any codified limit, or even any evidence of a de facto limit, for the amount of times that an asylum seeker in the UK can make a fresh claim.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
The one thing we need to continue to resist is ID cards imo.
I've somewhat changed my mind. These are normal in Bulgaria, where my wife is from, and just like a driving licence. People aren't reguarly demanded to supply them.
And we don't really have any privacy anyway. We are all tracked and monitored with our data and phones wherever we go, and our ISPs and Chatbots know everything about us.
If an ID card could be disaggregated from all other databases and shown to make it impossible to work as an illegal migrant, and aid deportations, and deter new arrivals, I might take a different view now to what I did in 2006-2008.
why not just use driving licence, even if you don't drive you can get a provisional. Our lot will squander billions on a shit solution
Or alternatively, why not have an ID card say if you have a driving licence?
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
The one thing we need to continue to resist is ID cards imo.
I've somewhat changed my mind. These are normal in Bulgaria, where my wife is from, and just like a driving licence. People aren't reguarly demanded to supply them.
And we don't really have any privacy anyway. We are all tracked and monitored with our data and phones wherever we go, and our ISPs and Chatbots know everything about us.
If an ID card could be disaggregated from all other databases and shown to make it impossible to work as an illegal migrant, and aid deportations, and deter new arrivals, I might take a different view now to what I did in 2006-2008.
why not just use driving licence, even if you don't drive you can get a provisional. Our lot will squander billions on a shit solution
Quite. The issue with ID cards is not the cards, it is the wide ranging surveillance powers that the British state is drooling like a hungry labrador at bringing in alongside the ID cards. They simply cannot be trusted with these powers. I wouldn't trust them with a paperclip I was fond of.
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
Yes, nearly all of them.
Where are you getting your evidence from, because the Oxford Migration Observatory's figures from 2024 show a 51% initial grant rate for Pakistan. That's not including appeals or subsequent legal challenges. That is not being 'routinely refused' and it's certainly not 'nearly all of them' being deported. It is in fact an eye-watering grant rate from a relatively safe country.
Give it a few years and you’ll find him on a street corner, clutching a tattered stack of lecture notes, bellowing; “You can’t give any examples!” at bewildered passers by.
He’ll be propping up a piece of frayed cardboard with a scratchily written message on it demanding 'free entry visas for international students' so they can gather round once more to hear his masterclass on post-doctoral semantic studies, and wondering whatever happened to all the people like him who thought they would inherit the earth were it not for the stupid idiot racists and the infathomable injustices of inheritance tax.
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
One can challenge an asylum refusal now in the courts. An indefinite number of times.
You cannot challenge an indefinite number of times, no. Even after challenges, most applicants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are refused.
Do you have a source for that claim, or is it entirely unsubstantiated like your "nearly all" claim earlier?
The Migration Observatory link earlier gave a majority of applicants from Pakistan being improved at the initial stage, let alone after challenges, so I'm not sure how that fits in with your claim that most are refused even after challenges.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
What problem is who not recognising? You appear to be caught in some strange persecutory fantasy. The current Govt is very aware of many problems and are clearly trying to do something about them. Now, you may conclude that they're not doing a very good job, but the idea that they refuse to recognise problems and are doubling down on "hyperliberalism" is entirely at odds with reality. Indeed, part of Labour's polling woes is because they've lost the "hyperliberal" vote on their left, while not convincing those in the centre that they're delivering.
You are an absolutely perfect example of the phenomenon.
In fact, you encapsulate it.
But you can't give actual examples. Because it's in your head.
You just provided one. You claimed “nearly all” Pakistani asylum seekers are refused. You denied there was a problem. Indeed you denied it by lying about it. Because what you said is a lie
Pakistan Asylum Seekers (and initial decision) 2023 Q3 to 2025 Q2 Total applications: 19,392 Grant of Protection: 7,608 (39%) Grant of Other Leave: 103 (1%) Refused: 9,003 (46%) Withdrawn: 1,853 (10%) Admin Outcome: 825 (4%)
Bangladesh is more likely to be rejected but still nowhere near nearly everyone. Total applications: 15,079 Grant of Protection: 2,310 (15%) Grant of Other Leave: 126 (1%) Refused: 9,594 (64%) Withdrawn: 2,600 (17%) Admin Outcome: 449 (3%)
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
Yes, nearly all of them.
Where are you getting your evidence from, because the Oxford Migration Observatory's figures from 2024 show a 51% initial grant rate for Pakistan. That's not including appeals or subsequent legal challenges. That is not being 'routinely refused' and it's certainly not 'nearly all of them' being deported. It is in fact an eye-watering grant rate from a relatively safe country.
And? Pakistan is a huge country of 255m people. If you have upset those in your neighbourhood whether because of your religion, your sexual orientation or your actions, move. Its not a reason to come here. Its not our problem. And why the hell are 6% of Indian applicants getting asylum after appeals? The score from both of these countries should be zero. We need to start getting real about this or the whole system will be overthrown.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
The one thing we need to continue to resist is ID cards imo.
I've somewhat changed my mind. These are normal in Bulgaria, where my wife is from, and just like a driving licence. People aren't reguarly demanded to supply them.
And we don't really have any privacy anyway. We are all tracked and monitored with our data and phones wherever we go, and our ISPs and Chatbots know everything about us.
If an ID card could be disaggregated from all other databases and shown to make it impossible to work as an illegal migrant, and aid deportations, and deter new arrivals, I might take a different view now to what I did in 2006-2008.
why not just use driving licence, even if you don't drive you can get a provisional. Our lot will squander billions on a shit solution
Quite. The issue with ID cards is not the cards, it is the wide ranging surveillance powers that the British state is drooling like a hungry labrador at bringing in alongside the ID cards. They simply cannot be trusted with these powers. I wouldn't trust them with a paperclip I was fond of.
That's my biggest practical objection, and what the Old Bill would do with it.
I think it's more likely they'd use it to crack down on minor infractions by domestic citizens rather than deal with illegal immigrants.
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
What problem is who not recognising? You appear to be caught in some strange persecutory fantasy. The current Govt is very aware of many problems and are clearly trying to do something about them. Now, you may conclude that they're not doing a very good job, but the idea that they refuse to recognise problems and are doubling down on "hyperliberalism" is entirely at odds with reality. Indeed, part of Labour's polling woes is because they've lost the "hyperliberal" vote on their left, while not convincing those in the centre that they're delivering.
You are an absolutely perfect example of the phenomenon.
In fact, you encapsulate it.
But you can't give actual examples. Because it's in your head.
You're like a man with a fork in a world of soup.
You're like a man who still can't give actual examples.
Can you give me a concrete example of a problem facing the country where there is "an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform"?
Come on, what problem? People coming over in boats? The government is very clear that this is a problem and they want to stop it happening. Asylum seekers in hotels? Government policy is to end this practice as soon as possible. Overall net immigration being high? The Government has committed to reducing it from the levels seen in the last few years of the previous administration.
As I said, you might well think the Government is shit at handling any of these. Fair enough. But they're not refusing to acknowledge that there is a problem.
Here is an example. What about the failure to have a credible plan to put an upper limit on our continuing and future borrowing coupled with a policy reliance on debt to GDP ratio in 5 years time, the target moving forward by 12 months every year and so never reached?
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
What problem is who not recognising? You appear to be caught in some strange persecutory fantasy. The current Govt is very aware of many problems and are clearly trying to do something about them. Now, you may conclude that they're not doing a very good job, but the idea that they refuse to recognise problems and are doubling down on "hyperliberalism" is entirely at odds with reality. Indeed, part of Labour's polling woes is because they've lost the "hyperliberal" vote on their left, while not convincing those in the centre that they're delivering.
You are an absolutely perfect example of the phenomenon.
In fact, you encapsulate it.
But you can't give actual examples. Because it's in your head.
You just provided one. You claimed “nearly all” Pakistani asylum seekers are refused. You denied there was a problem. Indeed you denied it by lying about it. Because what you said is a lie
Pakistan Asylum Seekers (and initial decision) 2023 Q3 to 2025 Q2 Total applications: 19,392 Grant of Protection: 7,608 (39%) Grant of Other Leave: 103 (1%) Refused: 9,003 (46%) Withdrawn: 1,853 (10%) Admin Outcome: 825 (4%)
Bangladesh is more likely to be rejected but still nowhere near nearly everyone. Total applications: 15,079 Grant of Protection: 2,310 (15%) Grant of Other Leave: 126 (1%) Refused: 9,594 (64%) Withdrawn: 2,600 (17%) Admin Outcome: 449 (3%)
Of those refused or withdrawn how many were returned ?
I was surprised to see anti-migrant protest are taking place in a town not far from where I grew up: Horley in Surrey. Surely the post boring place in human history. Even its name is just a dreary amalgamation of those of the two nearby towns Horsham and Crawley (not particularly exciting places in themselves).
The liberal consensus is breaking down. In real-time. I can even see aspects of it fraying amongst professional middle-class people, although more cautiously and with caveats.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
The one thing we need to continue to resist is ID cards imo.
I've somewhat changed my mind. These are normal in Bulgaria, where my wife is from, and just like a driving licence. People aren't reguarly demanded to supply them.
And we don't really have any privacy anyway. We are all tracked and monitored with our data and phones wherever we go, and our ISPs and Chatbots know everything about us.
If an ID card could be disaggregated from all other databases and shown to make it impossible to work as an illegal migrant, and aid deportations, and deter new arrivals, I might take a different view now to what I did in 2006-2008.
why not just use driving licence, even if you don't drive you can get a provisional. Our lot will squander billions on a shit solution
Quite. The issue with ID cards is not the cards, it is the wide ranging surveillance powers that the British state is drooling like a hungry labrador at bringing in alongside the ID cards. They simply cannot be trusted with these powers. I wouldn't trust them with a paperclip I was fond of.
That's my biggest practical objection, and what the Old Bill would do with it.
I think it's more likely they'd use it to crack down on minor infractions by domestic citizens rather than deal with illegal immigrants.
And you're right to think that. These institutions need gutting and a very long hard road to recovery before they can be trusted. They are a national disgrace.
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
One can challenge an asylum refusal now in the courts. An indefinite number of times.
You cannot challenge an indefinite number of times, no. Even after challenges, most applicants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are refused.
Please find any codified limit, or even any evidence of a de facto limit, for the amount of times that an asylum seeker in the UK can make a fresh claim.
To appeal an initial asylum decision by the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), you need some reason for the appeal in order to be given Permission to Appeal. This has to be an error in law by the First-tier Tribunal. If you are successful in that, you can go to the Upper Tribunal. If they say no, you can go to the Court of Appeal, although this is difficult. If they say no, you can appeal to the Supreme Court, although phenomenally difficult to get through to them. That's not an indefinite line of courts you can go to.
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
One can challenge an asylum refusal now in the courts. An indefinite number of times.
You cannot challenge an indefinite number of times, no. Even after challenges, most applicants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are refused.
Do you have a source for that claim, or is it entirely unsubstantiated like your "nearly all" claim earlier?
The Migration Observatory link earlier gave a majority of applicants from Pakistan being improved at the initial stage, let alone after challenges, so I'm not sure how that fits in with your claim that most are refused even after challenges.
The question asked was about Pakistan and Bangladesh. Over the both of them, the majority are refused. I said, "Even after challenges, most applicants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are refused." Take all the applicants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and see how many are accepted and how many refused. Most are refused. Within those three countries, Pakistan has the highest acceptance rate, Bangladesh in the middle and India the lowest. Do you see what I was saying now? Apologies if my wording was poor earlier.
The Pakistanis who apply for asylum are routinely refused are they not? And subsequently deported.
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
One can challenge an asylum refusal now in the courts. An indefinite number of times.
You cannot challenge an indefinite number of times, no. Even after challenges, most applicants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are refused.
Please find any codified limit, or even any evidence of a de facto limit, for the amount of times that an asylum seeker in the UK can make a fresh claim.
To appeal an initial asylum decision by the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), you need some reason for the appeal in order to be given Permission to Appeal. This has to be an error in law by the First-tier Tribunal. If you are successful in that, you can go to the Upper Tribunal. If they say no, you can go to the Court of Appeal, although this is difficult. If they say no, you can appeal to the Supreme Court, although phenomenally difficult to get through to them. That's not an indefinite line of courts you can go to.
That is a single claim, and a single process.
I am talking about an indefinite number of fresh claims that can be made by someone whose initial claim has been refused. A fresh claim that may involve providing new evidence supporting the initial claim, or something totally different.
Comments
Assuming it’s 1m per episode, that’s at least 20 days work and more likely 40 on set (say 400 hours but possibly more). Plus travel time, etc.
It’s still very well paid, obviously at around £600 per hour but that’s only about the same as a partner at a second tier law firm in London.
We’re discussing the deal he negotiated for Star Wars which gave him a low basic and a percentage of the gross profits. As the profits were huge and he made milllions from that.
This was the IMDb Comment I’m referring to
‘Guinness had a 2.25% interest in the revenue from Star Wars (1977), which would be the highest grossing movie at the time (and second only to Gone with the Wind (1939) when adjusted for inflation). Guinness had agreed to a 2% interest to make the film, but he reported that just before release during a telephone conversation George Lucas had offered an additional 0.5% because of how supportive and helpful Guinness had been (with dialogue, other actors, etc.). After the release and stunning results at the box office, Guinness asked to confirm the additional 0.5% in writing, but was told it was (reduced to) 0.25%, although it is not clear who had decided this. This was revealed by Guinness in the 1977 interview with BBC's Michael Parkinson on the series "Talking Pictures". It was in general supported by many public comments by Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher all speaking highly of Guinness' professionalism and impact on the set. Apparently, Guinness did not quibble the 1977 worldwide revenue for Star Wars of $400+ million making Guinness' 2.25% probably around $9m for that year alone, with additional revenue well into 1979. In comparison, that exceeds other British actor high-water marks for Sean Connery and Roger Moore in the 1970s playing James Bond ($1m salary + $3-5m depending on revenue interests per film e.g. 5-12%).’
They should pretty much sweep it.
'Sod off and go and live in a different country then.'
https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1959268379677581342
'Top three nationalities claiming asylum in the last year.
Pakistani.
Afghan.
Iranian.
Followed by Eritreans, Bangladeshis, Indians and so on.
We don't need, or want, these men in our country.
SEND THEM HOME.'
https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1958782599951782397
'There is NO point moving migrants out of hotels and into our communities.
It solves nothing. The ONLY answer is to deport them all in industrial numbers on a timescale never seen before.
Securely detaining them all until that can be achieved.
DETAIN. DEPORT.'
https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1958872364713644150
Hence 'TOMMY ROBINSON SAYS RUPERT LOWE IS 'LITERALLY THE ONLY MP FIGHTING FOR THE BRITISH PEOPLE'
https://x.com/Basil_TGMD/status/1940716207780593929
And the Bangladeshis IIRC.
Alec’s case is famous - demonstrates the importance of equity upside - but it’s a classic example of survivor bias. We aren’t talking about all the cases where the actors made no money from their points…
Word would soon get out. They'd join the Sex Pistols, frigging in the rigging, "cuz there's fuck all else to do..."
On the rare occasions when I need to now I pay for a private one - I simply don't have the time to play the games.
But lots of people don't have that option. And probably don't get their cancer caught earlier enough as a consequence.
https://x.com/brianlilley/status/1958929510058860999?s=61
People here are obsessed with Trump.
And, they will reap the whirlwind.
Farage has made a career out of pulling the Conservatives to the right whilst standing outside. Power without responsibility, as the saying goes.
Now, someone else is doing it to him. Heart of stone not to laugh, as a different saying almost goes.
I just have. It doesn't have the biggest story of the day anywhere on its leading page that's easy to find, whereas the Times, Telegraph, Sun, Mail and even The Guardian all do.
Instead there's some shit about "How Israel is causing famine in Gaza", which it probably is but that's entirely besides the point.
I now have next to zero confidence in it as the flagship national broadcaster. It's like its edited by Starmey/JoePolitics/YourParty interns.
However, must say ours is now excellent. Can normally get a same day appointment if required. Pleasant, supportive GP's too, which is VERY much better than when we moved here.
I do not think there is sufficient appreciation of the narrow gate through which the route for Farage (if he really wants it) to PM goes. He has to resolutely renounce the extremes, while also promoting as well as possible fantasy solutions which sound possible and non extreme and effective at the same time. This is hard, especially as it probably can't be done
He also - and this bit has hardly started but Farage is aware of it - has to pivot to giving the voters of Reform seats what they want. What they want is high spend (and therefore high tax) free stuff of the post war social democrat state, and don't believe anyone who says different. They are lying, and don't want to win the election.
The non extremism will disappoint the violent overweight pink people. The high spend stuff will upset the Singapore on Thames wide boys.
it will be an interesting ride. What could possibly go wrong?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/21/gay-violent-nigerian-criminal-stay-uk-wife-son-deport-echr/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce35pd9q2ldo
It was top right for me, posted 19 minutes ago.
On tax and spend Reform voters are actually still pretty small state, 47% of Reform voters back the government avoiding tax rises even if that means cutting spending or borrowing more. That is more even than the 39% of Tory voters who back that.
Only 17% of Reform voters back avoiding cuts to public services, even if that means tax rises and borrowing more. That is far less than the 59% of Labour, 60% of LD and 62% of Green voters who back that
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/Sky_Results_250602_w.pdf (p7)
Or the parking firm losing a second appeal and having to pay even higher costs, which I found incredibly funny.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce35pd9q2ldo
Count the coppers on overtime. Add in football and the NH Carnival. Now ask why there are none left to patrol Tesco to nick shoplifters.
When your claim is exhausted, you can simply make a fresh claim, either for some other reason, or because you argue that fresh evidence supports your original claim:
https://righttoremain.org.uk/toolkit/freshclaim/
So if you have come from a strict Muslim country, you could criticise the regime, discover your latent homosexuality, or convert to Christianity, and providing you have pronounced these things publicly, they would be considered grounds for a fresh claim.
You could also make a human rights claim under Article 8:
https://righttoremain.org.uk/toolkit/humanrights/
All these additional claims would be subject to the same process of claim, refusal, appeal, refusal, and if they failed, you could simply make another claim based on other fresh circumstances or evidence.
So what I said was completely factual, and you were talking utter mince.
The gorgeousness of the nurses wasn't exactly an incentive to leave, he said...
Abolition of lanyards, DEI officers and rainbow flags won't quite get the £300 billion or whatever it is Reform will save.
I don't necessarily welcome this. I've considered myself pretty liberal in the past: a believer in openness, being reasonable, free debate, a supporter of moderate migration, sceptical of ID cards, hating detention without due cause, cherishing fair rights and responsibilities, open and free trade, and international rule of law.
However, this is all breaking down because of an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform - to provide answers to the problems of today; their only response seemingly to be to clamp down on dissent and double-down on hyperliberalism.
In their determination to not give an inch anywhere, they risk losing everything. And plenty of them will never see it coming until it's far far too late, and then blame anyone but themselves.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/23/labour-brighton-council-st-georges-flags-removal-seafront
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/
In fact, you encapsulate it.
Reform show signs of winning over the socially conservative Labour element, the sort that voted for Brexit despite the attitudes of the Labour metropolitan elite. But I can't believe that they can win enough from that segment or the Tory right to give them the plurality they need. We shall see, maybe this is just wishful thinking. I believe the UK is better than this.
Correction. Did see a giant Union flag.
But it was an advert for supermarket veg.
And we don't really have any privacy anyway. We are all tracked and monitored with our data and phones wherever we go, and our ISPs and Chatbots know everything about us.
If an ID card could be disaggregated from all other databases and shown to make it impossible to work as an illegal migrant, and aid deportations, and deter new arrivals, I might take a different view now to what I did in 2006-2008.
Next you’ll be telling me @Sunil_Prasannan is in to trains
Right here on this thread. You’re a clown
We could flood a tunnel.
Take the Conservative administrations under Johnson and Sunak and the issue of immigration.
They miscalculated how many people would come on the skilled worker program, and set the salary limits far too low. They miscalculated how many visa dependents would come when they opened up academic study visas. And they allowed themselves to be scared by representatives of the care homes community about worker shortages.
All of those mistakes were recognised, and changes were made. But changes were made three years after it became clear there was a problem.
The number of student visas is down sharply. The minimum salary is up dramatically.
The errors were (a) miscalculation, and (b) taking years to correct their errors.
Good businesses run on incrementalism. We have targets. If we see numbers are way out of line from what we expected, we don't commission a study, that reports back at some point in the future. We say "this number is out of whack: what is the simplest, quickest, easiest way of solving it, without causing issues down the line."
So, for the salary limit, when it was clear we were getting 3x the expected number of people, the salary limit should have ben increased by (say) 10% after three months. And if that didn't change the numbers enough, you can move it by a further 20% two months after that.
The difference between successful and unsuccessful businesses is being responsive to data.
And the Conservative government was woefully slow to respond. The models said [x] people would come, and - such is human nature - you say "oh, it's temporary, it will change". No! Be responsive, because responsiveness works in two ways.
Not getting any student visa applications, and you expected 25,000: well, maybe we can loosen up the requirements. But be constantly responsive to the data, while being very open about your targets.
https://x.com/dave43law/status/1959224777492631681?s=61
Can you give me a concrete example of a problem facing the country where there is "an absolute refusal of the governing elites to compromise, and an extraordinary level of resistance to any idea that there's even a problem - let alone that they should reform"?
Come on, what problem? People coming over in boats? The government is very clear that this is a problem and they want to stop it happening. Asylum seekers in hotels? Government policy is to end this practice as soon as possible. Overall net immigration being high? The Government has committed to reducing it from the levels seen in the last few years of the previous administration.
As I said, you might well think the Government is shit at handling any of these. Fair enough. But they're not refusing to acknowledge that there is a problem.
The SDP at its height were facing both a Labour party seriously more credible than the current lot, despite its left lurch under Foot, and a Tory party in full pomp. Both parties has comprehensible principles and programmes.
Reform could win (I give them a 30% chance of majority government, that number on a rising trajectory) by being the least worst option for 34% or thereabouts of voters. On current form no-one will win on merit in 2029. So the rules have changed form the 1980s!
He’ll be propping up a piece of frayed cardboard with a scratchily written message on it demanding 'free entry visas for international students' so they can gather round once more to hear his masterclass on post-doctoral semantic studies, and wondering whatever happened to all the people like him who thought they would inherit the earth were it not for the stupid idiot racists and the infathomable injustices of inheritance tax.
The Migration Observatory link earlier gave a majority of applicants from Pakistan being improved at the initial stage, let alone after challenges, so I'm not sure how that fits in with your claim that most are refused even after challenges.
Pakistan Asylum Seekers (and initial decision) 2023 Q3 to 2025 Q2
Total applications: 19,392
Grant of Protection: 7,608 (39%)
Grant of Other Leave: 103 (1%)
Refused: 9,003 (46%)
Withdrawn: 1,853 (10%)
Admin Outcome: 825 (4%)
Bangladesh is more likely to be rejected but still nowhere near nearly everyone.
Total applications: 15,079
Grant of Protection: 2,310 (15%)
Grant of Other Leave: 126 (1%)
Refused: 9,594 (64%)
Withdrawn: 2,600 (17%)
Admin Outcome: 449 (3%)
I think it's more likely they'd use it to crack down on minor infractions by domestic citizens rather than deal with illegal immigrants.
(The Tories were just the same of course.)
I am talking about an indefinite number of fresh claims that can be made by someone whose initial claim has been refused. A fresh claim that may involve providing new evidence supporting the initial claim, or something totally different.