Good morning from the golf, where for the first time in years I have my first 10,000 steps in before 11am. Might celebrate with a beer, as the tent just opened!
Sub-optimal result for the Greens in Cotswolds / The Rissingtons:
LD gain from Green
LD 321 Con 268 RefUK 221 Green 47
Lib Dem 37.5% (New) Conservative 31.3% (-12.1%) Reform 25.8% (New) Green 5.5% (-51.1%)
Yes Polanski is far too leftwing for the Cotswolds, rich Remainers there may be environmentally friendly and not great fans of Brexit but they aren't going to vote to see their expensive properties and cars and wealth and income hammered with tax either. Hence they have switched to Davey's LDs
The Cotswolds is virtually a LibDem hegemony these days with only Geoff Clifton-Brown the holdout at Parliamentary level, and that due to personal popularity rather than party strength. The Rissingtons are close to his patch so this isn't a good sign for him.
The Greens do very well around Stroud which is an idiosyncratic place, twinned I believe with Middle Earth. Apart from that and parts of Bristol it's Yellow Peril as far as the eye can see.
The seat was Green before not Tory, the Tories were second and the Tory and Reform vote combined was over 50%
There was no Lab candidate so that may have bolstered the Ref vote, but mainly the results reflects the strong NOFE* sentiment in this pretty and prosperous area.
It will be great to see Kemi slaughtering Labour if they do insist on an all BAME (I thought it was Global Majority now?) shortlist
I was doing some interviews for a management post last week. One of the candidates described herself as BAME spontaneously in the interview.
It's not a great descriptor, but it is a damn sight better than 'Global majority' which is just plain dumb.
Yes: there isn't a global majority, unless the argument is that all non-whites have something in common. Genetically, arguably the global majority is everyone not negroid.
BAME irritates me for two reasons: first, why did 'minority ethnic' suddenly become more correct than 'ethnic minority'? That's not hiw we construct English. And second, redundancy: "black" is an ethnic minority - so is covered already by the ME bit. It's almost exactly like Cheshire West amd Chester. Just "West Cheshire" would do.
Yes, its not a term that I would use. Neither would I use Global Majority.
But there are a number of similar curiosities. Using "Coloured People" is likely to end in disciplinary action but using "People of Colour" is fine and dandy.
The difference between those two is group vs individual
“People [who happen to be] of Colour” vs a group based segregation-associated classification
Though the NAACP still use the old term.
I think this is all part of euphemism inflation. Existing usage gets tainted by pejorative connotations, so new terms come into usage, which in turn become pejorative.
So we started with the medical terms "imbecile", "moron" and "lunatic" but wind up "Learning Diability" "Special Needs" and "mental health issues" but as the underlying prejudices are little changed these new terms become tainted.
Can we do anything in the UK without it taking 10 20 years....
500km of railway, 20+ years. China, 50000km, 10 years. They built a bloody 20 million person world class city from scratch in 30 years. Are we still talking about new garden cities (that aren't really new cities), haven't they been in the works for 15 years???
China isn't necessarily tge best example to follow. They have 80 million empty houses because they built far too many because it made the GDP figure go up; their trains ferry around a lot of empty air, and their infrastructure is quite fally-downy
If you don't like China, you can have Singapore.
But having been in China for a month, I can tell you for instance "trains ferry a lot of empty air" isn't true, certainly not in Eastern China. The 1000 person trains were full. And the bullet trains are miles ahead of the rest of the world now in every aspect and they can make more in a year than the rest of the world combined x10. They have production lined train manufacture in a similar way to cars, but in a way no other company has. The train lines in the far north are the criticism for empty air, but it kinda of irrevelant in the grand scheme. There is politics / "control" in play, but also engineering testing for high speed in very cold temps and high desert, as they are exporting high speed to rest of the world now.
I think a lot of the poor quality stuff ends up being linked to corruption in lower tier cities. The Tier 1 cities are better than basically every Western city now.
Yes China keep their GDP up by doing effectively Keynsian ecomics of building in the down times and have overbuilt housing. But the point was they get shit done....the West, particularly the UK, don't get shit done, its more shit stuff gets done.
China gets stuff done by having no democracy, planning law, health & safety or environmental standards.
If they want to build something, they'll move you out of your house in 24 hrs - no questions- then bulldoze it, and they don't really care how many die in building the new stuff.
If you take that attitude, you can get quite a lot done quite quickly with an authoritarian state.
But would you want to live in one?
I am obviously not blind to that and obviously an extreme example. Singapore certainly gets shit done without total loss of rights. The problem in the West we are at the other end of the extreme spectrum. Also, what I have noticed across the up and coming countries of Asia, shit get done daily, in terms of something is broken, fixed immediately. Then I flew back to the UK, Heathrow, first toilet I walk into broken (and clearly been broken for a while), and loads of other stuff just like that.
But you are also missing a point a little. They can build 10x high speed trains of everybody else not because of making people homeless or even working people 100hr weeks or even having to have a million people working at it, its because they have this huge drive to scale production efficiently. We see it in every industry they get good at, solar panels, wind turbines, drones and now cars and robots.
The way they build the physical trains (and the track), they have taken the car production line model and gone big. The US used to do that kind of thing last century in many areas, tech is the last remaining one. In Europe, our productivity is laughable bad. All other train makers are still making them in an incredibly inefficient manner.
Yes India is incredibly efficient and their trains notoriously hi tech and up to date
I was pretty impressed by the Indian Railways on my recent trip. Admittedly the local trains looked a bit rough, but the long distance ones were pretty impressive and ran to time.
OT. My brother who has lived for many years in Holland and is now Dutch with a Dutch wife and family just texted me this in reply to my question 'who is this new Trump's best friend Rutte?'
"Horrible Man. He's the PM who sayed in power for 17 years by avoiding any serious issue, smiling his way out of trouble preferring to set up a commission to see what went wrong rather than look for serious solutions. He presided over the demolition of social services, schools, the justice system, the armed forces, allowing farmers to continue polluting the land and waterways.Who made a point of not having ideals or principles and who has now become Donald Trump's best buddy. Hollands answer to Neville Chamberlain.In short hiding under any stone that would have him. Also I should add the first PM to form a government coalition including our Mr Wilders. Enough. I hate him.
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
Sub-optimal result for the Greens in Cotswolds / The Rissingtons:
LD gain from Green
LD 321 Con 268 RefUK 221 Green 47
Lib Dem 37.5% (New) Conservative 31.3% (-12.1%) Reform 25.8% (New) Green 5.5% (-51.1%)
Yes Polanski is far too leftwing for the Cotswolds, rich Remainers there may be environmentally friendly and not great fans of Brexit but they aren't going to vote to see their expensive properties and cars and wealth and income hammered with tax either. Hence they have switched to Davey's LDs
The Cotswolds is virtually a LibDem hegemony these days with only Geoff Clifton-Brown the holdout at Parliamentary level, and that due to personal popularity rather than party strength. The Rissingtons are close to his patch so this isn't a good sign for him.
The Greens do very well around Stroud which is an idiosyncratic place, twinned I believe with Middle Earth. Apart from that and parts of Bristol it's Yellow Peril as far as the eye can see.
The seat was Green before not Tory, the Tories were second and the Tory and Reform vote combined was over 50%
There was no Lab candidate so that may have bolstered the Ref vote, but mainly the results reflects the strong NOFE* sentiment in this pretty and prosperous area.
*No Oiks From Epping
Epping has a higher average house price than even most of the Cotswolds and most Epping councillors are now also Liberal Democrat
Sub-optimal result for the Greens in Cotswolds / The Rissingtons:
LD gain from Green
LD 321 Con 268 RefUK 221 Green 47
Lib Dem 37.5% (New) Conservative 31.3% (-12.1%) Reform 25.8% (New) Green 5.5% (-51.1%)
Yes Polanski is far too leftwing for the Cotswolds, rich Remainers there may be environmentally friendly and not great fans of Brexit but they aren't going to vote to see their expensive properties and cars and wealth and income hammered with tax either. Hence they have switched to Davey's LDs
The Cotswolds is virtually a LibDem hegemony these days with only Geoff Clifton-Brown the holdout at Parliamentary level, and that due to personal popularity rather than party strength. The Rissingtons are close to his patch so this isn't a good sign for him.
The Greens do very well around Stroud which is an idiosyncratic place, twinned I believe with Middle Earth. Apart from that and parts of Bristol it's Yellow Peril as far as the eye can see.
The seat was Green before not Tory, the Tories were second and the Tory and Reform vote combined was over 50%
There was no Lab candidate so that may have bolstered the Ref vote, but mainly the results reflects the strong NOFE* sentiment in this pretty and prosperous area.
*No Oiks From Epping
Epping has a higher average house price than even most of the Cotswolds and most Epping councillors are now also Liberal Democrat
If the Tories are loosing the rural oik vote as well, they really are doomed.....
Sub-optimal result for the Greens in Cotswolds / The Rissingtons:
LD gain from Green
LD 321 Con 268 RefUK 221 Green 47
Lib Dem 37.5% (New) Conservative 31.3% (-12.1%) Reform 25.8% (New) Green 5.5% (-51.1%)
Yes Polanski is far too leftwing for the Cotswolds, rich Remainers there may be environmentally friendly and not great fans of Brexit but they aren't going to vote to see their expensive properties and cars and wealth and income hammered with tax either. Hence they have switched to Davey's LDs
The Cotswolds is virtually a LibDem hegemony these days with only Geoff Clifton-Brown the holdout at Parliamentary level, and that due to personal popularity rather than party strength. The Rissingtons are close to his patch so this isn't a good sign for him.
The Greens do very well around Stroud which is an idiosyncratic place, twinned I believe with Middle Earth. Apart from that and parts of Bristol it's Yellow Peril as far as the eye can see.
The seat was Green before not Tory, the Tories were second and the Tory and Reform vote combined was over 50%
There was no Lab candidate so that may have bolstered the Ref vote, but mainly the results reflects the strong NOFE* sentiment in this pretty and prosperous area.
*No Oiks From Epping
Epping has a higher average house price than even most of the Cotswolds and most Epping councillors are now also Liberal Democrat
If the Tories are loosing the rural oik vote as well, they really are doomed.....
Epping is a wealthy commuter town and most of the Cotswolds is rural
Good morning from the golf, where for the first time in years I have my first 10,000 steps in before 11am. Might celebrate with a beer, as the tent just opened!
What course you playing?
I’m not good enough to be playing!
I guess I can ask if they’ll let me have a go, but my handicap was about 25 a couple of decades ago and I won’t have improved in the meantime.
What the hell....They are doing $2 million a day in ticket alone now at ~$200 a pop, to watch the wizard of bloody oz.
The reimagining of the 1939 classic has now sold 2 million tickets since it bowed on Aug. 28 of last year, totaling more than $260 million in ticket sales, the company said Tuesday.
OT. My brother who has lived for many years in Holland and is now Dutch with a Dutch wife and family just texted me this in reply to my question 'who is this new Trump's best friend Rutte?'
"Horrible Man. He's the PM who sayed in power for 17 years by avoiding any serious issue, smiling his way out of trouble preferring to set up a commission to see what went wrong rather than look for serious solutions. He presided over the demolition of social services, schools, the justice system, the armed forces, allowing farmers to continue polluting the land and waterways.Who made a point of not having ideals or principles and who has now become Donald Trump's best buddy. Hollands answer to Neville Chamberlain.In short hiding under any stone that would have him. Also I should add the first PM to form a government coalition including our Mr Wilders. Enough. I hate him.
Comments
NEW THREAD
*No Oiks From Epping
I think this is all part of euphemism inflation. Existing usage gets tainted by pejorative connotations, so new terms come into usage, which in turn become pejorative.
So we started with the medical terms "imbecile", "moron" and "lunatic" but wind up "Learning Diability" "Special Needs" and "mental health issues" but as the underlying prejudices are little changed these new terms become tainted.
"Horrible Man. He's the PM who sayed in power for 17 years by avoiding any serious issue, smiling his way out of trouble preferring to set up a commission to see what went wrong rather than look for serious solutions. He presided over the demolition of social services, schools, the justice system, the armed forces, allowing farmers to continue polluting the land and waterways.Who made a point of not having ideals or principles and who has now become Donald Trump's best buddy. Hollands answer to Neville Chamberlain.In short hiding under any stone that would have him. Also I should add the first PM to form a government coalition including our Mr Wilders. Enough. I hate him.
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’:
“If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit.
In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
https://x.com/steverichards14/status/2014612676777779396?s=20