Indeed. If I recall, this is is part of the deeper analysis of why farmers, the medical profession etc have higher suicide rates. It's not so much due to the headline explanation that the jobs are supposedly more stressful, it's that they've got ready access to shotguns, lethal drugs etc.
Some years back there was a survey, and doctors chose insulin whereas laboratory chemists favoured cyanide.
Somewhere on my shelves is a racing book with an appendix on how to end it all. These days, the publisher would be excoriated for poor taste.
Ed Milliband has got to where he is today in climbing over the corpses of those who under estimated him. Gordon Brown alone perhaps spotted it early, "he's the one to watch".
Stuns me that people are continuing with this mistake
"Meanwhile, Ed Miliband's speech over the weekend ruling out a referendum was, in tone and content, the worst I can remember by a major party leader. Have a look: it reads like a Craig Brown parody.
And when you've finished snorting incredulously, look at where public opinion is on this issue: 82 per cent of people favour an In/Out referendum, and the Outs lead the Ins by 43 per cent to 35. If we absolutely must reduce this story to party politics, I'd say Miliband has the bigger problem, wouldn't you?"
Personally I think there should be a distinction between those who take their own life through pills, car exhaust fume, bullet or whatever and those who cause others to unwittingly do it for them by throwing themselves in front of a car or train.
Shouldn't both be called suicide and the latter śhould be shamed out of existence
If someone wants to end their life why cause innocent strangers to bear a burden?
To be fair I am not sure that someone who is at the point of committing suicide is really going to be thinking too deeply about the effect the method has on other people. The idea that people on the verge of taking their life are really going to be responsive to being 'shamed' by the way they do it seems rather hard hearted to me.
I have sympathy for anyone who feels suicidal of course, but if they are well enough to write a long suicide note blaming a government policy, they are capable of considering the effect their act will have on the poor driver
What you are saying could apply to Michael Ryan as easily as this lady
You have to love the Independent's appalling journalism standards. David Cameron says an EU-US trade deal could add £10bn to British economy. Indie reports this as him saying the EU could add £10bn to British economy:
My 9 year old recently announced that the worst three things in the world were racism, sexism and bad grammar (I will explain to him about euro phobes when he is older).
For a brief moment I thought the fees were worth it.
They'll use individual cases when it suits them. Remember Cameron and Shannon Matthews, a disgusting little turn by the PM which he had to apologise for. Many other examples too, usually involving children as "As a father" Dave pushed his Broken Britain meme.
Do you remember Tony Blair saying that the James Bulger case was an "ugly manifestation of a society that is becoming unworthy of that name?”
Labour set the benchmark with 'Jennifers Ear'. Nothing else has come close.
The larger problem is illustrated by Prof Crystal (in your BBC link) saying there are lots of exceptions. He is right but the same is true of Newtonian physics, yet we still teach children there are 1000g in 1kg and leave relativity to university. In English, though, complexity is used as a reason never to teach the basics.
Luckily (and ironically since those who advocate laissez faire generally see themselves as progressive) this leaves all the good jobs free for the scions of the educated middle classes.
Couldn't the low rates offered to charity shops be extended to new small business ventures?
We should start asking if it is right for charity shops to get the benefits they do, especially when many are multi-million pound businesses. Or if they do get them, whether other small businesses get them as well.
I think charity shops are part of the problem on the High Street.
If there were more empty units, then the pressure to bring down rents and rates would be higher.
All the while they can fill them with subsidised charity shops, the fundamental problem does not get solved.
For decades our High Streets were cash cows for the local authority to milk for their favourite projects and business rates are still a major factor in the lack of competitiveness between the High Street and online retailers. Somewhat ironically, however, there is evidence that since 2008 high rates have driven down rents. Property owners are very anxious about becoming liable for empty properties and will give incentives of rent frees and lower rents to avoid it.
There is a bit of Canute about this but I still think politicians should be doing what they can for the High Street from reducing rates to making planning categories more flexible. Many, many of our children leave 13 years or more of education incapable of complex work and retail is a major employer of the low skilled. Unfortunately there is no money left.
Much further down, i called these so call charity shops, Rag and Bone shops: Rags for the old clothes supplied and bones for the ludicrous profits that accrue to the charity fat cats.
Without clicking on the link I am willing to bet that the Daily Mail has illustrated its story with an appropriate picture of the staff from said chain of shops.
If shopping in Abercrombie & Fitch was used as a punishment it would contravene the Geneva convention.
@samonipad Quite a few people now throw themselves in front of trains because committing suicide in other ways is getting rather hard.
Probably true, doesnt make it right though in my opinion.
What if the driver was a bit depressed?!
I wonder how suicide rates (not that I count getting someone else to kill you unwittingly as suicide) have changed in relation to number of peole who are religious? A deeply religious person would care more about what happens to them and others after they die I would think.
Indeed. If I recall, this is is part of the deeper analysis of why farmers, the medical profession etc have higher suicide rates. It's not so much due to the headline explanation that the jobs are supposedly more stressful, it's that they've got ready access to shotguns, lethal drugs etc.
Some years back there was a survey, and doctors chose insulin whereas laboratory chemists favoured cyanide.
Somewhere on my shelves is a racing book with an appendix on how to end it all. These days, the publisher would be excoriated for poor taste.
Many years ago I lost someone I loved to suicide; it is a fairly open secret amongst my close friends. In January I was in conversation with my friend, who was talking around suicide (although not as strongly as he had in previous years). I reminded him about the loss of my friend, how I had even to this day never fully recovered, and how his friends would similarly suffer. He actually had the nerve to ask me how she committed suicide, and whether it had hurt.
At that point, I could gladly have strangled him and saved him the bother.
I have lost two people I deeply cared about to suicide. At what point do I start thinking it's not them, it's me? Or is it just that I befriend broken individuals? (Mrs J being a very notable exception).
@edmundintokyo You could make the same argument about trying to clamp down on tax fraud.
That's a great parallel. Taxation is a huge dead weight loss on the economy, tying up vast numbers of people who would otherwise be doing useful work in understanding and gaming an ever increasing, labyrinthine set of bureaucratic rules.
There would be a huge economic boost to a society that could get rid of taxation and still find a way to fund essential services, but that's very hard to do in practice. Even so there's a lot of economic benefit to simpler tax systems, where they're practical, rather than ones that require the government to collect a lot of information about the taxpayers and come up with a lot of complicated tests that can then be gamed in complicated ways.
The key difference here is right now it's quite hard to run a reasonable level of government services without a fairly elaborate system of taxation, but that's not even remotely true when it comes to managing who marries who and where they can live.
"Ed Miliband has just given the worst speech I've ever heard from a party leader. "
"It wasn’t just that it was vacuous. Or structurally incoherent. Or that the one announcement of substance – another rejection of a referendum on Europe – was politically irrational.
Whole passages just didn’t make sense. They had no grounding in basic logic.
Take this section on David Cameron and his own Euro travails: “I know David Cameron is a man who likes to be known for a bit of relaxing, even chillaxing, but on this occasion, it beggars belief. He’s not lying on the sofa, relaxed. He’s hiding behind the sofa, too scared to confront his party and provide the leadership the country needs. He’s weak and panicked and flailing around.” Which is it. Is he hiding behind the sofa? Or is he panicking, and flailing around?
On immigration he said, “In our society, we are not dazzled by change. But nor do we seek to recreate the past.” What does that mean. We want to change? We don’t want to change? We want to change in a way that keeps everything the same?"
Personally I think there should be a distinction between those who take their own life through pills, car exhaust fume, bullet or whatever and those who cause others to unwittingly do it for them by throwing themselves in front of a car or train.
Shouldn't both be called suicide and the latter śhould be shamed out of existence
If someone wants to end their life why cause innocent strangers to bear a burden?
To be fair I am not sure that someone who is at the point of committing suicide is really going to be thinking too deeply about the effect the method has on other people. The idea that people on the verge of taking their life are really going to be responsive to being 'shamed' by the way they do it seems rather hard hearted to me.
I have sympathy for anyone who feels suicidal of course, but if they are well enough to write a long suicide note blaming a government policy, they are capable of considering the effect their act will have on the poor driver
What you are saying could apply to Michael Ryan as easily as this lady
I can see why doctors would use insulin for suicide.
Harold Shipman preferred morphine to kill patients but I'm surprised he didn't use potassium chloride. A good dollop injected into a vein would cause death and it would be undetectable at PM - assuming you had a previous injection site to use. A high blood potassium level being a normal consequence of death anyway.
Thats a bit like "Easterross agrees with Fitalass" on Scottish political predictions.
Plus a shadow cabinet minister
"I’m told that shadow cabinet ministers who have become exasperated at the way even minor policy papers vanish into the “Black Hole of Calcutta” – the nickname given to Miliband’s personal policy unit – are now urging clarity in four key policy areas: Europe, welfare, immigration and spending.
Of these, welfare and immigration are regarded as the most urgent, not least because the next spending review and forthcoming welfare legislation represent a political elephant trap for Labour.
“Those are the two areas to watch,” one shadow cabinet member told me, “He needs to move decisively on those. If he doesn’t, then it’s game over.”"
"On immigration he said, “In our society, we are not dazzled by change. But nor do we seek to recreate the past.” What does that mean. We want to change? We don’t want to change? We want to change in a way that keeps everything the same?
But by far the worst section was when he tried, for the umpteenth time, to flesh out the One Nation vision he had unveiled last October; “We don’t like their story about our country. And we have a much better one ourselves. A sense of mission for the country. Inclusive. Not exclusive. Outward looking. Not inward looking. Optimistic about our future.” This isn’t a serious political prospectus. It’s gibberish."
It certainly is. Or perhaps - I'm entirely mistaken as is Mr Hodges - and its Ruthless...
Who the hell does Cameron think he is accusing Lord Lawson of being "odd" re. the pointless "renegotiation?"
Lawson is a political colossus next to pygmy Cameron. Cameron and Osborne would give their right (and left) arms for the kind of ecomonic growth Lawson delivered.
Cameron needs to wake up and smell the coffee. The interventions of Lawson and to a lesser extent Lamont and Portillo have completely tranformed the debate. If he doesn't start getting real I think the time will fast approach where he has to leave office.
My 9 year old recently announced that the worst three things in the world were racism, sexism and bad grammar (I will explain to him about euro phobes when he is older).
For a brief moment I thought the fees were worth it.
Are euro phobes people who combine the first two then?
Miss Plato, could you clarify? Is the below an actual quotation from E. Miliband?:
We don’t like their story about our country. And we have a much better one ourselves. A sense of mission for the country. Inclusive. Not exclusive. Outward looking. Not inward looking. Optimistic about our future.
Miss Plato, could you clarify? Is the below an actual quotation from E. Miliband?:
We don’t like their story about our country. And we have a much better one ourselves. A sense of mission for the country. Inclusive. Not exclusive. Outward looking. Not inward looking. Optimistic about our future.
I'm afraid so, Mr Dancer - who writes this drivel? C-, must try harder.
Farage just said on Daily Politics that Tory or Labour candidates that are commited to leaving the EU could stand with both their party and UKIP next to their name on the ballot at the next GE
The larger problem is illustrated by Prof Crystal (in your BBC link) saying there are lots of exceptions. He is right but the same is true of Newtonian physics, yet we still teach children there are 1000g in 1kg and leave relativity to university. In English, though, complexity is used as a reason never to teach the basics.
Luckily (and ironically since those who advocate laissez faire generally see themselves as progressive) this leaves all the good jobs free for the scions of the educated middle classes.
Who is the 'spelling and grammar' test pitched at. The level of spelling and grammar I see generally online is generally a long long way below even the incorrect sentences in that test. I blame twitter.
Indeed. If I recall, this is is part of the deeper analysis of why farmers, the medical profession etc have higher suicide rates. It's not so much due to the headline explanation that the jobs are supposedly more stressful, it's that they've got ready access to shotguns, lethal drugs etc.
Some years back there was a survey, and doctors chose insulin whereas laboratory chemists favoured cyanide.
Somewhere on my shelves is a racing book with an appendix on how to end it all. These days, the publisher would be excoriated for poor taste.
Many years ago I lost someone I loved to suicide; it is a fairly open secret amongst my close friends. In January I was in conversation with my friend, who was talking around suicide (although not as strongly as he had in previous years). I reminded him about the loss of my friend, how I had even to this day never fully recovered, and how his friends would similarly suffer. He actually had the nerve to ask me how she committed suicide, and whether it had hurt.
At that point, I could gladly have strangled him and saved him the bother.
I have lost two people I deeply cared about to suicide. At what point do I start thinking it's not them, it's me? Or is it just that I befriend broken individuals? (Mrs J being a very notable exception).
How could you know if it hurt?
I would never start thinking it was you, sorry to hear you have lost two close friends this way
I have lost two people I deeply cared about to suicide. At what point do I start thinking it's not them, it's me? Or is it just that I befriend broken individuals? (Mrs J being a very notable exception).
"On immigration he said, “In our society, we are not dazzled by change. But nor do we seek to recreate the past.” What does that mean. We want to change? We don’t want to change? We want to change in a way that keeps everything the same?
But by far the worst section was when he tried, for the umpteenth time, to flesh out the One Nation vision he had unveiled last October; “We don’t like their story about our country. And we have a much better one ourselves. A sense of mission for the country. Inclusive. Not exclusive. Outward looking. Not inward looking. Optimistic about our future.” This isn’t a serious political prospectus. It’s gibberish."
It certainly is. Or perhaps - I'm entirely mistaken as is Mr Hodges - and its Ruthless...
Forward looking, not backward looking. Back to the future...
Has Ed said anything about the big hole in his preferred banking model? Are Labour and Unite part of the bad debt?
Who the hell does Cameron think he is accusing Lord Lawson of being "odd" re. the pointless "renegotiation?"
Did he say that? I didn't catch the whole thing but the BBC report has him calling their opinions strange, which is a different thing.
That said, I do think he's got this thing backwards. He should be giving the right respect but no concessions, instead he's giving them concessions but no respect.
Regarding the story about the immigration financial requirement posted earlier, I found out something from an Asian friend the other day on the new immigration restrictions. Apparently the financial requirement of earning £18600 a year is having an effect. However, apparently a common way of getting round it is to take advantage of having savings instead.
Apparently, it's becoming a thing for the extended family in the subcontinent to make sure their combined "wedding gifts" total the amount required to the couple. They can then keep it in their bank account for just six months before applying. Once the visa is granted, the UKBA won't ever track the gift money again, so it can be returned to the contributors. Can anyone advise me if this would work? If true, it seems like it would be a good idea to require the savings to equal, say, eight years of the earning requirement rather than just four.
Another option is, as the salary requirement is still pretty low, for the sponsoring member of the couple to just be given a job in one of the extended family's shop with a bit of a bump to salary for six months. Doesn't seem like much can be done about this, other than just raising the earning threshold to a more sensible amount - perhaps the £26000 that was initially proposed.
It would help if you and several others on PB actually read the new rules on spousal visas rather than posting based on assumption and heresay.
The new financial requirement of earning at least £18,600 a year applies to the British SPONSOR, not the immigrant. So comparisons such as "an Indian researcher earning £20k is preferable to an American earning £30k" are irrelevant.
Secondly, although it is possible to meet the requirement using savings, it's a steep hurdle - for every pound you are under the threshold, you need to have £2.50 in the bank AND the first £16,000 of savings are ignored. So a couple with no income to meet the threshold would need about £62k of savings (18.6 *2.5 + 16000). Anyone with that level of resources is unlikely to be a burden on the state.
The finanical is re-checked 2.5 and 5 years after the visa is initially granted, so your statement in the second paragraph that the money can be "loaned" is false.
You also suggest raising the salary threshold above £18,600. It is already set at a level that excludes a third of the British population from living in the UK with the person to wish to marry if they are from a non-EU country. Are you saying it is just to exclude an either higher proporiton of British citizens from their own country due a small level of fraudulent marriages?
Finally, you demand that the couple submit proof they have been in a relationship for a year before being eligible for a visa. Leaving aside the question of how this would be proven (perhaps a series of "home movies" with a copy of each month's Daily Mail in the background could be emailed to Teresa May every month), you ignore practicalities such as pregancy, need to care for children/sick relatives etc. Above, what business is it of the Government's to determine how long a relationship needs to have subsisted for it to be "genuine"?
As with the welfare changes, these new immigraiton rules are causing needless hardhsip and suffering to thousands because of a small number of headline-grabbing fraud cases which have negligible overall impact. Your suggested changes would only worsen the situation.
As I've said before, Miliband has adopted an extremely Blair-like approach to his speeches and general use of language. It's not immediately obvious because they're very different speakers, but it is the case.
Farage just said on Daily Politics that Tory or Labour candidates that are commited to leaving the EU could stand with both their party and UKIP next to their name on the ballot at the next GE
Farage just said on Daily Politics that Tory or Labour candidates that are commited to leaving the EU could stand with both their party and UKIP next to their name on the ballot at the next GE
Drinking a bit early is he?
He was on there with Peter Bone. Bone was asking for a "Holy Alliance" of UKIP and Eurosceptic Cons!
Farage just said on Daily Politics that Tory or Labour candidates that are commited to leaving the EU could stand with both their party and UKIP next to their name on the ballot at the next GE
Even Ken Clarke ?
I dont think he comes under the "committed to leaving the EU" umbrella!
Who the hell does Cameron think he is accusing Lord Lawson of being "odd" re. the pointless "renegotiation?"
Lawson is a political colossus next to pygmy Cameron. Cameron and Osborne would give their right (and left) arms for the kind of ecomonic growth Lawson delivered.
Cameron needs to wake up and smell the coffee. The interventions of Lawson and to a lesser extent Lamont and Portillo have completely tranformed the debate. If he doesn't start getting real I think the time will fast approach where he has to leave office.
Of course Thatcher was removed three and a half years into her (third) term of office so if there wasn't a coalition to run he would be in serious danger. Never has a post war Tory leader generated so much anger from within his own ranks, not even IDS faced this level of hostility almost from the word off. Nevertheless despite the frothing I suspect he will survive (and I say that as someone who is 50:50 as to whether I'd vote in or out).
As I've said before, Miliband has adopted an extremely Blair-like approach to his speeches and general use of language. It's not immediately obvious because they're very different speakers, but it is the case.
I just notice the affectation with EdM - his pauses. Are. So. Deliberate. That I. Forget What. The Point of. It Was.
And after several minutes of this - my brain turns to instant potato and my synapses force me to switch over before it becomes terminal.
I've listened to 6x EdM speeches and can't stand another one - they're all the same and policy free. The poor acolytes who endure such mental torture and then hale them as full of portent have tougher constitutions than me.
I have lost two people I deeply cared about to suicide. At what point do I start thinking it's not them, it's me? Or is it just that I befriend broken individuals? (Mrs J being a very notable exception).
You just seem to be a good friend.
Thanks, but surely you must be wrong? After all I'm a baby eating (mostly) Tory (voter). ;-)
On immigration: when Mrs J came in to work in the UK in the early 2000s, she (and the company) found it very hard to get the relevant permits. And the hoops we had to jump through for her to get citizenship a few years later were fairly obtuse at times.
This was for a highly-qualified, hyper-intelligent muppet engineer, whose English is more fluent than my own and who works in a field that is more than a little value-added, and where there is also a massive skills shortage.
If you follow the rules, immigration isn't easy (at least from Turkey).
On another note: in 2006 we desperately wanted to hire a brilliant engineer from Taiwan. It took over six months to get the relevant permits.
How long does it take a football club to get some overpaid prima donna in?
""I imagine Michael Gove would have a go at George Orwell for using farmyard animals to explain the rise of the Soviet Union"
Yes - whenever I read Mr Bump I'm reminded of 1984.
The actual reasoning in the article is that it's a revision exercise about distilling the fall of the Weimar republic down to essential reasons, using Mr Men as personifications of particular qualities (Mr Worry, Mr Hungry, etc)
That woman is a moron then, as that comparison is idiotic to say the least.
Yup - the allegory is very clever. As any student of say art history or fables would know. Anyone trying to label Mr Gove as stupid or uneducated is on very stony ground [see what I did there]....
""I imagine Michael Gove would have a go at George Orwell for using farmyard animals to explain the rise of the Soviet Union"
Yes - whenever I read Mr Bump I'm reminded of 1984.
The actual reasoning in the article is that it's a revision exercise about distilling the fall of the Weimar republic down to essential reasons, using Mr Men as personifications of particular qualities (Mr Worry, Mr Hungry, etc)
If it's Weimar economics they could use Mr Brown or Mr Balls.
The Mr Men reviews by Hamilton Richardson are wonders in comic satire that never fail to make me LOL.
"If '1984' or 'The Trial' had been a children's book, Mr Messy would be it. No literary character has ever been so fully and categorically obliterated by the forces of social control. Hargreaves may well pay homage to Kafka and Orwell in this work, but he also goes beyond them.
We meet Mr Messy - a man whose entire day-to-day existence is the undiluted expression of his individuality. His very untidiness is a metaphor for his blissful and unselfconscious disregard for the Social Order. Yes, there are times when he himself is a victim of this individuality - as when he trips over a brush he has left on his garden path - but he goes through life with a smile on his face.
That is, until a chance meeting with Mr Neat and Mr Tidy - the archetypal men in suits. They set about a merciless programme of social engineering and indoctrination that we are left in no doubt is in flagrant violation of his free will. 'But I like being messy' he protests as they anonymize both his home and his person with their relentless cleaning activity, a symbolism thinly veiled.
This process is so thorough that by the end of it he is unrecognizable - a homogenized pink blob, no longer truly himself (that vibrant Pollock-like scribble of before). He smiles the smile of a brainwashed automaton, blandly accepting what he has been given no agency to question or refuse. It is in this very smile that the sheer horror of what we have seen to occur is at its most acute.
Somewhere behind this blank expression though is a latent anger - a trace of self-knowledge as to what he once was - in the barbed observation he makes to Neat and Tidy that they have even deprived him of his name.
The book ends with a dry reminder from Hargreaves that just as with the secret police in some totalitarian regime, our own small expressions of uniqueness and volition may also result in a visit from these sinister suited agents."
Who the hell does Cameron think he is accusing Lord Lawson of being "odd" re. the pointless "renegotiation?"
Lawson is a political colossus next to pygmy Cameron. Cameron and Osborne would give their right (and left) arms for the kind of ecomonic growth Lawson delivered.
Cameron needs to wake up and smell the coffee. The interventions of Lawson and to a lesser extent Lamont and Portillo have completely tranformed the debate. If he doesn't start getting real I think the time will fast approach where he has to leave office.
Of course Thatcher was removed three and a half years into her (third) term of office so if there wasn't a coalition to run he would be in serious danger. Never has a post war Tory leader generated so much anger from within his own ranks, not even IDS faced this level of hostility almost from the word off. Nevertheless despite the frothing I suspect he will survive (and I say that as someone who is 50:50 as to whether I'd vote in or out).
I'm not at all convinced Cameron will lead the party going into the election.
A pact between the Conservatives and UKIP WILL happen, IMO. If Cameron is set on being an impediment to that (as it looks like he will) he'll have to go.
He goesn't get it at all. The political sands have shifted. He is trying to hold back the tide, but its futile. Cameron, Heseltine, Clarke, etc... are in the minority and it's only going to get worse.
Cameron still has time to grasp the nettle, but we all know he won't and for the first time I think its more likely Cameron won't be leading the Tories in 2015 than he will. His position is looking very, very serious now to me...
And this is for the NOTA Party voter who feels disenfranchised ;^ ) Comedy can be rather penetrating at times...
"Mr Small is Hargreaves' `Boys From The Blackstuff'. Here he adopts a more naturalistic style, putting aside explicit exposition of academic schools of thought along with his usual moral and philosophical preoccupations. In a manner that is almost kitchen sink, we follow the working class everyman - quite literally the small man - as he searches for a job in 70s Britain. Thematically Hargreaves shows his vision, as he presages the mass unemployment that was to come in the 1980s.
Mr Small tries a succession of jobs for which he is woefully mismatched - they are all manifestly too big for him. He lacks the basic knowledge and skills to hold down any of the occupations he attempts. Does Hargreaves here break from his usual social conservatism with a damning indictment of an education system that is not adequately preparing the workforce for increasingly skilled and mechanized labour? And in this does he further express his frustration at how his own fictional potentialities have been manacled and constrained by this state of affairs?
For indeed, Hargreaves himself seems to give up on Mr Small - in a wry narrative flourish of course. Beneath the surface positivity of the ending, we at best encounter stoicism, with a definite undercurrent of fatalistic dread at what the very near future holds. The shadow of the impending Thatcher years is already falling across the world of the Mr Men. If Hargreaves has deprived him of revolutionary socialism in Mr Uppity - or even the more modest protection of the centre-left - there is nothing Mr Small can do but passively accept his situation. Mr Robertson, a literary personification of statutory intervention, is ultimately powerless to help him. The collective sentiment of the workers - embodied by a friendly postman - offers nothing practical, just sympathy. The only job that Mr Small proves fit to do is recount his story to the author. (Contrast this with the earlier Mr Bump, who successfully finds a job compatible with his idiosyncrasies as a character.)
Hargreaves, with characteristic genius, holds up his hands and laments his own impotence. But if Mr Small cannot be saved, at least he has been given a voice. "
One could childishly name call Mr Gove - Mr Swotty, but Mr Sloppy? He's not a sloppy bone in his body whatever one may dislike him over. He's a very precise man - his grammar, diction, even excessive courtesy are all signs of a man who is very particular in his ways.
Does he get on with Liam 'I want my coffee at 11:03 at 43C' Byrne?
I love the idea that aligning with UKIP is a one way trade and that only gains can be made. It combines simple and simplistic in equaly quantities.
Well clearly a Con/UKIP pact will put off some voters, but nevertheless it should bring more back to the Tories than it puts off.
The main thing for the Conservatives at the election will be to have the economy sorted (or at least showing signs of recovery) and on that score I get the sense things are starting to look more encouraging.
If the Tories can go into 2015 with an improving economy, an alliance with UKIP, the only party commited to an In/Out referendum and the useless Ed Miliband leading Labour, they could be surprisingly competitive.
Animal farm was a brilliant allegory and novel and comparing that to cartoon characters is a stretch too far.
!
Animal Farm was made into a animated cartoon.
I hear rumours that it also lent its name to at least one other (less mainstream) cinematic work, which, curiously, functions as a great allegory for what Gove's just done to Dave.
Fair point, and they made a good fist of it, but it couldn't really represent the complexity of the book. I don't think the Mr Men books/cartoons lasted very long though. I found those characters a little two-dimensional.
I love the idea that aligning with UKIP is a one way trade and that only gains can be made. It combines simple and simplistic in equaly quantities.
Well clearly a Con/UKIP pact will put off some voters, but nevertheless it should bring more back to the Tories than it puts off.
The main thing for the Conservatives at the election will be to have the economy sorted (or at least showing signs of recovery) and on that score I get the sense things are starting to look more encouraging.
If the Tories can go into 2015 with an improving economy, an alliance with UKIP, the only party commited to an In/Out referendum and the useless Ed Miliband leading Labour, they could be surprisingly competitive.
Farage reckons there is one Labour bod up for it as well
Coalitions of the right are possible e.g Australia for many years saw the National Country Party representing rural Australians in alliance with the more urban based Liberal party. Ironically I see those two parties merged in 2008.
Colour me unconvinced, in particular if the people who write comments in the Telegraph are in any approximating to UKIP voters in general: they are nihilst in an entirely destructive way and have nothing positive to offer.
[FWIW I thought at one stage that those commentators were generally an elaborate joke. Now I fear that they might beleive what the write...]
Animal farm was a brilliant allegory and novel and comparing that to cartoon characters is a stretch too far.
The Weimar Republic was a fascinating period but possibly more nuanced than Mr Greedy wanting everything now.
What next? Peppa Pig for the progress of the Labour party in the noughties?
Leave our Orwell alone!
Yes it's more nuanced. What this was was a revision exercise with a lot of similarities to common memory techniques. I.e. create a little story that branches off onto the larger things you go into more depth on.
It's not "your exam should reference Mr. Hungry", it's use this short story as a memory jogger, Mr Hungry reminds you to talk about the hunger in the Weimar republic and branch off etc. Then when Mr Bounce turns up, that'd be a trigger for the brief Stresemann recovery. And so on.
The surveys Gove's using seem doubtful and his attack on Mr Men is only valid if it's taken out of context and described wrongly.
The evidential basis of his 'evidence based policy making' is piss poor in this case.
Musing further on yesterday's events, I did wonder if we were seeing a degree of post-2015 positioning from Messrs Gove and Hammond. Clearly, it is de rigeur now to be in favour of leaving the EU in Conservative circles but presumably Gove's calculation is as much based on the possibility of defeat as the expectation of victory. Defeat will in effect annul the current Conservative position since not only will the Tories not be in a position to carry out any re-negotiation but Cameron may well no longer be the leader.
I think Ed Miliband has adroitly left the door open for both re-negotiation and a possible referendum but since he won't be in any position to do anything about it until he wins office, he too can indulege in some positioning. Of course, those who sincerely believe Britain would be better off outside the EU won't be impressed by any re-negotiation but I suspect a body of opinion on the "no" side is open to being persuaded that a re-negotiated position could be acceptable. That would be Cameron's hope inasmich as being able to carry the bulk of the Conservative Party post-2015.
The more immediate problem is making sure he's in a position to be doing the re-negotiating. Gove's mistake yesterday was less to emphasise his opposition to UK membership of the EU as currently constituted but not (apparently) to endorse the position that re-negotiated terms might be acceptable. That created a sense of division (a bit more than a "micro-split" in perception if not reality) which, as OGH states, Cameron could do without.
As a memory exercise, like - 'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain', I can see the point. But that's a five minute job and I assume the Mr Men issue was longer than that (If not, I apologise).
Anyway, would a good Marxist like EdM appreciate even a great book Animal Farm being taught as a reminder of the inevitable problems involved with communist governments?
The Tories are behaving like half-wits on Europe. At the time of Cameron's speech some Euro Prime Minister (of Sweden but may have been Holland) said that he was interested in hearing Cameron's ideas for how the EU should develop. That's what the Tories should be concentrating on - a British vision for Europe which is better than the 50% youth unemployment & austerity version we currently have - and which some, at least, other EU countries might find attractive. Not only is this a more sensible way forward than retreating into UKIP-land but it might make it easier to get changes more to our liking. (Of course, this might not work but at least we could have tried rather than retreat into a "let's get out even though we can't describe what out will really involve nor how it will affect you".
Ditto on gay marriage: Cameron really should have offered at the same time some tax advantages for married people (including married gay people). That way he would not be so vulnerable to the charge of not carrying out a manifesto commitment.
As it is, there is a lot of unappealing introspection and squabbling and such good things as are happening are ignored.
At this rate, no matter how average or ruthless (and I think Ed is somewhat ruthless and does have a vision for how he wants to change Britain but which he is carefully concealing from us) Ed M is, he will walk it into No. 10 - not out of enthusiasm but because of the electorate's exasperation with the ninnies currently in charge.
As a memory exercise, like - 'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain', I can see the point. But that's a five minute job and I assume the Mr Men issue was longer than that (If not, I apologise).
Anyway, would a good Marxist like EdM appreciate even a great book Animal Farm being taught as a reminder of the inevitable problems involved with communist governments?
Well, learning the colours of the rainbow is a pretty small job compared to learning the salient points for an essay answer in an exam, I'd have thought - I've no idea how expectations have changed in the 20 years since I did GCSEs, but about a sixth of the course back then was devoted to revision, with fairly lengthy lessons using different techniques to help us to remember and reproduce information. One could argue that it's a bit artificial and pointless having a system that necessitates these cramming techniques in order to perform in a strange exam ritual - perhaps something like continuous assessment would be an alternative?
Do potential UKIP/Conservative candidates have to sign up to the ludicrous idea we're going to have brownouts in 2015?
12-1 against. Not likely, but not in the ludicrous territory either.
I've read the OfGem report. I am happy to send you the same stuff that I sent Josias on UK generating margins of safety: email me at my username at gmail.com. Fair to say, either the market for UK electricity is wrong or OfGem is wrong: currently it prices in 2015 baseload electricity costs as rising at substantially below the rate of inflation.
It's also fair to say that generating companies do not share OfGem's prognosis.
Finally: if you're confident in UKIP's prognosis, you will take me up on either of my bets about 2015 electricity.
Europe's trade surplus, at $221bn last year, has just overtaken China's.
This is, of course, little consolation for unemployed Spaniards and Greeks.
Given the U.K runs a large trade deficit I'd be interested to know which EU counties are achieving counteracting mega surpluses.
Norm:
Germany runs a large trade surplus. Of course, the Eurozone crisis has weakened the Euro, benefiting German exports enormously.
Italy and Ireland run decent trade surpluses. France runs a deficit, albeit a declining one. I think Spain may have edged into surplus, but I could be wrong.
One could childishly name call Mr Gove - Mr Swotty, but Mr Sloppy? He's not a sloppy bone in his body whatever one may dislike him over. He's a very precise man - his grammar, diction, even excessive courtesy are all signs of a man who is very particular in his ways.
Does he get on with Liam 'I want my coffee at 11:03 at 43C' Byrne?
using half arsed data cribbed from daily mail etc to make actual policy is pretty damn sloppy any rode up, much as some of his aims might not look too unreasonable ( think he was perhaps unfairly done over about the bibles - though obv pr job was shite)
the mr. men tv theme tune (from the series voiced by arthur lowe) is a beauty
You haven't actually read any of this stuff have you. The exercise involve year elevens,after finishing their rise of Hitler study devising a class for primary school children using the characters and their knowledge of Weimar/Nazi Party psychology.
Gove either didn't understand what he was saying or deliberately misrepresented it. Same goes for the idiotic surveys he's been using
Calm down Mr Angry before you turn into Mr Stroke.
If only the rest of the world would accept that it's always wrong, and tim's always right.
heartily recommend Orwell's essays to anyone who hasn't read them. Not only "The politics of Language" (is that what its called?) also Books vs Cigarettes the Decline of the English murder, and so on.
"You haven't actually read any of this stuff have you."
The facts do seem elusive. You say that the exercise was aimed at providing material for primary schools. That's sounds like a good idea and I'm impressed. We never studied the Weimar Republic at primary school.
If it was a memory exercise only, that's fine too. I assume the actual lessons were a less infantile. If so, Gove should do the decent thing and apologise.
heartily recommend Orwell's essays to anyone who hasn't read them. Not only "The politics of Language" (is that what its called?) also Books vs Cigarettes the Decline of the English murder, and so on.
Who the hell does Cameron think he is accusing Lord Lawson of being "odd" re. the pointless "renegotiation?"
Did he say that? I didn't catch the whole thing but the BBC report has him calling their opinions strange, which is a different thing.
That said, I do think he's got this thing backwards. He should be giving the right respect but no concessions, instead he's giving them concessions but no respect.
Comments
Somewhere on my shelves is a racing book with an appendix on how to end it all. These days, the publisher would be excoriated for poor taste.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100216360/its-labour-that-has-the-real-eu-problem-just-look-at-the-opinion-polls/
"Meanwhile, Ed Miliband's speech over the weekend ruling out a referendum was, in tone and content, the worst I can remember by a major party leader. Have a look: it reads like a Craig Brown parody.
And when you've finished snorting incredulously, look at where public opinion is on this issue: 82 per cent of people favour an In/Out referendum, and the Outs lead the Ins by 43 per cent to 35. If we absolutely must reduce this story to party politics, I'd say Miliband has the bigger problem, wouldn't you?"
It is the bane of my life.
I'm not having a good 24 hours.
I have sympathy for anyone who feels suicidal of course, but if they are well enough to write a long suicide note blaming a government policy, they are capable of considering the effect their act will have on the poor driver
What you are saying could apply to Michael Ryan as easily as this lady
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-us-visit-staying-in-eu-could-benefit-britain-by-10-billion-annually-says-pm-as-he-holds-talks-with-us-president-barack-obama-8613148.html
For a brief moment I thought the fees were worth it.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/05/labour-divisions-over-eu-emerge-mps-launch-pro-referendum-group
Luckily (and ironically since those who advocate laissez faire generally see themselves as progressive) this leaves all the good jobs free for the scions of the educated middle classes.
My phone decided to change that to "[moderated] bucket"
What if the driver was a bit depressed?!
I wonder how suicide rates (not that I count getting someone else to kill you unwittingly as suicide) have changed in relation to number of peole who are religious? A deeply religious person would care more about what happens to them and others after they die I would think.
At that point, I could gladly have strangled him and saved him the bother.
I have lost two people I deeply cared about to suicide. At what point do I start thinking it's not them, it's me? Or is it just that I befriend broken individuals? (Mrs J being a very notable exception).
"The Indy on Sunday’s John Rentoul"
Circulation sub 100k - including the free ones.
Sun on Sunday gets 2M+
Like asking a Blue Square premier manager for his opinion of Sir Alex.
There would be a huge economic boost to a society that could get rid of taxation and still find a way to fund essential services, but that's very hard to do in practice. Even so there's a lot of economic benefit to simpler tax systems, where they're practical, rather than ones that require the government to collect a lot of information about the taxpayers and come up with a lot of complicated tests that can then be gamed in complicated ways.
The key difference here is right now it's quite hard to run a reasonable level of government services without a fairly elaborate system of taxation, but that's not even remotely true when it comes to managing who marries who and where they can live.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100216615/ed-miliband-says-he-has-a-vision-for-britain-so-why-wont-he-share-it-with-the-rest-of-us/
"Ed Miliband has just given the worst speech I've ever heard from a party leader. "
"It wasn’t just that it was vacuous. Or structurally incoherent. Or that the one announcement of substance – another rejection of a referendum on Europe – was politically irrational.
Whole passages just didn’t make sense. They had no grounding in basic logic.
Take this section on David Cameron and his own Euro travails: “I know David Cameron is a man who likes to be known for a bit of relaxing, even chillaxing, but on this occasion, it beggars belief. He’s not lying on the sofa, relaxed. He’s hiding behind the sofa, too scared to confront his party and provide the leadership the country needs. He’s weak and panicked and flailing around.” Which is it. Is he hiding behind the sofa? Or is he panicking, and flailing around?
On immigration he said, “In our society, we are not dazzled by change. But nor do we seek to recreate the past.” What does that mean. We want to change? We don’t want to change? We want to change in a way that keeps everything the same?"
I can see why doctors would use insulin for suicide.
Harold Shipman preferred morphine to kill patients but I'm surprised he didn't use potassium chloride. A good dollop injected into a vein would cause death and it would be undetectable at PM - assuming you had a previous injection site to use. A high blood potassium level being a normal consequence of death anyway.
"I’m told that shadow cabinet ministers who have become exasperated at the way even minor policy papers vanish into the “Black Hole of Calcutta” – the nickname given to Miliband’s personal policy unit – are now urging clarity in four key policy areas: Europe, welfare, immigration and spending.
Of these, welfare and immigration are regarded as the most urgent, not least because the next spending review and forthcoming welfare legislation represent a political elephant trap for Labour.
“Those are the two areas to watch,” one shadow cabinet member told me, “He needs to move decisively on those. If he doesn’t, then it’s game over.”"
I liked this bit of Ed's speech
"On immigration he said, “In our society, we are not dazzled by change. But nor do we seek to recreate the past.” What does that mean. We want to change? We don’t want to change? We want to change in a way that keeps everything the same?
But by far the worst section was when he tried, for the umpteenth time, to flesh out the One Nation vision he had unveiled last October; “We don’t like their story about our country. And we have a much better one ourselves. A sense of mission for the country. Inclusive. Not exclusive. Outward looking. Not inward looking. Optimistic about our future.” This isn’t a serious political prospectus. It’s gibberish."
It certainly is. Or perhaps - I'm entirely mistaken as is Mr Hodges - and its Ruthless...
Lawson is a political colossus next to pygmy Cameron. Cameron and Osborne would give their right (and left) arms for the kind of ecomonic growth Lawson delivered.
Cameron needs to wake up and smell the coffee. The interventions of Lawson and to a lesser extent Lamont and Portillo have completely tranformed the debate. If he doesn't start getting real I think the time will fast approach where he has to leave office.
;-)
We don’t like their story about our country. And we have a much better one ourselves. A sense of mission for the country. Inclusive. Not exclusive. Outward looking. Not inward looking. Optimistic about our future.
The last six 'sentences' don't have a single bloody verb amongst them!
Am about to embark on Prison Break which has rave reviews on IMDb and then Supernatural which is similarly well scored...
I would never start thinking it was you, sorry to hear you have lost two close friends this way
Has Ed said anything about the big hole in his preferred banking model? Are Labour and Unite part of the bad debt?
That said, I do think he's got this thing backwards. He should be giving the right respect but no concessions, instead he's giving them concessions but no respect.
The new financial requirement of earning at least £18,600 a year applies to the British SPONSOR, not the immigrant. So comparisons such as "an Indian researcher earning £20k is preferable to an American earning £30k" are irrelevant.
Secondly, although it is possible to meet the requirement using savings, it's a steep hurdle - for every pound you are under the threshold, you need to have £2.50 in the bank AND the first £16,000 of savings are ignored. So a couple with no income to meet the threshold would need about £62k of savings (18.6 *2.5 + 16000). Anyone with that level of resources is unlikely to be a burden on the state.
The finanical is re-checked 2.5 and 5 years after the visa is initially granted, so your statement in the second paragraph that the money can be "loaned" is false.
You also suggest raising the salary threshold above £18,600. It is already set at a level that excludes a third of the British population from living in the UK with the person to wish to marry if they are from a non-EU country. Are you saying it is just to exclude an either higher proporiton of British citizens from their own country due a small level of fraudulent marriages?
Finally, you demand that the couple submit proof they have been in a relationship for a year before being eligible for a visa. Leaving aside the question of how this would be proven (perhaps a series of "home movies" with a copy of each month's Daily Mail in the background could be emailed to Teresa May every month), you ignore practicalities such as pregancy, need to care for children/sick relatives etc. Above, what business is it of the Government's to determine how long a relationship needs to have subsisted for it to be "genuine"?
As with the welfare changes, these new immigraiton rules are causing needless hardhsip and suffering to thousands because of a small number of headline-grabbing fraud cases which have negligible overall impact. Your suggested changes would only worsen the situation.
As I've said before, Miliband has adopted an extremely Blair-like approach to his speeches and general use of language. It's not immediately obvious because they're very different speakers, but it is the case.
Carlotta,
"Indeed ! It's the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you're shit..... "
That's a good one.
And ... "fewer qualified people" and "less qualified people."
And after several minutes of this - my brain turns to instant potato and my synapses force me to switch over before it becomes terminal.
I've listened to 6x EdM speeches and can't stand another one - they're all the same and policy free. The poor acolytes who endure such mental torture and then hale them as full of portent have tougher constitutions than me.
;-)
On immigration: when Mrs J came in to work in the UK in the early 2000s, she (and the company) found it very hard to get the relevant permits. And the hoops we had to jump through for her to get citizenship a few years later were fairly obtuse at times.
This was for a highly-qualified, hyper-intelligent muppet engineer, whose English is more fluent than my own and who works in a field that is more than a little value-added, and where there is also a massive skills shortage.
If you follow the rules, immigration isn't easy (at least from Turkey).
On another note: in 2006 we desperately wanted to hire a brilliant engineer from Taiwan. It took over six months to get the relevant permits.
How long does it take a football club to get some overpaid prima donna in?
Ed. Not good. Crap.
Still a utter moron.
How education policy is being made up.
http://goo.gl/YgDLj
Surely, Sir - you mean Mr Messy? http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1SM813W6H36YA
The Mr Men reviews by Hamilton Richardson are wonders in comic satire that never fail to make me LOL.
"If '1984' or 'The Trial' had been a children's book, Mr Messy would be it. No literary character has ever been so fully and categorically obliterated by the forces of social control. Hargreaves may well pay homage to Kafka and Orwell in this work, but he also goes beyond them.
We meet Mr Messy - a man whose entire day-to-day existence is the undiluted expression of his individuality. His very untidiness is a metaphor for his blissful and unselfconscious disregard for the Social Order. Yes, there are times when he himself is a victim of this individuality - as when he trips over a brush he has left on his garden path - but he goes through life with a smile on his face.
That is, until a chance meeting with Mr Neat and Mr Tidy - the archetypal men in suits. They set about a merciless programme of social engineering and indoctrination that we are left in no doubt is in flagrant violation of his free will. 'But I like being messy' he protests as they anonymize both his home and his person with their relentless cleaning activity, a symbolism thinly veiled.
This process is so thorough that by the end of it he is unrecognizable - a homogenized pink blob, no longer truly himself (that vibrant Pollock-like scribble of before). He smiles the smile of a brainwashed automaton, blandly accepting what he has been given no agency to question or refuse. It is in this very smile that the sheer horror of what we have seen to occur is at its most acute.
Somewhere behind this blank expression though is a latent anger - a trace of self-knowledge as to what he once was - in the barbed observation he makes to Neat and Tidy that they have even deprived him of his name.
The book ends with a dry reminder from Hargreaves that just as with the secret police in some totalitarian regime, our own small expressions of uniqueness and volition may also result in a visit from these sinister suited agents."
Has PB turned into Lynne Truss's wet dream?
(And should that be Lynne Truss's or Lynne Truss', or does anyone give a damn?)
A pact between the Conservatives and UKIP WILL happen, IMO. If Cameron is set on being an impediment to that (as it looks like he will) he'll have to go.
He goesn't get it at all. The political sands have shifted. He is trying to hold back the tide, but its futile. Cameron, Heseltine, Clarke, etc... are in the minority and it's only going to get worse.
Cameron still has time to grasp the nettle, but we all know he won't and for the first time I think its more likely Cameron won't be leading the Tories in 2015 than he will. His position is looking very, very serious now to me...
"Mr Small is Hargreaves' `Boys From The Blackstuff'. Here he adopts a more naturalistic style, putting aside explicit exposition of academic schools of thought along with his usual moral and philosophical preoccupations. In a manner that is almost kitchen sink, we follow the working class everyman - quite literally the small man - as he searches for a job in 70s Britain. Thematically Hargreaves shows his vision, as he presages the mass unemployment that was to come in the 1980s.
Mr Small tries a succession of jobs for which he is woefully mismatched - they are all manifestly too big for him. He lacks the basic knowledge and skills to hold down any of the occupations he attempts. Does Hargreaves here break from his usual social conservatism with a damning indictment of an education system that is not adequately preparing the workforce for increasingly skilled and mechanized labour? And in this does he further express his frustration at how his own fictional potentialities have been manacled and constrained by this state of affairs?
For indeed, Hargreaves himself seems to give up on Mr Small - in a wry narrative flourish of course. Beneath the surface positivity of the ending, we at best encounter stoicism, with a definite undercurrent of fatalistic dread at what the very near future holds. The shadow of the impending Thatcher years is already falling across the world of the Mr Men. If Hargreaves has deprived him of revolutionary socialism in Mr Uppity - or even the more modest protection of the centre-left - there is nothing Mr Small can do but passively accept his situation. Mr Robertson, a literary personification of statutory intervention, is ultimately powerless to help him. The collective sentiment of the workers - embodied by a friendly postman - offers nothing practical, just sympathy. The only job that Mr Small proves fit to do is recount his story to the author. (Contrast this with the earlier Mr Bump, who successfully finds a job compatible with his idiosyncrasies as a character.)
Hargreaves, with characteristic genius, holds up his hands and laments his own impotence. But if Mr Small cannot be saved, at least he has been given a voice. "
tim,
Animal farm was a brilliant allegory and novel and comparing that to cartoon characters is a stretch too far.
The Weimar Republic was a fascinating period but possibly more nuanced than Mr Greedy wanting everything now.
What next? Peppa Pig for the progress of the Labour party in the noughties?
Leave our Orwell alone!
Does he get on with Liam 'I want my coffee at 11:03 at 43C' Byrne?
The main thing for the Conservatives at the election will be to have the economy sorted (or at least showing signs of recovery) and on that score I get the sense things are starting to look more encouraging.
If the Tories can go into 2015 with an improving economy, an alliance with UKIP, the only party commited to an In/Out referendum and the useless Ed Miliband leading Labour, they could be surprisingly competitive.
Fair point, and they made a good fist of it, but it couldn't really represent the complexity of the book. I don't think the Mr Men books/cartoons lasted very long though. I found those characters a little two-dimensional.
[FWIW I thought at one stage that those commentators were generally an elaborate joke. Now I fear that they might beleive what the write...]
It's not "your exam should reference Mr. Hungry", it's use this short story as a memory jogger, Mr Hungry reminds you to talk about the hunger in the Weimar republic and branch off etc. Then when Mr Bounce turns up, that'd be a trigger for the brief Stresemann recovery. And so on.
The surveys Gove's using seem doubtful and his attack on Mr Men is only valid if it's taken out of context and described wrongly.
The evidential basis of his 'evidence based policy making' is piss poor in this case.
Musing further on yesterday's events, I did wonder if we were seeing a degree of post-2015 positioning from Messrs Gove and Hammond. Clearly, it is de rigeur now to be in favour of leaving the EU in Conservative circles but presumably Gove's calculation is as much based on the possibility of defeat as the expectation of victory. Defeat will in effect annul the current Conservative position since not only will the Tories not be in a position to carry out any re-negotiation but Cameron may well no longer be the leader.
I think Ed Miliband has adroitly left the door open for both re-negotiation and a possible referendum but since he won't be in any position to do anything about it until he wins office, he too can indulege in some positioning. Of course, those who sincerely believe Britain would be better off outside the EU won't be impressed by any re-negotiation but I suspect a body of opinion on the "no" side is open to being persuaded that a re-negotiated position could be acceptable. That would be Cameron's hope inasmich as being able to carry the bulk of the Conservative Party post-2015.
The more immediate problem is making sure he's in a position to be doing the re-negotiating. Gove's mistake yesterday was less to emphasise his opposition to UK membership of the EU as currently constituted but not (apparently) to endorse the position that re-negotiated terms might be acceptable. That created a sense of division (a bit more than a "micro-split" in perception if not reality) which, as OGH states, Cameron could do without.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22511708
Europe's trade surplus, at $221bn last year, has just overtaken China's.
Corporeal,
As a memory exercise, like - 'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain', I can see the point. But that's a five minute job and I assume the Mr Men issue was longer than that (If not, I apologise).
Anyway, would a good Marxist like EdM appreciate even a great book Animal Farm being taught as a reminder of the inevitable problems involved with communist governments?
Ditto on gay marriage: Cameron really should have offered at the same time some tax advantages for married people (including married gay people). That way he would not be so vulnerable to the charge of not carrying out a manifesto commitment.
As it is, there is a lot of unappealing introspection and squabbling and such good things as are happening are ignored.
At this rate, no matter how average or ruthless (and I think Ed is somewhat ruthless and does have a vision for how he wants to change Britain but which he is carefully concealing from us) Ed M is, he will walk it into No. 10 - not out of enthusiasm but because of the electorate's exasperation with the ninnies currently in charge.
Worth a thread?
It's also fair to say that generating companies do not share OfGem's prognosis.
Finally: if you're confident in UKIP's prognosis, you will take me up on either of my bets about 2015 electricity.
Germany runs a large trade surplus. Of course, the Eurozone crisis has weakened the Euro, benefiting German exports enormously.
Italy and Ireland run decent trade surpluses. France runs a deficit, albeit a declining one. I think Spain may have edged into surplus, but I could be wrong.
the mr. men tv theme tune (from the series voiced by arthur lowe) is a beauty
If only the rest of the world would accept that it's always wrong, and tim's always right.
"You haven't actually read any of this stuff have you."
The facts do seem elusive. You say that the exercise was aimed at providing material for primary schools. That's sounds like a good idea and I'm impressed. We never studied the Weimar Republic at primary school.
If it was a memory exercise only, that's fine too. I assume the actual lessons were a less infantile. If so, Gove should do the decent thing and apologise.