Hard to believe this man was Chief of Staff to IDS, the worst Tory leader of the Opposition ever.
@montie: @DAaronovitch I would rather Out won the EU referendum than the Tories win next election. Self-government is too big a prize #BetterOffOut
He probably was the worst Tory leader of the Opposition, but the best Secretary of State for Works and Pensions for 60 years.
I wonder if Ed Miliband can do an IDS and reinvent himself.
His first remarks in the Commons since the election were probably among the most amusing, charming and naturally delivered things he's said in 5 years, publicly. And I say that as someone defending him as not-crap for those years.
Hard to believe this man was Chief of Staff to IDS, the worst Tory leader of the Opposition ever.
@montie: @DAaronovitch I would rather Out won the EU referendum than the Tories win next election. Self-government is too big a prize #BetterOffOut
He probably was the worst Tory leader of the Opposition, but the best Secretary of State for Works and Pensions for 60 years.
It must be a curious feeling to have failed at the top job, but, in some eyes at least, found much greater success in a subordinate position to someone else.
He never really got the top job though, did he? And while yes he is subordinate to the PM, i get the impression the PM is a big picture guy and leaves his cabinet to do what they want to do. IDS wanted to reform welfare. And he has.
Hard to believe this man was Chief of Staff to IDS, the worst Tory leader of the Opposition ever.
@montie: @DAaronovitch I would rather Out won the EU referendum than the Tories win next election. Self-government is too big a prize #BetterOffOut
I think montie managed to be a right winger pundit who lost as much from the election as polly t did... He's a busted flush to me at least, I don't trust him to have any real insight just his own kipper-light wishes
Assuming Cameron wins the Referendum, can somehow stave off the Scots having another one, and then steps down on top, I wonder how well his reputation as leader and PM would go. I mean, Blair won 3 elections but his name is poison for probably some time to come among many people, though his post-election activities have contributed to that, but I'm wondering what really major screw ups, or failure to prevent a screw up that would happen soon after he left, might mar what would otherwise be a pretty decent political record at any rate.
Had Blair not taken us to war in Iraq his legacy would be completely different. Iraq was always going to be a defining moment.
Indeed. As Hugh Gaitskell presciently stated in 1962:
What does federation mean? It means that powers are taken from national governments and handed over to federal governments and to federal parliaments. It means – I repeat it – that if we go into this we are no more than a state (as it were) in the United States of Europe, such as Texas and California. They are remarkably friendly examples, you do not find every state as rich or having such good weather as those two! But I could take others: it would be the same as in Australia, where you have Western Australia, for example, and New South Wales. We should be like them. This is what it means; it does mean the end of Britain as an independent nation state. It may be a good thing or a bad thing but we must recognise that this is so.... It means the end of a thousand years of history.
The restoration of self-government trumps any transient party political interest.
Hard to believe this man was Chief of Staff to IDS, the worst Tory leader of the Opposition ever.
@montie: @DAaronovitch I would rather Out won the EU referendum than the Tories win next election. Self-government is too big a prize #BetterOffOut
He probably was the worst Tory leader of the Opposition, but the best Secretary of State for Works and Pensions for 60 years.
I wonder if Ed Miliband can do an IDS and reinvent himself.
His first remarks in the Commons since the election were probably among the most amusing, charming and naturally delivered things he's said in 5 years, publicly. And I say that as someone defending him as not-crap for those years.
So, a start.
Interestingly, the Adam Smith Institute (the wonk wing of the arch-neoliberals) have stuck up a blog post "Ed Miliband is right: in-work poverty is the scourge of our time". Naturally, they don't agree with him on quite how to rectify it, but they're not parroting the standard Tory line either. Worth a read.
Had Blair not taken us to war in Iraq his legacy would be completely different. Iraq was always going to be a defining moment.
The question for me is IF the events of September 11th 2001 had not happened what would the second Blair term have been like ?
It's entirely possible Blair would have won a third landslide in 2005 against a weak Opposition and we can then ask - without the burst in defence spending caused by the events of 9/11, would the global downturn have happened the way it did with the effects it had ?
I could imagine standing down in 2007 on a high note and Brown winning his own mandate within a few months taking us to 2012-13 when the natural laws of political gravity dictate a Conservative recovery (or do they ?)
Had Blair not taken us to war in Iraq his legacy would be completely different. Iraq was always going to be a defining moment.
The question for me is IF the events of September 11th 2001 had not happened what would the second Blair term have been like ?
It's entirely possible Blair would have won a third landslide in 2005 against a weak Opposition and we can then ask - without the burst in defence spending caused by the events of 9/11, would the global downturn have happened the way it did with the effects it had ?
I could imagine standing down in 2007 on a high note and Brown winning his own mandate within a few months taking us to 2012-13 when the natural laws of political gravity dictate a Conservative recovery (or do they ?)
One for alternatehistory.com
The signs of Blair's messianic tendencies were already there before 9/11. He would have found another avenue to express them to the full.
When the most crucial thing I'm told about something is that is such an important work because it's speaks of some social issue or is just so philosophical or a deep experience without much mention if it is actually a good story, or entertaining, I just lose interest
Cracking point. Tangentially reminds me of owt I posted before re snobbery to The Sun, and how critically acclaimed things often only interest a tiny minority:
I don't often read the Sun unless I find it lying about on a train carriage (not a chap for gallivanting about in First Class) but, like the Mail, I've always found it a seriously well-produced piece of commercial product. But unlike the Mail, or the Mirror and the Guardian I've been particularly impressed by how the writer seems to assume that I, the reader, am just an utterly normal bloke. Not the siege mentality that I am a common member of some blighted minority (funny how the Guardian and Mail are both so good at this, albeit the identity of the dark and oppressive forces is rarely the same - unless it's a politician or a banker).
Also no assumption I'm interested in any old fancy-dancy artsy-fartsy minority pursuit - the Guardian and the "highbrow" right-wing papers seem to think I care about any passing bloody ballet or poetry scandal, or the latest social mores or juicy gossip from the London dinner parties I've never gone attended in my life (nor known anyone who does). The dinner party circuit is small albeit influential; poets deemed worthy of column inches often sell no more than a few hundred copies of their work per year; ballet audiences are vanishingly small compared to the West End and pale in comparison to Big Event TV; in comparison the circulation of the newspaper, in the hundreds of thousands, is often far larger than the entire cultural market segment they are discussing. Sheer weight of numbers suggests that it's a wild statistical improbability that as a reader of their publication I'd actually give two hoots. But "proper" newspapers feel they have to cover this stuff, perhaps because in the massively unrepresentative circles journos (or more likely, editors and big name columinists) move in it's felt to be "important". Even the TV sections are often filled with extensive coverage of niche shows with tiny viewerships (how many people really watch The Wire, or Breaking Bad, or BBC4 arts documentaries? - not a lot if the official figures are believed).
The Sun makes far fewer assumptions about who I am or how weird and minority my tastes might be, and doesn't seem to passively condemn the reader for their lack of cultural capital, or their mainstream and insufficiently eclectic tastes. They just seem to assume I have a minor obsession with Simon Cowell - but based on the TV ratings and the high popularity of online articles about the chap at other websites, that suggests they're simply bang on the money about what normal folk are like.
The signs of Blair's messianic tendencies were already there before 9/11. He would have found another avenue to express them to the full.
Perhaps and as it often is it's not one big thing but a series of small things which lead to trouble (as was the case with Margaret Thatcher arguably).
9/11 was the seminal event of our century so far and will be regarded by many as the point at which the history of the 21st Century ended just as November 1989 is seen by many as the end of the 20th Century cycle of European conflicts which began with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28th 1914.
Donald Trump on his ISIS strategy “If I tell you right now, everyone else is going to say ‘Wow, what a great idea.’ You’re going to have 10 candidates going to use it and they’re going to forget where it came from. Which is me,” said Trump. But the GOPer did note his strategy “would be decisive and quick and it would be very beautiful. Very surgical.” http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/trump-i-have-gucci-store-thats-worth-more-romney
Had Blair not taken us to war in Iraq his legacy would be completely different. Iraq was always going to be a defining moment.
The question for me is IF the events of September 11th 2001 had not happened what would the second Blair term have been like ?
It's entirely possible Blair would have won a third landslide in 2005 against a weak Opposition and we can then ask - without the burst in defence spending caused by the events of 9/11, would the global downturn have happened the way it did with the effects it had ?
I could imagine standing down in 2007 on a high note and Brown winning his own mandate within a few months taking us to 2012-13 when the natural laws of political gravity dictate a Conservative recovery (or do they ?)
One for alternatehistory.com
The signs of Blair's messianic tendencies were already there before 9/11. He would have found another avenue to express them to the full.
Indeed, in April 1999 Blair mad a speech in Chicago where he first expounded the "Blair Doctrine" on liberal interventionism. He was going bonkers even then. Too much success too soon, and no major setbacks.
Or is is it just the usual despicable stuff found in the Daily Hate?
We are just seeing the Scottish Nazi Party in their real colours. I see that the cultural purging of Scotland is also getting up a head of steam, with cricket being dropped by one of Scotland's most distinguished schools, Morrison's Academy.
When the most crucial thing I'm told about something is that is such an important work because it's speaks of some social issue or is just so philosophical or a deep experience without much mention if it is actually a good story, or entertaining, I just lose interest
The Sun makes far fewer assumptions about who I am or how weird and minority my tastes might be, and doesn't seem to passively condemn the reader for their lack of cultural capital, or their mainstream and insufficiently eclectic tastes. They just seem to assume I have a minor obsession with Simon Cowell - but based on the TV ratings and the high popularity of online articles about the chap at other websites, that suggests they're simply bang on the money about what normal folk are like.
The Sun works for its specific market, but it seems in precipitous decline like all the print media except maybe the "i" (cheap) and the Evening Standard (free). Although you deride the Mail and the Guardian, they're the only British papers that have a really large online audience - among the largest in the world, in fact. I may be wrong but my impression is that whereas the Times is making reasonable money from its paywall, the Sun isn't.
I'm probably less culturally inclined than you are, but on the rare occasions that I buy the print Guardian, I quite like having a read about on the obscure ballets and movies that I'd never get round to seeing. Similarly, I know two seriously left-wing people who like reading the Mail online because they enjoy goggling at the weird things that the Mail goes on about.
When the most crucial thing I'm told about something is that is such an important work because it's speaks of some social issue or is just so philosophical or a deep experience without much mention if it is actually a good story, or entertaining, I just lose interest
The Sun makes far fewer assumptions about who I am or how weird and minority my tastes might be, and doesn't seem to passively condemn the reader for their lack of cultural capital, or their mainstream and insufficiently eclectic tastes. They just seem to assume I have a minor obsession with Simon Cowell - but based on the TV ratings and the high popularity of online articles about the chap at other websites, that suggests they're simply bang on the money about what normal folk are like.
The Sun works for its specific market, but it seems in precipitous decline like all the print media except maybe the "i" (cheap) and the Evening Standard (free). Although you deride the Mail and the Guardian, they're the only British papers that have a really large online audience - among the largest in the world, in fact. I may be wrong but my impression is that whereas the Times is making reasonable money from its paywall, the Sun isn't.
I'm probably less culturally inclined than you are, but on the rare occasions that I buy the print Guardian, I quite like having a read about on the obscure ballets and movies that I'd never get round to seeing. Similarly, I know two seriously left-wing people who like reading the Mail online because they enjoy goggling at the weird things that the Mail goes on about.
I sometimes get the Saturday FT and rather enjoy the reviews of books and theatre that I will never go to. Their football coverage is very poor though!
I get most of my news and views online, so one of the pleasures in browsing a physical paper is reading articles that I would have never clicked on if reading online. Every now and then there is something that really changes my world view.
Hard to believe this man was Chief of Staff to IDS, the worst Tory leader of the Opposition ever.
@montie: @DAaronovitch I would rather Out won the EU referendum than the Tories win next election. Self-government is too big a prize #BetterOffOut
I think montie managed to be a right winger pundit who lost as much from the election as polly t did... He's a busted flush to me at least, I don't trust him to have any real insight just his own kipper-light wishes
Agreed He is just opening his mouth and hoping anything comes out other than vomit. Do not try to tell me anything coherent is going on in his head.
Hard to believe this man was Chief of Staff to IDS, the worst Tory leader of the Opposition ever.
@montie: @DAaronovitch I would rather Out won the EU referendum than the Tories win next election. Self-government is too big a prize #BetterOffOut
He probably was the worst Tory leader of the Opposition, but the best Secretary of State for Works and Pensions for 60 years.
It must be a curious feeling to have failed at the top job, but, in some eyes at least, found much greater success in a subordinate position to someone else.
He never really got the top job though, did he? And while yes he is subordinate to the PM, i get the impression the PM is a big picture guy and leaves his cabinet to do what they want to do. IDS wanted to reform welfare. And he has.
Alec Home carried on under Heath after losing an election and resigning as leader.
When the most crucial thing I'm told about something is that is such an important work because it's speaks of some social issue or is just so philosophical or a deep experience without much mention if it is actually a good story, or entertaining, I just lose interest
The Sun makes far fewer assumptions about who I am or how weird and minority my tastes might be, and doesn't seem to passively condemn the reader for their lack of cultural capital, or their mainstream and insufficiently eclectic tastes. They just seem to assume I have a minor obsession with Simon Cowell - but based on the TV ratings and the high popularity of online articles about the chap at other websites, that suggests they're simply bang on the money about what normal folk are like.
The Sun works for its specific market, but it seems in precipitous decline like all the print media except maybe the "i" (cheap) and the Evening Standard (free). Although you deride the Mail and the Guardian, they're the only British papers that have a really large online audience - among the largest in the world, in fact. I may be wrong but my impression is that whereas the Times is making reasonable money from its paywall, the Sun isn't.
I'm probably less culturally inclined than you are, but on the rare occasions that I buy the print Guardian, I quite like having a read about on the obscure ballets and movies that I'd never get round to seeing. Similarly, I know two seriously left-wing people who like reading the Mail online because they enjoy goggling at the weird things that the Mail goes on about.
I sometimes get the Saturday FT and rather enjoy the reviews of books and theatre that I will never go to. Their football coverage is very poor though!
I get most of my news and views online, so one of the pleasures in browsing a physical paper is reading articles that I would have never clicked on if reading online. Every now and then there is something that really changes my world view.
Agreed. It's an odd thing, isn't it? - although it's just as easy to click on "New Bulgarian opera shakes assumptions" as it is to read the article, in practice we're still more inclined to glance across a physical page than click. I wonder if that's a generational thing and people brought up on ultrafast broadband click away as much or more than we might in a newspaper.
Before my car radio irreparably broke down, I used to enjoy listening to Radio 4 for the same reason - not really that interested in their mainstream stuff, but they'd have a piece on the history of farming in Paraguay that would draw me in.
Tim Montgomerie is a decent man I have met a few times and genuinely interested in the disadvantaged, however he is generally socially conservative and very eurosceptic, like many leftwingers during the Blair years he and many on the right are waiting for the end of the Cameron era to 'get their party back' the election result means they will have to wait 5 years more at least
Hard to believe this man was Chief of Staff to IDS, the worst Tory leader of the Opposition ever.
Rubbish, at least IDS never lost an Election as leader (unlike Messrs. Hague and Howard)!
Listening, watching IDS waffling on about how his great ideas are going to change the nation in the face of actuality and reality makes me wonder on his hold on life. His insistence in the facts to the contrary makes me wonder why the PM keeps him in position.
@ Nick Palmer and foxinsoxuk re reading habits. I think it has more to do with the media than age. I scan things so much faster on paper than on a computer, because the format of paper media permits that, whereas needing to click onto something to pull it up literally precludes you scanning it while reading something else that piqued your fancy.
Hard to believe this man was Chief of Staff to IDS, the worst Tory leader of the Opposition ever.
Rubbish, at least IDS never lost an Election as leader (unlike Messrs. Hague and Howard)!
Listening, watching IDS waffling on about how his great ideas are going to change the nation in the face of actuality and reality makes me wonder on his hold on life. His insistence in the facts to the contrary makes me wonder why the PM keeps him in position.
Because we are witnessing in real time a total transformation in attitudes to the welfare state. Universal Credit is the holy grail of welfare, and IDS seems to have discovered it and supping from it.
My bet is in ten years time we will look back in shock at how we used to administer welfare and the wasted lives the system created.
The Sun works for its specific market, but it seems in precipitous decline like all the print media except maybe the "i" (cheap) and the Evening Standard (free). Although you deride the Mail and the Guardian, they're the only British papers that have a really large online audience - among the largest in the world, in fact. I may be wrong but my impression is that whereas the Times is making reasonable money from its paywall, the Sun isn't.
I'm probably less culturally inclined than you are, but on the rare occasions that I buy the print Guardian, I quite like having a read about on the obscure ballets and movies that I'd never get round to seeing. Similarly, I know two seriously left-wing people who like reading the Mail online because they enjoy goggling at the weird things that the Mail goes on about.
I didn't mean to deride the Mail/Guardian - they are both very fine commercial products. (On the thread which I copy-and-pasted that post from, I think I made other posts to the same effect! There is also this very cute story by Guido about the Guardian under Rusbridger, which I quite enjoyed.) But my sneaking admiration for The Sun was really based on another point - that in the partisanly self-selective world of the British press, it's the closest we've got to a One Nation newspaper (in terms, for example, of how its readers vote compared to the general population); and the distant second-closest is The Times.
My little dig at the Mail and Guardian for their tendency to lapse into their respective "siege mentalities" is basically grounded in the fact they are One Of Us newspapers. The reader is just naturally assumed to come from a particular substratum of society, to share certain aspirations and inclinations, and to feel outrage or pride or disgust accordingly. For me the impressive thing about the Sun is that it doesn't seem to typecast its readers so narrowly, and as a result its readership is not just larger (albeit declining) than other papers, but broader, and that's a great credit to its editorial staff. It's genuinely a paper that is written for "a perfectly normal bloke" - and since it's written in large part by staff of a similar, relatively elitist and overeducated background to other papers, the "common touch" is an even greater editorial achievement. The pluralism of the Times is also impressive but their target market is surely easier to reach out to.
I'm probably less culturally inclined than you are, but on the rare occasions that I buy the print Guardian, I quite like having a read about on the obscure ballets and movies that I'd never get round to seeing. Similarly, I know two seriously left-wing people who like reading the Mail online because they enjoy goggling at the weird things that the Mail goes on about.
It is very difficult to be less culturally inclined than I am! If you have managed this, Nick, then you should regard it as a great achievement indeed. This whole "Culture" thing, it's basically a whole bunch of old b**locks isn't it? Would have saved on a whole bunch of wars, nationalism, chauvinism and general misunderstandings if, rather than weighing ourselves down under a historical accumulation of "our" literature, art, music, film and TV, instead society just relaxed of an evening by partaking a little recreational geometry or read a good textbook about topology or 18th-century economic history or micro zoology. Or even just did some gardening or DIY. Apparently some people like going to the Opera for reasons other than the fact they can brag that they've been to the Opera, but even so, it doesn't keep the topiary in order or put up those new shelves we've all been intending to get around to, does it?
(More seriously... fully agreed about the "flicking through a physical paper" effect. It's a weird one, isn't it? I don't think it matters how skeuomorphic digital becomes, it can't match that. I reckon part of the issue is that paper imposes space constraints that mean the stories are compact. Digital stories often spew, not just off-screen, but over several pages. As a result they are pretty much unskimmable so it's less likely that some key phrase will catch your passing eye. I quite like following a range of news stories, not because I enjoy the "exoticism" of looking at the world through the lenses of weirdos and ideological arch-enemies, but because I want to keep an open mind - and if my cognitive biases don't allow that, I should at least keep open eyes and let my prejudices filter the information at the processing stage. Folk who read a newspaper or website because it "gets" them, and they fall ever-so-comfortably into the bullseye of its target audience, seem to me to be missing something quite fundamental. An alternative perspective can at least be stimulating even if it isn't challenging or particularly convincing.)
One of the things the exit poll got wrong was putting the Greens on two seats.
Was Bristol West the second seat they were projected to gain?
I think it was Norwich South, where in fact the Green vote went down compared to 2010.
The predictions based on the exit poll were the sum of probabilities, rather than a list of specific seat predictions. So, to predict 2 seats for the Green Party, they probably had about 95% for Brighton Pavilion, 40% for Bristol West, 20% for Norwich South, and maybe 1% for a few other places. So it adds up to about 1.6, which is rounded up to 2.
Advising George Osborne how to manage his own recovery is a bit like telling Shakespeare how to improve Hamlet. Anyway, the IMF forfeited any claims to be taken seriously with their 'playing with fire' utterances - this century's equivalent to the 365 economists.
But of all the 'austerity' we have had, we havent managed to get public spending to anywhere like what is was as percent of GDP in 2007. Government spending this year is 44 percent of gdp. In pre austerity Britain, the peak of new labour largesse it was 41%. The austerity is the reigning back from the turning on of the spending taps pushing up expenditure to 47% in 2009/10.
Stating the obvious I know, but the "spending taps" were turned on in the context of the financial crisis and subsequent recession! Perhaps it would make more sense to focus on GDP growth rather than reducing public spending further...?
Wren-Lewis keeps popping in pieces by the Labour-are-innocent brigade. He was cited in the Evening Standard piece I linked to down thread.
Advising George Osborne how to manage his own recovery is a bit like telling Shakespeare how to improve Hamlet. Anyway, the IMF forfeited any claims to be taken seriously with their 'playing with fire' utterances - this century's equivalent to the 365 economists.
But of all the 'austerity' we have had, we havent managed to get public spending to anywhere like what is was as percent of GDP in 2007. Government spending this year is 44 percent of gdp. In pre austerity Britain, the peak of new labour largesse it was 41%. The austerity is the reigning back from the turning on of the spending taps pushing up expenditure to 47% in 2009/10.
Stating the obvious I know, but the "spending taps" were turned on in the context of the financial crisis and subsequent recession! Perhaps it would make more sense to focus on GDP growth rather than reducing public spending further...?
You talk about not being concerned about the deficit. If we were talking pre recession £50 billion then yes, it could be dismissed. But you cannot dismiss a 10% deficit at £156 billion. You can only cover that for a very short period of time, then you have to start cutting your cloth. You cant just stick your fingers in your ears and hope for the best. This is possibly the most keynsian government in peace time history, but a 10% deficit just isnt enough for you.
You have to broadly balance your income with your expenditure. Running small deficits isnt necessarily a bad thing, as economic growth and inflation can shrink them away. But not the sheer scale of what we saw in 2010. Three years after the crash. Here we are seven years after the crash and its hard as hell to get us off the debt.
Exactly, economic cycles are typically 8-10 years long. We're seven years since the last recession, meaning we're due one between 2016 and 2019 on historical trends - and if a new recession does hit us then we need to ensure we still don't have a huge gaping hole in the roof from the last one.
Advising George Osborne how to manage his own recovery is a bit like telling Shakespeare how to improve Hamlet. Anyway, the IMF forfeited any claims to be taken seriously with their 'playing with fire' utterances - this century's equivalent to the 365 economists.
But of all the 'austerity' we have had, we havent managed to get public spending to anywhere like what is was as percent of GDP in 2007. Government spending this year is 44 percent of gdp. In pre austerity Britain, the peak of new labour largesse it was 41%. The austerity is the reigning back from the turning on of the spending taps pushing up expenditure to 47% in 2009/10.
Stating the obvious I know, but the "spending taps" were turned on in the context of the financial crisis and subsequent recession! Perhaps it would make more sense to focus on GDP growth rather than reducing public spending further...?
Wren-Lewis keeps popping in pieces by the Labour-are-innocent brigade. He was cited in the Evening Standard piece I linked to down thread.
Advising George Osborne how to manage his own recovery is a bit like telling Shakespeare how to improve Hamlet. Anyway, the IMF forfeited any claims to be taken seriously with their 'playing with fire' utterances - this century's equivalent to the 365 economists.
But of all the 'austerity' we have had, we havent managed to get public spending to anywhere like what is was as percent of GDP in 2007. Government spending this year is 44 percent of gdp. In pre austerity Britain, the peak of new labour largesse it was 41%. The austerity is the reigning back from the turning on of the spending taps pushing up expenditure to 47% in 2009/10.
Stating the obvious I know, but the "spending taps" were turned on in the context of the financial crisis and subsequent recession! Perhaps it would make more sense to focus on GDP growth rather than reducing public spending further...?
You talk about not being concerned about the deficit. If we were talking pre recession £50 billion then yes, it could be dismissed. But you cannot dismiss a 10% deficit at £156 billion. You can only cover that for a very short period of time, then you have to start cutting your cloth. You cant just stick your fingers in your ears and hope for the best. This is possibly the most keynsian government in peace time history, but a 10% deficit just isnt enough for you.
You have to broadly balance your income with your expenditure. Running small deficits isnt necessarily a bad thing, as economic growth and inflation can shrink them away. But not the sheer scale of what we saw in 2010. Three years after the crash. Here we are seven years after the crash and its hard as hell to get us off the debt.
Exactly, economic cycles are typically 8-10 years long. We're seven years since the last recession, meaning we're due one between 2016 and 2019 on historical trends - and if a new recession does hit us then we need to ensure we still don't have a huge gaping hole in the roof from the last one.
Hard to believe this man was Chief of Staff to IDS, the worst Tory leader of the Opposition ever.
Rubbish, at least IDS never lost an Election as leader (unlike Messrs. Hague and Howard)!
Listening, watching IDS waffling on about how his great ideas are going to change the nation in the face of actuality and reality makes me wonder on his hold on life. His insistence in the facts to the contrary makes me wonder why the PM keeps him in position.
Because we are witnessing in real time a total transformation in attitudes to the welfare state. Universal Credit is the holy grail of welfare, and IDS seems to have discovered it and supping from it.
My bet is in ten years time we will look back in shock at how we used to administer welfare and the wasted lives the system created.
Sorry, for not being clearer. I have no problem with cleaning up the mess of rules, regulations and restrictions that have come into being by well meaning politicians of all parties over many years.
However, I do have a problem with IDS's insistence that all the systems that he is putting in place are working perfectly when the evidence of experience is different.
Having watched and listened to interviews where IDS doesn't allow any doubt of "his" planning and methods to creep into the conversation, even when you can see that the interviewer has a line of questions which show that the answers they are getting are a load of rubbish, makes me, and I suspect many others, suspicious of his motives and methods.
Personally, I suspect that since he got kicked out of the leadership of the Conservative party, he now, instinctively, is trying to leave a mark in history just to show what the Tories missed. My gut feeling is that from past experience, IDS has always seemed to cause a terrific mess that someone else has to clean up.
As to why he is allowed to remain, I believe that Cameron's management style of putting some one in place and letting them get on with the job, with out oversight until the clamour from the media means that there has to be change of position for tacticle reasons, eg. Landsley, Gove et al.
If he does it should be borne in mind that it's one member one vote, and also that supporters can sign up to vote without having to be full members.
There's already been considerable grassroots support, with over 10,000 likes for Jeremy Corbyn For Leader on Facebook after just three days. If he does get on the ballot and participate in debates as a genuine man of principle against 2 New Labour and 1 red Tory, that could turn into a real surge.
A Corbyn victory would require another Edstone for the Labour Party.
This time, requiring the stonemason to inscribe just two words: In Memorium
Comments
So, a start.
Previously episodes were 20' 30" long - with series 7 they've reduced each one by a minute to 19' 30"
I love Amy, I heard she has a PhD in neuroscience in real-life too.
Having read much of election night thread, my stand out goes to one of the shortest posts straight after the exit poll at 10pm.
"Cross over"
2nd was compouter posting just before 10pm having been earlier reported to be a lab 'insider' saying
"Eicipm"
Watching "Vietnam - a television history", based on the excellent book by Stanley Karnow.
It's entirely possible Blair would have won a third landslide in 2005 against a weak Opposition and we can then ask - without the burst in defence spending caused by the events of 9/11, would the global downturn have happened the way it did with the effects it had ?
I could imagine standing down in 2007 on a high note and Brown winning his own mandate within a few months taking us to 2012-13 when the natural laws of political gravity dictate a Conservative recovery (or do they ?)
One for alternatehistory.com
I don't often read the Sun unless I find it lying about on a train carriage (not a chap for gallivanting about in First Class) but, like the Mail, I've always found it a seriously well-produced piece of commercial product. But unlike the Mail, or the Mirror and the Guardian I've been particularly impressed by how the writer seems to assume that I, the reader, am just an utterly normal bloke. Not the siege mentality that I am a common member of some blighted minority (funny how the Guardian and Mail are both so good at this, albeit the identity of the dark and oppressive forces is rarely the same - unless it's a politician or a banker).
Also no assumption I'm interested in any old fancy-dancy artsy-fartsy minority pursuit - the Guardian and the "highbrow" right-wing papers seem to think I care about any passing bloody ballet or poetry scandal, or the latest social mores or juicy gossip from the London dinner parties I've never gone attended in my life (nor known anyone who does). The dinner party circuit is small albeit influential; poets deemed worthy of column inches often sell no more than a few hundred copies of their work per year; ballet audiences are vanishingly small compared to the West End and pale in comparison to Big Event TV; in comparison the circulation of the newspaper, in the hundreds of thousands, is often far larger than the entire cultural market segment they are discussing. Sheer weight of numbers suggests that it's a wild statistical improbability that as a reader of their publication I'd actually give two hoots. But "proper" newspapers feel they have to cover this stuff, perhaps because in the massively unrepresentative circles journos (or more likely, editors and big name columinists) move in it's felt to be "important". Even the TV sections are often filled with extensive coverage of niche shows with tiny viewerships (how many people really watch The Wire, or Breaking Bad, or BBC4 arts documentaries? - not a lot if the official figures are believed).
The Sun makes far fewer assumptions about who I am or how weird and minority my tastes might be, and doesn't seem to passively condemn the reader for their lack of cultural capital, or their mainstream and insufficiently eclectic tastes. They just seem to assume I have a minor obsession with Simon Cowell - but based on the TV ratings and the high popularity of online articles about the chap at other websites, that suggests they're simply bang on the money about what normal folk are like.
9/11 was the seminal event of our century so far and will be regarded by many as the point at which the history of the 21st Century ended just as November 1989 is seen by many as the end of the 20th Century cycle of European conflicts which began with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28th 1914.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3112992/Hounded-SNP-hate-mob-weeks-lonely-death-Charles-Kennedy-endured-vile-campaign-bullying-abuse-separatist-fanatics-deeply-wounded-vulnerable-man.html
Or is is it just the usual despicable stuff found in the Daily Hate?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/06/06/the_boys_of_pointe_du_hoc_126885.html
Text of speech:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international-jan-june99-blair_doctrine4-23/
I'm probably less culturally inclined than you are, but on the rare occasions that I buy the print Guardian, I quite like having a read about on the obscure ballets and movies that I'd never get round to seeing. Similarly, I know two seriously left-wing people who like reading the Mail online because they enjoy goggling at the weird things that the Mail goes on about.
I get most of my news and views online, so one of the pleasures in browsing a physical paper is reading articles that I would have never clicked on if reading online. Every now and then there is something that really changes my world view.
He is just opening his mouth and hoping anything comes out other than vomit. Do not try to tell me anything coherent is going on in his head.
Before my car radio irreparably broke down, I used to enjoy listening to Radio 4 for the same reason - not really that interested in their mainstream stuff, but they'd have a piece on the history of farming in Paraguay that would draw me in.
My bet is in ten years time we will look back in shock at how we used to administer welfare and the wasted lives the system created.
My little dig at the Mail and Guardian for their tendency to lapse into their respective "siege mentalities" is basically grounded in the fact they are One Of Us newspapers. The reader is just naturally assumed to come from a particular substratum of society, to share certain aspirations and inclinations, and to feel outrage or pride or disgust accordingly. For me the impressive thing about the Sun is that it doesn't seem to typecast its readers so narrowly, and as a result its readership is not just larger (albeit declining) than other papers, but broader, and that's a great credit to its editorial staff. It's genuinely a paper that is written for "a perfectly normal bloke" - and since it's written in large part by staff of a similar, relatively elitist and overeducated background to other papers, the "common touch" is an even greater editorial achievement. The pluralism of the Times is also impressive but their target market is surely easier to reach out to.
(More seriously... fully agreed about the "flicking through a physical paper" effect. It's a weird one, isn't it? I don't think it matters how skeuomorphic digital becomes, it can't match that. I reckon part of the issue is that paper imposes space constraints that mean the stories are compact. Digital stories often spew, not just off-screen, but over several pages. As a result they are pretty much unskimmable so it's less likely that some key phrase will catch your passing eye. I quite like following a range of news stories, not because I enjoy the "exoticism" of looking at the world through the lenses of weirdos and ideological arch-enemies, but because I want to keep an open mind - and if my cognitive biases don't allow that, I should at least keep open eyes and let my prejudices filter the information at the processing stage. Folk who read a newspaper or website because it "gets" them, and they fall ever-so-comfortably into the bullseye of its target audience, seem to me to be missing something quite fundamental. An alternative perspective can at least be stimulating even if it isn't challenging or particularly convincing.)
http://www.standard.co.uk/business/markets/ben-chu-labour-may-apologise-but-it-didnt-cause-the-financial-crisis-10295091.html
Is he the next 'Danny' Blanchflower?
http://www.standard.co.uk/business/markets/ben-chu-labour-may-apologise-but-it-didnt-cause-the-financial-crisis-10295091.html
Is he the next 'Danny' Blanchflower?
However, I do have a problem with IDS's insistence that all the systems that he is putting in place are working perfectly when the evidence of experience is different.
Having watched and listened to interviews where IDS doesn't allow any doubt of "his" planning and methods to creep into the conversation, even when you can see that the interviewer has a line of questions which show that the answers they are getting are a load of rubbish, makes me, and I suspect many others, suspicious of his motives and methods.
Personally, I suspect that since he got kicked out of the leadership of the Conservative party, he now, instinctively, is trying to leave a mark in history just to show what the Tories missed. My gut feeling is that from past experience, IDS has always seemed to cause a terrific mess that someone else has to clean up.
As to why he is allowed to remain, I believe that Cameron's management style of putting some one in place and letting them get on with the job, with out oversight until the clamour from the media means that there has to be change of position for tacticle reasons, eg. Landsley, Gove et al.
Cameron giveth, Osborne taketh.
This time, requiring the stonemason to inscribe just two words: In Memorium