Labour's role should be to ensure that within our capitalist system the disadvantaged are not left behind, that there is genuine equality of opportunity, that entrenched elites do not dominate, that the UK stays together and that its voice is effective and influential overseas. In other words, it's the same role that the Tories have. The argument, as ever, is over the methods to achieve this.
I would say that the Tories' role is to ensure entrenched elites do dominate - it's practically the party's prime mission.
Of course they aren't doing very well on any of the other points, either.
"He wants to give the party autonomy on policy, candidate selection and party management, as he is determined to reset its relationship with the UK party to ground zero. "
Roll back 4 years to the Murphy review of SLABs 2011 defeat:
"The review, led by Jim Murphy MP and Sarah Boyack MSP, was prompted by the party's Holyrood elections defeat. The plans include fully devolving itself from the UK party on all Scottish matters. "
As far as I can tell Burnham & co are promising to deliver to SLAB exactly what was meant to have been put in place after the Murphy review of 4 years ago - why would anyone believe these guys ?
It's becoming increasingly clear that at the moment Labour couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery let alone run the country.
I also note you've increased your bribe from £100k to £1m.
Of course negotation rather than war is popular, it's something almost everyone supports. The problem I and many others have - and I have opposed most interventions - is when people extend that argument as though it is always possible to continue negotiations, and sometimes it is not, sometimes matters come to a head.
I recall around the time of the Libya intervention, which many will have opposed on principled grounds, and the place has certainly been a mess ever since, but there was a QT where people kept intervening to say things like 'We shouldn't get involved that is totally wrong...but I do think Gaddafi needs to step down' as though it was possible to get the latter without getting involved. That choice was not on the table. Sometimes, no matter how much we want to negotiate, the other side are not willing to meet us halfway. Sometimes, it is the other way around - it's a good default position, but insisting upon a position of negotiation even when the other side are not engaging, is not a morally superior position in my opinion, it is grandstanding. It's like someone saying we need to negotiate with IS and therefore any military involvement, however slight, would be wrong - now, it is simply not true to say we and others do not negotiate with terrorists, because in the real world sometimes you have to do that, and terrorists can become those you do business with in the end as we know only too well, but at the current time, it would not be appropriate to even attempt to negotiate with them.
So you see, it's not that he advocates negotiation not war that is an issue, nor that anyone querying him is automatically a hawk onmilitary matters, but that it appears (and this may not be the case) that it is an immovable, inviolable position for him, when the vagaries and complexities of international affairs may dictate that negotiation is not the best option sometimes when either it is not morally acceptable for us to moderate our position or the other side are unwilling to come to the table, and vice-versa.
In international affairs, even more so than many other positions, I think having such an automatic, unthinking approach is unsound.
A good post.
In fact when a country has two or more factions that just hate each other (usually religious) then often the only answer to keep the peace is a very strong dictator. It is when the factions unite for a while to defeat that dictator when problems arise - as there if often no agreement or planning for the succession.
I suspect that most Brits would have been quite happy if the Republic had offered a bribe to people in Northen Ireland to join the Republic and they went along with it. The problem was that some Unionists wouldn't have accepted any bribe no mtter how large so you would still have had war.
On the same terms its extremely likely that some Falkland islanders would not have accepted the offer no matter how big, people with family buried there for example.
I suspect that most Brits would have been quite happy if the Republic had offered a bribe to people in Northen Ireland to join the Republic and they went along with it. The problem was that some Unionists wouldn't have accepted any bribe no mtter how large so you would still have had war.
On the same terms its extremely likely that some Falkland islanders would not have accepted the offer no matter how big, people with family buried there for example.
Some people with houses on the HS2 route or one of the 800 houses to be demolished by the 3rd Heathrow runway may be unwilling to accept any amount of compensation. But they will be moved regardless for the common good.
It's a tricky thing, democracy, isn't it.
If you are an example of the mentality that supports Corbyn - if you represent the real labour - then gawd help you. What an utter and complete ignorant bigot you are.
You are right. I am a LibDem.
I'm enjoying this Corbyn business. I also like challenging entrenched views. When I was a non-exec of a public company, I saw my role as devil's advocate, challenging any group think. (I would have been useful on the RBS Board). I was told (through gritted teeth) that my role as devil's advocate was appreciated. I don't think it is here!
Edit. Basically I'm a stirrer. Edit. And now I've given the game away.
That well known PB Tory, Helen Lewis, in that infamous right wing rag, The New Statesman, on 'virtue signalling' and why Twitter lost Labour the election
At a recent Gay Pride march, Burnham wore a T-shirt proclaiming that he’d “never kissed a Tory”. Well, if he wants to win the next election he’s going to have to do a bit more than kiss some Tories. He’s going to have to convince them to vote Labour. (That’s third base, at least, in my book.) Will reaching out to those voters be seen as a betrayal, too?
Ultimately, in the secrecy of the ballot, when there’s no more virtue signalling to be done, Corbyn will fade away. But the country will have taken note of a Labour Party that seems to prefer the purity of opposition to the compromises of power.
Excellent post as usual by Antifrank but I'd add something interesting Peter Kellner said at the post-election Nuffield College seminar that's doing the re-runs on BBC Parliament, available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05wdqq7
There are really two kinds of left-right. There's the substantive, policy details which make a particular manifesto right or left. But there is also an abstract aura of left or right, and this kind of subjective political positioning doesn't necessarily align with concrete pledges.
Kellner argued that Tony Blair had some very left-wing or progressive policies, such as minimum wage (there are apparently some young'uns on PB for whom the idea of life without the minimum wage is unthinkable, but for the bulk of the 20th century, when minimum wages have frequently been in political discussion particularly within left-wing circles, the idea of introducing one was long unthinkable: even radically-inclined Labour governments steered away from it) yet was able to position himself as centrist overall. He was able to create an image of a centrist, by careful media judgment, shying away from inflammatory rhetoric and adding some more right-leaning policies which counterbalanced his left-wing ones. Kellner's argument seemed to be that Blair could have been seen as a more seriously left-wing progressive leader had he chosen to, but that he had wisely set his sights on the centre-line.
On the other hand, Michael Howard produced a manifesto that, line by line, on matters like immigration, crime and Europe, the British public was broadly sympathetic to. On each particular policy he was not substantially far away from the typical British voter, if such a beast there be. Yet taken in aggregate with his historic image, it led people to the impression that he was a long way to the right of them.
As for the hard-left calling Blairites Tories - they are doing that because they are idiots. To hear people like Dave Ward talk the way they do is an absolute disgrace - these people did nothing to get Labour elected, and if anything their actions make Tory majority governments more likely and yet they had the nerve to call out people who actually won elections?
As for 1997 not being a Labour win - that's the first time I've heard that notion. Even by people who do regard Blair as a 'Tory', most see 1997 as a triumph for Labour after years in opposition.
If only Tony Blair had listened a bit more. Corbyn is weak on economic policy, but on social and foreign policy he tends to be correct.
The problem is that if you don't get the economic bit right, you can't afford the social or anything else.
Foxinsox is letting loose his inner dribbling leftie. All Corbyn's (ie rampant loony leftie) so called 'social' stuff is utter rubbish. All the Left's 'spend spend spend until your eyeballs burst' rubbish was tested to destruction by the stark staring bonkers Brown.
Your abusive posts this morning sound more drunk than my redneck poker players. Are you quite well?
I suspect that most Brits would have been quite happy if the Republic had offered a bribe to people in Northen Ireland to join the Republic and they went along with it. The problem was that some Unionists wouldn't have accepted any bribe no mtter how large so you would still have had war.
On the same terms its extremely likely that some Falkland islanders would not have accepted the offer no matter how big, people with family buried there for example.
I suspect that most Brits would have been quite happy if the Republic had offered a bribe to people in Northen Ireland to join the Republic and they went along with it. The problem was that some Unionists wouldn't have accepted any bribe no mtter how large so you would still have had war.
On the same terms its extremely likely that some Falkland islanders would not have accepted the offer no matter how big, people with family buried there for example.
Some people with houses on the HS2 route or one of the 800 houses to be demolished by the 3rd Heathrow runway may be unwilling to accept any amount of compensation. But they will be moved regardless for the common good.
It's a tricky thing, democracy, isn't it.
If you are an example of the mentality that supports Corbyn - if you represent the real labour - then gawd help you. What an utter and complete ignorant bigot you are.
You are right. I am a LibDem.
I'm enjoying this Corbyn business. I also like challenging entrenched views. When I was a non-exec of a public company, I saw my role as devil's advocate, challenging any group think. (I would have been useful on the RBS Board). I was told (through gritted teeth) that my role as devil's advocate was appreciated. I don't think it is here!
Edit. Basically I'm a stirrer. Edit. And now I've given the game away.
Bear in mind you are posting on a forum full of political obsessive nutters who are deeply entrenched in their opinions!
Labour's role should be to ensure that within our capitalist system the disadvantaged are not left behind, that there is genuine equality of opportunity, that entrenched elites do not dominate, that the UK stays together and that its voice is effective and influential overseas. In other words, it's the same role that the Tories have. The argument, as ever, is over the methods to achieve this.
To an outsider it appears that the argument has yet to reach that point, at least outside the "sensible wing" of Labour. Far too many centre and hard left Labour people appear unable to accept even that much of a change, and are still banging on about overthrowing the capitalist system and equality of outcomes. That argument either needs to be won or the party needs to split before your argument is going to get a hearing, at the moment anyone trying to talk about the things you propose is howled down as a closet Tory.
The comfort blanket is very comforting. Now that the Tories have embraced social liberalism, the Labour party has to do the same with capitalism. It is the best system and it does work. The issue is to make it work best for the most people. You are right, though: Labour accepts this or its disappears. I don't have a huge problem with either scenario as I know that if Labour does go down the plughole something else on the centre left will emerge to take its place.
have no idea of what *does* make an electoral strategy to deliver power.
Sure they do...
Hollande won (and will likely lead to Le Pen next time round)
Syriza won (and Greece is even more ****ed)
Corbyn can win...
Le Pen is highly unlikely to win the next Presidential election in France, because the FN is still very transfer unfriendly.
Look at the latest local elections (this year) in France. The FN was widely expected to "win". They trailed the Republicans in the first round by 5%.
In the second round they did appallingly. They ended up with just 1.5% of councillors.
1.5%.
That's less than the Communists got. In fact, in heads up between the Communists and the FN, the Republicans and the Socialists broke clearly for the Communists. The FN's second round performance was disastrous and bodes very poorly for the FN in 2017.
The most likely election result is that Juppe leads on about 30%, with Le Pen on 25-26%, and Hollande trailing in the mid to high teens.
FN did worse (in the first round) than polls predicted. Had they come first, I expect a lot of UMP supporters would have switched to them to keep out the Left.
I don't think that's true at all.
This is a local election, where the second round is between the two parties who came first and second in that particular ward.
It is highly unlikely that the national order will have any any effect on local transfer patterns.
Isn't the issue for the FN that the left are the ones that they have replaced in the final round, so it is often FN vs UMP - and so the left will 'hold their nose' and vote UMP. If it was FN vs Left in the final, then UMP supporters would split more evenly. The FN's problem isn't so much that they are transfer unfriendly in general, but that they are particularly transfer unfriendly to those who have been eliminated (which is what actually matters clearly)
That well known PB Tory, Helen Lewis, in that infamous right wing rag, The New Statesman, on 'virtue signalling' and why Twitter lost Labour the election
At a recent Gay Pride march, Burnham wore a T-shirt proclaiming that he’d “never kissed a Tory”. Well, if he wants to win the next election he’s going to have to do a bit more than kiss some Tories. He’s going to have to convince them to vote Labour. (That’s third base, at least, in my book.) Will reaching out to those voters be seen as a betrayal, too?
Ultimately, in the secrecy of the ballot, when there’s no more virtue signalling to be done, Corbyn will fade away. But the country will have taken note of a Labour Party that seems to prefer the purity of opposition to the compromises of power.
"Kendall is booed at hustings while Corbyn is cheered. Her campaign is faltering precisely because she is saying what she believes.
As it happens, I disagree with her about the two-child limit – in the words of The West Wing’s Josh Lyman, Osborne apparently wants a government just small enough to fit into our bedrooms. But it is undeniably popular with exactly the people Labour was founded to represent.
What Kendall is doing is also more principled – “courageous”, even, in the Yes, Minister sense of foolhardy – than the strategy pursued by Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, who will not attack Corbyn head on because they want anyone who votes for him to put them down in second place."
That well known PB Tory, Helen Lewis, in that infamous right wing rag, The New Statesman, on 'virtue signalling' and why Twitter lost Labour the election
At a recent Gay Pride march, Burnham wore a T-shirt proclaiming that he’d “never kissed a Tory”. Well, if he wants to win the next election he’s going to have to do a bit more than kiss some Tories. He’s going to have to convince them to vote Labour. (That’s third base, at least, in my book.) Will reaching out to those voters be seen as a betrayal, too?
Ultimately, in the secrecy of the ballot, when there’s no more virtue signalling to be done, Corbyn will fade away. But the country will have taken note of a Labour Party that seems to prefer the purity of opposition to the compromises of power.
"Kendall is booed at hustings while Corbyn is cheered. Her campaign is faltering precisely because she is saying what she believes.
As it happens, I disagree with her about the two-child limit – in the words of The West Wing’s Josh Lyman, Osborne apparently wants a government just small enough to fit into our bedrooms. But it is undeniably popular with exactly the people Labour was founded to represent.
What Kendall is doing is also more principled – “courageous”, even, in the Yes, Minister sense of foolhardy – than the strategy pursued by Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, who will not attack Corbyn head on because they want anyone who votes for him to put them down in second place."
Also, could anyone see Thatcher or Major's Conservative governments promising and delivering on devolution (circa Blair 1997-2001)?
Was devolution really a good decision for the UK?
As a concept, yes. As the idiotic way Blair and Brown gerrymandered it to trying and maintain Scotland as a Labour fiefdom in perpetuity (that worked well!) no.
"The flaws of the present Labour contest are critical, especially in the context of the challenges the party will face at the next election. On 28 July the Fabian Society published a report into the 2015 defeat. Its findings reaffirmed how perilous is Labour’s position. “The verdicts are of a defeat in the broad realm of ideas and positioning, not individual policies,” ..
Rowenna Davis, who failed to hold John Denham’s old seat of Southampton Itchen for Labour, observes: “The leadership seemed to assume that people were either needy, greedy or irrelevant.”
Sally Keeble, who did not regain Northampton North after losing the seat in 2010, highlights the urgent need for “a big picture that will appeal beyond our core vote”, and warns that Labour’s path back to power rests on reaching out to those “embedded in the Tory and Ukip ranks”....
The protracted and increasingly bizarre leadership contest, combined with the lack of direction and unease in the parliamentary party, despite the best efforts of the acting leader, Harriet Harman, has been a gift to a resurgent Conservative Party. The danger for Labour is that, as in 2010, the Tories exploit these summer months of drift and unrest to control the “narrative” of the parliament and define the ground on which the next election is fought – all of this before Mr Miliband’s successor has been elected.
Also, could anyone see Thatcher or Major's Conservative governments promising and delivering on devolution (circa Blair 1997-2001)?
Was devolution really a good decision for the UK?
As a concept, yes. As the idiotic way Blair and Brown gerrymandered it to trying and maintain Scotland as a Labour fiefdom in perpetuity (that worked well!) no.
have no idea of what *does* make an electoral strategy to deliver power.
Sure they do...
Hollande won (and will likely lead to Le Pen next time round)
Syriza won (and Greece is even more ****ed)
Corbyn can win...
Le Pen is highly unlikely to win the next Presidential election in France, because the FN is still very transfer unfriendly.
Look at the latest local elections (this year) in France. The FN was widely expected to "win". They trailed the Republicans in the first round by 5%.
In the second round they did appallingly. They ended up with just 1.5% of councillors.
1.5%.
That's less than the Communists got. In fact, in heads up between the Communists and the FN, the Republicans and the Socialists broke clearly for the Communists. The FN's second round performance was disastrous and bodes very poorly for the FN in 2017.
The most likely election result is that Juppe leads on about 30%, with Le Pen on 25-26%, and Hollande trailing in the mid to high teens.
FN did worse (in the first round) than polls predicted. Had they come first, I expect a lot of UMP supporters would have switched to them to keep out the Left.
I don't think that's true at all.
This is a local election, where the second round is between the two parties who came first and second in that particular ward.
It is highly unlikely that the national order will have any any effect on local transfer patterns.
Isn't the issue for the FN that the left are the ones that they have replaced in the final round, so it is often FN vs UMP - and so the left will 'hold their nose' and vote UMP. If it was FN vs Left in the final, then UMP supporters would split more evenly. The FN's problem isn't so much that they are transfer unfriendly in general, but that they are particularly transfer unfriendly to those who have been eliminated (which is what actually matters clearly)
There were hundred and hundreds of council seats in the French locals where it was FN vs the Socialists in the second round.
have no idea of what *does* make an electoral strategy to deliver power.
Sure they do...
Hollande won (and will likely lead to Le Pen next time round)
Syriza won (and Greece is even more ****ed)
Corbyn can win...
Le Pen is highly unlikely to win the next Presidential election in France, because the FN is still very transfer unfriendly.
Look at the latest local elections (this year) in France. The FN was widely expected to "win". They trailed the Republicans in the first round by 5%.
In the second round they did appallingly. They ended up with just 1.5% of councillors.
1.5%.
That's less than the Communists got. In fact, in heads up between the Communists and the FN, the Republicans and the Socialists broke clearly for the Communists. The FN's second round performance was disastrous and bodes very poorly for the FN in 2017.
The most likely election result is that Juppe leads on about 30%, with Le Pen on 25-26%, and Hollande trailing in the mid to high teens.
FN did worse (in the first round) than polls predicted. Had they come first, I expect a lot of UMP supporters would have switched to them to keep out the Left.
I don't think that's true at all.
This is a local election, where the second round is between the two parties who came first and second in that particular ward.
It is highly unlikely that the national order will have any any effect on local transfer patterns.
Isn't the issue for the FN that the left are the ones that they have replaced in the final round, so it is often FN vs UMP - and so the left will 'hold their nose' and vote UMP. If it was FN vs Left in the final, then UMP supporters would split more evenly. The FN's problem isn't so much that they are transfer unfriendly in general, but that they are particularly transfer unfriendly to those who have been eliminated (which is what actually matters clearly)
There were hundred and hundreds of council seats in the French locals where it was FN vs the Socialists in the second round.
In all but a few, the Socialist candidate won.
I only had a quick look last time round, but it seemed at the time that whilst there were some UMP > Socialist switchers, potential UMP > FN switchers stayed at home. They didn't come out en masse to support the Socialists, but they didn't need to.
Also, could anyone see Thatcher or Major's Conservative governments promising and delivering on devolution (circa Blair 1997-2001)?
Was devolution really a good decision for the UK?
Personally, I think so.
The problem with such decisions is that they take decades to work through and often with outcomes not envisaged by their originator. This decision was bad because it did not cater for the most obvious of problems - ELEV - and also really did not consider the implications of a break-up of the UK.
As afar as scenario planning, this was more a Labour political decision than what would be good for the people of the UK and thus was fatally flawed.
Blair was charismatic and actually ferociously OPPOSED the Tories in opposition (and introduced a number of policies they never would have in government), none of which is true for any current 'Blairites'.
If we had a similar leadership candidate now I'm sure they would be getting quite a lot of support.
Blair was charismatic and actually OPPOSED the Tories in opposition (and introduced a number of policies they never would have in government), none of which is true for any current 'Blairites'.
I also note you've increased your bribe from £100k to £1m.
Strip away the blind hatred of Thatcher, and the idea that any PM would sacrifice the lives of hundreds of servicemen and naval vessels purely to win votes, rather than go with the ' 'easier' option of simply paying off those threatened by invasion to accept their new overlords is frankly ridiculous.
The Left would be unlikely to say the same of Jim Callaghan, 30 years later, had he won in '79 and been in the same position of executing the Falklands War to regain Sovereign ruled territory.
It's only an issue because 'Evil Milk Snatching Maggie' did it. Nothing more. Some people need to move on.
The cricket troubles me. England should win, but without Anderson those three Aussie wickets could be tricky to take. Chasing I00 to I50 I would not fancy the likes of Lyth, Bairstow and Buttler to score anything as they do not look capable of dealing with high pressure situations (the latter is very out of form, the first two are not up to test standard), so we really need Cook, Root, Bell and Stokes to take us home. If they falter in a Mitch and Nath storm it could be a very unpleasant day.
I only had a quick look last time round, but it seemed at the time that whilst there were some UMP > Socialist switchers, potential UMP > FN switchers stayed at home. They didn't come out en masse to support the Socialists, but they didn't need to.
This map shows the leading party after the first round in the departmental elections in France this year.
The Front National was the leading group in more departments than any other party.
In some places, the number two party was the Socialists, in some places the UMP/RFR (or The Republicans are they now are).
But the FN got virtually no transfer votes. Put this is context: between rounds one and two, the Socialists increased their vote by a little less than a tenth. The Right increased their's by close to a fifth. And the FN: they lost one in five of their votes! Considering they were in the second round almost everywhere, that means they got very few UMP/RFR transfers. And the Socialists - who were in far fewer second rounds than the FN - were relatively transfer friendly.
Blair was charismatic and actually ferociously OPPOSED the Tories in opposition (and introduced a number of policies they never would have in government), none of which is true for any current 'Blairites'.
If we had a similar leadership candidate now I'm sure they would be getting quite a lot of support.
Any of the current Blairites as leader would oppose the Tories and any in government would introduce a number of policies they never would have.
Leadership contenders in a leadership election need to be opposing each other (and thus party sacred cows) not simply the Tories.
"So a united mainstream front will hold back the surge (Corbyn). But that’s the problem. This race is oscillating between the two poles of radicalism and safety first. But is safety first a better option? I genuinely do not believe that it is so. Why? Because recent history says not......
The lesson from 2010 and 2015 percent was that the electorate doesn’t want Brownism.
We were sent a clear signal before the 2010 election: the country didn’t want Brown. We ignored it. Labour was trounced. Then we asked the electorate: how about son of Brown? The answer was no again. We ignored it. Cameron has a majority. We are now going into the ‘how about the daughter of Brown?’ phase......
And yet, I’m looking at the complete public ‘nah’ at the prospect of a Cooper leadership. I’m looking at her being torn apart with ease by Andrew Neill by refusing to acknowledge errors of the Brown administration. And I’m getting déjà vu.
So I don’t see Cooper as a safe harbour at all. I am genuinely sorry to come across as divisive. But if these things aren’t said now then when? We can all spend our time piling into Jeremy Corbyn for the next few weeks. That’s too easy. The person who needs the greater scrutiny is Yvette Cooper. And it’s just not happening. And that is a disaster for the Labour Party too."
If only Tony Blair had listened a bit more. Corbyn is weak on economic policy, but on social and foreign policy he tends to be correct.
Very left-wing view. He was not right on the miners strike or Sinn Fein.
He would have talked to SF under any circumstance. The British government only did so once they'd secured a measure of stability such that SF knew they could never win by force.
Did SF ever think they could win by force? Surely the support given to loyalists was sufficient to convince them otherwise from the early 70s at latest. It's a Conservative Party version of history, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it is too neatly designed to say "Thatcher Strong" when the real status quo in Northern Ireland was not stability but brutality.
The more convincing interpretation of history, to me, is that talks started when the IRA switched from killing Irish people, which didn't garner much concern in Britain, to maximising damage to British commercial targets like Manchester city centre and Canary Wharf.
The cricket troubles me. England should win, but without Anderson those three Aussie wickets could be tricky to take. Chasing I00 to I50 I would not fancy the likes of Lyth, Bairstow and Buttler to score anything as they do not look capable of dealing with high pressure situations (the latter is very out of form, the first two are not up to test standard), so we really need Cook, Root, Bell and Stokes to take us home. If they falter in a Mitch and Nath storm it could be a very unpleasant day.
Broad, Finn etc ought to be able to take the wickets of three tail-enders.
The loss of Anderson is a much bigger problem for the fourth and fifth Test than this one. We need to win the Ashes outright since the Aussies would retain it in a tie, so even if we win this then unless there's two more draws we're going to have to win a Test without Anderson.
Also, could anyone see Thatcher or Major's Conservative governments promising and delivering on devolution (circa Blair 1997-2001)?
Was devolution really a good decision for the UK?
As a concept, yes. As the idiotic way Blair and Brown gerrymandered it to trying and maintain Scotland as a Labour fiefdom in perpetuity (that worked well!) no.
Remember Glasgow was a Labour fiefdom that even a donkey could win with a red rosette.
Didnt turn out to be true in 2015 - the rosettes were yellow and black.
These are certainly interesting times. Farron might be thinking his prospects of ensuring a Lib Dem revival could be better than they might have seemed.
"Strip away the blind hatred of Thatcher, and the idea that any PM would sacrifice the lives of hundreds of servicemen and naval vessels purely to win votes, rather than go with the ' 'easier' option of simply paying off those threatened by invasion to accept their new overlords is frankly ridiculous.
The Left would be unlikely to say the same of Jim Callaghan, 30 years later, had he won in '79 and been in the same position of executing the Falklands War to regain Sovereign ruled territory.
It's only an issue because 'Evil Milk Snatching Maggie' did it. Nothing more. Some people need to move on."
I don't really think she did it to win an election - though was the consequence. She did it because that's who she was. That was her personality. You've seen the photo of her enjoying herself in a tank.
The cricket troubles me. England should win, but without Anderson those three Aussie wickets could be tricky to take. Chasing I00 to I50 I would not fancy the likes of Lyth, Bairstow and Buttler to score anything as they do not look capable of dealing with high pressure situations (the latter is very out of form, the first two are not up to test standard), so we really need Cook, Root, Bell and Stokes to take us home. If they falter in a Mitch and Nath storm it could be a very unpleasant day.
I too worry about this - did you also grow up watching cricket in the 90s, as that's my excuse for always being pessimistic about England chances (while also not getting too upset if they do fail, usually), It's what I was taught to expect.
The cricket troubles me. England should win, but without Anderson those three Aussie wickets could be tricky to take. Chasing I00 to I50 I would not fancy the likes of Lyth, Bairstow and Buttler to score anything as they do not look capable of dealing with high pressure situations (the latter is very out of form, the first two are not up to test standard), so we really need Cook, Root, Bell and Stokes to take us home. If they falter in a Mitch and Nath storm it could be a very unpleasant day.
Broad, Finn etc ought to be able to take the wickets of three tail-enders.
The loss of Anderson is a much bigger problem for the fourth and fifth Test than this one. We need to win the Ashes outright since the Aussies would retain it in a tie, so even if we win this then unless there's two more draws we're going to have to win a Test without Anderson.
Yes, and draws are looking unlikely at present given the scale of the two victories so far, and the possible scale of the one today.
Hope you're having a great time NPXMP. I loved my time in the American West - everyone was so friendly and it was very relaxed. Can't imagine Vegas is quite like that though - I never got nearer to it than Carson City.
Yes, thanks! Las Vegas strikes me as an American super-Skegness - brash, commercial, and wildly OTT, but basically loads of people having a good time: I've not seen anyone having an argument or looking upset even once over the last 48 hours. The ridiculously cheesy bits are part of the fun - I'm staying in the mock-pyramid Luxor, full of sphinxes and the like; the town also features an Eiffel Tower, a Caesar's Palace and a "Venetian" hotel with accordian-players and gondolas. There are lots of Brits here, and if we don't get snooty about the place we're very welcome.
Having been to both Skegness and Vegas, I am not too sure that they are comparable.
Las Vegas is more like Blackpool without the classy people and good taste!
That's less than the Communists got. In fact, in heads up between the Communists and the FN, the Republicans and the Socialists broke clearly for the Communists. The FN's second round performance was disastrous and bodes very poorly for the FN in 2017.
The most likely election result is that Juppe leads on about 30%, with Le Pen on 25-26%, and Hollande trailing in the mid to high teens.
Wasn't there a new item a day or two ago that the communists were now proposing to give their transfers to Le Pen because they couldn't face giving them to Hollande after the Greece fiasco ?
As Hollande won't be in the second round, that's unlikely to be an issue :-)
That's what my French contact said yesterday.
If Hollande somehow gets into the second round (probably most likely if Sarkozy and Le Republicains split the right vote) then there is a real risk that 60%+ of the Communists vote for Le Pen
"Strip away the blind hatred of Thatcher, and the idea that any PM would sacrifice the lives of hundreds of servicemen and naval vessels purely to win votes, rather than go with the ' 'easier' option of simply paying off those threatened by invasion to accept their new overlords is frankly ridiculous.
The Left would be unlikely to say the same of Jim Callaghan, 30 years later, had he won in '79 and been in the same position of executing the Falklands War to regain Sovereign ruled territory.
It's only an issue because 'Evil Milk Snatching Maggie' did it. Nothing more. Some people need to move on."
I don't really think she did it to win an election - though was the consequence. She did it because that's who she was. That was her personality. You've seen the photo of her enjoying herself in a tank.
Who wouldn't enjoy themselves riding around atop a Main Battle Tank on a Range? I'd love it.
If only Tony Blair had listened a bit more. Corbyn is weak on economic policy, but on social and foreign policy he tends to be correct.
Very left-wing view. He was not right on the miners strike or Sinn Fein.
He would have talked to SF under any circumstance. The British government only did so once they'd secured a measure of stability such that SF knew they could never win by force.
Did SF ever think they could win by force? Surely the support given to loyalists was sufficient to convince them otherwise from the early 70s at latest. It's a Conservative Party version of history, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it is too neatly designed to say "Thatcher Strong" when the real status quo in Northern Ireland was not stability but brutality.
The more convincing interpretation of history, to me, is that talks started when the IRA switched from killing Irish people, which didn't garner much concern in Britain, to maximising damage to British commercial targets like Manchester city centre and Canary Wharf.
Not true. The IRA had several bombing campaigns in England in the Seventies. Both sides escalated the violence in the early eighties.
Hope you're having a great time NPXMP. I loved my time in the American West - everyone was so friendly and it was very relaxed. Can't imagine Vegas is quite like that though - I never got nearer to it than Carson City.
Yes, thanks! Las Vegas strikes me as an American super-Skegness - brash, commercial, and wildly OTT, but basically loads of people having a good time: I've not seen anyone having an argument or looking upset even once over the last 48 hours. The ridiculously cheesy bits are part of the fun - I'm staying in the mock-pyramid Luxor, full of sphinxes and the like; the town also features an Eiffel Tower, a Caesar's Palace and a "Venetian" hotel with accordian-players and gondolas. There are lots of Brits here, and if we don't get snooty about the place we're very welcome.
Having been to both Skegness and Vegas, I am not too sure that they are comparable.
Las Vegas is more like Blackpool without the classy people and good taste!
Whilst having been to most parts of N America, have avoided Las Vegas. Would sooner lose any money at places like Monaco - better food and better company. Also nobody hassling you if you frequently win at the tables.
"Strip away the blind hatred of Thatcher, and the idea that any PM would sacrifice the lives of hundreds of servicemen and naval vessels purely to win votes, rather than go with the ' 'easier' option of simply paying off those threatened by invasion to accept their new overlords is frankly ridiculous.
The Left would be unlikely to say the same of Jim Callaghan, 30 years later, had he won in '79 and been in the same position of executing the Falklands War to regain Sovereign ruled territory.
It's only an issue because 'Evil Milk Snatching Maggie' did it. Nothing more. Some people need to move on."
I don't really think she did it to win an election - though was the consequence. She did it because that's who she was. That was her personality. You've seen the photo of her enjoying herself in a tank.
Who wouldn't enjoy themselves riding around atop a Main Battle Tank on a Range? I'd love it.
The cricket troubles me. England should win, but without Anderson those three Aussie wickets could be tricky to take. Chasing I00 to I50 I would not fancy the likes of Lyth, Bairstow and Buttler to score anything as they do not look capable of dealing with high pressure situations (the latter is very out of form, the first two are not up to test standard), so we really need Cook, Root, Bell and Stokes to take us home. If they falter in a Mitch and Nath storm it could be a very unpleasant day.
I too worry about this - did you also grow up watching cricket in the 90s, as that's my excuse for always being pessimistic about England chances (while also not getting too upset if they do fail, usually), It's what I was taught to expect.
The cricket troubles me. England should win, but without Anderson those three Aussie wickets could be tricky to take. Chasing I00 to I50 I would not fancy the likes of Lyth, Bairstow and Buttler to score anything as they do not look capable of dealing with high pressure situations (the latter is very out of form, the first two are not up to test standard), so we really need Cook, Root, Bell and Stokes to take us home. If they falter in a Mitch and Nath storm it could be a very unpleasant day.
Broad, Finn etc ought to be able to take the wickets of three tail-enders.
The loss of Anderson is a much bigger problem for the fourth and fifth Test than this one. We need to win the Ashes outright since the Aussies would retain it in a tie, so even if we win this then unless there's two more draws we're going to have to win a Test without Anderson.
Yes, and draws are looking unlikely at present given the scale of the two victories so far, and the possible scale of the one today.
Yes the draws do look unlikely. As for the 90s I grew up as an ex-pat living in Australia in the 90s. Not only did I see us lose every series despite always having hope, but I was the only "Pommie" in my school ...
The cricket troubles me. England should win, but without Anderson those three Aussie wickets could be tricky to take. Chasing I00 to I50 I would not fancy the likes of Lyth, Bairstow and Buttler to score anything as they do not look capable of dealing with high pressure situations (the latter is very out of form, the first two are not up to test standard), so we really need Cook, Root, Bell and Stokes to take us home. If they falter in a Mitch and Nath storm it could be a very unpleasant day.
It'll be the greatest comeback since Lazarus if the convicts win from here.
‘I want to see a party that stands up for workers again, that stands up for the disadvantaged in society and puts those principles first, without compromising those principles just in pursuit of an election victory.’
Sounds like he might be in luck If Corbyn isn't elected, or gets elected and deposed in a year or two, are the unions going to take their train set home ?
Hope you're having a great time NPXMP. I loved my time in the American West - everyone was so friendly and it was very relaxed. Can't imagine Vegas is quite like that though - I never got nearer to it than Carson City.
Yes, thanks! Las Vegas strikes me as an American super-Skegness - brash, commercial, and wildly OTT, but basically loads of people having a good time: I've not seen anyone having an argument or looking upset even once over the last 48 hours. The ridiculously cheesy bits are part of the fun - I'm staying in the mock-pyramid Luxor, full of sphinxes and the like; the town also features an Eiffel Tower, a Caesar's Palace and a "Venetian" hotel with accordian-players and gondolas. There are lots of Brits here, and if we don't get snooty about the place we're very welcome.
Having been to both Skegness and Vegas, I am not too sure that they are comparable.
Las Vegas is more like Blackpool without the classy people and good taste!
I remembered at Blackpool that the person in front of me had left their bank balance receipt on the ATM after withdrawing some readies for a mad night out.
The cricket troubles me. England should win, but without Anderson those three Aussie wickets could be tricky to take. Chasing I00 to I50 I would not fancy the likes of Lyth, Bairstow and Buttler to score anything as they do not look capable of dealing with high pressure situations (the latter is very out of form, the first two are not up to test standard), so we really need Cook, Root, Bell and Stokes to take us home. If they falter in a Mitch and Nath storm it could be a very unpleasant day.
It'll be the greatest comeback since Lazarus if the convicts win from here.
I'm putting money on Aussies to win this.
If they do, I want money to drown my sorrows, because I'm going to feel sicker than a cyclist with piles.
I just have the feeling the Aussies owe us for Headingley 1981 and Edgbaston 2005.
You get the feeling the Jimmy injury is just like McGrath moment in 2005.
That's less than the Communists got. In fact, in heads up between the Communists and the FN, the Republicans and the Socialists broke clearly for the Communists. The FN's second round performance was disastrous and bodes very poorly for the FN in 2017.
The most likely election result is that Juppe leads on about 30%, with Le Pen on 25-26%, and Hollande trailing in the mid to high teens.
Wasn't there a new item a day or two ago that the communists were now proposing to give their transfers to Le Pen because they couldn't face giving them to Hollande after the Greece fiasco ?
As Hollande won't be in the second round, that's unlikely to be an issue :-)
That's what my French contact said yesterday.
If Hollande somehow gets into the second round (probably most likely if Sarkozy and Le Republicains split the right vote) then there is a real risk that 60%+ of the Communists vote for Le Pen
While that's true: 99.9% of Bayrou supporters will vote Hollande over Le Pen, as will the majority of Greens and - if the locals are anything to go by - the bulk of Republicans.
For Le Pen to win you need:
1. Hollande to get past the Republican candidate, but to still be well short of Le Pen in the first round. So, say 28% for Le Pen, then 21% for Hollande and 20% for Juppe.
2. Then you need the Communists and the Republicans to break for Le Pen over Hollande.
Which is possible, but pretty unlikely, as the evidence from the municipal elections was clearly that Republican and Communist voters preferred the Socialists over the FN. (To get this scenario, you need to see Hollande getting better at getting first round votes... without getting better at getting second round ones...)
That all being said, two years is a long time in politics. France is the least reformed major economy in Europe, especially as Renzi is now beginning to liberalise Italian labour laws. France could be the real economic laggard in 2017, and that could really throw the cat among the pigeons.
An IMF official said the fund would withhold financial support unless it has guarantees Greece can carry out a "comprehensive" set of reforms and will be the beneficiary of debt relief from its European creditors.
The world's "lender of last resort' said it would continue talks with its creditor partners and the Leftist government of Athens, but made it clear the onus of keeping Greece in the eurozone now fell on Europe's reluctant member states.
If only Tony Blair had listened a bit more. Corbyn is weak on economic policy, but on social and foreign policy he tends to be correct.
Very left-wing view. He was not right on the miners strike or Sinn Fein.
He would have talked to SF under any circumstance. The British government only did so once they'd secured a measure of stability such that SF knew they could never win by force.
Did SF ever think they could win by force? Surely the support given to loyalists was sufficient to convince them otherwise from the early 70s at latest. It's a Conservative Party version of history, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it is too neatly designed to say "Thatcher Strong" when the real status quo in Northern Ireland was not stability but brutality.
The more convincing interpretation of history, to me, is that talks started when the IRA switched from killing Irish people, which didn't garner much concern in Britain, to maximising damage to British commercial targets like Manchester city centre and Canary Wharf.
Not true. The IRA had several bombing campaigns in England in the Seventies. Both sides escalated the violence in the early eighties.
There's no contradiction between what we wrote. Yes, there were bombing campaigns through the 70s, 80s and part of the early 90s. But it was clear that official government support for loyalists would see every IRA action responded to with equal and opposite force. Callaghan and Thatcher authorised unofficial talks with the IRA, but the situation was not considered in need of urgent resolution. Later, the focus switched dramatically from violence in Ireland to outrages targeted at Britain, and specifically, major commercial areas like Canary Wharf. Then people started to talk.
My police officers are regularly called away from their jobs protecting the citizens of Surrey and sent to the M25 at Cobham services, where they have to run around mopping up hordes of illegal migrants. In the past few months alone, Surrey Police have caught 156 people piling out of lorries as their drivers stop for diesel or a coffee. Recently, in Redhill, we had another 16 go on the run in an industrial park. No one knows how many we missed. The last time they were sent to Cobham, police caught 20.
These operations take out virtually half of Surrey’s 999 response capability and can tie up our nine prisoner vans for hours, as well the helicopter and all the dogs we can spare, to say nothing of jamming up the county’s cells. The migrants have become a serious threat to our residents: we can’t respond to their needs or patrol adequately.
The government better do more than more sniffer dogs and fences pretty damn quick or this is going to get out of hand on many fronts, not least politically.
The cricket troubles me. England should win, but without Anderson those three Aussie wickets could be tricky to take. Chasing I00 to I50 I would not fancy the likes of Lyth, Bairstow and Buttler to score anything as they do not look capable of dealing with high pressure situations (the latter is very out of form, the first two are not up to test standard), so we really need Cook, Root, Bell and Stokes to take us home. If they falter in a Mitch and Nath storm it could be a very unpleasant day.
It'll be the greatest comeback since Lazarus if the convicts win from here.
I'm putting money on Aussies to win this.
If they do, I want money to drown my sorrows, because I'm going to feel sicker than a cyclist with piles.
I just have the feeling the Aussies owe us for Headingley 1981 and Edgbaston 2005.
You get the feeling the Jimmy injury is just like McGrath moment in 2005.
I meant the test, is your money on the series or the test ?
The cricket troubles me. England should win, but without Anderson those three Aussie wickets could be tricky to take. Chasing I00 to I50 I would not fancy the likes of Lyth, Bairstow and Buttler to score anything as they do not look capable of dealing with high pressure situations (the latter is very out of form, the first two are not up to test standard), so we really need Cook, Root, Bell and Stokes to take us home. If they falter in a Mitch and Nath storm it could be a very unpleasant day.
It'll be the greatest comeback since Lazarus if the convicts win from here.
I'm putting money on Aussies to win this.
If they do, I want money to drown my sorrows, because I'm going to feel sicker than a cyclist with piles.
I just have the feeling the Aussies owe us for Headingley 1981 and Edgbaston 2005.
You get the feeling the Jimmy injury is just like McGrath moment in 2005.
I meant the test, is your money on the series or the test ?
The morning bet is on the test.
On this test, I thought it was prudent to lay the draw.
The cricket troubles me. England should win, but without Anderson those three Aussie wickets could be tricky to take. Chasing I00 to I50 I would not fancy the likes of Lyth, Bairstow and Buttler to score anything as they do not look capable of dealing with high pressure situations (the latter is very out of form, the first two are not up to test standard), so we really need Cook, Root, Bell and Stokes to take us home. If they falter in a Mitch and Nath storm it could be a very unpleasant day.
It'll be the greatest comeback since Lazarus if the convicts win from here.
I'm putting money on Aussies to win this.
If they do, I want money to drown my sorrows, because I'm going to feel sicker than a cyclist with piles.
I just have the feeling the Aussies owe us for Headingley 1981 and Edgbaston 2005.
You get the feeling the Jimmy injury is just like McGrath moment in 2005.
I meant the test, is your money on the series or the test ?
The morning bet is on the test.
On this test, I thought it was prudent to lay the draw.
Series wise, I'm on Australia
I'll admit I rebacked Aus last night to cover my red on them. Seemed a good deal for the peace of mind £3 at 34.0
If only Tony Blair had listened a bit more. Corbyn is weak on economic policy, but on social and foreign policy he tends to be correct.
Very left-wing view. He was not right on the miners strike or Sinn Fein.
He would have talked to SF under any circumstance. The British government only did so once they'd secured a measure of stability such that SF knew they could never win by force.
Did SF ever think they could win by force? Surely the support given to loyalists was sufficient to convince them otherwise from the early 70s at latest. It's a Conservative Party version of history, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it is too neatly designed to say "Thatcher Strong" when the real status quo in Northern Ireland was not stability but brutality.
The more convincing interpretation of history, to me, is that talks started when the IRA switched from killing Irish people, which didn't garner much concern in Britain, to maximising damage to British commercial targets like Manchester city centre and Canary Wharf.
Not true. The IRA had several bombing campaigns in England in the Seventies. Both sides escalated the violence in the early eighties.
There's no contradiction between what we wrote. Yes, there were bombing campaigns through the 70s, 80s and part of the early 90s. But it was clear that official government support for loyalists would see every IRA action responded to with equal and opposite force. Callaghan and Thatcher authorised unofficial talks with the IRA, but the situation was not considered in need of urgent resolution. Later, the focus switched dramatically from violence in Ireland to outrages targeted at Britain, and specifically, major commercial areas like Canary Wharf. Then people started to talk.
This is an outstanding account of the IRA's campaign, by MLR Smith. In essence, they thought they could defeat the British militarily, up till the late 70's. They then adopted a long war strategy, believing that eventually, the British government would just get sick of keeping Northern Ireland in the UK. That lasted up till the early nineties, when they realised that the British were quite capable of absorbing the losses that they were inflicting (and at the same time, they were suffering at British and Loyalist hands). At no point prior to the 1990s would the IRA have settled for Northern Ireland remaining a part of the UK.
How very odd, send out the membership card automatically and then decide not to let the person join... do you get any nice discounts if you show your membership card ?
My police officers are regularly called away from their jobs protecting the citizens of Surrey and sent to the M25 at Cobham services, where they have to run around mopping up hordes of illegal migrants. In the past few months alone, Surrey Police have caught 156 people piling out of lorries as their drivers stop for diesel or a coffee. Recently, in Redhill, we had another 16 go on the run in an industrial park. No one knows how many we missed. The last time they were sent to Cobham, police caught 20.
These operations take out virtually half of Surrey’s 999 response capability and can tie up our nine prisoner vans for hours, as well the helicopter and all the dogs we can spare, to say nothing of jamming up the county’s cells. The migrants have become a serious threat to our residents: we can’t respond to their needs or patrol adequately.
The government better do more than more sniffer dogs and fences pretty damn quick or this is going to get out of hand on many fronts, not least politically.
Let's face it - 149+ a day is probably the norm, and the vast majority are entering the UK via the tunnel. That's 55,000 a year.
Close it to freight, even temporarily whilst security is upgraded, and see what happens.
And the Falkland Islanders being handed over to the Argies. I was astonished that @Barnesian thought we could sell them off for £100k a throw bribes. And describing it as a "win-win". Win for who exactly?
They also voted in a ref to remain British. Good for them.
Thatcher said it well:
The people of the Falkland Islands, like the people of the United Kingdom, are an island race. Their way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. They are few in number, but they have the right to live in peace, to choose their own way of life and to determine their own allegiance. Their way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. It is the wish of the British people and the duty of Her Majesty's Government to do everything that we can to uphold that right. That will be our hope and our endeavour and, I believe, the resolve of every Member of the House.
Empty rhetoric.
They could have kept their British way of life, their allegiance to the Crown, on a Scottish island with £1,000,000 a family. They would have been better off. Britain would have been better off. But Maggie might not have won her election. It suited her to stir up jingoism (which sickened me at the time). A lot of people were opposed to it at the time. This is not revisionism.
When Corbyn explains what happened to young people who were not around at the time to experience the jingoism, many will say WTF?
1 - The concept of paying them to move may not have been officially suggested, but the Islanders are not unaware of the concept. I was warned not to bring up the subject in casual social discussion; an earlier person had (using the 1 million per Islander level) and the response had been extremely negative.
2 - For a State to respond to military invasion of territory that it undertakes to defend with, "Oh, sorry! We'll get our people out of your way immediately. No, don't worry; we'll pay for it all. Don't get up. We'll clear out for you. Can we get you anything else?" would be enormously detrimental to their legitimacy, encourage other militaristic adventurers, and cripple them diplomatically for generations.
My police officers are regularly called away from their jobs protecting the citizens of Surrey and sent to the M25 at Cobham services, where they have to run around mopping up hordes of illegal migrants. In the past few months alone, Surrey Police have caught 156 people piling out of lorries as their drivers stop for diesel or a coffee. Recently, in Redhill, we had another 16 go on the run in an industrial park. No one knows how many we missed. The last time they were sent to Cobham, police caught 20.
These operations take out virtually half of Surrey’s 999 response capability and can tie up our nine prisoner vans for hours, as well the helicopter and all the dogs we can spare, to say nothing of jamming up the county’s cells. The migrants have become a serious threat to our residents: we can’t respond to their needs or patrol adequately.
The government better do more than more sniffer dogs and fences pretty damn quick or this is going to get out of hand on many fronts, not least politically.
The single most effective thing would be to make employing illegal immigrants as serious an offence here as it is in Germany, Italy, France or Switzerland.
I think we should copy the Italian system where illegal immigrants can get residence by informing on the company that hired them. (And the directors of the firm that hired them get chokey.) It acts as a pretty serious disincentive for hiring illegal immigrants.
My police officers are regularly called away from their jobs protecting the citizens of Surrey and sent to the M25 at Cobham services, where they have to run around mopping up hordes of illegal migrants. In the past few months alone, Surrey Police have caught 156 people piling out of lorries as their drivers stop for diesel or a coffee. Recently, in Redhill, we had another 16 go on the run in an industrial park. No one knows how many we missed. The last time they were sent to Cobham, police caught 20.
These operations take out virtually half of Surrey’s 999 response capability and can tie up our nine prisoner vans for hours, as well the helicopter and all the dogs we can spare, to say nothing of jamming up the county’s cells. The migrants have become a serious threat to our residents: we can’t respond to their needs or patrol adequately.
The government better do more than more sniffer dogs and fences pretty damn quick or this is going to get out of hand on many fronts, not least politically.
Let's face it - 149+ a day is probably the norm, and the vast majority are entering the UK via the tunnel. That's 55,000 a year.
Close it to freight, even temporarily whilst security is upgraded, and see what happens.
What happens is that more than 55,000 people in export industries lose their jobs.
More than £40bn of British exports go via the Channel Tunnel each year. That's almost £1bn per week.
And yes, in time the ferries would be able to pick up the slack. But not immediately (and not without simply transferring the problem to immigrants in trucks on boats.)
My police officers are regularly called away from their jobs protecting the citizens of Surrey and sent to the M25 at Cobham services, where they have to run around mopping up hordes of illegal migrants. In the past few months alone, Surrey Police have caught 156 people piling out of lorries as their drivers stop for diesel or a coffee. Recently, in Redhill, we had another 16 go on the run in an industrial park. No one knows how many we missed. The last time they were sent to Cobham, police caught 20.
These operations take out virtually half of Surrey’s 999 response capability and can tie up our nine prisoner vans for hours, as well the helicopter and all the dogs we can spare, to say nothing of jamming up the county’s cells. The migrants have become a serious threat to our residents: we can’t respond to their needs or patrol adequately.
The government better do more than more sniffer dogs and fences pretty damn quick or this is going to get out of hand on many fronts, not least politically.
The single most effective thing would be to make employing illegal immigrants as serious an offence here as it is in Germany, Italy, France or Switzerland.
I think we should copy the Italian system where illegal immigrants can get residence by informing on the company that hired them. (And the directors of the firm that hired them get chokey.) It acts as a pretty serious disincentive for hiring illegal immigrants.
"There have been rumours of a possible party rupture in the event of a Jeremy Corbyn victory, with Labour donor John Mills speaking publicly about this possibility last week. Some now even argue that the party could split regardless of the election’s outcome.
Though two thirds of those who took part in our survey do not see this as a likely scenario, 28% believe it is somewhat or very likely, suggesting that some people are taking the idea of an SDP-style split very seriously. The results were:
Somewhat unlikely 37%, Very unlikely 28%, Somewhat likely 20%, Very likely 8%, Don’t know 7%"
And the Falkland Islanders being handed over to the Argies. I was astonished that @Barnesian thought we could sell them off for £100k a throw bribes. And describing it as a "win-win". Win for who exactly?
They also voted in a ref to remain British. Good for them.
Thatcher said it well:
The people of the Falkland Islands, like the people of the United Kingdom, are an island race. Their way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. They are few in number, but they have the right to live in peace, to choose their own way of life and to determine their own allegiance. Their way of life is British; their allegiance is to the Crown. It is the wish of the British people and the duty of Her Majesty's Government to do everything that we can to uphold that right. That will be our hope and our endeavour and, I believe, the resolve of every Member of the House.
Empty rhetoric.
They could have kept their British way of life, their allegiance to the Crown, on a Scottish island with £1,000,000 a family. They would have been better off. Britain would have been better off. But Maggie might not have won her election. It suited her to stir up jingoism (which sickened me at the time). A lot of people were opposed to it at the time. This is not revisionism.
When Corbyn explains what happened to young people who were not around at the time to experience the jingoism, many will say WTF?
1 - The concept of paying them to move may not have been officially suggested, but the Islanders are not unaware of the concept. I was warned not to bring up the subject in casual social discussion; an earlier person had (using the 1 million per Islander level) and the response had been extremely negative.
2 - For a State to respond to military invasion of territory that it undertakes to defend with, "Oh, sorry! We'll get our people out of your way immediately. No, don't worry; we'll pay for it all. Don't get up. We'll clear out for you. Can we get you anything else?" would be enormously detrimental to their legitimacy, encourage other militaristic adventurers, and cripple them diplomatically for generations.
States have an enormous vested interest in holding territory and repelling attacks on it. It's why it is very unusually for States to hand over territory, except in the face of superior force.
That well known PB Tory, Helen Lewis, in that infamous right wing rag, The New Statesman, on 'virtue signalling' and why Twitter lost Labour the election
At a recent Gay Pride march, Burnham wore a T-shirt proclaiming that he’d “never kissed a Tory”. Well, if he wants to win the next election he’s going to have to do a bit more than kiss some Tories. He’s going to have to convince them to vote Labour. (That’s third base, at least, in my book.) Will reaching out to those voters be seen as a betrayal, too?
Ultimately, in the secrecy of the ballot, when there’s no more virtue signalling to be done, Corbyn will fade away. But the country will have taken note of a Labour Party that seems to prefer the purity of opposition to the compromises of power.
"Kendall is booed at hustings while Corbyn is cheered. Her campaign is faltering precisely because she is saying what she believes.
As it happens, I disagree with her about the two-child limit – in the words of The West Wing’s Josh Lyman, Osborne apparently wants a government just small enough to fit into our bedrooms. But it is undeniably popular with exactly the people Labour was founded to represent.
What Kendall is doing is also more principled – “courageous”, even, in the Yes, Minister sense of foolhardy – than the strategy pursued by Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, who will not attack Corbyn head on because they want anyone who votes for him to put them down in second place."
She's completely misunderstanding the "Josh Lyman" position, FWIW.
His comment was in the context of gay rights - that the government shouldn't be banning gay marriage because it's none of their business what goes on in people's bedrooms. Which is a very fair comment.
She is claiming that government's lack of interest in personal sexuality should extent to being willing to pay towards the cost of any children that result
Rowenna Davis, who failed to hold John Denham’s old seat of Southampton Itchen for Labour, observes: “The leadership seemed to assume that people were either needy, greedy or irrelevant.” .
2 - For a State to respond to military invasion of territory that it undertakes to defend with, "Oh, sorry! We'll get our people out of your way immediately. No, don't worry; we'll pay for it all. Don't get up. We'll clear out for you. Can we get you anything else?" would be enormously detrimental to their legitimacy, encourage other militaristic adventurers, and cripple them diplomatically for generations.
That's what happened to Hong Kong and Kowloon: the possibility of future hostility, not even a direct threat, after the end of the lease on the adjacent New Territories, was resolved with the pragmatic Thatcher-Deng agreement that Britain would get out PDQ while delaying the full integration of Hong Kong to China. Britain wasn't crippled diplomatically. It was very sensible.
That well known PB Tory, Helen Lewis, in that infamous right wing rag, The New Statesman, on 'virtue signalling' and why Twitter lost Labour the election
At a recent Gay Pride march, Burnham wore a T-shirt proclaiming that he’d “never kissed a Tory”. Well, if he wants to win the next election he’s going to have to do a bit more than kiss some Tories. He’s going to have to convince them to vote Labour. (That’s third base, at least, in my book.) Will reaching out to those voters be seen as a betrayal, too?
Ultimately, in the secrecy of the ballot, when there’s no more virtue signalling to be done, Corbyn will fade away. But the country will have taken note of a Labour Party that seems to prefer the purity of opposition to the compromises of power.
"Kendall is booed at hustings while Corbyn is cheered. Her campaign is faltering precisely because she is saying what she believes.
As it happens, I disagree with her about the two-child limit – in the words of The West Wing’s Josh Lyman, Osborne apparently wants a government just small enough to fit into our bedrooms. But it is undeniably popular with exactly the people Labour was founded to represent.
What Kendall is doing is also more principled – “courageous”, even, in the Yes, Minister sense of foolhardy – than the strategy pursued by Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, who will not attack Corbyn head on because they want anyone who votes for him to put them down in second place."
She's completely misunderstanding the "Josh Lyman" position, FWIW.
His comment was in the context of gay rights - that the government shouldn't be banning gay marriage because it's none of their business what goes on in people's bedrooms. Which is a very fair comment.
She is claiming that government's lack of interest in personal sexuality should extent to being willing to pay towards the cost of any children that result
"There have been rumours of a possible party rupture in the event of a Jeremy Corbyn victory, with Labour donor John Mills speaking publicly about this possibility last week. Some now even argue that the party could split regardless of the election’s outcome.
Though two thirds of those who took part in our survey do not see this as a likely scenario, 28% believe it is somewhat or very likely, suggesting that some people are taking the idea of an SDP-style split very seriously. The results were:
Somewhat unlikely 37%, Very unlikely 28%, Somewhat likely 20%, Very likely 8%, Don’t know 7%"
The country told Labour it didn't want Footites in 1979 The country told Labour it didn't want Bennites in 1983 The country told Labour it didn't want Brownites in 2010 and 2015 The country said that it rather liked Blairites in 1997, 2001 and 2005 So Labour brand the Blairite a Tory, and offer the membership the choice of a Foot/Bennite or a Brownite.
If Kendall wins unexpectedly, do the unions pull their funding and kill the party anyway out of spite ?
How very odd, send out the membership card automatically and then decide not to let the person join... do you get any nice discounts if you show your membership card ?
How the mighty fall. Was a time that Hatton had the whole of the Labour Party in his pocket....
2 - For a State to respond to military invasion of territory that it undertakes to defend with, "Oh, sorry! We'll get our people out of your way immediately. No, don't worry; we'll pay for it all. Don't get up. We'll clear out for you. Can we get you anything else?" would be enormously detrimental to their legitimacy, encourage other militaristic adventurers, and cripple them diplomatically for generations.
That's what happened to Hong Kong and Kowloon: the possibility of future hostility, not even a direct threat, after the end of the lease on the adjacent New Territories, was resolved with the pragmatic Thatcher-Deng agreement that Britain would get out PDQ while delaying the full integration of Hong Kong to China. Britain wasn't crippled diplomatically. It was very sensible.
Once the lease expired, China had both the legal and moral right to the New Territories. And China had only to turn off the water supply to the rest of colony.
Neither Argentina nor the IRA had any legal or moral right to the territories they were seeking to conquer, and the British government was capable of resisting their attacks.
I don't think Jezza will win but even if he does, there is still a path to victory in 2020.
Jezza becomes leader, shakes up the party and gives a renewed sense of purpose to many activists, despite dropping in the polls. In late 2019, Jezza kicks the bucket and Labour gain popularity on a wave of sympathy. Numerous tributes to his bravery and honesty. After all, only nice people die.
Labour elects a Liz or a Dan Jarvis in time for 2020 and squeeze home.
Yes, I know it's in bad taste, but I'm around Jezza's age so I can get away with it.
How very odd, send out the membership card automatically and then decide not to let the person join... do you get any nice discounts if you show your membership card ?
How the mighty fall. Was a time that Hatton had the whole of the Labour Party in his pocket....
"Strip away the blind hatred of Thatcher, and the idea that any PM would sacrifice the lives of hundreds of servicemen and naval vessels purely to win votes, rather than go with the ' 'easier' option of simply paying off those threatened by invasion to accept their new overlords is frankly ridiculous.
The Left would be unlikely to say the same of Jim Callaghan, 30 years later, had he won in '79 and been in the same position of executing the Falklands War to regain Sovereign ruled territory.
It's only an issue because 'Evil Milk Snatching Maggie' did it. Nothing more. Some people need to move on."
I don't really think she did it to win an election - though was the consequence. She did it because that's who she was. That was her personality. You've seen the photo of her enjoying herself in a tank.
And yet you're not critical of this picture, for example
I think we can all agree that the Morris Dancer Party's policies of a trebuchet-based justice system on the south coast and the invasion of France shows how ahead of the curve we were.
I don't think Jezza will win but even if he does, there is still a path to victory in 2020.
Jezza becomes leader, shakes up the party and gives a renewed sense of purpose to many activists, despite dropping in the polls. In late 2019, Jezza kicks the bucket and Labour gain popularity on a wave of sympathy. Numerous tributes to his bravery and honesty. After all, only nice people die.
Labour elects a Liz or a Dan Jarvis in time for 2020 and squeeze home.
Yes, I know it's in bad taste, but I'm around Jezza's age so I can get away with it.
The country told Labour it didn't want Footites in 1979 The country told Labour it didn't want Bennites in 1983 The country told Labour it didn't want Brownites in 2010 and 2015 The country said that it rather liked Blairites in 1997, 2001 and 2005 So Labour brand the Blairite a Tory, and offer the membership the choice of a Foot/Bennite or a Brownite.
Remember that there is a strand of Left-wing thought that the British are collectively a bunch of unreconstructed blimps, uncultured suburbanites and feral chavs (the victims of the former groups of course). To these people being elected is a sign that you must have severe moral failings.
How very odd, send out the membership card automatically and then decide not to let the person join... do you get any nice discounts if you show your membership card ?
How the mighty fall. Was a time that Hatton had the whole of the Labour Party in his pocket....
And the Falkland Islanders being handed over to the Argies. I was astonished that @Barnesian thought we could sell them off for £100k a throw bribes. And describing it as a "win-win". Win for who exactly?
They also voted in a ref to remain British. Good for them.
Thatcher said it well:
Empty rhetoric.
They could have kept their British way of life, their allegiance to the Crown, on a Scottish island with £1,000,000 a family. They would have been better off. Britain would have been better off. But Maggie might not have won her election. It suited her to stir up jingoism (which sickened me at the time). A lot of people were opposed to it at the time. This is not revisionism.
When Corbyn explains what happened to young people who were not around at the time to experience the jingoism, many will say WTF?
"1 - The concept of paying them to move may not have been officially suggested, but the Islanders are not unaware of the concept. I was warned not to bring up the subject in casual social discussion; an earlier person had (using the 1 million per Islander level) and the response had been extremely negative.
2 - For a State to respond to military invasion of territory that it undertakes to defend with, "Oh, sorry! We'll get our people out of your way immediately. No, don't worry; we'll pay for it all. Don't get up. We'll clear out for you. Can we get you anything else?" would be enormously detrimental to their legitimacy, encourage other militaristic adventurers, and cripple them diplomatically for generations."
Touchy lot. They expect a great deal don't they! All that blood and treasure. And you can't bring it up in casual social discussion or risk an extremely negative response. If that's true, they've lost my sympathy.
If any householder turned down a £1m offer for their £300K house in the way of the 3rd Heathrow runway, they'd get little sympathy.
I don't think Jezza will win but even if he does, there is still a path to victory in 2020.
Jezza becomes leader, shakes up the party and gives a renewed sense of purpose to many activists, despite dropping in the polls. In late 2019, Jezza kicks the bucket and Labour gain popularity on a wave of sympathy. Numerous tributes to his bravery and honesty. After all, only nice people die.
Labour elects a Liz or a Dan Jarvis in time for 2020 and squeeze home.
Yes, I know it's in bad taste, but I'm around Jezza's age so I can get away with it.
Ah yes - John Smith the hard leftie who would have succeeded in winning an election on the same platform that Foot, Kinnock, Ed and Brown failed with because he was bald and Scottish or something.
This is an outstanding account of the IRA's campaign, by MLR Smith. In essence, they thought they could defeat the British militarily, up till the late 70's. They then adopted a long war strategy, believing that eventually, the British government would just get sick of keeping Northern Ireland in the UK. That lasted up till the early nineties, when they realised that the British were quite capable of absorbing the losses that they were inflicting (and at the same time, they were suffering at British and Loyalist hands). At no point prior to the 1990s would the IRA have settled for Northern Ireland remaining a part of the UK.
Well, history is all a matter of interpretation so who am I to criticise especially without having read it to consider the evidence, but I am not sure the author of that book had any more insight on the thinking of the IRA Army Council than you or I do. For instance, too much of a focus on the territorial objective is characteristic of a standard and valid military history analysis, but it ignores other important strategic and tactical motives for small paramilitary groups, like the self-mandated protection of Catholics from loyalist violence that motivated some to join the IRA. Furthermore, the loyalists weren't just background actors who took a few decades to make themselves obvious. It was a pretty relentless campaign from them too in the 1970s, eventually involving a lot of chaps with NF/BNP tendencies, and we now know that the extent of government support for them through collusion was large.
"Strip away the blind hatred of Thatcher, and the idea that any PM would sacrifice the lives of hundreds of servicemen and naval vessels purely to win votes, rather than go with the ' 'easier' option of simply paying off those threatened by invasion to accept their new overlords is frankly ridiculous.
The Left would be unlikely to say the same of Jim Callaghan, 30 years later, had he won in '79 and been in the same position of executing the Falklands War to regain Sovereign ruled territory.
It's only an issue because 'Evil Milk Snatching Maggie' did it. Nothing more. Some people need to move on."
I don't really think she did it to win an election - though was the consequence. She did it because that's who she was. That was her personality. You've seen the photo of her enjoying herself in a tank.
And yet you're not critical of this picture, for example
How very odd, send out the membership card automatically and then decide not to let the person join... do you get any nice discounts if you show your membership card ?
How the mighty fall. Was a time that Hatton had the whole of the Labour Party in his pocket....
Labour need to listen to Kinnock again //www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWLN7rIby9s
"Strip away the blind hatred of Thatcher, and the idea that any PM would sacrifice the lives of hundreds of servicemen and naval vessels purely to win votes, rather than go with the ' 'easier' option of simply paying off those threatened by invasion to accept their new overlords is frankly ridiculous.
The Left would be unlikely to say the same of Jim Callaghan, 30 years later, had he won in '79 and been in the same position of executing the Falklands War to regain Sovereign ruled territory.
It's only an issue because 'Evil Milk Snatching Maggie' did it. Nothing more. Some people need to move on."
I don't really think she did it to win an election - though was the consequence. She did it because that's who she was. That was her personality. You've seen the photo of her enjoying herself in a tank.
And yet you're not critical of this picture, for example
Oh, and another word on the chronology of the IRA ceasefire; I'd also add that the 1990s were a time of change, re-imagination and re-invention in radical politics across Europe, from centre-left to the furthest extremes, and the republican movement was just participating in the same introspective reformation that turned everyone from the Labour Party to the Italian Communists into good "neoliberals" (yuck - hate that word almost as much as virtue signalling for its lazy criticism - but I can't think of a better summary for the 1990s political consensus).
Comments
Of course they aren't doing very well on any of the other points, either.
"He wants to give the party autonomy on policy, candidate selection and party management, as he is determined to reset its relationship with the UK party to ground zero. "
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13521492.Burnham_promises_to_give_Scottish_Labour_more_freedom_if_he_wins_leadership/
Roll back 4 years to the Murphy review of SLABs 2011 defeat:
"The review, led by Jim Murphy MP and Sarah Boyack MSP, was prompted by the party's Holyrood elections defeat. The plans include fully devolving itself from the UK party on all Scottish matters. "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-14865745
As far as I can tell Burnham & co are promising to deliver to SLAB exactly what was meant to have been put in place after the Murphy review of 4 years ago - why would anyone believe these guys ?
It's becoming increasingly clear that at the moment Labour couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery let alone run the country.
I also note you've increased your bribe from £100k to £1m.
Of course negotation rather than war is popular, it's something almost everyone supports. The problem I and many others have - and I have opposed most interventions - is when people extend that argument as though it is always possible to continue negotiations, and sometimes it is not, sometimes matters come to a head.
I recall around the time of the Libya intervention, which many will have opposed on principled grounds, and the place has certainly been a mess ever since, but there was a QT where people kept intervening to say things like 'We shouldn't get involved that is totally wrong...but I do think Gaddafi needs to step down' as though it was possible to get the latter without getting involved. That choice was not on the table. Sometimes, no matter how much we want to negotiate, the other side are not willing to meet us halfway. Sometimes, it is the other way around - it's a good default position, but insisting upon a position of negotiation even when the other side are not engaging, is not a morally superior position in my opinion, it is grandstanding. It's like someone saying we need to negotiate with IS and therefore any military involvement, however slight, would be wrong - now, it is simply not true to say we and others do not negotiate with terrorists, because in the real world sometimes you have to do that, and terrorists can become those you do business with in the end as we know only too well, but at the current time, it would not be appropriate to even attempt to negotiate with them.
So you see, it's not that he advocates negotiation not war that is an issue, nor that anyone querying him is automatically a hawk onmilitary matters, but that it appears (and this may not be the case) that it is an immovable, inviolable position for him, when the vagaries and complexities of international affairs may dictate that negotiation is not the best option sometimes when either it is not morally acceptable for us to moderate our position or the other side are unwilling to come to the table, and vice-versa.
In international affairs, even more so than many other positions, I think having such an automatic, unthinking approach is unsound.
A good post.
In fact when a country has two or more factions that just hate each other (usually religious) then often the only answer to keep the peace is a very strong dictator. It is when the factions unite for a while to defeat that dictator when problems arise - as there if often no agreement or planning for the succession.
I'm enjoying this Corbyn business. I also like challenging entrenched views. When I was a non-exec of a public company, I saw my role as devil's advocate, challenging any group think. (I would have been useful on the RBS Board). I was told (through gritted teeth) that my role as devil's advocate was appreciated. I don't think it is here!
Edit. Basically I'm a stirrer.
Edit. And now I've given the game away.
@MyBurningEars a couple of days ago posted this interesting analysis on Blair's politics/political positioning: As for the hard-left calling Blairites Tories - they are doing that because they are idiots. To hear people like Dave Ward talk the way they do is an absolute disgrace - these people did nothing to get Labour elected, and if anything their actions make Tory majority governments more likely and yet they had the nerve to call out people who actually won elections?
As for 1997 not being a Labour win - that's the first time I've heard that notion. Even by people who do regard Blair as a 'Tory', most see 1997 as a triumph for Labour after years in opposition.
Also from that article:
"Kendall is booed at hustings while Corbyn is cheered. Her campaign is faltering precisely because she is saying what she believes.
As it happens, I disagree with her about the two-child limit – in the words of The West Wing’s Josh Lyman, Osborne apparently wants a government just small enough to fit into our bedrooms. But it is undeniably popular with exactly the people Labour was founded to represent.
What Kendall is doing is also more principled – “courageous”, even, in the Yes, Minister sense of foolhardy – than the strategy pursued by Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, who will not attack Corbyn head on because they want anyone who votes for him to put them down in second place."
Someone described him a *needy* a few days ago - that was spot on. Also from that article:
"Kendall is booed at hustings while Corbyn is cheered. Her campaign is faltering precisely because she is saying what she believes.
As it happens, I disagree with her about the two-child limit – in the words of The West Wing’s Josh Lyman, Osborne apparently wants a government just small enough to fit into our bedrooms. But it is undeniably popular with exactly the people Labour was founded to represent.
What Kendall is doing is also more principled – “courageous”, even, in the Yes, Minister sense of foolhardy – than the strategy pursued by Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, who will not attack Corbyn head on because they want anyone who votes for him to put them down in second place."
I'm not sure we can What-If this scenario as the past was a very different place.
Personally, I skip discussions about how John Smith was [insert wishful thought here] discussions.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/leader-labour-mps-are-odds-their-own-party-members
"The flaws of the present Labour contest are critical, especially in the context of the challenges the party will face at the next election. On 28 July the Fabian Society published a report into the 2015 defeat. Its findings reaffirmed how perilous is Labour’s position. “The verdicts are of a defeat in the broad realm of ideas and positioning, not individual policies,” ..
Rowenna Davis, who failed to hold John Denham’s old seat of Southampton Itchen for Labour, observes: “The leadership seemed to assume that people were either needy, greedy or irrelevant.”
Sally Keeble, who did not regain Northampton North after losing the seat in 2010, highlights the urgent need for “a big picture that will appeal beyond our core vote”, and warns that Labour’s path back to power rests on reaching out to those “embedded in the Tory and Ukip ranks”....
The protracted and increasingly bizarre leadership contest, combined with the lack of direction and unease in the parliamentary party, despite the best efforts of the acting leader, Harriet Harman, has been a gift to a resurgent Conservative Party. The danger for Labour is that, as in 2010, the Tories exploit these summer months of drift and unrest to control the “narrative” of the parliament and define the ground on which the next election is fought – all of this before Mr Miliband’s successor has been elected.
Perhaps someone with a better memory can help here, re the mechanics Labour introduced to keep LabourLand.
In all but a few, the Socialist candidate won.
As afar as scenario planning, this was more a Labour political decision than what would be good for the people of the UK and thus was fatally flawed.
https://twitter.com/anthonypainter/status/627045545161420800
If we had a similar leadership candidate now I'm sure they would be getting quite a lot of support.
Strip away the blind hatred of Thatcher, and the idea that any PM would sacrifice the lives of hundreds of servicemen and naval vessels purely to win votes, rather than go with the ' 'easier' option of simply paying off those threatened by invasion to accept their new overlords is frankly ridiculous.
The Left would be unlikely to say the same of Jim Callaghan, 30 years later, had he won in '79 and been in the same position of executing the Falklands War to regain Sovereign ruled territory.
It's only an issue because 'Evil Milk Snatching Maggie' did it. Nothing more. Some people need to move on.
The Front National was the leading group in more departments than any other party.
In some places, the number two party was the Socialists, in some places the UMP/RFR (or The Republicans are they now are).
But the FN got virtually no transfer votes. Put this is context: between rounds one and two, the Socialists increased their vote by a little less than a tenth. The Right increased their's by close to a fifth. And the FN: they lost one in five of their votes! Considering they were in the second round almost everywhere, that means they got very few UMP/RFR transfers. And the Socialists - who were in far fewer second rounds than the FN - were relatively transfer friendly.
Leadership contenders in a leadership election need to be opposing each other (and thus party sacred cows) not simply the Tories.
"So a united mainstream front will hold back the surge (Corbyn). But that’s the problem. This race is oscillating between the two poles of radicalism and safety first. But is safety first a better option? I genuinely do not believe that it is so. Why? Because recent history says not......
The lesson from 2010 and 2015 percent was that the electorate doesn’t want Brownism.
We were sent a clear signal before the 2010 election: the country didn’t want Brown. We ignored it. Labour was trounced. Then we asked the electorate: how about son of Brown? The answer was no again. We ignored it. Cameron has a majority. We are now going into the ‘how about the daughter of Brown?’ phase......
And yet, I’m looking at the complete public ‘nah’ at the prospect of a Cooper leadership. I’m looking at her being torn apart with ease by Andrew Neill by refusing to acknowledge errors of the Brown administration. And I’m getting déjà vu.
So I don’t see Cooper as a safe harbour at all. I am genuinely sorry to come across as divisive. But if these things aren’t said now then when? We can all spend our time piling into Jeremy Corbyn for the next few weeks. That’s too easy. The person who needs the greater scrutiny is Yvette Cooper. And it’s just not happening. And that is a disaster for the Labour Party too."
The more convincing interpretation of history, to me, is that talks started when the IRA switched from killing Irish people, which didn't garner much concern in Britain, to maximising damage to British commercial targets like Manchester city centre and Canary Wharf.
The loss of Anderson is a much bigger problem for the fourth and fifth Test than this one. We need to win the Ashes outright since the Aussies would retain it in a tie, so even if we win this then unless there's two more draws we're going to have to win a Test without Anderson.
Didnt turn out to be true in 2015 - the rosettes were yellow and black.
These are certainly interesting times. Farron might be thinking his prospects of ensuring a Lib Dem revival could be better than they might have seemed.
The Left would be unlikely to say the same of Jim Callaghan, 30 years later, had he won in '79 and been in the same position of executing the Falklands War to regain Sovereign ruled territory.
It's only an issue because 'Evil Milk Snatching Maggie' did it. Nothing more. Some people need to move on."
I don't really think she did it to win an election - though was the consequence. She did it because that's who she was. That was her personality. You've seen the photo of her enjoying herself in a tank.
Las Vegas is more like Blackpool without the classy people and good taste!
If Hollande somehow gets into the second round (probably most likely if Sarkozy and Le Republicains split the right vote) then there is a real risk that 60%+ of the Communists vote for Le Pen
She was similar to Putin in many ways.
Glad you're having a good holiday.
MINUS £5,000 !!
If they do, I want money to drown my sorrows, because I'm going to feel sicker than a cyclist with piles.
I just have the feeling the Aussies owe us for Headingley 1981 and Edgbaston 2005.
You get the feeling the Jimmy injury is just like McGrath moment in 2005.
my 12 year old only challenges me at chess after I've had a glass of wine...
For Le Pen to win you need:
1. Hollande to get past the Republican candidate, but to still be well short of Le Pen in the first round. So, say 28% for Le Pen, then 21% for Hollande and 20% for Juppe.
2. Then you need the Communists and the Republicans to break for Le Pen over Hollande.
Which is possible, but pretty unlikely, as the evidence from the municipal elections was clearly that Republican and Communist voters preferred the Socialists over the FN. (To get this scenario, you need to see Hollande getting better at getting first round votes... without getting better at getting second round ones...)
That all being said, two years is a long time in politics. France is the least reformed major economy in Europe, especially as Renzi is now beginning to liberalise Italian labour laws. France could be the real economic laggard in 2017, and that could really throw the cat among the pigeons.
On this test, I thought it was prudent to lay the draw.
Series wise, I'm on Australia
This is an outstanding account of the IRA's campaign, by MLR Smith. In essence, they thought they could defeat the British militarily, up till the late 70's. They then adopted a long war strategy, believing that eventually, the British government would just get sick of keeping Northern Ireland in the UK. That lasted up till the early nineties, when they realised that the British were quite capable of absorbing the losses that they were inflicting (and at the same time, they were suffering at British and Loyalist hands). At no point prior to the 1990s would the IRA have settled for Northern Ireland remaining a part of the UK.
https://twitter.com/labourpress/status/625793530183745536
How very odd, send out the membership card automatically and then decide not to let the person join... do you get any nice discounts if you show your membership card ?
Let's face it - 149+ a day is probably the norm, and the vast majority are entering the UK via the tunnel. That's 55,000 a year.
Close it to freight, even temporarily whilst security is upgraded, and see what happens.
They could have kept their British way of life, their allegiance to the Crown, on a Scottish island with £1,000,000 a family. They would have been better off. Britain would have been better off. But Maggie might not have won her election. It suited her to stir up jingoism (which sickened me at the time). A lot of people were opposed to it at the time. This is not revisionism.
When Corbyn explains what happened to young people who were not around at the time to experience the jingoism, many will say WTF?
1 - The concept of paying them to move may not have been officially suggested, but the Islanders are not unaware of the concept. I was warned not to bring up the subject in casual social discussion; an earlier person had (using the 1 million per Islander level) and the response had been extremely negative.
2 - For a State to respond to military invasion of territory that it undertakes to defend with, "Oh, sorry! We'll get our people out of your way immediately. No, don't worry; we'll pay for it all. Don't get up. We'll clear out for you. Can we get you anything else?" would be enormously detrimental to their legitimacy, encourage other militaristic adventurers, and cripple them diplomatically for generations.
The single most effective thing would be to make employing illegal immigrants as serious an offence here as it is in Germany, Italy, France or Switzerland.
I think we should copy the Italian system where illegal immigrants can get residence by informing on the company that hired them. (And the directors of the firm that hired them get chokey.) It acts as a pretty serious disincentive for hiring illegal immigrants.
Close it to freight, even temporarily whilst security is upgraded, and see what happens.
What happens is that more than 55,000 people in export industries lose their jobs.
More than £40bn of British exports go via the Channel Tunnel each year. That's almost £1bn per week.
And yes, in time the ferries would be able to pick up the slack. But not immediately (and not without simply transferring the problem to immigrants in trucks on boats.)
I think we should copy the Italian system where illegal immigrants can get residence by informing on the company that hired them. (And the directors of the firm that hired them get chokey.) It acts as a pretty serious disincentive for hiring illegal immigrants.
How many MP's will be facing jail time?
"There have been rumours of a possible party rupture in the event of a Jeremy Corbyn victory, with Labour donor John Mills speaking publicly about this possibility last week. Some now even argue that the party could split regardless of the election’s outcome.
Though two thirds of those who took part in our survey do not see this as a likely scenario, 28% believe it is somewhat or very likely, suggesting that some people are taking the idea of an SDP-style split very seriously. The results were:
Somewhat unlikely 37%, Very unlikely 28%, Somewhat likely 20%, Very likely 8%, Don’t know 7%"
2 - For a State to respond to military invasion of territory that it undertakes to defend with, "Oh, sorry! We'll get our people out of your way immediately. No, don't worry; we'll pay for it all. Don't get up. We'll clear out for you. Can we get you anything else?" would be enormously detrimental to their legitimacy, encourage other militaristic adventurers, and cripple them diplomatically for generations.
States have an enormous vested interest in holding territory and repelling attacks on it. It's why it is very unusually for States to hand over territory, except in the face of superior force.
"Kendall is booed at hustings while Corbyn is cheered. Her campaign is faltering precisely because she is saying what she believes.
As it happens, I disagree with her about the two-child limit – in the words of The West Wing’s Josh Lyman, Osborne apparently wants a government just small enough to fit into our bedrooms. But it is undeniably popular with exactly the people Labour was founded to represent.
What Kendall is doing is also more principled – “courageous”, even, in the Yes, Minister sense of foolhardy – than the strategy pursued by Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, who will not attack Corbyn head on because they want anyone who votes for him to put them down in second place."
She's completely misunderstanding the "Josh Lyman" position, FWIW.
His comment was in the context of gay rights - that the government shouldn't be banning gay marriage because it's none of their business what goes on in people's bedrooms. Which is a very fair comment.
She is claiming that government's lack of interest in personal sexuality should extent to being willing to pay towards the cost of any children that result
As for the Tunnel and exporters: are those exporters doing business now?
I guess Southampton wasn't itching for Rowenna
His comment was in the context of gay rights - that the government shouldn't be banning gay marriage because it's none of their business what goes on in people's bedrooms. Which is a very fair comment.
She is claiming that government's lack of interest in personal sexuality should extent to being willing to pay towards the cost of any children that result
The country told Labour it didn't want Bennites in 1983
The country told Labour it didn't want Brownites in 2010 and 2015
The country said that it rather liked Blairites in 1997, 2001 and 2005
So Labour brand the Blairite a Tory, and offer the membership the choice of a Foot/Bennite or a Brownite.
If Kendall wins unexpectedly, do the unions pull their funding and kill the party anyway out of spite ?
I wonder if they'd begrudgingly welcome a temporary tunnel closure if it meant that security was upgraded sooner?
I suspect that quite a few will simply stop using Eurotunnel altogether, and their £100 million annual profit will vanish into the red.
Neither Argentina nor the IRA had any legal or moral right to the territories they were seeking to conquer, and the British government was capable of resisting their attacks.
I don't think Jezza will win but even if he does, there is still a path to victory in 2020.
Jezza becomes leader, shakes up the party and gives a renewed sense of purpose to many activists, despite dropping in the polls. In late 2019, Jezza kicks the bucket and Labour gain popularity on a wave of sympathy. Numerous tributes to his bravery and honesty. After all, only nice people die.
Labour elects a Liz or a Dan Jarvis in time for 2020 and squeeze home.
Yes, I know it's in bad taste, but I'm around Jezza's age so I can get away with it.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/07/21/article-0-0202FE1600000578-912_468x562.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWLN7rIby9s
2 - For a State to respond to military invasion of territory that it undertakes to defend with, "Oh, sorry! We'll get our people out of your way immediately. No, don't worry; we'll pay for it all. Don't get up. We'll clear out for you. Can we get you anything else?" would be enormously detrimental to their legitimacy, encourage other militaristic adventurers, and cripple them diplomatically for generations."
Touchy lot. They expect a great deal don't they! All that blood and treasure. And you can't bring it up in casual social discussion or risk an extremely negative response. If that's true, they've lost my sympathy.
If any householder turned down a £1m offer for their £300K house in the way of the 3rd Heathrow runway, they'd get little sympathy.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/04/07/article-2305423-03E244B00000044D-849_634x409.jpg
http://www.declarepeace.org.uk/captain/murder_inc/site/pics/blair-tank.jpg