"Spain is doing very well too, and will notch up its second year in a row of 3%+ GDP growth. Employment has grown by more than two million from the bottom of the crisis, and is up almost five million from the level at the beginning of 1999 when it joined the Eurozone. (That being said, there are clearly two Spains: the export oriented North of the country and Madrid are flying. The South, whose economy is almost entirely reliant on tourism and construction, is still a disaster area.)"
One of my gaming partners lives in Madrid and he paints a very different picture. He is a chap in his late forties with a steady job with an airline and earns reasonable money. We had a long chat about the state of Spain the other day and he is far less sanguine than you are. This is what he told me:
Aside from the top 10% or so, wages have fallen by between 20 and 25% and show no sign of recovering. Peoples' savings have now been used up and there now a real fear that the middle class is starting to go down. Unemployment amongst the young people is bad but cushioned by the free university system, basically if you are bright enough you can become a permanent student (BA, MA PHd etc.). Prices are edging up adding to the problems.
That is a synopsis and obviously I have no way of confirming what I am told, but perhaps the overall data as reported by an Ex-Goldman Sachs wallah may not correlate to closely with the experience of the ordinary fellow on the the ground.
My friend also mentioned that he is starting to worry about political stability.
Rcs100 apologies you are correct bail out the banks customers. I did not agree with Alistair Darling bailing out customers getting a high rate outside the UK the Icelandic Banks.
How does the rescue of the 2008 banking near-fatalities compare with say Barings, to an outsider it seems the former got off rather more leniently than that later ?
The latter was sold to whoever it was for a dollar, or somesuch, IIRC and all employees and shareholders suffered. Neither, in those heady days (I heard the news on the radio as I was on my way to the Kong Kong Derby early one Sunday morning), did banks have the kind of holdings which created the bonkers systemic risk 20 years later. Apart from the name, which might have been vaguely familiar to a few people, no one was touched or aware of Barings.
If Northern Rock had gone down, it would have engendered panic across all high street banks, mass withdrawal and a drawdown of banks' capital reserves, such as they were at the time. There are plenty of left wing critics of the "money creation" system we have now, and it would all have fallen apart under a bank panic if the government hadn't stepped in as it did. Belatedly.
£1 which literally came out of the pocket of the partner closing the deal. Barings was, if you look at the actual exposures, tiny and outside a limited audience, unknown. Plus they had a history of regular insolvency...
**** I think Barings and the Co-op were small enough to fail ... they did so for different reasons, and the Co-op was bailed out by US hedge funds, which took a share in it.
Northern Rock, RBS or HBOS were too big to fail. Zero has been done to split banks up so that the new post-2008 banks can be left to fail, yet that's how capitalism is supposed to work.
@AlsoIndigo I needed to describe a common Remainer view of Leavers. For balance, my previous piece had included the phrase "cowardly cretins" to sum up a common Leaver view of Remainers, for the mirror image reason.
@Mortimer Miliband's unpopularity was nothing to do with virtue signalling/SJW - particularly since Miliband didn't really do any of these. Miliband's issues were as follows:
- On a superficial level, he didn't look and sound like a leader. - He lacked a coherent political vision. Miliband was so caught between his own centre-left politics, and where the Tories had shifted the centre towards, that by 2015 his views were an incoherent muddle of an attempt square both diametric elements together. With no coherent economic and social policies, that meant that the Conservative could focus in on Miliband's long-standing personal flaws even more. Combined with the credibility the Conservatives had on the economy and welfare - two of the central issues at the time - a Miliband loss was inevitable.
On Corbyn: Imagine conflating a hard-left candidate with the rest of the left. As if Corbyn's bizarre attitudes reflects everyone who votes Labour, or everyone left wing. The left is more than just some 18-24 year olds who go on tumblr and twitter FGS.
On immigration: The media pretty much reflects public attitudes towards immigration. Publications like the Mail and The Sun are probably big reasons why the EU Referendum essentially became a hate-fest towards foreigners, as opposed to a genuine examination of the pros and cons of the EU.
- I'm not a fan of the EU myself. However the public are fairly divided on the issue, as the referendum result shows.
- Well, obvious point on the LDs. But I don't see how that has anything to do with SJW/virtue signalling etc. The LDs lost voters because they went into coalition with the Tories for a start, and the Tories successfully in Lib/Con marginals used the LDs to position themselves as a socially liberal, fiscally conservative party. Because they positioned themselves in that centre, that led to the LDs becoming irrelevant, and the Tories winning seats.
- On political correctness: I recall you expressing an opinion along the lines that racism and sexism is merely being impolite. My experiences with people from a range of political perspectives suggest that many think otherwise.
- SNP weren't unpopular because they were a social democratic party. The issue there was that voters were concerned Miliband would become a puppet for Scottish interests which isn't a left/right issue.
Time to go canvassing and encounter the views of others. I think you'll find it mindblowing.
Edit: Oh, and my favourite part of your response is about the left being more than a bunch of 18-24 year olds on social media. The current incarnation of the Labour party, and especially Momentum, are sort of proving you wrong....
"Mortimer is out of date on public attitudes to the Lib Dems. He needs to start paying attention to those "parish council" elections."
But why should he, Ma'am? I have been hanging around this site since 2007 and cannot remember any evidence that shows the results of council by-elections involving a few hundred people each has any bearing on the following general election.
Anyone interested in the Barings collapse - ask me at the next PB Drinks! Suffice it to say that, from the government and BoE point of view, it was a textbook example of how to handle a bank crash, and of how these things were successfully handled for 150 years before Gordon Brown.
Of course, it was a small bank, which made it easier.
NR shareholders got it in the neck, but didn't the bond holders escape more or less unharmed ? Nice work if you can get it I would have thought.
Northern Rock shareholders lost everything. Subordinated bond holders lost everything*. Senior bond holders and deposit holders kept everything.
Working out who is owed what when a banks goes down is *incredibly* difficult. A lot of a bank's liabilities are 'secured', and therefore have a call on (certain) assets before anyone else. (If a bank borrows against its government bond holdings, and then goes bust, then the person who lent the money has the right to demand the government bonds are handed over.) Things are further complicated by banks being party to long-term derivative contracts, the value of which is very... uncertain.
* Actually, they lost everything**, and then got it back again. But that's another story altogether.
** The government decided to default on payments. The subordinated debt was therefore worthless. But then it looked like the government was going to end up making a profit on Northern Rock, and found themselves having to buy back in all the subordinated debt to avoid law suits. Some of the subordinated debt traded at pennies on the pound, and ended up being taken out at a premiun to par.
Why does everyone think the by-election will be delayed until May? Surely both Lab and Con will want it quicker than that, in order to try and keep everyone else out of the game?
As for the Lib Dems and UKIP, pretty sure Lib Dems will do better than at the General Election and UKIP worse.
Mortimer is out of date on public attitudes to the Lib Dems. He needs to start paying attention to those "parish council" elections.
As I've repeated many times, my step-Grandmother, an ex-JP who makes Maggie look like a softie votes LDs locally in the Westcountry. As do most of her friends. They're good at local politics, voter engagement, and 'winning here' leaflets.
Can we stop the terms like "remoaner" and other derogatory terms to describe one side or another in EU debate.
Mr Smithson, God love you, but appealing to people's better nature only works in films. If you want to stop the use of slurs, you're going to have to delete posts and ban people. Asking people to play nicely only works if you have a f*****g big hammer
Can we stop the terms like "remoaner" and other derogatory terms to describe one side or another in EU debate.
Mr Smithson, God love you, but appealing to people's better nature only works in films. If you want to stop the use of slurs, you're going to have to delete posts and ban people. Asking people to play nicely only works if you have a f*****g big hammer
"Spain is doing very well too, and will notch up its second year in a row of 3%+ GDP growth. Employment has grown by more than two million from the bottom of the crisis, and is up almost five million from the level at the beginning of 1999 when it joined the Eurozone. (That being said, there are clearly two Spains: the export oriented North of the country and Madrid are flying. The South, whose economy is almost entirely reliant on tourism and construction, is still a disaster area.)"
One of my gaming partners lives in Madrid and he paints a very different picture. He is a chap in his late forties with a steady job with an airline and earns reasonable money. We had a long chat about the state of Spain the other day and he is far less sanguine than you are. This is what he told me:
Aside from the top 10% or so, wages have fallen by between 20 and 25% and show no sign of recovering. Peoples' savings have now been used up and there now a real fear that the middle class is starting to go down. Unemployment amongst the young people is bad but cushioned by the free university system, basically if you are bright enough you can become a permanent student (BA, MA PHd etc.). Prices are edging up adding to the problems.
That is a synopsis and obviously I have no way of confirming what I am told, but perhaps the overall data as reported by an Ex-Goldman Sachs wallah may not correlate to closely with the experience of the ordinary fellow on the the ground.
My friend also mentioned that he is starting to worry about political stability.
Real wages have fallen; that's the consequence of an internal devaluation. But the labour market has responded by dramatic increases in the number of people employed. Spain GDP per capita, on a PPP basis, is about to overtake Italy. Indeed, it may well do so this year.
In 2007, Spain was a booming country, but it was the consequences of a debt fuelled property bubble. The country imported far more than it exported, but everyone felt rich because their house kept going up in value.
The shake out from that was always going to be painful. But consumer indebtedness in Spain has fallen faster than anywhere else in Europe, perhaps in the world, in the last decade. The total stock of debt has fallen by about EUR400bn (albeit, that includes corporate debt, which is likely 40% of the total reduction), so your contention that savings have been eroded is not born out by the data.
Regarding political stability, the PP went forward in the last election, and their poll rating have improved since.
" Asking people to play nicely only works if you have a f*****g big hammer"
It really doesn't. Most people manage to get through their everyday lives, dealing with all sorts of people whose views they may or may not agree with, without having someone threaten them with a really big hammer. It used to be called good manners.
Some, though, are complete pillocks who deserve to be driven from polite society, and we do have a few of them on here.
"Spain is doing very well too, and will notch up its second year in a row of 3%+ GDP growth. Employment has grown by more than two million from the bottom of the crisis, and is up almost five million from the level at the beginning of 1999 when it joined the Eurozone. (That being said, there are clearly two Spains: the export oriented North of the country and Madrid are flying. The South, whose economy is almost entirely reliant on tourism and construction, is still a disaster area.)"
One of my gaming partners lives in Madrid and he paints a very different picture. He is a chap in his late forties with a steady job with an airline and earns reasonable money. We had a long chat about the state of Spain the other day and he is far less sanguine than you are. This is what he told me:
Aside from the top 10% or so, wages have fallen by between 20 and 25% and show no sign of recovering. Peoples' savings have now been used up and there now a real fear that the middle class is starting to go down. Unemployment amongst the young people is bad but cushioned by the free university system, basically if you are bright enough you can become a permanent student (BA, MA PHd etc.). Prices are edging up adding to the problems.
That is a synopsis and obviously I have no way of confirming what I am told, but perhaps the overall data as reported by an Ex-Goldman Sachs wallah may not correlate to closely with the experience of the ordinary fellow on the the ground.
My friend also mentioned that he is starting to worry about political stability.
I have friends too in Madrid, Barcelona and the provinces. From what I hear, I think Robert is right in that Spain is past the worst and it will pull through. But you are also right because it is far from rosy and there could still be an upset.
On Brexit 6 months on, nothing has changed. It's a big mess from my point of view that will extend for decades. I don't think Leavers are stupid or even wrong on the principle - they have an opinion which is just as valid as any other. I do however, believe, however that the Leave vote was informed by assumptions that were never likely to materialise - in particular the idea of a new world order for Britain. Dealing with that mistake is part of the mess I referred to. Six months repeating myself is very boring (even if I am correct) so I will step away from PB for a while, so that it can concentrate on its proper mission, which is political outcomes. Copeland is a Christmas present for us.
" Asking people to play nicely only works if you have a f*****g big hammer"
It really doesn't. Most people manage to get through their everyday lives, dealing with all sorts of people whose views they may or may not agree with, without having someone threaten them with a really big hammer. It used to be called good manners.
Some, though, are complete pillocks who deserve to be driven from polite society, and we do have a few of them on here.
I am called a Remoaner and a "liberal elitist" etc. I take it as part of the cut and thrust of PB.
I do find it troubling when some are called traitors, though. Especially after the Jo Cox murder.
Anyone interested in the Barings collapse - ask me at the next PB Drinks! Suffice it to say that, from the government and BoE point of view, it was a textbook example of how to handle a bank crash, and of how these things were successfully handled for 150 years before Gordon Brown.
Of course, it was a small bank, which made it easier.
Surely a textbook example of the Bank of England not having a clue what was happening until after it happened.
Some of that, too. But it's hard to know what is happening when the relevant contract notes are hidden in a drawer in Singapore.
The drawer belonging to the person who was both supposed to be monitoring malpractices and perpetrating them.
Dear god a lot has changed regulatorily and oversight-wise since then.
And yet pretty much exactly the same thing happened in 2011 with Kweku Adoboli and his $2.3 billion fraud in UBS.
If you want to know more you can ask me at the next PB drinks.
Anyone interested in the Barings collapse - ask me at the next PB Drinks! Suffice it to say that, from the government and BoE point of view, it was a textbook example of how to handle a bank crash, and of how these things were successfully handled for 150 years before Gordon Brown.
Of course, it was a small bank, which made it easier.
Surely a textbook example of the Bank of England not having a clue what was happening until after it happened.
Some of that, too. But it's hard to know what is happening when the relevant contract notes are hidden in a drawer in Singapore.
The drawer belonging to the person who was both supposed to be monitoring malpractices and perpetrating them.
Dear god a lot has changed regulatorily and oversight-wise since then.
You'd hope so but wasn't the UBS unauthorised trading loss similar?
Slightly different.
Kweku ran his losing positions and hid them by pretending that he was hedged so the mark to market didn't look too bad. When the market went his way, his bogus hedging trades expired worthless, when it went against him, he put more bogus hedging trades on.
Now, he maintains that "everyone knew" this was happening and he had the agreement of his bosses. But if the compliance/risk dept knew well of course it was fraud so that would have been that.
With Nick Leeson, he was both the compliance/risk officer and the trader so the only person who might have been worried was himself.
Not quite right. There were rather more similarities with Barings and indeed with the Kerviel/Soc Gen fraud a few years before Adoboli than has ever come out in public. That bastard took 14 months out of my life. Why the pathetically useless Border Force hasn't managed to put him on plane back to Ghana (he's lost his appeal against deportation) I don't know.
As I say, you will need to buy me a nice drink to know more!
Anyone interested in the Barings collapse - ask me at the next PB Drinks! Suffice it to say that, from the government and BoE point of view, it was a textbook example of how to handle a bank crash, and of how these things were successfully handled for 150 years before Gordon Brown.
Of course, it was a small bank, which made it easier.
Surely a textbook example of the Bank of England not having a clue what was happening until after it happened.
Some of that, too. But it's hard to know what is happening when the relevant contract notes are hidden in a drawer in Singapore.
The drawer belonging to the person who was both supposed to be monitoring malpractices and perpetrating them.
Dear god a lot has changed regulatorily and oversight-wise since then.
You'd hope so but wasn't the UBS unauthorised trading loss similar?
Slightly different.
Kweku ran his losing positions and hid them by pretending that he was hedged so the mark to market didn't look too bad. When the market went his way, his bogus hedging trades expired worthless, when it went against him, he put more bogus hedging trades on.
Now, he maintains that "everyone knew" this was happening and he had the agreement of his bosses. But if the compliance/risk dept knew well of course it was fraud so that would have been that.
With Nick Leeson, he was both the compliance/risk officer and the trader so the only person who might have been worried was himself.
Not quite right. There were rather more similarities with Barings and indeed with the Kerviel/Soc Gen fraud a few years before Adoboli than has ever come out in public. That bastard took 14 months out of my life. Why the pathetically useless Border Force hasn't managed to put him on plane back to Ghana (he's lost his appeal against deportation) I don't know.
As I say, you will need to buy me a nice drink to know more!
Yes I have to say I have no problem with the robust language on here. It's the Internet innit.
At peak pre-EU Ref it got quite heated and I remember for a day that that surprised me but that (the surprise) soon passed and one adjusts to it all.
I can see however that OGH would prefer a civilised, erudite discussion which attracts influential participants and lurkers alike.
But I don't see that happening. Especially if @SeanT is expected to continue to post.
Because he's a countryman at heart.
SeanT's calmed down a lot. His explosions are less entertaining; more mudpot than Vesuvius. Perhaps he's had one ban too many, or perhaps he's finally found contentment with his success.
David Herdson said: 'A good point and one we should keep in the forefront of our minds. Brexit was an issue in Richmond because the Lib Dems made it one and they were able to do so there in no small part because the normal party line-up wasn't present and because the issue Zac wanted to campaign on made no sense given that there was no pro-LHR3 candidate. Copeland will be different. '
Quite so. The assumption that Brexit is going to change many votes in this by election will, I suspect, turn out to be wrong.
Can we stop the terms like "remoaner" and other derogatory terms to describe one side or another in EU debate.
Mr Smithson, God love you, but appealing to people's better nature only works in films. If you want to stop the use of slurs, you're going to have to delete posts and ban people. Asking people to play nicely only works if you have a f*****g big hammer
I would be very reluctant to give up "Brextard".
How dare you, I'm a Brexidiot.
In all seriousness, I think it's a fine balance of when terms of good clean political fun, and genuinely hateful, and often depends on context. I've referred to remoaning, but even for moans I think are justifiable, for instance, but others might find it unfair regardless. Traitor is one I would find hard to be amusing, but others find it ok in the sense of hyperbole.
I have been hanging around this site since 2007 and cannot remember any evidence that shows the results of council by-elections involving a few hundred people each has any bearing on the following general election.
Except that the Lib Dems were winning few council by-elections during the coalition. We weren't even standing candidates in a lot of places. And we got stuffed at the GE. Not arguing direct causation, but one was a sympton that the other might be going to happen. Compare that period to this year. We have had some spectacular swinngs, and some spectacular gains in places we have not previously held. This is our best year for council by-electionsfor at least 20 years (our records don't go back further). Not suggesting we will win the next GE. But we appear to be on an upward trajectory.
I have been hanging around this site since 2007 and cannot remember any evidence that shows the results of council by-elections involving a few hundred people each has any bearing on the following general election.
Except that the Lib Dems were winning few council by-elections during the coalition. We weren't even standing candidates in a lot of places. And we got stuffed at the GE. Not arguing direct causation, but one was a sympton that the other might be going to happen. Compare that period to this year. We have had some spectacular swinngs, and some spectacular gains in places we have not previously held. This is our best year for council by-electionsfor at least 20 years (our records don't go back further). Not suggesting we will win the next GE. But we appear to be on an upward trajectory.
Current LibDem gains, lovely they no doubt are to LD activists, are possibly more a symptom of their how bad their previous losses were rather than any real achievement.
Time to go canvassing and encounter the views of others. I think you'll find it mindblowing.
Edit: Oh, and my favourite part of your response is about the left being more than a bunch of 18-24 year olds on social media. The current incarnation of the Labour party, and especially Momentum, are sort of proving you wrong....
So you don't have anything to say to any of my points? Only that your experience of other views reigns supreme? What a shame.
Re you're last point: well that is based on your assumption that Labour Party and Momentum represent all of the British Left. I'd have thought that being on this site, and seeing many on the left be critical of Corbyn and Mometum, alongside criticism of Corbyn from other parts of the left in the media - such as The New Statesmen - would have showed you otherwise.
Time to go canvassing and encounter the views of others. I think you'll find it mindblowing.
Edit: Oh, and my favourite part of your response is about the left being more than a bunch of 18-24 year olds on social media. The current incarnation of the Labour party, and especially Momentum, are sort of proving you wrong....
So you don't have anything to say to any of my points? Only that your experience of other views reigns supreme? What a shame.
Re you're last point: well that is based on your assumption that Labour Party and Momentum represent all of the British Left. I'd have thought that being on this site, and seeing many on the left be critical of Corbyn and Mometum, alongside criticism of Corbyn from other parts of the left in the media - such as The New Statesmen - would have showed you otherwise.
I had things to say about pretty much every point - but I'm not sure my views or yours are really what was under discussion here.
You suggested that people in the outside world don't share the concerns about SJW/political correctness etc - I said not only that they do, but they do in large numbers and most vocally to canvassers in the ways I described.
Listen to the voters - their views are far more important than those of thee or me.
Can we stop the terms like "remoaner" and other derogatory terms to describe one side or another in EU debate.
Mr Smithson, God love you, but appealing to people's better nature only works in films. If you want to stop the use of slurs, you're going to have to delete posts and ban people. Asking people to play nicely only works if you have a f*****g big hammer
I would be very reluctant to give up "Brextard".
How dare you, I'm a Brexidiot.
In all seriousness, I think it's a fine balance of when terms of good clean political fun, and genuinely hateful, and often depends on context. I've referred to remoaning, but even for moans I think are justifiable, for instance, but others might find it unfair regardless. Traitor is one I would find hard to be amusing, but others find it ok in the sense of hyperbole.
I had things to say about pretty much every point - but I'm not sure my views or yours are really what was under discussion here.
You suggested that people in the outside world don't share the concerns about SJW/political correctness etc - I said not only that they do, but they do in large numbers and most vocally to canvassers in the ways I described.
Listen to the voters - their views are far more important than those of thee or me.
Most voters haven't even heard of the phrase SJW. Most people I know are concerned about jobs, finances etc - not SJWs, who are only really relevant on tumblr and Twitter.
Comments
It's "treacherous".
"Spain is doing very well too, and will notch up its second year in a row of 3%+ GDP growth. Employment has grown by more than two million from the bottom of the crisis, and is up almost five million from the level at the beginning of 1999 when it joined the Eurozone. (That being said, there are clearly two Spains: the export oriented North of the country and Madrid are flying. The South, whose economy is almost entirely reliant on tourism and construction, is still a disaster area.)"
One of my gaming partners lives in Madrid and he paints a very different picture. He is a chap in his late forties with a steady job with an airline and earns reasonable money. We had a long chat about the state of Spain the other day and he is far less sanguine than you are. This is what he told me:
Aside from the top 10% or so, wages have fallen by between 20 and 25% and show no sign of recovering. Peoples' savings have now been used up and there now a real fear that the middle class is starting to go down. Unemployment amongst the young people is bad but cushioned by the free university system, basically if you are bright enough you can become a permanent student (BA, MA PHd etc.). Prices are edging up adding to the problems.
That is a synopsis and obviously I have no way of confirming what I am told, but perhaps the overall data as reported by an Ex-Goldman Sachs wallah may not correlate to closely with the experience of the ordinary fellow on the the ground.
My friend also mentioned that he is starting to worry about political stability.
Edit: Oh, and my favourite part of your response is about the left being more than a bunch of 18-24 year olds on social media. The current incarnation of the Labour party, and especially Momentum, are sort of proving you wrong....
"Mortimer is out of date on public attitudes to the Lib Dems. He needs to start paying attention to those "parish council" elections."
But why should he, Ma'am? I have been hanging around this site since 2007 and cannot remember any evidence that shows the results of council by-elections involving a few hundred people each has any bearing on the following general election.
Why do I get the impression that every high-prestige publically-funded building built in the next ten years will be unutterably gaudy go "Treasonous", surely.
Subordinated bond holders lost everything*.
Senior bond holders and deposit holders kept everything.
Working out who is owed what when a banks goes down is *incredibly* difficult. A lot of a bank's liabilities are 'secured', and therefore have a call on (certain) assets before anyone else. (If a bank borrows against its government bond holdings, and then goes bust, then the person who lent the money has the right to demand the government bonds are handed over.) Things are further complicated by banks being party to long-term derivative contracts, the value of which is very... uncertain.
* Actually, they lost everything**, and then got it back again. But that's another story altogether.
** The government decided to default on payments. The subordinated debt was therefore worthless. But then it looked like the government was going to end up making a profit on Northern Rock, and found themselves having to buy back in all the subordinated debt to avoid law suits. Some of the subordinated debt traded at pennies on the pound, and ended up being taken out at a premiun to par.
She laughs at the notion of the national party.
In 2007, Spain was a booming country, but it was the consequences of a debt fuelled property bubble. The country imported far more than it exported, but everyone felt rich because their house kept going up in value.
The shake out from that was always going to be painful. But consumer indebtedness in Spain has fallen faster than anywhere else in Europe, perhaps in the world, in the last decade. The total stock of debt has fallen by about EUR400bn (albeit, that includes corporate debt, which is likely 40% of the total reduction), so your contention that savings have been eroded is not born out by the data.
Regarding political stability, the PP went forward in the last election, and their poll rating have improved since.
" Asking people to play nicely only works if you have a f*****g big hammer"
It really doesn't. Most people manage to get through their everyday lives, dealing with all sorts of people whose views they may or may not agree with, without having someone threaten them with a really big hammer. It used to be called good manners.
Some, though, are complete pillocks who deserve to be driven from polite society, and we do have a few of them on here.
Can any of his buildings be described as architecturally important, or even beautiful?
On Brexit 6 months on, nothing has changed. It's a big mess from my point of view that will extend for decades. I don't think Leavers are stupid or even wrong on the principle - they have an opinion which is just as valid as any other. I do however, believe, however that the Leave vote was informed by assumptions that were never likely to materialise - in particular the idea of a new world order for Britain. Dealing with that mistake is part of the mess I referred to. Six months repeating myself is very boring (even if I am correct) so I will step away from PB for a while, so that it can concentrate on its proper mission, which is political outcomes. Copeland is a Christmas present for us.
I do find it troubling when some are called traitors, though. Especially after the Jo Cox murder.
If you want to know more you can ask me at the next PB drinks.
Do you know how to flex it?
What do you prefer
A hard or soft Brexit
(How much do you need?)"
As I say, you will need to buy me a nice drink to know more!
At peak pre-EU Ref it got quite heated and I remember for a day that that surprised me but that (the surprise) soon passed and one adjusts to it all.
I can see however that OGH would prefer a civilised, erudite discussion which attracts influential participants and lurkers alike.
But I don't see that happening. Especially if @SeanT is expected to continue to post.
Because he's a countryman at heart.
Hopefully the latter.
'A good point and one we should keep in the forefront of our minds. Brexit was an issue in Richmond because the Lib Dems made it one and they were able to do so there in no small part because the normal party line-up wasn't present and because the issue Zac wanted to campaign on made no sense given that there was no pro-LHR3 candidate. Copeland will be different. '
Quite so. The assumption that Brexit is going to change many votes in this by election will, I suspect, turn out to be wrong.
In all seriousness, I think it's a fine balance of when terms of good clean political fun, and genuinely hateful, and often depends on context. I've referred to remoaning, but even for moans I think are justifiable, for instance, but others might find it unfair regardless. Traitor is one I would find hard to be amusing, but others find it ok in the sense of hyperbole.
I have been hanging around this site since 2007 and cannot remember any evidence that shows the results of council by-elections involving a few hundred people each has any bearing on the following general election.
Except that the Lib Dems were winning few council by-elections during the coalition. We weren't even standing candidates in a lot of places. And we got stuffed at the GE. Not arguing direct causation, but one was a sympton that the other might be going to happen. Compare that period to this year. We have had some spectacular swinngs, and some spectacular gains in places we have not previously held. This is our best year for council by-electionsfor at least 20 years (our records don't go back further). Not suggesting we will win the next GE. But we appear to be on an upward trajectory.
Re you're last point: well that is based on your assumption that Labour Party and Momentum represent all of the British Left. I'd have thought that being on this site, and seeing many on the left be critical of Corbyn and Mometum, alongside criticism of Corbyn from other parts of the left in the media - such as The New Statesmen - would have showed you otherwise.
You suggested that people in the outside world don't share the concerns about SJW/political correctness etc - I said not only that they do, but they do in large numbers and most vocally to canvassers in the ways I described.
Listen to the voters - their views are far more important than those of thee or me.