Just catching up a bit, I think one reason the Con/DUP deal will be seen in a different light to a potential Lab/SNP/SF one is that the DUP are not trying to break up the country. It's one thing to have to partner a minor party who's aims are broadly in line with rUK, at least in terms of the future of the country, but quite a different one to partner with parties who's sole aim is to break up the UK. I'm not going to say price worth paying, because I think we'd have been better off daring the DUP to vote us down and let Jez/SF into No. 10, it would have been sufficient IMO.
In other news, the Brexit temperature in Australia is warm to hot. A few months ago it was tepid apparently. Ideal Brexit is seen as Britain staying in the single market but also becoming an independent member of the WTO, lots of people I spoke to today think that we'd bring a new and powerful voice for services trade liberalisation to the WTO, something the EU doesn't do at all.
And at least the DUP money will be spent in this country.
Planned Overseas Aid = Bad Unplanned Ulster Bung = Good
What's a billion quid or rather approx £24bn between the new bosom pals of the Con/DUP APP ?
I see very little difference between the DUP negotiating for more money for their constituents and Labour governments channelling more money to Labour councils. Except for the scale of the money involved.
Gove and Hunt surely have a better chance than Prit Patel.
Gove has the most "Want to Slap" face in Westminster, and Hunt is so toxic that most people pronounce his name with a C instead of an H.
Vote Leave put Gove front and centre and it didn't stop us from winning. He's not lovable but he's a serious, clever politician. Who cares if some teachers who vote Labour anyway don't like him?
It is a measure of how utterly diminished May is that her unnecessary election campaign was convincingly taken apart this morning on R4 by..... Grant Shapps.
To be fair to Grant Shapps, he does know how to run a Tory majority winning general election campaign, unlike Mrs May.
Only by cheating though....
Tell me how his cheating differed from the Labour cheating and the LibDem cheating, in that they were each fined by the Electoral Commission.
Or are you still trying to make hay about the battle bus? You know, the one where there were no charges, so everyone is innocent in the eyes of the law? Except for that higher legal force, snide LibDems gits.....
Mark you keep saying this. You must know it is misrepresenting reality. Lab and LD were fined for failure to declare some expenses on their national returns. Admin errors that had no impact, but a failure to take proper care to disclose properly. Conservatives declared local expenses on national returns as per the Electoral Commission and received a much higher fine for doing so. The Electoral Commission also found them obstructive. However the issue of the local returns itself is a Police matter. The reason for there not being a prosecution was not an issue of not doing it and doing it deliberately but the difficulty of proving the agents and candidates were aware of it. Something I have a lot of sympathy with as it was clearly driven nationally. Trying to claim it didn't happen, when it clearly did is perverse.
Sadly by making no clear distinction between honest careless or even negligent mistakes does not do our democracy any favours. I give you the example of the DUP being fined for declaring local expenses on national returns, when they also declared them locally. In effect being fined for over declaring. Utter nonsense.
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
The government are paying a going rate of £100M a vote. That's a big incentive.
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
I think that's a possibility.
May's decision to exempt Scotland from WFA restrictions was idiotically dangerous.
It really was an encouragement to regional demands
Is this an official CCHQ spin line -- that Labour used to be at it in some nefarious but unspecified way, so the MayDUP bung is small beer in comparison? It seems to be quite popular this morning. Perhaps someone will fill in the details later.
It is a measure of how utterly diminished May is that her unnecessary election campaign was convincingly taken apart this morning on R4 by..... Grant Shapps.
To be fair to Grant Shapps, he does know how to run a Tory majority winning general election campaign, unlike Mrs May.
He does seem to be another one of May's unnecessary enemies, now coming back to haunt her.
It seems she didn't like nearly all of the Cameroons. Osborne is one thing, but to make enemies of so many of them was a bad idea.
Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Amber Rudd and Justine Greening are currently serving in her cabinet.
Democracy, dangerous thing, you feel? Better to use public money for party advantage than to risk voters having another say?
You must be one of those extremist sympathisers I read about. A Hamas supporter, perhaps?
The voters just had their say. What's wrong with trying to make what they said work? The public delivered a clear message to all of the parties. It's very telling that the first reaction of all the politicians is to assume the public got it wrong in some way.
Indeed. They didn't trust the Conservatives with a majority, and didn't trust Labour in power.
Trying to engineer an election on the basis that they got it wrong would probably turn out badly.
Agree, the vote was a rejection of posturing and hard Brexit willy waving. People, and especially the younger voters who will be more directly affected, utterly rejected the vision of May, Davies, Bozo and Fox.
As for Corbyn's vote, people clearly want a deal which protects their jobs, their services and their rights. They want an end to austerity and above all they want proper pay rises, not changes to income tax thresholds paid for by demolition of the services they use.
Let's hope Theresa got these messages. But I'm not holding my breath.
Then the manifesto was released, and the conversation turned to social care and winter fuel payments. At that point the Conservative poll numbers fell to the low 40s. The beneficiary was a Labour Party that had also committed to leaving the single market, but was strongly against the changes to social care and winter fuel payment.
The two parties vigorously campaigning against a hard Brexit, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, slumped for the whole campaign.
This is a rejection of a hard Brexit apparently.
Depends if you believed the polls, which seem likely to have been overestimating Tory share for some time, and in any case those most affected by the manifesto content largely voted for you anyway. Young people are angry with the Tories, and they're not the ones who are dying at a rate of several thousand per week. The next generation of oldies, the Generation X'ers, are nowhere near as well disposed to the Tories as the Boomers were, for whom voting Tory is and was a lifestyle thing.
Underestimate this at your peril, or else you are heading for a 1997 result next time.
Oh dear, will this upset Ruthie's chances now. Getting sued by a Tory Candidate for the EP because even though she should have been automatically selected, plus she had the experience, Ruthie's Fav, who was 5th on the list got chosen instead...Ooops! How to lose friends....
It is a measure of how utterly diminished May is that her unnecessary election campaign was convincingly taken apart this morning on R4 by..... Grant Shapps.
To be fair to Grant Shapps, he does know how to run a Tory majority winning general election campaign, unlike Mrs May.
He does seem to be another one of May's unnecessary enemies, now coming back to haunt her.
It seems she didn't like nearly all of the Cameroons. Osborne is one thing, but to make enemies of so many of them was a bad idea.
It might not be that she didn't like them personally, although that certainly seems to be the case with one or two. It might be that she felt a break with the past and the austerity years was best, and she also might have been concerned that some may have been more interested in aiding others rather than herself.
In some ways it doesn't matter, as the end results been hideous for her whatever her reasoning.
They represented an approach that she didn't agree with not to say didn't understand: communicating, listening, taking advice delegating.
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
The government are paying a going rate of £100M a vote. That's a big incentive.
...even that's untrue. There will be hundreds of votes on which the DUP will support the Govt. The left and Mathematics are strangers to one another.
There are plenty to lay, and McDonnell at 29/46 to back. Seeing as how the hard left have control of the Labour party that looks better to me than Cooper @ 9-1 (Who I have just laid a touch)
Was just looking at that market myself. Agree with your lay...
Just catching up a bit, I think one reason the Con/DUP deal will be seen in a different light to a potential Lab/SNP/SF one is that the DUP are not trying to break up the country. It's one thing to have to partner a minor party who's aims are broadly in line with rUK, at least in terms of the future of the country, but quite a different one to partner with parties who's sole aim is to break up the UK. I'm not going to say price worth paying, because I think we'd have been better off daring the DUP to vote us down and let Jez/SF into No. 10, it would have been sufficient IMO.
In other news, the Brexit temperature in Australia is warm to hot. A few months ago it was tepid apparently. Ideal Brexit is seen as Britain staying in the single market but also becoming an independent member of the WTO, lots of people I spoke to today think that we'd bring a new and powerful voice for services trade liberalisation to the WTO, something the EU doesn't do at all.
Australians seem remarkably well informed on matters of trade.
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
These negotiations will only happen when there is a hung parliament. I don't think that happens enough to make a big difference to voting behaviour. Besides, Cornwall already has so many more blessings than every other county of the United Kingdom, so it would seem rather unfair to get more public spending too.
Democracy, dangerous thing, you feel? Better to use public money for party advantage than to risk voters having another say?
You must be one of those extremist sympathisers I read about. A Hamas supporter, perhaps?
The voters just had their say. What's wrong with trying to make what they said work? The public delivered a clear message to all of the parties. It's very telling that the first reaction of all the politicians is to assume the public got it wrong in some way.
Indeed. They didn't trust the Conservatives with a majority, and didn't trust Labour in power.
Trying to engineer an election on the basis that they got it wrong would probably turn out badly.
Agree, the vote was a rejection of posturing and hard Brexit willy waving. People, and especially the younger voters who will be more directly affected, utterly rejected the vision of May, Davies, Bozo and Fox.
As for Corbyn's vote, people clearly want a deal which protects their jobs, their services and their rights. They want an end to austerity and above all they want proper pay rises, not changes to income tax thresholds paid for by demolition of the services they use.
Let's hope Theresa got these messages. But I'm not holding my breath.
Then the manifesto was released, and the conversation turned to social care and winter fuel payments. At that point the Conservative poll numbers fell to the low 40s. The beneficiary was a Labour Party that had also committed to leaving the single market, but was strongly against the changes to social care and winter fuel payment.
The two parties vigorously campaigning against a hard Brexit, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, slumped for the whole campaign.
This is a rejection of a hard Brexit apparently.
Depends if you believed the polls, which seem likely to have been overestimating Tory share for some time, and in any case those most affected by the manifesto content largely voted for you anyway. Young people are angry with the Tories, and they're not the ones who are dying at a rate of several thousand per week. The next generation of oldies, the Generation X'ers, are nowhere near as well disposed to the Tories as the Boomers were, for whom voting Tory is and was a lifestyle thing.
Underestimate this at your peril, or else you are heading for a 1997 result next time.
The local election results suggest the Tories weren't being overestimated. They were ahead then shot themselves in the foot with social care and pensioner benefits.
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
I think there were plenty of reasons for the regions to want to further themselves, maybe at the expense of others, before this latest deal.
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
The government are paying a going rate of £100M a vote. That's a big incentive.
...even that's untrue. There will be hundreds of votes on which the DUP will support the Govt. The left and Mathematics are strangers to one another.
£1bn / 10 DUP MPs = £100m a vote.
Apparently you are a stranger to how to frame a problem.
And at least the DUP money will be spent in this country.
Planned Overseas Aid = Bad Unplanned Ulster Bung = Good
What's a billion quid or rather approx £24bn between the new bosom pals of the Con/DUP APP ?
It all comes from the same magic money tree only some is being distributed outside of the UK and some within it.
But perhaps you can explain where the £24bn comes from. If you say WFA and TLP then you're even more inaccurate than your election prediction.
Another magic money tree follower ?!?
Presumably the Conservative manifesto was costed somewhere and not just on the back of a fag packet. If the savings from not implementing WFA and TLP changes are dropped where is the shortfall coming from? .... presumably another magic money tree in the same orchard?
It is a measure of how utterly diminished May is that her unnecessary election campaign was convincingly taken apart this morning on R4 by..... Grant Shapps.
To be fair to Grant Shapps, he does know how to run a Tory majority winning general election campaign, unlike Mrs May.
Only by cheating though....
Tell me how his cheating differed from the Labour cheating and the LibDem cheating, in that they were each fined by the Electoral Commission.
Or are you still trying to make hay about the battle bus? You know, the one where there were no charges, so everyone is innocent in the eyes of the law? Except for that higher legal force, snide LibDems gits.....
Mark you keep saying this. You must know it is misrepresenting reality. Lab and LD were fined for failure to declare some expenses on their national returns. Admin errors that had no impact, but a failure to take proper care to disclose properly. Conservatives declared local expenses on national returns as per the Electoral Commission and received a much higher fine for doing so. The Electoral Commission also found them obstructive. However the issue of the local returns itself is a Police matter. The reason for there not being a prosecution was not an issue of not doing it and doing it deliberately but the difficulty of proving the agents and candidates were aware of it. Something I have a lot of sympathy with as it was clearly driven nationally. Trying to claim it didn't happen, when it clearly did is perverse.
Sadly by making no clear distinction between honest careless or even negligent mistakes does not do our democracy any favours. I give you the example of the DUP being fined for declaring local expenses on national returns, when they also declared them locally. In effect being fined for over declaring. Utter nonsense.
Some of the election law is bizarre. I was involved in a similar case many, many years ago. I don't want to go into the specifics here, but an individual cheated (fraud) on behalf of 2 candidates in a local election. The candidates and agent were unaware. It was a rogue act, but may well have influenced the election. The only case that could be brought was one of electoral expenses because the cheating had a financial implication that could be easily quantified. The agent had a choice of filing the return he had always intended or adding the expense that he had not authorised (and never would have) and would have busted the limit. He did the former. He was arrested. There was no dispute as to what had happened. After about 2 years the CPS decided not to charge him for lack of evidence.
Normally late July to early September, but the Tories proposed a longer twelve week one this time, starting after the QS and ending early October, not sure whether this is formally agreed as yet?
Mr. Observer, this may shock you, but I'm not convinced using an argument also used by Theresa May necessarily enhances your argument's persuasive power.
Democracy, dangerous thing, you feel? Better to use public money for party advantage than to risk voters having another say?
You must be one of those extremist sympathisers I read about. A Hamas supporter, perhaps?
The voters just had their say. What's wrong with trying to make what they said work? The public delivered a clear message to all of the parties. It's very telling that the first reaction of all the politicians is to assume the public got it wrong in some way.
Indeed. They didn't trust the Conservatives with a majority, and didn't trust Labour in power.
Trying to engineer an election on the basis that they got it wrong would probably turn out badly.
Let's hope Theresa got these messages. But I'm not holding my breath.
This is a rejection of a hard Brexit apparently.
Underestimate this at your peril, or else you are heading for a 1997 result next time.
The local election results suggest the Tories weren't being overestimated. They were ahead then shot themselves in the foot with social care and pensioner benefits.
Labour are currently completely dependent on an age group that is notoriously inconsistent in voting turning out at incredibly high rates. Perhaps they will do it again, but I wouldn't want to count on it, particularly if Corbyn struggles aged 73 at the next election.
Young people voting Labour at such high levels is a worry, but more of a long term one for me. We must fix it by addressing their concerns about good jobs, high housing costs and high student debt. We are already delivering on the first, but we must build a lot of new housing and do something on student debt. I think we should come up with a new savings account where you can save money for your first property before your income is calculated for student loan repayment.
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
I think there were plenty of reasons for the regions to want to further themselves, maybe at the expense of others, before this latest deal.
Davidson and her Scottish contingent would appear to have the biggest problem, since their votes should be as valuable as the DUP yet they have nothing to show for it.
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
These negotiations will only happen when there is a hung parliament. I don't think that happens enough to make a big difference to voting behaviour. Besides, Cornwall already has so many more blessings than every other county of the United Kingdom, so it would seem rather unfair to get more public spending too.
The more regional movements there are, the more likely hung parliaments are. It's - potentially - a self-reinforcing cycle.
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
Scot Nats are focused on independence not more dependence
And at least the DUP money will be spent in this country.
Planned Overseas Aid = Bad Unplanned Ulster Bung = Good
What's a billion quid or rather approx £24bn between the new bosom pals of the Con/DUP APP ?
I see very little difference between the DUP negotiating for more money for their constituents and Labour governments channelling more money to Labour councils. Except for the scale of the money involved.
The difference being I'd rather prefer not to hear quite so much DUP guff about the Union when they attempt to shaft England, Wales and Scotland. It's all for one and one for all when it suits them and I'm all right Jack when the cash till rings.
Mr. 1000, indeed. It's why wanting shitty little regional assemblies in England is such an indefensibly insane idea (unless you want to destroy England, of course).
Democracy, dangerous thing, you feel? Better to use public money for party advantage than to risk voters having another say?
You must be one of those extremist sympathisers I read about. A Hamas supporter, perhaps?
The voters just had their say. What's wrong with trying to make what they said work? The public delivered a clear message to all of the parties. It's very telling that the first reaction of all the politicians is to assume the public got it wrong in some way.
Indeed. They didn't trust the Conservatives with a majority, and didn't trust Labour in power.
Trying to engineer an election on the basis that they got it wrong would probably turn out badly.
Agree, the vote was a rejection of posturing and hard Brexit willy waving. People, and especially the younger voters who will be more directly affected, utterly rejected the vision of May, Davies, Bozo and Fox.
As for Corbyn's vote, people clearly want a deal which protects their jobs, their services and their rights. They want an end to austerity and above all they want proper pay rises, not changes to income tax thresholds paid for by demolition of the services they use.
Let's hope Theresa got these messages. But I'm not holding my breath.
The two parties vigorously campaigning against a hard Brexit, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, slumped for the whole campaign.
This is a rejection of a hard Brexit apparently.
Depends if you believed the polls, which seem likely to have been overestimating Tory share for some time, and in any case those most affected by the manifesto content largely voted for you anyway. Young people are angry with the Tories, and they're not the ones who are dying at a rate of several thousand per week. The next generation of oldies, the Generation X'ers, are nowhere near as well disposed to the Tories as the Boomers were, for whom voting Tory is and was a lifestyle thing.
Underestimate this at your peril, or else you are heading for a 1997 result next time.
The local election results suggest the Tories weren't being overestimated. They were ahead then shot themselves in the foot with social care and pensioner benefits.
The demographics of the vote suggest otherwise. People turned out for GE who didn't vote in LE. Also this year's LE were focused on your strongest - rural - areas. They were not a very good indicator.
And at least the DUP money will be spent in this country.
Planned Overseas Aid = Bad Unplanned Ulster Bung = Good
What's a billion quid or rather approx £24bn between the new bosom pals of the Con/DUP APP ?
It all comes from the same magic money tree only some is being distributed outside of the UK and some within it.
But perhaps you can explain where the £24bn comes from. If you say WFA and TLP then you're even more inaccurate than your election prediction.
Another magic money tree follower ?!?
Presumably the Conservative manifesto was costed somewhere and not just on the back of a fag packet. If the savings from not implementing WFA and TLP changes are dropped where is the shortfall coming from? .... presumably another magic money tree in the same orchard?
So you can't explain the £24bn - thought not.
But we are on the magic money tree and that's because the country wants to be. On a purely practical issue there is no chance of getting restrictions on TLP and WFA through parliament irrespective of the DUP stance.
Still interesting to see you having reservations about the magic money tree now - I don't remember you being so concerned when Osborne was borrowing hundreds of billions more from those same magic money trees than he said he would.
The voters just had their say. What's wrong with trying to make what they said work? The public delivered a clear message to all of the parties. It's very telling that the first reaction of all the politicians is to assume the public got it wrong in some way.
Indeed. They didn't trust the Conservatives with a majority, and didn't trust Labour in power.
Trying to engineer an election on the basis that they got it wrong would probably turn out badly.
Agree, the vote was a rejection of posturing and hard Brexit willy waving. People, and especially the younger voters who will be more directly affected, utterly rejected the vision of May, Davies, Bozo and Fox.
.
Then the manifesto was released, and the conversation turned to social care and winter fuel payments. At that point the Conservative poll numbers fell to the low 40s. The beneficiary was a Labour Party that had also committed to leaving the single market, but was strongly against the changes to social care and winter fuel payment.
The two parties vigorously campaigning against a hard Brexit, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, slumped for the whole campaign.
This is a rejection of a hard Brexit apparently.
Depends if you believed the polls, which seem likely to have been overestimating Tory share for some time, and in any case those most affected by the manifesto content largely voted for you anyway. Young people are angry with the Tories, and they're not the ones who are dying at a rate of several thousand per week. The next generation of oldies, the Generation X'ers, are nowhere near as well disposed to the Tories as the Boomers were, for whom voting Tory is and was a lifestyle thing.
Underestimate this at your peril, or else you are heading for a 1997 result next time.
The local election results suggest the Tories weren't being overestimated. They were ahead then shot themselves in the foot with social care and pensioner benefits.
All the evidence suggests that the Tories were ahead, but never by as much as the fiddled polls suggested. YouGov's model (and the local elections) imply a national Tory lead before the election was called of around 4-6%, which, had it been reported, wouldn't been enough to have persuaded May to chance it IMHO.
Cameron's majority was therefore probably both gained and lost due to the false picture being painted by VI opinion polling. Karma of sorts?
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
Perhaps not. Another perspective might be that the lions share of spending has gone to London - which is essentially the local interest of the UK parliament - for decades. A corrective to this might not be entirely a bad thing.
And at least the DUP money will be spent in this country.
Planned Overseas Aid = Bad Unplanned Ulster Bung = Good
What's a billion quid or rather approx £24bn between the new bosom pals of the Con/DUP APP ?
It all comes from the same magic money tree only some is being distributed outside of the UK and some within it.
But perhaps you can explain where the £24bn comes from. If you say WFA and TLP then you're even more inaccurate than your election prediction.
Another magic money tree follower ?!?
Presumably the Conservative manifesto was costed somewhere and not just on the back of a fag packet. If the savings from not implementing WFA and TLP changes are dropped where is the shortfall coming from? .... presumably another magic money tree in the same orchard?
So you can't explain the £24bn - thought not.
But we are on the magic money tree and that's because the country wants to be. On a purely practical issue there is no chance of getting restrictions on TLP and WFA through parliament irrespective of the DUP stance.
Still interesting to see you having reservations about the magic money tree now - I don't remember you being so concerned when Osborne was borrowing hundreds of billions more from those same magic money trees than he said he would.
Utter garbage. We are on the magic money tree because a humiliated and exhausted PM had to harvest its fruits to buy off a crazed bunch of regionalist sectarian homophobes so she could limp on in government. Nothing you can say or do will change that undeniable fact. And it will be repeated back to the Tories over and over and over again. Suck it up.
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
These negotiations will only happen when there is a hung parliament. I don't think that happens enough to make a big difference to voting behaviour. Besides, Cornwall already has so many more blessings than every other county of the United Kingdom, so it would seem rather unfair to get more public spending too.
The more regional movements there are, the more likely hung parliaments are. It's - potentially - a self-reinforcing cycle.
A smaller scale example would be local councils which become infested with various independent groups.
I don't know if there has been any study into how that affects the local governance and economy.
It is a measure of how utterly diminished May is that her unnecessary election campaign was convincingly taken apart this morning on R4 by..... Grant Shapps.
To be fair to Grant Shapps, he does know how to run a Tory majority winning general election campaign, unlike Mrs May.
He does seem to be another one of May's unnecessary enemies, now coming back to haunt her.
It seems she didn't like nearly all of the Cameroons. Osborne is one thing, but to make enemies of so many of them was a bad idea.
Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Amber Rudd and Justine Greening are currently serving in her cabinet.
I said 'nearly all' as opposed to all. Though Michael Gove doesn't really count after what happened during EUref. That leaves about three names you've mentioned there, which doesn't really refute the assertion that she's made enemies of many Cameroons unless the likes of Nicky Morgan, Grant Shapps, Anna Soubry, Osborne, Craig Oliver and so on don't exist anymore.
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
Scot Nats are focused on independence not more dependence
And at least the DUP money will be spent in this country.
Planned Overseas Aid = Bad Unplanned Ulster Bung = Good
What's a billion quid or rather approx £24bn between the new bosom pals of the Con/DUP APP ?
It all comes from the same magic money tree only some is being distributed outside of the UK and some within it.
But perhaps you can explain where the £24bn comes from. If you say WFA and TLP then you're even more inaccurate than your election prediction.
Another magic money tree follower ?!?
Presumably the Conservative manifesto was costed somewhere and not just on the back of a fag packet. If the savings from not implementing WFA and TLP changes are dropped where is the shortfall coming from? .... presumably another magic money tree in the same orchard?
So you can't explain the £24bn - thought not.
But we are on the magic money tree and that's because the country wants to be. On a purely practical issue there is no chance of getting restrictions on TLP and WFA through parliament irrespective of the DUP stance.
Still interesting to see you having reservations about the magic money tree now - I don't remember you being so concerned when Osborne was borrowing hundreds of billions more from those same magic money trees than he said he would.
Utter garbage. We are on the magic money tree because a humiliated and exhausted PM had to harvest its fruits to buy off a crazed bunch of regionalist sectarian homophobes so she could limp on in government. Nothing you can say or do will change that undeniable fact. And it will be repeated back to the Tories over and over and over again. Suck it up.
Shocked by the lack of knowledge about British MPs named Hannibal.
TSE replied earlier. Keep up.
Hold on. Wasn't there a Tory backbencher with Hannibal as a middle name back in the 80s? It will come to me later, probably shortly after someone else posts his name on here.
The situation is quite simple. The Tories can find 1.4 billion for NI because the DUP will keep them in power. They won't find money for public sector pay rises etc because they reckon the votes of nurses etc won't come to them or keep them in power. You do what is practical and power efficient, not what is power inefficient. It sucks, but that is humanity under a money based system. There will always be money for pork barrels and the pump priming of warcraft.
And at least the DUP money will be spent in this country.
Planned Overseas Aid = Bad Unplanned Ulster Bung = Good
What's a billion quid or rather approx £24bn between the new bosom pals of the Con/DUP APP ?
It all comes from the same magic money tree only some is being distributed outside of the UK and some within it.
But perhaps you can explain where the £24bn comes from. If you say WFA and TLP then you're even more inaccurate than your election prediction.
Another magic money tree follower ?!?
Presumably the Conservative manifesto was costed somewhere and not just on the back of a fag packet. If the savings from not implementing WFA and TLP changes are dropped where is the shortfall coming from? .... presumably another magic money tree in the same orchard?
So you can't explain the £24bn - thought not.
But we are on the magic money tree and that's because the country wants to be. On a purely practical issue there is no chance of getting restrictions on TLP and WFA through parliament irrespective of the DUP stance.
Still interesting to see you having reservations about the magic money tree now - I don't remember you being so concerned when Osborne was borrowing hundreds of billions more from those same magic money trees than he said he would.
Utter garbage. We are on the magic money tree because a humiliated and exhausted PM had to harvest its fruits to buy off a crazed bunch of regionalist sectarian homophobes so she could limp on in government. Nothing you can say or do will change that undeniable fact. And it will be repeated back to the Tories over and over and over again. Suck it up.
That's no way to be talking about Gordon Brown.
Brown only got one vote for a DUP bung - at least May's got two years and possibly more....
But we are on the magic money tree and that's because the country wants to be. On a purely practical issue there is no chance of getting restrictions on TLP and WFA through parliament irrespective of the DUP stance.
Still interesting to see you having reservations about the magic money tree now - I don't remember you being so concerned when Osborne was borrowing hundreds of billions more from those same magic money trees than he said he would.
The approx £24bn I quoted comes from :
£1bn extra cash and about £750m in post BREXIT farm subsidies. Not implementing WFA reform - approx £8bn. TLP about £14.5bn
I never believed in the magic money tree whether Brown or Osborne were plucking billions from the tree. Sustainable debt levels are one thing but sound money is the key to economic success.
And at least the DUP money will be spent in this country.
Planned Overseas Aid = Bad Unplanned Ulster Bung = Good
What's a billion quid or rather approx £24bn between the new bosom pals of the Con/DUP APP ?
It all comes from the same magic money tree only some is being distributed outside of the UK and some within it.
But perhaps you can explain where the £24bn comes from. If you say WFA and TLP then you're even more inaccurate than your election prediction.
Another magic money tree follower ?!?
Presumably the Conservative manifesto was costed somewhere and not just on the back of a fag packet. If the savings from not implementing WFA and TLP changes are dropped where is the shortfall coming from? .... presumably another magic money tree in the same orchard?
So you can't explain the £24bn - thought not.
But we are on the magic money tree and that's because the country wants to be. On a purely practical issue there is no chance of getting restrictions on TLP and WFA through parliament irrespective of the DUP stance.
Still interesting to see you having reservations about the magic money tree now - I don't remember you being so concerned when Osborne was borrowing hundreds of billions more from those same magic money trees than he said he would.
Utter garbage. We are on the magic money tree because a humiliated and exhausted PM had to harvest its fruits to buy off a crazed bunch of regionalist sectarian homophobes so she could limp on in government. Nothing you can say or do will change that undeniable fact. And it will be repeated back to the Tories over and over and over again. Suck it up.
That's no way to be talking about Gordon Brown.
Brown only got one vote for a DUP bung - at least May's got two years and possibly more....
Well we finally seem to have found some government spending that the PB lefties oppose.
Almost as revelatory as last weeks:
Higher pay for public sector workers = good Higher pay for agricultural workers = bad
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
I think there were plenty of reasons for the regions to want to further themselves, maybe at the expense of others, before this latest deal.
Davidson and her Scottish contingent would appear to have the biggest problem, since their votes should be as valuable as the DUP yet they have nothing to show for it.
She must do things a lot less publicly plus, I can't see the circumstances under which an SCON contingent would vote against the Cons, any more than any other region full of Cons MPs might.
Now that we have a new demographic to consider-the youth vote-it's difficult to see a Brexiteer either winning an election to be leader of their party or a general election.
May and Corbyn were successful by appearing to straddle both camps. May then screwed it up with the most rapid damascene conversion since St Paul.
The country is divided and no one likes to see a divided country. I don't think there's any doubt that May becomming the brexiest Brexiteer in the land was what did it for the Tories. Corbyn is still the Corbyn his own party were laughing at just a few months ago and she couldn't beat him.
Johnson Davis Patel are dead in the water. It can only be Hammond. How are the mighty fallen.....
Shocked by the lack of knowledge about British MPs named Hannibal.
TSE replied earlier. Keep up.
Hold on. Wasn't there a Tory backbencher with Hannibal as a middle name back in the 80s? It will come to me later, probably shortly after someone else posts his name on here.
Sir Peter Emery. That's the chap. Maybe more 70s than 80s.
Peter Frank Hannibal Emery was born in London on February 27 1926; he was the son of a small clothing manufacturer, FG Emery, and claimed descent from a famous sailor, Captain Hannibal, whose grain-carrying schooners plied between Plymouth and Australia. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1478849/Sir-Peter-Emery.html
Regarding the DUP deal, I do wonder if there is a longer term risk to British democracy.
(Hear me out.)
If I were an ambitious, sensible and smart leader of the Scottish nationalists, I would be thinking less about Scottish independence and more about Scottish pork. Bringing government spending to Scotland would seem to be a surer route to re-election than another referendum. "Only we will stand up for Scottish interests, and only we can bring jobs to Scotland" is a pretty effective rallying cry.
Now imagine you were sitting in Cornwall. It's another poorer part of the UK, with strong regional identity. It even has an existing nationalist party. Perhaps it could run candidates that would stand up and bring pork to Cornwall? The LibDems and Labour Party are weak there, and someone standing up for local interests who could bring a billion pounds to the region... well that would look pretty attractive.
I suspect I'm wrong. But if regionalism - and begger thy neighbour politics - is seen to pay, then we will get more of it. This is not a good thing.
Scot Nats are focused on independence not more dependence
To coin a catchy slogan.
If they were they'd be asking for less money from Westminster, not more.......
Now that we have a new demographic to consider-the youth vote-it's difficult to see a Brexiteer either winning an election to be leader of their party or a general election.
May and Corbyn were successful by appearing to straddle both camps. May then screwed it up with the most rapid damascene conversion since St Paul.
The country is divided and no one likes to see a divided country. I don't think there's any doubt that May becomming the brexiest Brexiteer in the land was what did it for the Tories. Corbyn is still the Corbyn his own party were laughing at just a few months ago and she couldn't beat him.
Johnson Davis Patel are dead in the water. It can only be Hammond. How are the mighty fallen.....
I think I agree with this. She wanted to deliver Hard Brexit (yes, I know) and that simply ignored a large part of the electorate. She could say: I will govern for rich and poor and help the poor, but she found herself unable to say: I will seek a Brexit that we can all support.
Now, of course, there may not be a Brexit that we can all support, but it's what she should have said and tried to achieve.
The situation is quite simple. The Tories can find 1.4 billion for NI because the DUP will keep them in power. They won't find money for public sector pay rises etc because they reckon the votes of nurses etc won't come to them or keep them in power. You do what is practical and power efficient, not what is power inefficient. It sucks, but that is humanity under a money based system. There will always be money for pork barrels and the pump priming of warcraft.
At the end of the day - all countries have to have a bit of pork spending to grease the wheels from time to time. Build an airport or a road here to keep so and so happy even though it's probably not the best investment etc.
It would be interesting to see analysis - but I imagine the UK system is probably fairly good at reducing this sort of spending as we tend to have strong, centralised government.
I certainly think we aren't as prone to it as the US or the EU.
But we are on the magic money tree and that's because the country wants to be. On a purely practical issue there is no chance of getting restrictions on TLP and WFA through parliament irrespective of the DUP stance.
Still interesting to see you having reservations about the magic money tree now - I don't remember you being so concerned when Osborne was borrowing hundreds of billions more from those same magic money trees than he said he would.
The approx £24bn I quoted comes from :
£1bn extra cash and about £750m in post BREXIT farm subsidies. Not implementing WFA reform - approx £8bn. TLP about £14.5bn
I never believed in the magic money tree whether Brown or Osborne were plucking billions from the tree. Sustainable debt levels are one thing but sound money is the key to economic success.
TLP reform only saves money when 2.5% is the highest of the three locks and that's unlikely in the near future.
And if the effect of TLPs concern you then I would have expected some criticism of it from 2010 onwards.
Likewise on WFA I don't think we had any idea at what level restrictions were planned. In reality such changes tend to be diluted down to minimise the effect.
In any case there was no chance of restrictions being implemented on either TLP or WFA after the election, irrespective of the DUP.
Nor, for that matter, was there any chance of restrictions being implemented on TLP or WFA before the election. The example of the Budget's proposed NI changes shows that only a landslide majority would guarantee difficult fiscal changes.
And the British people have now shown that they want neither a government with such a majority or any fiscal changes which are detrimental to them.
So its the magic money tree for all of us, with whatever the consequences that will bring.
Now that we have a new demographic to consider-the youth vote-it's difficult to see a Brexiteer either winning an election to be leader of their party or a general election.
You seem to have forgotten that by the next election, the UK will have already Left the EU.
Now that we have a new demographic to consider-the youth vote-it's difficult to see a Brexiteer either winning an election to be leader of their party or a general election.
You seem to have forgotten that by the next election, the UK will have already Left the EU.
Now that we have a new demographic to consider-the youth vote-it's difficult to see a Brexiteer either winning an election to be leader of their party or a general election.
You seem to have forgotten that by the next election, the UK will have already Left the EU.
Now that we have a new demographic to consider-the youth vote-it's difficult to see a Brexiteer either winning an election to be leader of their party or a general election.
You seem to have forgotten that by the next election, the UK will have already Left the EU.
On topic. I probably wouldn't vote for a Davis-led Tory party (assuming I'm ever registered to vote in GB again). His petulant by-election stunt was pathetic. Only Liam Fox would be likely to have a similar effect on me.
Though I guess I might if the alternative was still Corbyn.
Victoria Derbyshire Show - The MoD just got a richly deserved pounding from the mother and sister of Lee Rigby over their total failure after his funeral.
On topic. I probably wouldn't vote for a Davis-led Tory party (assuming I'm ever registered to vote in GB again). His petulant by-election stunt was pathetic. Only Liam Fox would be likely to have a similar effect on me.
Though I guess I might if the alternative was still Corbyn.
Christ.
Could be worse, you could have a vote in the Tory leadership contest.
Like JohnO, were the two choices Boris or Davis, I'll be likely spoiling my ballot paper.
In 2010 three quarters of British people polled said they were considering emigrating as they wanted to leave the UK. That is equivalent to 45 million people - not 1 million EU migrants.
Oddly I haven't noticed 45 million people Leaving the UK in the last seven years,
Lots of people consider lots of things in their lives - but they don't necessarily act on them.
A lot of this hysteria is based on some weird idea put round in some quarters that come March 2019 3 million EU citizens somehow face being deported overnight. When they calm down and work out they can stay and carry on as before as May has proposed how many really will uproot and leave?
I am tired of could, and might when it comes to Brexit - I would prefer a bit more will and are!
It just demonstrates the bunkum we are having to observe at the moment.
Just catching up on the LBC phone in with the woman in the Kensington block who doesn't want Grenfell residents there because her service charge is £15,500 a year and they'll get it for free. Her argument is that her and her husband have worked hard for their money. If we explode the myth that all Grenfell residents are scrounging benefit claimants I think we can assume that many of them have worked hard their whole life too, just not perhaps in such a cushy little earner as the complainant and her spouse. So, what they are actually saying is they shouldn't be allowed to live there is because they are not rich, and she is. It's one thing that Ticks me off more than anything, people with money thinking they are the only ones that have worked hard for what they have. Channeling my Trotskyite grandparents here when I say screw them and their piles of cash.
I wish the media would give Scottish politics coverage proportionate to its share of the UK population.
Davis should not have made his statement about getting a motion of consent - they can just insert a clause in the Great Repeal Bill to give it effect notwithstanding the Scotland Acts.
I suspect May will stay until the Brexit deal has been agreed, then stand down. Davis chances will hinge upon how well the deal is perceived - and we've got another 18 months to see who else emerges as a potential leader. I'm not sure the Tories will want to experiment again with a 'safe pair of hands whose a bit dull' leader......
I'm in a soak the rich mood today. Come on Corbyn, announce a proposal for a one off wealth tax to pay for the refurbishment and infrastructure around our crap tower housing to bring them up to scratch and make safe. Then it can easily be done again and again. Fuck em. Go on Jezza, do it, do it.
Just catching up on the LBC phone in with the woman in the Kensington block who doesn't want Grenfell residents there because her service charge is £15,500 a year and they'll get it for free. Her argument is that her and her husband have worked hard for their money. If we explode the myth that all Grenfell residents are scrounging benefit claimants I think we can assume that many of them have worked hard their whole life too, just not perhaps in such a cushy little earner as the complainant and her spouse. So, what they are actually saying is they shouldn't be allowed to live there is because they are not rich, and she is. It's one thing that Ticks me off more than anything, people with money thinking they are the only ones that have worked hard for what they have. Channeling my Trotskyite grandparents here when I say screw them and their piles of cash.
So everyone who works hard should get the taxpayer to provide them with free housing in a multi million pound block in Kensington with £15k a year service charges.
What would be wrong with a house with a garden in outer London - which is a much more suitable environment for young kids than a block of flats. It's the choice most working Londoners have to make as they are priced out of zones 1 to 3.
There are right and proper temporary measures - but long term it perhaps isn't a good use of taxpayers money. You don't have to live in Kensington - sorry!
Comments
But perhaps you can explain where the £24bn comes from. If you say WFA and TLP then you're even more inaccurate than your election prediction.
In other news, the Brexit temperature in Australia is warm to hot. A few months ago it was tepid apparently. Ideal Brexit is seen as Britain staying in the single market but also becoming an independent member of the WTO, lots of people I spoke to today think that we'd bring a new and powerful voice for services trade liberalisation to the WTO, something the EU doesn't do at all.
Edit: sorry, obvious joke.
Sadly by making no clear distinction between honest careless or even negligent mistakes does not do our democracy any favours. I give you the example of the DUP being fined for declaring local expenses on national returns, when they also declared them locally. In effect being fined for over declaring. Utter nonsense.
May's decision to exempt Scotland from WFA restrictions was idiotically dangerous.
It really was an encouragement to regional demands
Underestimate this at your peril, or else you are heading for a 1997 result next time.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/26/former-candidates-sue-conservative-party-after-missing-out-on-mep-posts
We're have seen how that worked out.
Agree with your lay...
Nia Griffith at 419-1?
Apparently you are a stranger to how to frame a problem.
Presumably the Conservative manifesto was costed somewhere and not just on the back of a fag packet. If the savings from not implementing WFA and TLP changes are dropped where is the shortfall coming from? .... presumably another magic money tree in the same orchard?
Young people voting Labour at such high levels is a worry, but more of a long term one for me. We must fix it by addressing their concerns about good jobs, high housing costs and high student debt. We are already delivering on the first, but we must build a lot of new housing and do something on student debt. I think we should come up with a new savings account where you can save money for your first property before your income is calculated for student loan repayment.
To coin a catchy slogan.
But we are on the magic money tree and that's because the country wants to be. On a purely practical issue there is no chance of getting restrictions on TLP and WFA through parliament irrespective of the DUP stance.
Still interesting to see you having reservations about the magic money tree now - I don't remember you being so concerned when Osborne was borrowing hundreds of billions more from those same magic money trees than he said he would.
Cameron's majority was therefore probably both gained and lost due to the false picture being painted by VI opinion polling. Karma of sorts?
Another perspective might be that the lions share of spending has gone to London - which is essentially the local interest of the UK parliament - for decades. A corrective to this might not be entirely a bad thing.
https://iea.org.uk/publications/should-the-uk-pay-an-eu-divorce-bill/
I don't know if there has been any study into how that affects the local governance and economy.
You do what is practical and power efficient, not what is power inefficient. It sucks, but that is humanity under a money based system.
There will always be money for pork barrels and the pump priming of warcraft.
Anyway the next quiz is how many Victorian era UK monarchs can you name?
Your pathetic fangirl act really is unbecoming of a Oxford graduate in her sixties who really ought to be old and bright enough to have her own mind.
America's 15th Vice President was called Hannibal Hamlin.
Al Gore grew up in Carthage, so another loser from Carthage, just like Hannibal.
I think he'll go down with May's ship.
I was previously backing him, now i've traded out - and will be looking to lay him at the right odds.
£1bn extra cash and about £750m in post BREXIT farm subsidies. Not implementing WFA reform - approx £8bn. TLP about £14.5bn
I never believed in the magic money tree whether Brown or Osborne were plucking billions from the tree. Sustainable debt levels are one thing but sound money is the key to economic success.
Except that gag about the need for the Tories to make London more like Mansfield. That was hilarious.
Almost as revelatory as last weeks:
Higher pay for public sector workers = good
Higher pay for agricultural workers = bad
May and Corbyn were successful by appearing to straddle both camps. May then screwed it up with the most rapid damascene conversion since St Paul.
The country is divided and no one likes to see a divided country. I don't think there's any doubt that May becomming the brexiest Brexiteer in the land was what did it for the Tories. Corbyn is still the Corbyn his own party were laughing at just a few months ago and she couldn't beat him.
Johnson Davis Patel are dead in the water. It can only be Hammond. How are the mighty fallen.....
Peter Frank Hannibal Emery was born in London on February 27 1926; he was the son of a small clothing manufacturer, FG Emery, and claimed descent from a famous sailor, Captain Hannibal, whose grain-carrying schooners plied between Plymouth and Australia.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1478849/Sir-Peter-Emery.html
Now, of course, there may not be a Brexit that we can all support, but it's what she should have said and tried to achieve.
It would be interesting to see analysis - but I imagine the UK system is probably fairly good at reducing this sort of spending as we tend to have strong, centralised government.
I certainly think we aren't as prone to it as the US or the EU.
Edited extra bit: *driver, ahem.
And if the effect of TLPs concern you then I would have expected some criticism of it from 2010 onwards.
Likewise on WFA I don't think we had any idea at what level restrictions were planned. In reality such changes tend to be diluted down to minimise the effect.
In any case there was no chance of restrictions being implemented on either TLP or WFA after the election, irrespective of the DUP.
Nor, for that matter, was there any chance of restrictions being implemented on TLP or WFA before the election. The example of the Budget's proposed NI changes shows that only a landslide majority would guarantee difficult fiscal changes.
And the British people have now shown that they want neither a government with such a majority or any fiscal changes which are detrimental to them.
So its the magic money tree for all of us, with whatever the consequences that will bring.
Brexit is the new Corn Laws.
I've just opened the packaging of a bath mat that I bought the other day. The package contains usage instructions.
Usage instructions for a bath mat.
I despair.
Noone is going to plunge the knife in the next two days, it'd have been done a week ago.
Though I guess I might if the alternative was still Corbyn.
Christ.
https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/879618975881207812
Like JohnO, were the two choices Boris or Davis, I'll be likely spoiling my ballot paper.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1275878/Three-quarters-Britons-want-emigrate-Australia-popular-destination.html
Oddly I haven't noticed 45 million people Leaving the UK in the last seven years,
Lots of people consider lots of things in their lives - but they don't necessarily act on them.
A lot of this hysteria is based on some weird idea put round in some quarters that come March 2019 3 million EU citizens somehow face being deported overnight. When they calm down and work out they can stay and carry on as before as May has proposed how many really will uproot and leave?
I am tired of could, and might when it comes to Brexit - I would prefer a bit more will and are!
It just demonstrates the bunkum we are having to observe at the moment.
If we explode the myth that all Grenfell residents are scrounging benefit claimants I think we can assume that many of them have worked hard their whole life too, just not perhaps in such a cushy little earner as the complainant and her spouse. So, what they are actually saying is they shouldn't be allowed to live there is because they are not rich, and she is.
It's one thing that Ticks me off more than anything, people with money thinking they are the only ones that have worked hard for what they have. Channeling my Trotskyite grandparents here when I say screw them and their piles of cash.
Davis should not have made his statement about getting a motion of consent - they can just insert a clause in the Great Repeal Bill to give it effect notwithstanding the Scotland Acts.
Why grant a hostage to fortune?
What would be wrong with a house with a garden in outer London - which is a much more suitable environment for young kids than a block of flats. It's the choice most working Londoners have to make as they are priced out of zones 1 to 3.
There are right and proper temporary measures - but long term it perhaps isn't a good use of taxpayers money. You don't have to live in Kensington - sorry!