It's a shame the PB Tories can't match my work ethic and insight I know. You have to admire some of them though, I mean how does financier know when there's a bad poll for the Tories coming out and arrange to be busy that day? No wonder he's a high rolling gambler who only bets on certainties
It's a shame the PB Tories can't match my work ethic and insight I know. You have to admire some of them though, I mean how does financier know when there's a bad poll for the Tories coming out and arrange to be busy that day? No wonder he's a high rolling gambler who only bets on certainties
Ah Tim, FYI between 5am and 8am I am usually talking to our clients in the Far East and Australasia and building our exports. Also I am not privy the pre-publication of polls.
Also I am not a gambler - but I do invest in certainties. For example, on Friday, I was aware that a share had its value depressed below that which was its true value. Knowing both the business and its market and market conditions, on Monday early am our syndicate took an option on a few million of these shares. By 10am they had risen in value by 15p and we sold out before the profit-takers woke up. So a quick gain of about £300k for zero investment.
Now that's far better than a few £50 bets at evens that may take months to mature. I am sure that all intelligent PBers would agree.
Gambling is for losers and tim you appear to be loser - big time. A quick tip for you if you ever want to play roulette, take a small spirit level with you.
Labour's delivery on housing. In 2007 PM Gordon Brown said they would build 3 million more houses by 2020. That is a 12 year period requiring an average of 250,000 a year. In the following 3 years under Labour 550,000 were built instead of 750,000 a shortfall of 200,000 in just 3 years. This is just the mentality of stalinist tractor production announcements, which Ed Milliband looks like repeating. source for Brown http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/1568471/Gordon-Brown-to-launch-house-building-boom.html
Tom Chivers @TomChivers 16m I wish to point out that on Today earlier, Harriet Harman said "In cost-benefit analyses, you have to look at the costs, and the benefits."
Labour = we will take money off those rich, nasty bankers and give it to hard-working families.
Conservatives = we've brought you through three years of austerity and we can see the sunny uplands. Will you risk it all on the party whose spendthrift habits caused the crash?
Anyone who believes that the Eds will increase housebuilding is putting faith before reality.
Labour will no more meet their promises on housebuiling under the Eds than they did under Blair and Brown.
Is there more than one "tim"? I have a vision of a relay of "clones" doing three or four hour sessions at the computer!
More seriously, do those figures include Housing Association starts. For example, Essex Cricket Club is, in partnership with a developer, building several blocks of flats on land which it owns to finance major ground improvements, and most of one of the blocks has been pre-sold to a social housing organisation, allegedly from EastLondon.
Thats interesting
For info, by chance I had read the following earlier this morning
tim: Your study related to the USA where they have very different concepts of personal freedoms - and the houses I once heard being advertised had 1 acre plots and cost $100k (£40k in 1994).
After Brown made his "3 million more houses" announcement in 2007 the following happened to the number of houses built compared to the previous year. 2007-08 -540 2008-09 -39,750 2009-10 -25,830 2010-11 -15,550 2011-12 +8,510
Was this a Labour promise built on McBride's advice?
The thing I don't understand, is if the McBride era was so horrible (Harriet Harman this morning was doing her best to it across how traumatising it was for them all) why was she and so many others backing Brown to the hilt? Why didn't someone speak up? Is it me, or are they all by implication pretty much saying they're weak and unprincipled?
Well, quite. Talk about bad judgement - this is the party which, near-unanimously, chose Gordon Brown as leader and PM - " the most unstable and ill-suited figure to have held power in Downing Street since Robert Walpole became its first tenant in 1735", according to Anthonty Seldon.
He might have been the first political tenant, I think there was a previous tenant to Walpole , a "Mr Chicken". I am fairly sure its there somewhere on the Downing St website should you choose to peruse it.
Yes, I talked to a senior journalist at the Conference about it - he said the whole story was "fun for us but meaningless to most voters". I've had one reference to it, but from someone who was anti-Labour already.
The YG is encouraging but we need to wait for post-conference polls to judge the lasting impact. The sense from my postbag is that a bunch of people who thought all the parties were rubbish now think we're at least engaging with their worries, but they're not yet sold. What is also worth noting is the complete absence of either a negative Bloom effect or a positive UKIP conference effect. People who like UKIP still like it. People who don't, don't. Possibly this voter segment is quite hard to shift either way.
That makes it all hunky-dory and fine, then. Careers ruined by the poison spread by the acolytes of people you supported. And both the Brownites and Blairites were doing it.
Aren't you even a little bit ashamed of being involved with a party where this was going on?
It's ancient history.
Yes. It's time to move on. Learn the lessons of the past. focus on the future. Forward to the New Britain!
(and ignore the fact that the most senior members of the shadow cabinet, who you believe should govern this country, were in the room when all this was happening. They are either stupid, liars, complicit or a combination of the three. None of which makes me any happier to see them in power again)
Tom Chivers @TomChivers 16m I wish to point out that on Today earlier, Harriet Harman said "In cost-benefit analyses, you have to look at the costs, and the benefits."
Why's that a great tweet?
I assume it's a factual correction of something someone else posted?
On YouGov, its odd to see people getting excited by today's poll. It may signify something, or it may not, and we won't know for some time, but the idea that YouGov introduced a different (and erroneous) weighting policy last week, corrected it this week and today's figure is therefore somehow more valid is nonsense. The trend is worth noting: this is the first 8pt lead for Labour in 16 polls, and the first in September.There were three 8pt+ leads in August (top: 10), six in July (top: 11), twelve in June (top: 11), eighteen in May (top: 13), seventeen in April (top: 14), nineteen in March (top: 14), twenty in February (top: 15) and twenty in January (top: 13). YouGov occasionally kicks out outliers at the top and bottom of the range but the current trend is a lead of about 4pts, enough, on ther face of it, to see Labour comfortably into power. I am expecting Labour to get a boost from their conference which may persist for a while unless the Tories can find an effective response to the Labour strategy of trying to force them to side with the few against the many on issues such as taxing very high earners, corporation tax/business rates etc
Sorry Mr Flockers you are incorrect . Todays Yougov sample had a raw Labour lead of 7% before weighting adjustments and 8% after the minor changes . The dead heat poll last week had a raw Labour lead of 8% which turned into zero after adjustments which were not justified by Party ID or Past Vote . The "outlier" last week was not caused by a rogue sample , the sample was very normal as was today's , it was caused by rogue weighting adjustments .
There's the election campaign right there. Deficit reduction,growth, benefit savings, social mobility all tie in to that centrepiece. An end to the cancerous housing policies of the last 35 years.
How many houses did Brown promise to build and how many did he actually get built?
Avery claimed last night he promised to "create two million new home owners" and created two million new home owners
But as Macmillan and co recognised simply creating home owners will never ever build enough houses
Pasrt performance is often a very good guide to future performance (although, obviously, not in stocks and shares).
Labour promsied houses and missed their target by almost a quarter (2007-10).
Why should we have any confidence that they will deliver this time?
Tom Chivers @TomChivers 16m I wish to point out that on Today earlier, Harriet Harman said "In cost-benefit analyses, you have to look at the costs, and the benefits."
Why's that a great tweet?
I assume it's a factual correction of something someone else posted?
Yes, I talked to a senior journalist at the Conference about it - he said the whole story was "fun for us but meaningless to most voters". I've had one reference to it, but from someone who was anti-Labour already.
The YG is encouraging but we need to wait for post-conference polls to judge the lasting impact. The sense from my postbag is that a bunch of people who thought all the parties were rubbish now think we're at least engaging with their worries, but they're not yet sold. What is also worth noting is the complete absence of either a negative Bloom effect or a positive UKIP conference effect. People who like UKIP still like it. People who don't, don't. Possibly this voter segment is quite hard to shift either way.
That makes it all hunky-dory and fine, then. Careers ruined by the poison spread by the acolytes of people you supported. And both the Brownites and Blairites were doing it.
Aren't you even a little bit ashamed of being involved with a party where this was going on?
It's ancient history.
Yes. It's time to move on. Learn the lessons of the past. focus on the future. Forward to the New Britain!
(and ignore the fact that the most senior members of the shadow cabinet, who you believe should govern this country, were in the room when all this was happening. They are either stupid, liars, complicit or a combination of the three. None of which makes me any happier to see them in power again)
They were not literally in the room. That would be absurd.
"Ed Miliband stakes the house on huge new-build programme and tax cut Labour leader to promise 200,000 new homes a year by 2020, and will echo Reagan by asking voters: 'Are you better off now?'" http://www.theguardian.com/uk?view=mobile @georgeeaton: Miliband's pledge to build a million new homes could be the game-changer he needs http://t.co/O7ntYGd76b There's the election campaign right there. Deficit reduction,growth, benefit savings, social mobility all tie in to that centrepiece. An end to the cancerous housing policies of the last 35 years.
How many houses did Brown promise to build and how many did he actually get built?
Avery claimed last night he promised to "create two million new home owners" and created two million new home owners
But as Macmillan and co recognised simply creating home owners will never ever build enough houses
Pasrt performance is often a very good guide to future performance (although, obviously, not in stocks and shares). Labour promised houses and missed their target by almost a quarter (2007-10). Why should we have any confidence that they will deliver this time?
(Pedant award?) Brown promised 250,000 a year in 2007 and then after 3 years just 550,000 were built, that 200,000 shortfall is a miss of 27%, slightly more than a quarter.
Taleah @TaleahPrince while a gang of Islamic terrorists were killing in the name of Allah in Nairobi, another Islamic gang was bombing 75 Christians in Pakistan
I saw this story about the killing of Christians in Pakistan by suicide bombers on Sunday evenings BBC news after the report on the killing of anyone but Muslims by Muslim terrorists in Kenya
Yes. It's time to move on. Learn the lessons of the past. focus on the future. Forward to the New Britain!
(and ignore the fact that the most senior members of the shadow cabinet, who you believe should govern this country, were in the room when all this was happening. They are either stupid, liars, complicit or a combination of the three. None of which makes me any happier to see them in power again)
I don't think either you or Bobajob quite get it Charles.
Of recent (hardly ancient) historical interest they self-evidently are since this is all about what he did while in the employ of Brown. So yes, Mr Smithson has a point about those revelations not shifting many votes in 2015. However, those claiming they have no relevance to current events might care to ask, say, Tom Watson, Murphy, wee Dougie, Tom Harris, brother David and most of the current shadow cabinet including little Ed (who, lest we forget, was subject to the uber Blairites and their whisper campaigns more than once already) whether the Brown Blair split is really ancient history? The fact of the matter is it is not.
In the same way the split in the tory party over the EU has never healed the same goes for the Brown Blair split. Both have the power to resurface at almost any time and cause the leaders of their parties intense discomfort.
I'd be interested to see how vehemently tim condems this gross act of centralisation.
Business rates are the responsibility of local authorities (this is a real issue, for instance in RBKC, where it is making retail a very challenging operation). Corporation tax is collected centrally...
Surely not in any real sense? Business rates are set centrally, collected locally, delivered centrally and then redistributed. The Lyons enquiry in 2009 looked at proposals to localise them and rejected them. Miliband's proposals, whatever their virtuers or otherwise, only relate to the rate, which is centrally-set - he's not proposing some change to how they are collected.
Tom Chivers @TomChivers 16m I wish to point out that on Today earlier, Harriet Harman said "In cost-benefit analyses, you have to look at the costs, and the benefits."
Why's that a great tweet?
I assume it's a factual correction of something someone else posted?
I posted it at 07:55 from Sunny.
I know - but why is a factual correction a "great tweet"?
They were not literally in the room. That would be absurd.
Are you not even remotely concerned that a group of people who were complicit in this kind of behaviour will potentially form the Cabinet after the next election?
I can't believe anybody is getting caught out with this spin from Ed on house building...Tim is cheer-leading this as if Labour win in 2015, forget "Fire Up the Quattro", it will be "Fire up the Cement Mixer".
From the puff piece in the Guardian, it says to get to 200k new houses, but Ed is talking about this for 7 years time. Comparing house building numbers from the good times in the mid 2000's that is about the level we were at, and the government at the time said it still wasn't anywhere near enough and we needed at least 250k a year (which they failed miserably on).
So basically Ed is proposing that in 7 years time we will be building again like the good times. Well I should bl##dy hope the economy is going better by then.
That is hardly Ed claiming he is going to roll out of some bold radical new deal style housing for the masses come 2015, which the likes of Tim keep telling us we need yesterday.
So the briefing is that Ed will promise 200,000 new house builds each year. In 2007 Brown promised 250,000 and fell short by over 65,000 each year. History repeating?
The thing I don't understand, is if the McBride era was so horrible (Harriet Harman this morning was doing her best to it across how traumatising it was for them all) why was she and so many others backing Brown to the hilt? Why didn't someone speak up? Is it me, or are they all by implication pretty much saying they're weak and unprincipled?
Well, quite. Talk about bad judgement - this is the party which, near-unanimously, chose Gordon Brown as leader and PM - " the most unstable and ill-suited figure to have held power in Downing Street since Robert Walpole became its first tenant in 1735", according to Anthonty Seldon.
He might have been the first political tenant, I think there was a previous tenant to Walpole , a "Mr Chicken". I am fairly sure its there somewhere on the Downing St website should you choose to peruse it.
Sorry, couldn’t resist – I enjoy factiods..!
“The original numbering of the Downing Street houses was completely different from what we see today. The sequence of numbers was haphazard, and the houses tended to be known by the name or title of their occupants. The current Number 10 started out life as Number 5, and was not renumbered until 1779.
The Downing Street house had several distinguished residents. The Countess of Yarmouth lived at Number 10 between 1688 and 1689, and was followed by Lord Lansdowne from 1692 to 1696 and the Earl of Grantham from 1699 to 1703. The last private resident of Downing's terrace was one Mr Chicken. Little is known about him except that he moved out in the early 1730s.”
Yes. It's time to move on. Learn the lessons of the past. focus on the future. Forward to the New Britain!
(and ignore the fact that the most senior members of the shadow cabinet, who you believe should govern this country, were in the room when all this was happening. They are either stupid, liars, complicit or a combination of the three. None of which makes me any happier to see them in power again)
I don't think either you or Bobajob quite get it Charles.
Of recent (hardly ancient) historical interest they self-evidently are since this is all about what he did while in the employ of Brown. So yes, Mr Smithson has a point about those revelations not shifting many votes in 2015. However, those claiming they have no relevance to current events might care to ask, say, Tom Watson, Murphy, wee Dougie, Tom Harris, brother David and most of the current shadow cabinet including little Ed (who, lest we forget, was subject to the uber Blairites and their whisper campaigns more than once already) whether the Brown Blair split is really ancient history? The fact of the matter is it is not.
In the same way the split in the tory party over the EU has never healed the same goes for the Brown Blair split. Both have the power to resurface at almost any time and cause the leaders of their parties intense discomfort.
I don't think it will shift many votes either way. I take your point that it may strain relationships in the party, but I think the Blairites are done, defeated. The difference with the Thatcherites is while she stayed around as a idol to follow, Blair has happily swanned off to make money, so it is difficult to hold fast to him in the same way.
For me the biggest impact is that it overshadowed the conference - may be not important - but another opportunity to get Labour's message out there.
The biggest worry is that so many on the left just don't care about the evil that was done in their name. Is power really worth so much to them?
Taleah @TaleahPrince while a gang of Islamic terrorists were killing in the name of Allah in Nairobi, another Islamic gang was bombing 75 Christians in Pakistan
dunno. i don't bother with telly news any more except to occasionally see how they're spinning something specific to the people who still trust them.
They were not literally in the room. That would be absurd.
Are you not even remotely concerned that a group of people who were complicit in this kind of behaviour will potentially form the Cabinet after the next election?
Have I stopped beating my wife, do you mean? You beg the question of whether any Shadow Cabinet members were complicit.
They were not literally in the room. That would be absurd.
Are you not even remotely concerned that a group of people who were complicit in this kind of behaviour will potentially form the Cabinet after the next election?
Have I stopped beating my wife, do you mean? You beg the question of whether any Shadow Cabinet members were complicit.
I do. The other option is that they were stupid. Of course people knew that vile briefing was going on - ever since Charlie Whelan was sacked, if not earlier.
Being aware of something and failing to stop it is indicative of their moral compass.
Yes, I talked to a senior journalist at the Conference about it - he said the whole story was "fun for us but meaningless to most voters". I've had one reference to it, but from someone who was anti-Labour already.
The YG is encouraging but we need to wait for post-conference polls to judge the lasting impact. The sense from my postbag is that a bunch of people who thought all the parties were rubbish now think we're at least engaging with their worries, but they're not yet sold. What is also worth noting is the complete absence of either a negative Bloom effect or a positive UKIP conference effect. People who like UKIP still like it. People who don't, don't. Possibly this voter segment is quite hard to shift either way.
That makes it all hunky-dory and fine, then. Careers ruined by the poison spread by the acolytes of people you supported. And both the Brownites and Blairites were doing it.
Aren't you even a little bit ashamed of being involved with a party where this was going on?
I don't think it will shift many votes either way. I take your point that it may strain relationships in the party, but I think the Blairites are done, defeated. The difference with the Thatcherites is while she stayed around as a idol to follow, Blair has happily swanned off to make money, so it is difficult to hold fast to him in the same way.
For me the biggest impact is that it overshadowed the conference - may be not important - but another opportunity to get Labour's message out there.
The biggest worry is that so many on the left just don't care about the evil that was done in their name. Is power really worth so much to them?
They were all gunning for Cerise at the beginning but when it looked like the Cameroons were guaranteed to be a one-term wonder they mostly stopped. Now the Cameroons losing seems less certain they've started up again - at least for now.
Also the distinction Brownite and Blairite is (imo) Brownite = lobby fodder Blairite = lobbyist fodder
It's not really about Blair. It's just a convenient label.
I don't think it will shift many votes either way. I take your point that it may strain relationships in the party, but I think the Blairites are done, defeated.
Pfft. Then you don't know the Blairites. Just because their dear leader has other more lucrative ventures these days hardly means Hodges or his ilk are about to concede a thing to to the Brownites, or indeed vice versa.
The biggest worry is that so many on the left just don't care about the evil that was done in their name. Is power really worth so much to them?
Bit sweeping. I don't recall many on here or elsewhere blaming the tories for the kippers comedic incompetence at their conference just because both parties are on the right.
In the same way claiming everyone on the left was fine with the poison that seeped from Campbell/Mandelson or McBride/Whelan is a just wee bit of a stretch. Far more accurate to say that so many in labour seem to be fine with it. Though again I presume that would also depend on which side of the Blair Brown split they lean well as how recent they were monstered by either side.
I must say though, I admire the high hilltop and vantage point of moral superiority from which you view these things Charles. Let's hope you are securely perched because a fall could be vertiginous.
They were not literally in the room. That would be absurd.
Are you not even remotely concerned that a group of people who were complicit in this kind of behaviour will potentially form the Cabinet after the next election?
Have I stopped beating my wife, do you mean? You beg the question of whether any Shadow Cabinet members were complicit.
Antony Shedon – said "He [Brown] surrounded himself with a coterie that included Balls, Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander, Charlie Whelan, McBride and Tom Watson, who reinforced his sense of injustice.”
Ali Campbell said “a main flaw of Mr Brown was his need for "truly horrible people to be around him, doing truly horrible things in politics".”
Despite the protestations to the contrary by various members of Labour’s front bench – Shedon and Cambbell between the two give a far clearer picture of who knew what was going on within No.10
Taleah @TaleahPrince while a gang of Islamic terrorists were killing in the name of Allah in Nairobi, another Islamic gang was bombing 75 Christians in Pakistan
Thank you for the corrected link to voting patterns in Germany. (Sorry for the late reply but had a long call from KSA.)
I find these historic-based patterns interesting as I once lived and worked behind the "Wall". To this day, some people (usually the older people) prefer the certainties (jobs, income, housing etc) of living under the totalitarian state to the uncertainties of living in a capitalist regime. Recently I have found the same attitudes of many living in the Baltic States who have been free of the USSR for about 20 years.
I would not be at all surprised if we saw more than 200K homes being built in 2014 given the way that private housebuilders are responding to the freeing up of credit. Not enough of course given the backlog on past performance and our rapidly increasing population but enough to make these promises by Ed either something that has aleady been achieved by Mr Osborne (in the short term) or meaningless, take your pick.
Taking a step back the problem with Labour promises is that they (and other parties to be fair) have yet to come to terms with how Brown's disaster has diminished and changed the role of government for the foreseeable future. Rather than trying to find ever more promises on how to spend more money Labour (and the Conservatives next week) should be focussing on the much less fun question of what are our priorities and what can we cut?
Claiming, for example, that a tiny tax cut on rates is "funded" by a change in CT is just nonsense in the overall context of a major deficit and frankly terrifying debt level. We may well need to put up CT anyway, simply to stop the borrowing. We will need to increase taxes not for sexy new spending but to reduce borrowing. There is no money left. Really. And playing at rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic is a rather pointless displacement activity until we come to terms with that.
Miss Plato, wasn't the Pakistan incident mentioned here?
I didn't see it on the news last night.
I certainly didn't see mention of it anywhere in the MSM - I was occupied by #Lab13 but it seems a noteworthy story that's been missed entirely.
It was mentioned on the BBC News (for one) at the weekend.
Quite so Sunil and indeed every major news network. Kenya obviously took precedent because of the ongoing and unresolved nature of the events but both were reported.
tim: Your study related to the USA where they have very different concepts of personal freedoms - and the houses I once heard being advertised had 1 acre plots and cost $100k (£40k in 1994).
Well you clearly didnt read it then
"Immigration and property prices: Evidence from England and Wales"
The clue was in the title
supply and demand
If house prices have gone down in certain areas then logically it must be because of lower effective demand so if the number of people has gone up and yet there's still lower effective demand that would mean...drum roll...lower incomes.
or
other stuff happened in the same time period that was coincidental like no more self-certified 100% mortgages.
or
a bit of both.
On the other hand regions where there was lower effective demand due to lower incomes but landlords could still make a lot money through breaking what used to be family homes into ever more, ever smaller units and renting them out might still see house prices going up despite lower effective demand from everyone apart from landlords.
Can someone direct me to the subsection analysis of todays Yougov please, I cannot seem to find the usual microscopic disection of the results.
One more day of the car crash/disaster/all falling apart/ meltdown of a conference and the Labour lead could increase even further......keep up the good work!
Antony Shedon – said "He [Brown] surrounded himself with a coterie that included Balls, Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander, Charlie Whelan, McBride and Tom Watson, who reinforced his sense of injustice.”
Ali Campbell said “a main flaw of Mr Brown was his need for "truly horrible people to be around him, doing truly horrible things in politics".”
Despite the protestations to the contrary by various members of Labour’s front bench – Shedon and Cambbell between the two give a far clearer picture of who knew what was going on within No.10
While I agree that Brown needed to surround himself with these awful types and had a bunker mentality, taking Ali Campbell's word for it is not something I would do. McBride and Campbell are two sides of the same coin.
I would not be at all surprised if we saw more than 200K homes being built in 2014 given the way that private housebuilders are responding to the freeing up of credit. Not enough of course given the backlog on past performance and our rapidly increasing population but enough to make these promises by Ed either something that has aleady been achieved by Mr Osborne (in the short term) or meaningless, take your pick.
Taking a step back the problem with Labour promises is that they (and other parties to be fair) have yet to come to terms with how Brown's disaster has diminished and changed the role of government for the foreseeable future. Rather than trying to find ever more promises on how to spend more money Labour (and the Conservatives next week) should be focussing on the much less fun question of what are our priorities and what can we cut?
Claiming, for example, that a tiny tax cut on rates is "funded" by a change in CT is just nonsense in the overall context of a major deficit and frankly terrifying debt level. We may well need to put up CT anyway, simply to stop the borrowing. We will need to increase taxes not for sexy new spending but to reduce borrowing. There is no money left. Really. And playing at rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic is a rather pointless displacement activity until we come to terms with that.
Is putting up CT again a good plan? After one of the reasons for the cut was to encourage companies to relocate to the UK and pay their taxes here.
On topic, Ed Miliband's speech is far more important in the long term than Damian McBride's revelations. In an odd way, they might help to draw a line under the less savoury aspects of the last Government.
I have a feeling that there will be some afters between Douglas Alexander and Damian McBride though.
Ed Miliband has a big task this afternoon. Labour so far this conference have come up with some innovative spending plans, but have failed to address their big problem, which is showing tangibly that they know how to save rather than spend. Ed Miliband has to disappoint Labour supporters as well as inspire them today.
If Labour really do decide to unleash local government borrowing, as has been hinted, they will be slaughtered (whether or not it's a good idea). The party that left national government up to its eyeballs in debt cannot afford to be seen to see borrowing as the solution to everything.
Antony Shedon – said "He [Brown] surrounded himself with a coterie that included Balls, Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander, Charlie Whelan, McBride and Tom Watson, who reinforced his sense of injustice.”
Ali Campbell said “a main flaw of Mr Brown was his need for "truly horrible people to be around him, doing truly horrible things in politics".”
Despite the protestations to the contrary by various members of Labour’s front bench – Shedon and Cambbell between the two give a far clearer picture of who knew what was going on within No.10
While I agree that Brown needed to surround himself with these awful types and had a bunker mentality, taking Ali Campbell's word for it is not something I would do. McBride and Campbell are two sides of the same coin.
Oh I quite agree MaxPB, - I apply a healthy dose of salt to both their claims - but somewhere in the middle there is enough evidence to leave an unpleasant taste, non the less.
Pfft. Then you don't know the Blairites. Just because their dear leader has other more lucrative ventures these days hardly means Hodges or his ilk are about to concede a thing to to the Brownites, or indeed vice versa.
Oh, I don't think they will concede. I just don't think they are that relevant. An irritant, may be, but can be ignored.
Bit sweeping. I don't recall many on here or elsewhere blaming the tories for the kippers comedic incompetence at their conference just because both parties are on the right.
In the same way claiming everyone on the left was fine with the poison that seeped from Campbell/Mandelson or McBride/Whelan is a just wee bit of a stretch. Far more accurate to say that so many in labour seem to be fine with it. Though again I presume that would also depend on which side of the Blair Brown split they lean well as how recent they were monstered by either side.
I'm not claiming everyone on the left is fine with it - many people I know are horrified. But a lot of those who post on here seem quite blase about it. However, for those people who were in the Cabinet last time round - Milliband, Balls, Cooper, et al - I can only see 3 options: (1) they knew and ignored it; (2) they actively participated; or (3) they didn't know and are clearly naive. Happy to consider other options if you can think of them, but all of these 3 give me grave concerns about their suitability for government
I must say though, I admire the high hilltop and vantage point of moral superiority from which you view these things Charles. Let's hope you are securely perched because a fall could be vertiginous.
Lucky I'm not planning to go into politics then, isn't it.
I would not be at all surprised if we saw more than 200K homes being built in 2014 given the way that private housebuilders are responding to the freeing up of credit. Not enough of course given the backlog on past performance and our rapidly increasing population but enough to make these promises by Ed either something that has aleady been achieved by Mr Osborne (in the short term) or meaningless, take your pick.
Taking a step back the problem with Labour promises is that they (and other parties to be fair) have yet to come to terms with how Brown's disaster has diminished and changed the role of government for the foreseeable future. Rather than trying to find ever more promises on how to spend more money Labour (and the Conservatives next week) should be focussing on the much less fun question of what are our priorities and what can we cut?
Claiming, for example, that a tiny tax cut on rates is "funded" by a change in CT is just nonsense in the overall context of a major deficit and frankly terrifying debt level. We may well need to put up CT anyway, simply to stop the borrowing. We will need to increase taxes not for sexy new spending but to reduce borrowing. There is no money left. Really. And playing at rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic is a rather pointless displacement activity until we come to terms with that.
Is putting up CT again a good plan? After one of the reasons for the cut was to encourage companies to relocate to the UK and pay their taxes here.
The realities of modern government is that that CT and indeed almost all other taxes should be at the maximum rate that they can be without doing serious damage to the economy. My point is that this does not "pay" or "fund" anything new. It is needed simply to cover current spending and reduce the deficit. Pretending that we have the sort of room for manouvre that all politicians like to claim is a delusion.
Lucky I'm not planning to go into politics then, isn't it.
Also lucky that you have nothing that would give you grave concerns about the suitability for government for the current tory party as well right now. Happily.
I am not sure that promising loads of new house builds is a good thing to shout about politically. Its one of those things that sound virtuous and gets activists (especially on the left) cheering and most people will casually respond thats its a good idea so as to not sound mean. But deep down people then worry they will be built near them and vote accordingly .
RT @BBCLouise: Godfrey Bloom says: I have felt for some time now that the 'New UKIP' is not really right for me anymore
New UKIP?
That's a new one on me. LOL
If Kippers can't have amusing harmless chaps like Godders who remind me of the Major in Fawlty Towers - what is Britain coming to? I wish he wasn't being forced out - he's great fun.
I prefer him to Jeremy Corbin or George Galloway or a host of others.
Thank you for the corrected link to voting patterns in Germany. (Sorry for the late reply but had a long call from KSA.)
I find these historic-based patterns interesting as I once lived and worked behind the "Wall". To this day, some people (usually the older people) prefer the certainties (jobs, income, housing etc) of living under the totalitarian state to the uncertainties of living in a capitalist regime. Recently I have found the same attitudes of many living in the Baltic States who have been free of the USSR for about 20 years.
There was a "semi-pro" film about that; My DDR Teeshirt. Saw it at the Keswick Festival a few years ago. Several of the interviewees regretted the change in attitude of "the authorities"!
Similar to the base of the Communist vote in Russia. of course I can recall Lord Tebbitt being told it was a "conservative" vote and calling the interviewer, effectively an idiot. "They're not Conservatives they're Communists."
Regarding previous posts today on the aftermath of the Niarobi massacre and other muslim atricities in the name of islam; what people forget or gloss over is that Islam is a political movement as well as a religion.
For Cammo and others of the establishment to regard Islam as solely a religion, means that they will lose the fight in the long run. Note the serious rise in conversions to Islam in the past few years.
I know many Muslims want the divide between state and (their) religion to evaporate, but I don't believe they're in the majority.
A problem is the salami-slicing referred to in Yes, Prime Minister (where the scenario of the Soviets taking over Berlin is mentioned). The freedom for people to publish and view the Danish cartoons was not stood up for, but the freedom to wear the niqab is.
Mr. Flashman (deceased), maybe he'll add a tickbox to energy bills, so that the greenists can voluntarily pay £100-200 more for 'ethical' green energy.
RT @BBCLouise: Godfrey Bloom says: I have felt for some time now that the 'New UKIP' is not really right for me anymore
New UKIP?
That's a new one on me. LOL
If Kippers can't have amusing harmless chaps like Godders who remind me of the Major in Fawlty Towers - what is Britain coming to? I wish he wasn't being forced out - he's great fun.
I prefer him to Jeremy Corbin or George Galloway or a host of others.
In many ways I agree with you Plato. However a political party cannot afford to be laughed at or made a mockery of. One can hate or disparage a party with no lasting damage but to be laughed is fatal
There was a "semi-pro" film about that; My DDR Teeshirt. Saw it at the Keswick Festival a few years ago. Several of the interviewees regretted the change in attitude of "the authorities"!
Similar to the base of the Communist vote in Russia. of course I can recall Lord Tebbitt being told it was a "conservative" vote and calling the interviewer, effectively an idiot. "They're not Conservatives they're Communists."
There's a small-c conservative reluctance to accept change and risk which is quite widespread, and rational enough for people on low incomes. If you're on £100K/year, you can cheerfully embrace various innovations without fretting too much. If you're on £10K/year, almost any risk is frightening.
Assuming the general view is correct that too much state-funded security leads to lower growth (cf Eastern Europe), but too rapid growth leads to big class divisions (cf China today), it's a tricky balancing process, and probably wrong to deride the people who are reluctant to embrace change: they may be wrong, but their fear is understandable. That applies to UKIP supporters in a slightly different context too.
@joesarling: The average house price increase in London is more than the avr salary! A house is 'earning' more than a resident! | http://t.co/LoGACU9Uid
But weren't you the one saying London property, such as mine, "wasn't" an investment? Make your miniature mind up.
From that same piece:
"It’s not quite at minimum wage yet, but London houses don’t sleep or take holidays, and earned £4.42 every single hour of the year to July. Perhaps it’s time to add hard-working houses to the political lexicon."
To translate it into a language you, as a Liverpudlian, might understand: having a London home is like having a wife who goes on the game. You just have to sit there, chugging lager, and she brings home the money every night.
In order to turn it into actual cash money, you'd need to borrow against it (probably by remortgaging) so you can spend the money in the high street -- this is George Osborne's house price boom reelection strategy in a nutshell. Trouble is, you'd probably spend it on invisible imports like more holidays in paradise, and let Miliband into Downing Street.
Lucky I'm not planning to go into politics then, isn't it.
Also lucky that you have nothing that would give you grave concerns about the suitability for government for the current tory party as well right now. Happily.
They make a frustrating number of unforced errors, which appear to be driven by a lack of senior-level focus at an early enough stage.
They're also not particularly good at the grubby business of parliamentary politics, although that's not really a government question.
TBF, they have been hanidcapped by an awful legacy, and coalition government is harder to make work well
So I would put them in the 'have done ok given the circumstances and probably better than the alternatives'. Not a rousing endorsement though.
Sunny Hundal @sunny_hundal Ed Balls undermined by some polling too. More Labour (!) voters think Vince Cable would be a better chancellor cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_upload…
Note the serious rise in conversions to Islam in the past few years.
Where? In the UK conversions run at about 5,000 a year and have done for a long time. In Africa there are reportedly 6 Million conversions from Islam to Christianity each year.
Where are you talking about and what is your evidence?
I cannot find the article I read this in (still looking) but its estimated that conversions in UK are now averageing 30,000 per year.
Lucky I'm not planning to go into politics then, isn't it.
Also lucky that you have nothing that would give you grave concerns about the suitability for government for the current tory party as well right now. Happily.
They make a frustrating number of unforced errors, which appear to be driven by a lack of senior-level focus at an early enough stage.
Labour on the other hand obviously making it known they were unsuitable for power what with the relentless spin and overwhelming compulsion to manage newspaper headlines using clearly unsuitable and poisonous characters like Campbell and McBride who should never have been close to the former PMs Brown and Blair.
" I am not in Brighton. I want to make that clear at the outset. It’s not that I don’t enjoy conference – I really do. What’s not to enjoy? The drink, the food, the old comrades you haven’t seen since last year, the drink...
Nevertheless, as previously stated, I am not in Brighton. There are two reasons for this. The first is that, having resigned from the Labour front bench to spend more time with my family, I figured I should spend this week with my family rather than with colleagues, many of whom I see plenty of when Parliament’s sitting anyway.
The second reason is the sheer eye-watering personal cost of attending. You can throw a brick into any bus queue in the country and hit someone who assumes MPs have some way of getting reimbursed for expenses incurred at their party conferences (author’s note: do not, under any circumstance, throw a brick at a bus queue). We don’t, and quite right too. But that means that accommodation and travel (not to mention refreshments in the admittedly unlikely event you can’t get a friendly journalist to stump up for sustenance on your behalf) have to come from the household budget. Each year MPs receive numerous emails from party headquarters inviting us to book a room at the “conference hotel” where the leader and most of the shadow cabinet stay, for the knock-down price of just £150 a night for a minimum of four nights. Oh, and can we also have £150 from you for your pass? Cheers, comrade!
Owen Jones pens EdM's speech in an alternative universe
"Friends, I’m here with one mission today. To offer hope. Injustice is as expensive as it is cruel. We don’t know the true cost of the housing crisis: the sleepless nights, the kids with nowhere to study, the families forced to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children. But we know how much it costs the taxpayer: £24bn a year on housing benefit, money which could build over 125,000 homes. It’s not lining the pockets of tenants. It increasingly lines the pockets of landlords charging rip-off rents. So here is my pledge. We will liberate councils, finally letting them build houses – creating jobs, stimulating the economy, bringing down our 5 million-strong social housing waiting list, and reducing housing benefit spending, too.
One day, Britons will look back in disgust at the idea that people could get up early in the morning, labour and toil, and come back home with a paypacket that didn’t let them live a decent life. They will look back in horror at the fact that most people living in poverty in 2013 were in work. They will look back in disbelief that we spent billions subsidising poverty wages with in-work benefits. But they will remember the year that ended: 2015, when we will introduce a living wage for all. And no more unpaid internships. No more workfare schemes. An honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work... > http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/labour-party-conference-an-honest-days-wage-for-an-honest-days-work-friends-this-is-my-pledge-8835601.html
I am also a homeowner in London. My new house - in the outer boroughs - has gone "up" £9k since I bought it in the spring. This "money" is useless to me, unless I move out of this wonderful city, which I have no social, professional or economic cause nor inclination to do.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures. In his effort to finally force his way into the consciousness of the British people, Ed Miliband has invoked the image of many great men. Mandela. Disraeli. Bob Holness.
It has failed. The voters remain stubbornly immune to his charms. So this afternoon Labour’s leader will attempt to karate-kick his way to their affection. He is about to channel his inner Eric Cantona.
“When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea,” he will say. Or, something like that. According to the advance briefing, the exact words will be: "They used to say 'a rising tide lifts all boats'. Now the rising tide just seems to lift yachts.” Which is just as deep. Or meaningless. Depending on your perspective.
Warming to his theme, Miliband will turn his fire to the bankers, telling his audience that the "revolution is really easy to do these days. What's the system? The system is built on the power of the banks. So it must be destroyed through the banks. A real revolution". Actually, that’s not Ed, that’s Eric again. Ed’s version will be: "David Cameron talks about Britain being in a global race. But what he doesn't tell you is that he thinks the only way Britain can win is for you to lose.” But there’s bound to be something about bankers in there somewhere.http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100237582/ed-miliband-is-about-to-channel-his-inner-eric-cantona/
Comments
I'm gonna see if I can listen to it in the car, between work.
Ta.
Also I am not a gambler - but I do invest in certainties. For example, on Friday, I was aware that a share had its value depressed below that which was its true value. Knowing both the business and its market and market conditions, on Monday early am our syndicate took an option on a few million of these shares. By 10am they had risen in value by 15p and we sold out before the profit-takers woke up. So a quick gain of about £300k for zero investment.
Now that's far better than a few £50 bets at evens that may take months to mature. I am sure that all intelligent PBers would agree.
Gambling is for losers and tim you appear to be loser - big time. A quick tip for you if you ever want to play roulette, take a small spirit level with you.
In 2007 PM Gordon Brown said they would build 3 million more houses by 2020. That is a 12 year period requiring an average of 250,000 a year. In the following 3 years under Labour 550,000 were built instead of 750,000 a shortfall of 200,000 in just 3 years. This is just the mentality of stalinist tractor production announcements, which Ed Milliband looks like repeating.
source for Brown
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/1568471/Gordon-Brown-to-launch-house-building-boom.html
Tom Chivers @TomChivers 16m
I wish to point out that on Today earlier, Harriet Harman said "In cost-benefit analyses, you have to look at the costs, and the benefits."
I can see the theme of the next GE developing.
Labour = we will take money off those rich, nasty bankers and give it to hard-working families.
Conservatives = we've brought you through three years of austerity and we can see the sunny uplands. Will you risk it all on the party whose spendthrift habits caused the crash?
LibDems = do you trust the other two?
Ukip = do you trust any of them?
For info, by chance I had read the following earlier this morning
http://bobrussell.org.uk/en/article/2013/729587/colchester-borough-council-rejects-scare-mongering-housing-rumours
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BU6dnmSCYAEWF_o.jpg:large
2007-08 -540
2008-09 -39,750
2009-10 -25,830
2010-11 -15,550
2011-12 +8,510
Was this a Labour promise built on McBride's advice?
(and ignore the fact that the most senior members of the shadow cabinet, who you believe should govern this country, were in the room when all this was happening. They are either stupid, liars, complicit or a combination of the three. None of which makes me any happier to see them in power again)
Nick Boles @GeneralBoles
Ed Miliband paddles in the sea before his big speech #Lab13
I assume it's a factual correction of something someone else posted?
Labour promsied houses and missed their target by almost a quarter (2007-10).
Why should we have any confidence that they will deliver this time?
Will be more painful than having teeth pulled - with less verbs.
Happy days
Of recent (hardly ancient) historical interest they self-evidently are since this is all about what he did while in the employ of Brown. So yes, Mr Smithson has a point about those revelations not shifting many votes in 2015. However, those claiming they have no relevance to current events might care to ask, say, Tom Watson, Murphy, wee Dougie, Tom Harris, brother David and most of the current shadow cabinet including little Ed (who, lest we forget, was subject to the uber Blairites and their whisper campaigns more than once already) whether the Brown Blair split is really ancient history? The fact of the matter is it is not.
In the same way the split in the tory party over the EU has never healed the same goes for the Brown Blair split. Both have the power to resurface at almost any time and cause the leaders of their parties intense discomfort.
*U.K. BBA MORTGAGE APPROVALS RISE TO HIGHEST SINCE DEC. 2009
From the puff piece in the Guardian, it says to get to 200k new houses, but Ed is talking about this for 7 years time. Comparing house building numbers from the good times in the mid 2000's that is about the level we were at, and the government at the time said it still wasn't anywhere near enough and we needed at least 250k a year (which they failed miserably on).
So basically Ed is proposing that in 7 years time we will be building again like the good times. Well I should bl##dy hope the economy is going better by then.
That is hardly Ed claiming he is going to roll out of some bold radical new deal style housing for the masses come 2015, which the likes of Tim keep telling us we need yesterday.
In 2007 Brown promised 250,000 and fell short by over 65,000 each year.
History repeating?
“The original numbering of the Downing Street houses was completely different from what we see today. The sequence of numbers was haphazard, and the houses tended to be known by the name or title of their occupants. The current Number 10 started out life as Number 5, and was not renumbered until 1779.
The Downing Street house had several distinguished residents. The Countess of Yarmouth lived at Number 10 between 1688 and 1689, and was followed by Lord Lansdowne from 1692 to 1696 and the Earl of Grantham from 1699 to 1703. The last private resident of Downing's terrace was one Mr Chicken. Little is known about him except that he moved out in the early 1730s.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/history/10-downing-street
For me the biggest impact is that it overshadowed the conference - may be not important - but another opportunity to get Labour's message out there.
The biggest worry is that so many on the left just don't care about the evil that was done in their name. Is power really worth so much to them?
Being aware of something and failing to stop it is indicative of their moral compass.
Cyclefree in particular I recall mentioning it.
oh.
Also the distinction Brownite and Blairite is (imo)
Brownite = lobby fodder
Blairite = lobbyist fodder
It's not really about Blair. It's just a convenient label.
Bit sweeping. I don't recall many on here or elsewhere blaming the tories for the kippers comedic incompetence at their conference just because both parties are on the right.
In the same way claiming everyone on the left was fine with the poison that seeped from Campbell/Mandelson or McBride/Whelan is a just wee bit of a stretch. Far more accurate to say that so many in labour seem to be fine with it. Though again I presume that would also depend on which side of the Blair Brown split they lean well as how recent they were monstered by either side.
I must say though, I admire the high hilltop and vantage point of moral superiority from which you view these things Charles. Let's hope you are securely perched because a fall could be vertiginous.
Ali Campbell said “a main flaw of Mr Brown was his need for "truly horrible people to be around him, doing truly horrible things in politics".”
Despite the protestations to the contrary by various members of Labour’s front bench – Shedon and Cambbell between the two give a far clearer picture of who knew what was going on within No.10
Online stories:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24201243
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24193734
http://news.sky.com/story/1145305/pakistan-protests-at-deadly-church-bombings
http://news.sky.com/story/1144982/pakistan-suicide-bombing-at-peshawar-church
Thank you for the corrected link to voting patterns in Germany. (Sorry for the late reply but had a long call from KSA.)
I find these historic-based patterns interesting as I once lived and worked behind the "Wall". To this day, some people (usually the older people) prefer the certainties (jobs, income, housing etc) of living under the totalitarian state to the uncertainties of living in a capitalist regime. Recently I have found the same attitudes of many living in the Baltic States who have been free of the USSR for about 20 years.
Taking a step back the problem with Labour promises is that they (and other parties to be fair) have yet to come to terms with how Brown's disaster has diminished and changed the role of government for the foreseeable future. Rather than trying to find ever more promises on how to spend more money Labour (and the Conservatives next week) should be focussing on the much less fun question of what are our priorities and what can we cut?
Claiming, for example, that a tiny tax cut on rates is "funded" by a change in CT is just nonsense in the overall context of a major deficit and frankly terrifying debt level. We may well need to put up CT anyway, simply to stop the borrowing. We will need to increase taxes not for sexy new spending but to reduce borrowing. There is no money left. Really. And playing at rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic is a rather pointless displacement activity until we come to terms with that.
Our Next PM!
If house prices have gone down in certain areas then logically it must be because of lower effective demand so if the number of people has gone up and yet there's still lower effective demand that would mean...drum roll...lower incomes.
or
other stuff happened in the same time period that was coincidental like no more self-certified 100% mortgages.
or
a bit of both.
On the other hand regions where there was lower effective demand due to lower incomes but landlords could still make a lot money through breaking what used to be family homes into ever more, ever smaller units and renting them out might still see house prices going up despite lower effective demand from everyone apart from landlords.
One more day of the car crash/disaster/all falling apart/ meltdown of a conference and the Labour lead could increase even further......keep up the good work!
"A council that spent more than £111m on a new headquarters is considering moving out after just three years.
Newham Council bought Building 1000 for £92m in 2010 and spent a further £18.7m on a refurbishment. Designer light fittings alone cost £1,800 each.
Now the BBC has been told the council is unable to sell the old buildings it vacated and is considering moving back."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24205638
Was it outrage at the misplaced apostrophe?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P1Rc_Ko0Ltk
I'm sure Mr Dale would find this hilarious. ;^ )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2-15mYWpmA
I have a feeling that there will be some afters between Douglas Alexander and Damian McBride though.
Ed Miliband has a big task this afternoon. Labour so far this conference have come up with some innovative spending plans, but have failed to address their big problem, which is showing tangibly that they know how to save rather than spend. Ed Miliband has to disappoint Labour supporters as well as inspire them today.
If Labour really do decide to unleash local government borrowing, as has been hinted, they will be slaughtered (whether or not it's a good idea). The party that left national government up to its eyeballs in debt cannot afford to be seen to see borrowing as the solution to everything.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24222992#TWEET899583
New UKIP?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24222992
I prefer him to Jeremy Corbin or George Galloway or a host of others.
Similar to the base of the Communist vote in Russia. of course I can recall Lord Tebbitt being told it was a "conservative" vote and calling the interviewer, effectively an idiot. "They're not Conservatives they're Communists."
For Cammo and others of the establishment to regard Islam as solely a religion, means that they will lose the fight in the long run. Note the serious rise in conversions to Islam in the past few years.
Godfrey Bloom Quits UKIP http://guyfawk.es/15QRmb6
What a loss of talent (or entertainment).....
I know many Muslims want the divide between state and (their) religion to evaporate, but I don't believe they're in the majority.
A problem is the salami-slicing referred to in Yes, Prime Minister (where the scenario of the Soviets taking over Berlin is mentioned). The freedom for people to publish and view the Danish cartoons was not stood up for, but the freedom to wear the niqab is.
Electricity price escalator ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFRiqIHIcBo&feature=youtu.be
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2430259/Damian-McBride-A-huge-foot-mouth-crisis-But-I-want-holiday-said-David-Cameron.html
Assuming the general view is correct that too much state-funded security leads to lower growth (cf Eastern Europe), but too rapid growth leads to big class divisions (cf China today), it's a tricky balancing process, and probably wrong to deride the people who are reluctant to embrace change: they may be wrong, but their fear is understandable. That applies to UKIP supporters in a slightly different context too.
They're also not particularly good at the grubby business of parliamentary politics, although that's not really a government question.
TBF, they have been hanidcapped by an awful legacy, and coalition government is harder to make work well
So I would put them in the 'have done ok given the circumstances and probably better than the alternatives'. Not a rousing endorsement though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzZ86GYoxE0
LOL
Ed Balls undermined by some polling too. More Labour (!) voters think Vince Cable would be a better chancellor cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_upload…
Below is an out of date article but it gives a general picture:
http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/index.php/islam-growing-at-astronomical-rate-in-uk/
Labour on the other hand obviously making it known they were unsuitable for power what with the relentless spin and overwhelming compulsion to manage newspaper headlines using clearly unsuitable and poisonous characters like Campbell and McBride who should never have been close to the former PMs Brown and Blair.
I agree with you Charles, I do indeed.
But Iain Dale rugby tackling a heckler is more WTFfery – who knew he had it in him..!
" I am not in Brighton. I want to make that clear at the outset. It’s not that I don’t enjoy conference – I really do. What’s not to enjoy? The drink, the food, the old comrades you haven’t seen since last year, the drink...
Nevertheless, as previously stated, I am not in Brighton. There are two reasons for this. The first is that, having resigned from the Labour front bench to spend more time with my family, I figured I should spend this week with my family rather than with colleagues, many of whom I see plenty of when Parliament’s sitting anyway.
The second reason is the sheer eye-watering personal cost of attending. You can throw a brick into any bus queue in the country and hit someone who assumes MPs have some way of getting reimbursed for expenses incurred at their party conferences (author’s note: do not, under any circumstance, throw a brick at a bus queue). We don’t, and quite right too. But that means that accommodation and travel (not to mention refreshments in the admittedly unlikely event you can’t get a friendly journalist to stump up for sustenance on your behalf) have to come from the household budget. Each year MPs receive numerous emails from party headquarters inviting us to book a room at the “conference hotel” where the leader and most of the shadow cabinet stay, for the knock-down price of just £150 a night for a minimum of four nights. Oh, and can we also have £150 from you for your pass? Cheers, comrade!
Add to all that the cost of a 1000-miles round trip to Brighton and it becomes an unsavoury prospect. > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10329970/Tom-Harris-MP-Why-I-refuse-to-go-to-Labour-Party-conference.html
"Friends, I’m here with one mission today. To offer hope. Injustice is as expensive as it is cruel. We don’t know the true cost of the housing crisis: the sleepless nights, the kids with nowhere to study, the families forced to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children. But we know how much it costs the taxpayer: £24bn a year on housing benefit, money which could build over 125,000 homes. It’s not lining the pockets of tenants. It increasingly lines the pockets of landlords charging rip-off rents. So here is my pledge. We will liberate councils, finally letting them build houses – creating jobs, stimulating the economy, bringing down our 5 million-strong social housing waiting list, and reducing housing benefit spending, too.
One day, Britons will look back in disgust at the idea that people could get up early in the morning, labour and toil, and come back home with a paypacket that didn’t let them live a decent life. They will look back in horror at the fact that most people living in poverty in 2013 were in work. They will look back in disbelief that we spent billions subsidising poverty wages with in-work benefits. But they will remember the year that ended: 2015, when we will introduce a living wage for all. And no more unpaid internships. No more workfare schemes. An honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work... > http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/labour-party-conference-an-honest-days-wage-for-an-honest-days-work-friends-this-is-my-pledge-8835601.html
I am also a homeowner in London. My new house - in the outer boroughs - has gone "up" £9k since I bought it in the spring. This "money" is useless to me, unless I move out of this wonderful city, which I have no social, professional or economic cause nor inclination to do.
:scotland-vote-yes-2014:
"Desperate times call for desperate measures. In his effort to finally force his way into the consciousness of the British people, Ed Miliband has invoked the image of many great men. Mandela. Disraeli. Bob Holness.
It has failed. The voters remain stubbornly immune to his charms. So this afternoon Labour’s leader will attempt to karate-kick his way to their affection. He is about to channel his inner Eric Cantona.
“When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea,” he will say. Or, something like that. According to the advance briefing, the exact words will be: "They used to say 'a rising tide lifts all boats'. Now the rising tide just seems to lift yachts.” Which is just as deep. Or meaningless. Depending on your perspective.
Warming to his theme, Miliband will turn his fire to the bankers, telling his audience that the "revolution is really easy to do these days. What's the system? The system is built on the power of the banks. So it must be destroyed through the banks. A real revolution". Actually, that’s not Ed, that’s Eric again. Ed’s version will be: "David Cameron talks about Britain being in a global race. But what he doesn't tell you is that he thinks the only way Britain can win is for you to lose.” But there’s bound to be something about bankers in there somewhere.http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100237582/ed-miliband-is-about-to-channel-his-inner-eric-cantona/