Just listened to Anna Soubry's speech yesterday. I know if you are pro-Remain you will say her "suck it up" comments were "refreshing" but she is not exactly doing her bit to dispel the notion that Remainers are arrogant and an elite. She also sounds as though she knows she will not be a MP past this Parliament.
One of the heavily ironic things about hearing the likes of Ken Clarke, Soubry and Grieve wax lyrical about the benefits of openness, immigration and the need to bring down barriers is that they all Barristers, a profession which is the absolute master of erecting numerous arcane barriers to keep out competition and fighting tooth and claw retain their lock on the market.
Barristers just do the easy talking. Solicitors do the hard thinking......
It isn't acceptable to label the majority of my constituents as racist or to suggest they didn't know what they were voting http://for.It is not the place of politicians to tell the people they were wrong. 7:58 PM - 13 Jun 2018 "
While that might be true, it’s also because the EU does not particularly care about voter preferences throughout Europe in any event - and the ‘reality’ to which he refers is not immutable.
‘Capitulation’ pretty well described the EU’s desired outcome, though.
This is actually a real example of where the UK Government is actually preparing for no deal. And it can, because we do have the expertise, knowledge, money, science and security apparatus to do it, and even the spaceports in the medium term, to do it and do it well.
We talk about the EU as if it were the Borg. In reality, the EU is gravely weakened by the UK’s exit and will become smaller, and more defensive, nervous and inwardly focussed, as a result.
Exactly what Putin wanted.
Putin runs an economic backwater with a GDP significantly less than ours. We could take on Putin unilaterally if we wanted to.
There are a number of economic backwaters with big militaries like Russia and Iran who punch above their weight in foreign affairs as a result while a number of economic powerhouses like Singapore and Switzerland have little impact on foreign affairs themselves beyond staging a big summit
Russia has always placed guns before butter, giving it power in foreign affairs that it's economic strength would not justify.
But, it's power is still a shadow of what it was in the 19th century or the 1950's.
Mr. Eagles, cheers (assuming that's serious, my knowledge of football is lamentable. Although given my F1 performance this year, some might argue the same for motorsport).
Just listened to the podcast. If you consider reversing Brexit to be the most important political campaign of your life (as I do) then the last few days have been disappointing.
A week ago Boris and J R-M's stars were on the wane and Tory Remainers were starting to assert themselves. Brexit was going so badly that the built in Remain majority in Parliament looked like they might mobilize in the national interest. If May was forced out she wouldn't be replaced by one of the headbangers but by Javid. So the fear of the lunatics taking over the asylum was severely reduced.
Compromises could be made. The wild ones-Boris Fox and the Bulldog-could be fired and the sensible majority could reassert itself. A period of quiet reflection would very likely lead to BINO or even a moratorium while we reflected on where we were going leading to another referendum in a few years time
But then yesterday it became obvious that Corbyn the treacherous bastard is a Leaver. With the leader of the biggest parliamentary block of Remainers at war with his own troops we're back to square one.
Corbyn wants the Tories to own BREXIT but the PLP suicide squad cant help themselves.
Mr. Eagles, cheers (assuming that's serious, my knowledge of football is lamentable. Although given my F1 performance this year, some might argue the same for motorsport).
In 2014 I generally backed the outsider then traded out/cashed out when they were on top.
Just listened to Anna Soubry's speech yesterday. I know if you are pro-Remain you will say her "suck it up" comments were "refreshing" but she is not exactly doing her bit to dispel the notion that Remainers are arrogant and an elite. She also sounds as though she knows she will not be a MP past this Parliament.
One of the heavily ironic things about hearing the likes of Ken Clarke, Soubry and Grieve wax lyrical about the benefits of openness, immigration and the need to bring down barriers is that they all Barristers, a profession which is the absolute master of erecting numerous arcane barriers to keep out competition and fighting tooth and claw retain their lock on the market.
Yes, I have wondered about this.
Lawyers have in general not suffered very much from competition due to Freedom of Movement, as the legal systems in England & Wales, Scotland are so specific to each country.
This is very different to low-skilled jobs, but also to professional jobs in science, technology and software, and even jobs in the arts and publishing.
I would guess that lawyers and barristers are still almost exclusively English (or Scottish) born, bred and trained.
A Romanian coming to the UK to work as a lawyer would need extensive re-training in English or Scottish law, but a Romanian coming to work as a car-washer or a research scientist or a programmer or a doctor needs little or no re-training.
.... then yesterday it became obvious that Corbyn the treacherous bastard is a Leaver. With the leader of the biggest parliamentary block of Remainers at war with his own troops we're back to square one.
Have you been paying no attention? How long have I been banging on here about Corbyn being Brexit's Bessy Mate?
So are we adding a from scratch wholly new self-built positioning system to the reasons we voted Leave? Add it to the upskilling, the better technical education, productivity, etc...
A nice little Brexit bonus, I guess. £8bn for the world's most advanced positioning satellites? Worth it.
I must have missed all that on the ballot paper and during the campaign but I’m sure we will all get behind the effort and support the £8bn.
Glad to see you're on board already. It's more like £0.8bn for 10 years though, less however much the EU will have to pay us to buy us out of Galileo and however much we retain from it (worth around £2bn).
I think for the kind of money being asked, it is definitely worth going for it and putting in the most advanced imaging tech vs the outdated stuff going into Galileo.
Not only will it be modern tech, we can take advantage of the extraordinary cheap SpaceX launches as well as take the opportunity to bring back huge technical and scientific knowledge that’s been lost over the decades.
I think it helps develop a whole industry which is hugely valuable to the economy. This seems to be the first area where the government has seized some kind of initiative rather than try and beg the EU for some concessions. If only they did the same for the trade talks.
Any reason why we wouldn't join EFTA? Not the EEA just EFTA. Is it because it starts with E?
Free movement obligations, IIRC.
Nope. The Swiss are quite happy to be in EFTA but not the EEA. This has been my position since early 2016 - membership of EFTA and a bilateral bespoke arrangement with the EU so not Norway-lite, Canada Plus Plus or anything like that but a separate series of treaties between the UK and the EU.
Meanwhile, we re-invigorate EFTA by re-joining (we were members from 1960 to 1973 and no one objected then) and perhaps agree to take on the leadership of the organisation and build it as a loose association of collaborating free trading nations.
The Prime Minister has occasionally hinted at wanting something "unique" for the UK so perhaps she has decided to follow my advice (nothing wrong with that).
Just listened to Anna Soubry's speech yesterday. I know if you are pro-Remain you will say her "suck it up" comments were "refreshing" but she is not exactly doing her bit to dispel the notion that Remainers are arrogant and an elite. She also sounds as though she knows she will not be a MP past this Parliament.
One of the heavily ironic things about hearing the likes of Ken Clarke, Soubry and Grieve wax lyrical about the benefits of openness, immigration and the need to bring down barriers is that they all Barristers, a profession which is the absolute master of erecting numerous arcane barriers to keep out competition and fighting tooth and claw retain their lock on the market.
It isn't acceptable to label the majority of my constituents as racist or to suggest they didn't know what they were voting http://for.It is not the place of politicians to tell the people they were wrong. 7:58 PM - 13 Jun 2018 "
While that might be true, it’s also because the EU does not particularly care about voter preferences throughout Europe in any event - and the ‘reality’ to which he refers is not immutable.
‘Capitulation’ pretty well described the EU’s desired outcome, though.
This is actually a real example of where the UK Government is actually preparing for no deal. And it can, because we do have the expertise, knowledge, money, science and security apparatus to do it, and even the spaceports in the medium term, to do it and do it well.
We talk about the EU as if it were the Borg. In reality, the EU is gravely weakened by the UK’s exit and will become smaller, and more defensive, nervous and inwardly focussed, as a result.
Exactly what Putin wanted.
Putin runs an economic backwater with a GDP significantly less than ours. We could take on Putin unilaterally if we wanted to.
Rubbish!
Russian Purchasing Power Parity GDP (which is the important one, given most of their military resources are purchased internally) is 35% higher than ours. Their natural resources and military capability is far in excess of the UK's. There is no sensible way 'we could take on Putin if we wanted to'.
Just listened to Anna Soubry's speech yesterday. I know if you are pro-Remain you will say her "suck it up" comments were "refreshing" but she is not exactly doing her bit to dispel the notion that Remainers are arrogant and an elite. She also sounds as though she knows she will not be a MP past this Parliament.
One of the heavily ironic things about hearing the likes of Ken Clarke, Soubry and Grieve wax lyrical about the benefits of openness, immigration and the need to bring down barriers is that they all Barristers, a profession which is the absolute master of erecting numerous arcane barriers to keep out competition and fighting tooth and claw retain their lock on the market.
That's referred to as 'maintaining standards'.
If only they had applied the same rationale to new members of the EU...
Any reason why we wouldn't join EFTA? Not the EEA just EFTA. Is it because it starts with E?
Free movement obligations, IIRC.
Nope. The Swiss are quite happy to be in EFTA but not the EEA. This has been my position since early 2016 - membership of EFTA and a bilateral bespoke arrangement with the EU so not Norway-lite, Canada Plus Plus or anything like that but a separate series of treaties between the UK and the EU.
Meanwhile, we re-invigorate EFTA by re-joining (we were members from 1960 to 1973 and no one objected then) and perhaps agree to take on the leadership of the organisation and build it as a loose association of collaborating free trading nations.
The Prime Minister has occasionally hinted at wanting something "unique" for the UK so perhaps she has decided to follow my advice (nothing wrong with that).
But Switzerlands trade deal is contingent on FoM isn't it
For those Remainers who don’t understand, ESA is not the EU. ESA contains members not in the EU (such as Switzerland & Norway), and there are EU members not in ESA (such as Bulgaria & Romania). This is just the same as all the European science projects (e.g., CERN or ESO, they are nothing to do with the EU, they predate the EU and their membership is not coincident with the EU).
According to wiki, other members of Galileo include Morocco, Israel and the Ukraine. Last time I looked, they were not in the EU or in ESA. (Obviously, the other non-EU but ESA countries such as Norway and Switzerland are in Galileo). Again, according to wiki, China was in Galileo, but withdrew because it didn’t think the Europeans could fund it and carry it our successfully.
Given such a disparate membership, there is no reason for us to be excluded from Galileo. If we have contributed skills, expertise and money to the Galileo project, and are now being excluded, then that is theft.
We can still pay for access, like all of these countries.
How many contracts to build the top secret electronics at the heart of the system have been awarded to Morocco?
Just listened to the podcast. If you consider reversing Brexit to be the most important political campaign of your life (as I do) then the last few days have been disappointing.
A week ago Boris and J R-M's stars were on the wane and Tory Remainers were starting to assert themselves. Brexit was going so badly that the built in Remain majority in Parliament looked like they might mobilize in the national interest. If May was forced out she wouldn't be replaced by one of the headbangers but by Javid. So the fear of the lunatics taking over the asylum was severely reduced.
Compromises could be made. The wild ones-Boris Fox and the Bulldog-could be fired and the sensible majority could reassert itself. A period of quiet reflection would very likely lead to BINO or even a moratorium while we reflected on where we were going leading to another referendum in a few years time
But then yesterday it became obvious that Corbyn the treacherous bastard is a Leaver. With the leader of the biggest parliamentary block of Remainers at war with his own troops we're back to square one.
Have you been involved in the stopbrexit campaign?
Surely GPS is a boringly mature technology which works fine in theory and works fine in practice, and there's only so much to be gained by refining your accuracy form the nanometer range down to the picometer? The fun stuff is jamming, spoofing and generally messing about with the other players. Galileo was always hopelessly insecure for having too many nation states involved, and now it's also obsolescent and compromised by the fact that a formerly friendly, now neutral power knows how it works. Nice little positioning system you have there, M Barnier, what a shame if the documentation were to show up on wikileaks.
Mr. Eagles, your World Cup tips coming up this afternoon?
Dr. Foxy, Hitler was a vegetarian*. Guilt by association is dumb (and if Remain had spent more time on the EU and less on pointing at Farage and making rude noises, they probably would've won).
*Vegetarian was defined a bit more loosely back then, including eating things like kidney. That might sound daft, but in 50 years or so people might feel the same about vegetarians eating fish.
Completely agree. Just because Hitler was a vegetarian it doesn't mean all Nazis were c@nts.
For those Remainers who don’t understand, ESA is not the EU. ESA contains members not in the EU (such as Switzerland & Norway), and there are EU members not in ESA (such as Bulgaria & Romania). This is just the same as all the European science projects (e.g., CERN or ESO, they are nothing to do with the EU, they predate the EU and their membership is not coincident with the EU).
According to wiki, other members of Galileo include Morocco, Israel and the Ukraine. Last time I looked, they were not in the EU or in ESA. (Obviously, the other non-EU but ESA countries such as Norway and Switzerland are in Galileo). Again, according to wiki, China was in Galileo, but withdrew because it didn’t think the Europeans could fund it and carry it our successfully.
Given such a disparate membership, there is no reason for us to be excluded from Galileo. If we have contributed skills, expertise and money to the Galileo project, and are now being excluded, then that is theft.
We can still pay for access, like all of these countries.
How many contracts to build the top secret electronics at the heart of the system have been awarded to Morocco?
Oh.
The project was created by ESA.
We would be unique in being in ESA, and being excluded from (parts of) the project.
To be fair to OGH he may run the site but I post on PB and have been campaigning for the Tories in Lewisham East and will be out again tonight, we all know OGH is a prominent LD activist but that does not mean we all are
While I've been over to support Lucy as a Lib Dem member and slightly activist. To be fair, the Deputy Editor of this site is a card carrying Conservative yet that doesn't stop some of the Conservatives on here bleating on about bias.
As to whether OGH is still "active", that's his business and he makes no secret of it. You and other Conservatives choose to post here and that's your privilege subject to Mike's rules.
As for the content of the threads, we get an excellent weekly contribution from David Herdosn who is, I believe, a Conservative member and activist. Indeed, one of the strengths of this forum has been and continues to be the quality of the thread titles.
Just listened to Anna Soubry's speech yesterday. I know if you are pro-Remain you will say her "suck it up" comments were "refreshing" but she is not exactly doing her bit to dispel the notion that Remainers are arrogant and an elite. She also sounds as though she knows she will not be a MP past this Parliament.
One of the heavily ironic things about hearing the likes of Ken Clarke, Soubry and Grieve wax lyrical about the benefits of openness, immigration and the need to bring down barriers is that they all Barristers, a profession which is the absolute master of erecting numerous arcane barriers to keep out competition and fighting tooth and claw retain their lock on the market.
Yes, I have wondered about this.
Lawyers have in general not suffered very much from competition due to Freedom of Movement, as the legal systems in England & Wales, Scotland are so specific to each country.
This is very different to low-skilled jobs, but also to professional jobs in science, technology and software, and even jobs in the arts and publishing.
I would guess that lawyers and barristers are still almost exclusively English (or Scottish) born, bred and trained.
A Romanian coming to the UK to work as a lawyer would need extensive re-training in English or Scottish law, but a Romanian coming to work as a car-washer or a research scientist or a programmer or a doctor needs little or no re-training.
Lots of lawyers are foreign, but probably more likely to be from the US or Commonwealth than the EU. There are financial pressures on law firms, such as the cost of PII, legal aid cuts, and high rents, but they aren't really affected by foreign competition.
Mr. Eagles, your World Cup tips coming up this afternoon?
Dr. Foxy, Hitler was a vegetarian*. Guilt by association is dumb (and if Remain had spent more time on the EU and less on pointing at Farage and making rude noises, they probably would've won).
*Vegetarian was defined a bit more loosely back then, including eating things like kidney. That might sound daft, but in 50 years or so people might feel the same about vegetarians eating fish.
I've backed Saudi Arabia to beat Russia
It should be an interesting match. Two paragons of democracy and freedom meet to showcase the beautiful game.
On the betting opportunities for next Con leader, I think it was David L who said that the next leader is almost certainly within the Cabinet (or attends Cabinet). That sounds right; given the turmoil over Brexit there will be a desire to make sure it is someone who can command some level of respect. I also think the next leader will have to have two things (1) being known as a Brexit supporter - many place the problems with May (maybe unfavourably) over Brexit as due to the fact she doesn't really believe in it - but not a frothing Brexiteer and (2) and maybe more importantly, someone who is prepared to be decisive in their thinking to counteract Corbyn, who is not afraid of a fight to defend their principles and who comes across well.
Looking at the current Cabinet, that means you can probably rule out the bulk - Hammond, Lidlington, Gauke, Mundell, Cairns, Clark, Brokenshire, Bradley, Hinds, Lewis, Truss, Wright, Grayling, mainly on the lack of personality front. Perry is too much of a remainer. Nokes will not recover from WIndrush. I know someone mentioned Matt Hancock but he seems too linked with Remain and, probably more importantly, a Cameron/Osborne style character, which will be out of favour. Williamson will think he is a candidate but I doubt he will make it. Fox would be out also on frothing / character traits as well as Leadsom and probably you can count off David Davis on a weaker basis on both points.
That leaves Johnson, Hunt, Javid, McVey, Mourdant and Gove. Of those, I think Johnson will be seen as too fluffy and too much of a risk. Gove, I suspects, knows he has too much baggage to be seen as PM and would settle for CoE, where he is better suited. As for Hunt, while he now backs Leave, the Health tenure would just overshadow his leadership and it would focus attention on an area favourable to Labour.
That leaves Javid, McVey and Mourdant. Unfortunately, I don't think the MPs will think it is the right time for a Muslim leader. The Conservative base is moving more WWC and, rightly or wrongly, there will be a concern he could put off some of that base, which is probably unfounded. On Mourdant, she is a Brexiteer and comes off well but maybe seen as a bit too "posh" (I know, it sounds stupid) in the current environment.
Surely GPS is a boringly mature technology which works fine in theory and works fine in practice, and there's only so much to be gained by refining your accuracy form the nanometer range down to the picometer? The fun stuff is jamming, spoofing and generally messing about with the other players. Galileo was always hopelessly insecure for having too many nation states involved, and now it's also obsolescent and compromised by the fact that a formerly friendly, now neutral power knows how it works. Nice little positioning system you have there, M Barnier, what a shame if the documentation were to show up on wikileaks.
Finally! An adult speaks.
Vote LibDem*
*contractual obligations for site participation satisfied.
Mr. Eagles, your World Cup tips coming up this afternoon?
Dr. Foxy, Hitler was a vegetarian*. Guilt by association is dumb (and if Remain had spent more time on the EU and less on pointing at Farage and making rude noises, they probably would've won).
*Vegetarian was defined a bit more loosely back then, including eating things like kidney. That might sound daft, but in 50 years or so people might feel the same about vegetarians eating fish.
I've backed Saudi Arabia to beat Russia
It should be an interesting match. Two paragons of democracy and freedom meet to showcase the beautiful game.
Looking forward to Portugal v Spain tomorrow.
I went massively on Spain yesterday after they sacked their manager.
Both on the Portugal match and to win the tournament.
But then yesterday it became obvious that Corbyn the treacherous bastard is a Leaver. With the leader of the biggest parliamentary block of Remainers at war with his own troops we're back to square one.
Where have you been?!?
This has been obvious all the way through.
You could say that this would be very different had, say, Chuka Ummuna become Labour leader in 2015. But then it's plausible that a Labour Party led by him would have experienced the landslide defeat we expected in 2017.
Surely GPS is a boringly mature technology which works fine in theory and works fine in practice, and there's only so much to be gained by refining your accuracy form the nanometer range down to the picometer? The fun stuff is jamming, spoofing and generally messing about with the other players. Galileo was always hopelessly insecure for having too many nation states involved, and now it's also obsolescent and compromised by the fact that a formerly friendly, now neutral power knows how it works. Nice little positioning system you have there, M Barnier, what a shame if the documentation were to show up on wikileaks.
Finally! An adult speaks.
Vote LibDem*
*contractual obligations for site participation satisfied.
Early reports suggest a low turnout so far in Lewisham East which could make the result interesting, especially if Labour voters are less likely to be voting
That's a fantastically honest article, Crace's life weirdly mirrors mine, he must indeed be a similar age to me. We probably had the same dealers.
Luckily my depressions and anxieties aren't as bad as his (though I can still wake in a fetal position, almost suicidal from some inexplicable, sudden surge of self hate and/or futility (happily this is rare)).
I have learned to self-medicate differently, with a mix of fine wine, hard exercise, country walks, intriguing travel and mildly kinky sex. Plus lots of interaction with my kids and friends and wife, and yet, also, isolation when I need to be quiet and to calm the demons.
The fact is, I need ALL of that to replace the deadly yet seductive quietus of heroin. That is how powerful it is.
Like button needed. Care for yourself.
When you're that depressed, caring for yourself is the last thing you're bothered about. Caring for someone else can make a difference.
Outrageous. Anyone who truly follows this site knows it has ALWAYS been a bizarre front for LibDem electioneering.
Hell, we even had a thread a few weeks back that eulogized Lord Rennard.....
This site is a front for LibDem electioneering? Maybe that explains their dismal showing in recent GEs...
They are so bloody fair-minded they keep allowing their electioneering site to be filled with Tory propaganda!
Tbf OGH did a sterling job for Jo 'I abstained for Wales' Swinson.
'If Conservative and Labour voters were to lend their vote to Jo Swinson and the Liberal Democrats, they can stop the SNP from winning in East Dunbartonshire.'
Was it ever revealed who paid for that mail shot, or is that part of the Swinson 'vanishing' election costs brouhaha?
It isn't acceptable to label the majority of my constituents as racist or to suggest they didn't know what they were voting http://for.It is not the place of politicians to tell the people they were wrong. 7:58 PM - 13 Jun 2018 "
While that might be true, it’s also because the EU does not particularly care about voter preferences throughout Europe in any event - and the ‘reality’ to which he refers is not immutable.
‘Capitulation’ pretty well described the EU’s desired outcome, though.
This is actually a real example of where the UK Government is actually preparing for no deal. And it can, because we do have the expertise, knowledge, money, science and security apparatus to do it, and even the spaceports in the medium term, to do it and do it well.
We talk about the EU as if it were the Borg. In reality, the EU is gravely weakened by the UK’s exit and will become smaller, and more defensive, nervous and inwardly focussed, as a result.
Exactly what Putin wanted.
Britain has been one of the strongest voices arguing for sanctions against Putin. It is Italy which wants to lift them. Brexit is not the only reason why Europe’s collective voice is weakened and Putin emboldened.
Mr. Eagles, your World Cup tips coming up this afternoon?
Dr. Foxy, Hitler was a vegetarian*. Guilt by association is dumb (and if Remain had spent more time on the EU and less on pointing at Farage and making rude noises, they probably would've won).
*Vegetarian was defined a bit more loosely back then, including eating things like kidney. That might sound daft, but in 50 years or so people might feel the same about vegetarians eating fish.
Surely GPS is a boringly mature technology which works fine in theory and works fine in practice, and there's only so much to be gained by refining your accuracy form the nanometer range down to the picometer? The fun stuff is jamming, spoofing and generally messing about with the other players. Galileo was always hopelessly insecure for having too many nation states involved, and now it's also obsolescent and compromised by the fact that a formerly friendly, now neutral power knows how it works. Nice little positioning system you have there, M Barnier, what a shame if the documentation were to show up on wikileaks.
Not my area of expertise particularly but is the ability of hostile countries to jam GPS signals seriously limited by *not understanding how they work*???
To be fair to OGH he may run the site but I post on PB and have been campaigning for the Tories in Lewisham East and will be out again tonight, we all know OGH is a prominent LD activist but that does not mean we all are
While I've been over to support Lucy as a Lib Dem member and slightly activist. To be fair, the Deputy Editor of this site is a card carrying Conservative yet that doesn't stop some of the Conservatives on here bleating on about bias.
As to whether OGH is still "active", that's his business and he makes no secret of it. You and other Conservatives choose to post here and that's your privilege subject to Mike's rules.
As for the content of the threads, we get an excellent weekly contribution from David Herdosn who is, I believe, a Conservative member and activist. Indeed, one of the strengths of this forum has been and continues to be the quality of the thread titles.
Neither RCS nor David Herdson are sending out Conservative flyers that put in imperceptibly small print that they're from the Conservative Party but instead appears to be from PB. That's the difference.
OGH is regularly invited onto the media as an expert due to this site, this is a partisan advert that pretends to be independent expertise and is really party spin.
To be fair to OGH he may run the site but I post on PB and have been campaigning for the Tories in Lewisham East and will be out again tonight, we all know OGH is a prominent LD activist but that does not mean we all are
While I've been over to support Lucy as a Lib Dem member and slightly activist. To be fair, the Deputy Editor of this site is a card carrying Conservative yet that doesn't stop some of the Conservatives on here bleating on about bias.
As to whether OGH is still "active", that's his business and he makes no secret of it. You and other Conservatives choose to post here and that's your privilege subject to Mike's rules.
As for the content of the threads, we get an excellent weekly contribution from David Herdosn who is, I believe, a Conservative member and activist. Indeed, one of the strengths of this forum has been and continues to be the quality of the thread titles.
Mr. Eagles, your World Cup tips coming up this afternoon?
Dr. Foxy, Hitler was a vegetarian*. Guilt by association is dumb (and if Remain had spent more time on the EU and less on pointing at Farage and making rude noises, they probably would've won).
*Vegetarian was defined a bit more loosely back then, including eating things like kidney. That might sound daft, but in 50 years or so people might feel the same about vegetarians eating fish.
I've backed Saudi Arabia to beat Russia
It should be an interesting match. Two paragons of democracy and freedom meet to showcase the beautiful game.
Looking forward to Portugal v Spain tomorrow.
I went massively on Spain yesterday after they sacked their manager.
Both on the Portugal match and to win the tournament.
It isn't acceptable to label the majority of my constituents as racist or to suggest they didn't know what they were voting http://for.It is not the place of politicians to tell the people they were wrong. 7:58 PM - 13 Jun 2018 "
While that might be true, it’s also because the EU does not ired outcome, though.
This is actually a real example of where the UK Government is actually preparing for no deal. And it can, because we do have the expertise, knowledge, money, science and security apparatus to do it, and even the spaceports in the medium term, to do it and do it well.
We talk about the EU as if it were the Borg. In reality, the EU is gravely weakened by the UK’s exit and will become smaller, and more defensive, nervous and inwardly focussed, as a result.
Exactly what Putin wanted.
Putin runs an economic backwater with a GDP significantly less than ours. We could take on Putin unilaterally if we wanted to.
There are a number of economic backwaters with big militaries like Russia and Iran who punch above their weight in foreign affairs as a result while a number of economic powerhouses like Singapore and Switzerland have little impact on foreign affairs themselves beyond staging a big summit
Russia has always placed guns before butter, giving it power in foreign affairs that it's economic strength would not justify.
But, it's power is still a shadow of what it was in the 19th century or the 1950's.
Russia is no longer the main superpower rival to the USA, China has replaced it there but it can still be a nuisance certainly
While that might be true, it’s also because the EU does not particularly care about voter preferences throughout Europe in any event - and the ‘reality’ to which he refers is not immutable.
‘Capitulation’ pretty well described the EU’s desired outcome, though.
in the medium term, to do it and do it well.
We talk about the EU as if it were the Borg. In reality, the EU is gravely weakened by the UK’s exit and will become smaller, and more defensive, nervous and inwardly focussed, as a result.
Exactly what Putin wanted.
Putin runs an economic backwater with a GDP significantly less than ours. We could take on Putin unilaterally if we wanted to.
Russia's GDP recently slipped behind Australia.
Next year, it will likely drop below Spain and South Korea.
Forget the G7, it might not even make it into the top 20 in five years time.
The thread header is illustrated with a picture of the North Korean leader. GDP is not a reliable measure of disruptiveness or threat. Russia in economic decline is if anything likely to be more disruptive and dangerous as it casts around still more frantically for ways of restoring past glory.
North Korea has to maintain control with slave camps and complete lockdown about the outside world. There will come a point where the income gap wil start making Russians upset. Plus it will mean Europe will be more wiling to put sanctions on.
The best thing Europe can do is get fracking. Their animosity to Russia is severely tempered by their reliance on Russian oil and gas, find another source and then proper sancions can hit Putin very hard.
The votes over the past few days may show way the wind is blowing?
Just a few straws:-
Tory rebels on the "Parliament should have the final say" seem to be about 15-20? We don't know for sure because it was never put to test, but must be more than 10 to put HMG into a U turn/holding pattern for talks. Those 15-20 seem to consist of the Ultras, Grieve, Soubry, and Clarke, and a more biddable rest. On a /the CU, similar numbers (?) but it seems a bit more fudgable as to "a", "the", "arrangement" etc, at least for now, so it passed last night, but it still lurks beneath the surface. Whether Barnier will take too much fudge is a different matter, but possible if the Irish think it's some fudge or the teeth breaking rock of queues at Rosslare.
Labour's official position in so far as I can work out (I am genuinely not meaning to be sarcastic there, I personally am a little hazy on this), seems to be "we want EEA/SM but we're not going to call it that, we're going to call it "full access", with restrictions on FOM".
Actually, had Cameron been able to put that to the nation he'd have romped home, so Corbyn's current position is, to be fair, probably not far off what a workable consensus looks like in Middle England. It's just not on offer from the EU (so far), so is a great thing for the Opposition to tout, because they don't have to deliver it.
However, Labour has 70+ hard core Remainers who don't care, a very small number of Ultras the other way (Hoey/Field etc) but also to be fair (and this surprised me) clearly a not inconsiderable number (given HoC maths) of the Flint persuasion who get that the electorate told them something very deep felt in June 2016, and they'd better do something about it. There is more unease about being too "Remainy" in Labour Leave seats than perhaps I had thought.
So where does that leave us?
I'd say there is a majority for staying pretty close in a/the/arrangement CU, but also to have meaningful immigration controls with the EU. (as an aside I think Sajid has hit the nail on the head this morning, nobody is seriously going to object to more doctors arriving from Singapore, or Canada, or Eithopia to do high paid jobs we want in the NHS. More of this sort of targeted thing please!).
So CU/Controls: Am I 100% happy with that? - no. Could I live with it for now? - yes. ( I think the economics would follow as the world develops and over the years the desirability of an EU/CU would decline anyway).
If we could cross party such a position, it would immensely strengthen our hand with the 27 I feel. I suspect that's flying pig territory. My real doubt is how committed is "official Labour" to restricting FOM? I always get the feeling they'd jump ship on that at the first opportunity.
Mr. Eagles, your World Cup tips coming up this afternoon?
Dr. Foxy, Hitler was a vegetarian*. Guilt by association is dumb (and if Remain had spent more time on the EU and less on pointing at Farage and making rude noises, they probably would've won).
*Vegetarian was defined a bit more loosely back then, including eating things like kidney. That might sound daft, but in 50 years or so people might feel the same about vegetarians eating fish.
Vegetarians don't eat fish
I once had a colleague who claimed to be a vegetarian but would eat birds (e.g. chicken) ‘because she didn’t like the look in their eyes!’ She wouldn’t eat fish though. Never asked her about reptiles.
Mr. Eagles, your World Cup tips coming up this afternoon?
Dr. Foxy, Hitler was a vegetarian*. Guilt by association is dumb (and if Remain had spent more time on the EU and less on pointing at Farage and making rude noises, they probably would've won).
*Vegetarian was defined a bit more loosely back then, including eating things like kidney. That might sound daft, but in 50 years or so people might feel the same about vegetarians eating fish.
I've backed Saudi Arabia to beat Russia
It should be an interesting match. Two paragons of democracy and freedom meet to showcase the beautiful game.
Looking forward to Portugal v Spain tomorrow.
I went massively on Spain yesterday after they sacked their manager.
Both on the Portugal match and to win the tournament.
Just listened to Anna Soubry's speech yesterday. I know if you are pro-Remain you will say her "suck it up" comments were "refreshing" but she is not exactly doing her bit to dispel the notion that Remainers are arrogant and an elite. She also sounds as though she knows she will not be a MP past this Parliament.
One of the heavily ironic things about hearing the likes of Ken Clarke, Soubry and Grieve wax lyrical about the benefits of openness, immigration and the need to bring down barriers is that they all Barristers, a profession which is the absolute master of erecting numerous arcane barriers to keep out competition and fighting tooth and claw retain their lock on the market.
Yes, I have wondered about this.
Lawyers have in general not suffered very much from competition due to Freedom of Movement, as the legal systems in England & Wales, Scotland are so specific to each country.
This is very different to low-skilled jobs, but also to professional jobs in science, technology and software, and even jobs in the arts and publishing.
I would guess that lawyers and barristers are still almost exclusively English (or Scottish) born, bred and trained.
A Romanian coming to the UK to work as a lawyer would need extensive re-training in English or Scottish law, but a Romanian coming to work as a car-washer or a research scientist or a programmer or a doctor needs little or no re-training.
Lots of lawyers are foreign, but probably more likely to be from the US or Commonwealth than the EU. There are financial pressures on law firms, such as the cost of PII, legal aid cuts, and high rents, but they aren't really affected by foreign competition.
The biggest barrier to competition is the fact that Continental lawyers are not trained in common law.
On of the concerns I had about more integration was the way in which the advantages of the common law were being lost eg the execrable EAW allowing people to be arrested, deported and locked up without even a prima facie case being made against them.
The votes over the past few days may show way the wind is blowing?
Just a few straws:-
Tory rebels on the "Parliament should have the final say" seem to be about 15-20? We don't know for sure because it was never put to test, but must be more than 10 to put HMG into a U turn/holding pattern for talks. Those 15-20 seem to consist of the Ultras, Grieve, Soubry, and Clarke, and a more biddable rest. On a /the CU, similar numbers (?) but it seems a bit more fudgable as to "a", "the", "arrangement" etc, at least for now, so it passed last night, but it still lurks beneath the surface. Whether Barnier will take too much fudge is a different matter, but possible if the Irish think it's some fudge or the teeth breaking rock of queues at Rosslare.
Labour's official position in so far as I can work out (I am genuinely not meaning to be sarcastic there, I personally am a little hazy on this), seems to be "we want EEA/SM but we're not going to call it that, we're going to call it "full access", with restrictions on FOM".
Actually, had Cameron been able to put that to the nation he'd have romped home, so Corbyn's current position is, to be fair, probably not far off what a workable consensus looks like in Middle England. It's just not on offer from the EU (so far), so is a great thing for the Opposition to tout, because they don't have to deliver it.
However, Labour has 70+ hard core Remainers who don't care, a very small number of Ultras the other way (Hoey/Field etc) but also to be fair (and this surprised me) clearly a not inconsiderable number (given HoC maths) of the Flint persuasion who get that the electorate told them something very deep felt in June 2016, and they'd better do something about it. There is more unease about being too "Remainy" in Labour Leave seats than perhaps I had thought.
So where does that leave us?
I'd say there is a majority for staying pretty close in a/the/arrangement CU, but also to have meaningful immigration controls with the EU. (as an aside I think Sajid has hit the nail on the head this morning, nobody is seriously going to object to more doctors arriving from Singapore, or Canada, or Eithopia to do high paid jobs we want in the NHS. More of this sort of targeted thing please!).
So CU/Controls: Am I 100% happy with that? - no. Could I live with it for now? - yes. ( I think the economics would follow as the world develops and over the years the desirability of an EU/CU would decline anyway).
If we could cross party such a position, it would immensely strengthen our hand with the 27 I feel. I suspect that's flying pig territory. My real doubt is how committed is "official Labour" to restricting FOM? I always get the feeling they'd jump ship on that at the first opportunity.
Missing out the extremists, Labour's cunning plan is to offer a close market relationship outside the EU with changes to FOM.
Anyone with a brain cell knows that can't be and never will be on offer. All 27 would want the same deal (well, the voters would). But loss of unlimited FOM would be a major setback to the whole EU plan.
But as you say, Labour can offer it, and claim they could deliver it.
I'd say there is a majority for staying pretty close in a/the/arrangement CU, but also to have meaningful immigration controls with the EU. (as an aside I think Sajid has hit the nail on the head this morning, nobody is seriously going to object to more doctors arriving from Singapore, or Canada, or Eithopia to do high paid jobs we want in the NHS. More of this sort of targeted thing please!).
I object. We are one of the most scientifically developed countries in the world, we should be training and exporting doctors and engineers.
We should be offering free scholarships to Ethiopians to train as doctors, and then encouraging them to return to Ethiopia where their new skills are badly needed.
This is what the Labour Party believed in, once upon a time.
As Caroline Flint put it yesterday, why is it so hard for my constituents (in the Don Valley) to train as doctors?
Putin runs an economic backwater with a GDP significantly less than ours. We could take on Putin unilaterally if we wanted to.
Russia's GDP recently slipped behind Australia.
Next year, it will likely drop below Spain and South Korea.
Forget the G7, it might not even make it into the top 20 in five years time.
The thread header is illustrated with a picture of the North Korean leader. GDP is not a reliable measure of disruptiveness or threat. Russia in economic decline is if anything likely to be more disruptive and dangerous as it casts around still more frantically for ways of restoring past glory.
North Korea has to maintain control with slave camps and complete lockdown about the outside world. There will come a point where the income gap wil start making Russians upset. Plus it will mean Europe will be more wiling to put sanctions on.
The best thing Europe can do is get fracking. Their animosity to Russia is severely tempered by their reliance on Russian oil and gas, find another source and then proper sancions can hit Putin very hard.
Find another source and you don't need sanctions.
That’s a good point, the lack of foreign currency from O&G sales would be to a large extent their own sanctions.
It isn't acceptable to label the majority of my constituents as racist or to suggest they didn't know what they were voting http://for.It is not the place of politicians to tell the people they were wrong. 7:58 PM - 13 Jun 2018 "
While that might be true, it’s also because the EU does not particularly care about voter preferences throughout Europe in any event - and the ‘reality’ to which he refers is not immutable.
‘Capitulation’ pretty well described the EU’s desired outcome, though.
We talk about the EU as if it were the Borg. In reality, the EU is gravely weakened by the UK’s exit and will become smaller, and more defensive, nervous and inwardly focussed, as a result.
Exactly what Putin wanted.
And a choice it is making itself.
The UK wanted to collaborate on this.
The trouble is thanks to Brexit the UK is no longer as desirable a partner on any project. Who knows when we might choose to walk out? Brexit Britain is diminished.
That’s a silly argument. The UK works and collaborates in close treaty arrangements with countries around the world, and has always met its obligations. It isn’t about to walk out of NATO or fiveeyes, and nor is there any realistic chance it would do so.
The UK has been clear it wants to collaborate closely on foreign and security policy with the EU. The EU is telling it (on Galileo at least) to jog on.
But that attitude is precisely why the UK might walk from Nato and intelligence co-operation in the event of No Deal. If the electorate comes to see European intransigence as precipitating a serious crisis - and No Deal would do that - then people will legitimately question why we're defending countries intent on doing us harm.
In any case, is Nato really worth much without the US - and who believes that Trump is reliable in the event of a Ukraine-style situation in, say, Estonia?
Any reason why we wouldn't join EFTA? Not the EEA just EFTA. Is it because it starts with E?
Free movement obligations, IIRC.
Nope. The Swiss are quite happy to be in EFTA but not the EEA. This has been my position since early 2016 - membership of EFTA and a bilateral bespoke arrangement with the EU so not Norway-lite, Canada Plus Plus or anything like that but a separate series of treaties between the UK and the EU.
Meanwhile, we re-invigorate EFTA by re-joining (we were members from 1960 to 1973 and no one objected then) and perhaps agree to take on the leadership of the organisation and build it as a loose association of collaborating free trading nations.
The Prime Minister has occasionally hinted at wanting something "unique" for the UK so perhaps she has decided to follow my advice (nothing wrong with that).
But Switzerlands trade deal is contingent on FoM isn't it
I think the Swiss are in a knot on that. The Govt wants to acquiesce to the EU on that, the voters, I think, have said "no thanks" in a couple of referendums on it. And Swiss democracy is hot on referendums, so last time I looked it was a mess.
Others may have the latest position.
However, the Swiss, I believe, have an insurance based health system, and a more contributory benefits system so it's much harder to pitch up from other parts of Europe and claim anything like tax credits, because my understanding is that sort of thing is much more restricted in Switzerland.
This was one of Cameron's stumbling blocks. The EU simply refused to allow any difference to be had between UK and EU27 (well 26 because we've always had special deals with Ireland) citizens.
We could tear up the benefits system and make it more insurance/contributory and have far more power to do something about FOM, but I suspect the will is not there for such upheaval.
I'd say there is a majority for staying pretty close in a/the/arrangement CU, but also to have meaningful immigration controls with the EU. (as an aside I think Sajid has hit the nail on the head this morning, nobody is seriously going to object to more doctors arriving from Singapore, or Canada, or Eithopia to do high paid jobs we want in the NHS. More of this sort of targeted thing please!).
I object. We are one of the most scientifically developed countries in the world, we should be training and exporting doctors and engineers.
We should be offering free scholarships to Ethiopians to train as doctors, and then encouraging them to return to Ethiopia where their new skills are badly needed.
This is what the Labour Party believed in, once upon a time.
As Caroline Flint put it yesterday, why is it so hard for my constituents (in the Don Valley) to train as doctors?
Oh agreed. 100%. I think Flint nailed it.
I think it's crazy if we train fewer doctors than the Netherlands, yes we should be "exporting" the expertise for the good of humanity, but right now Sajid has done the right thing.
Two politicians on opposite sides saying and doing excellent things on consecutive days. I need to lie down.
Neither RCS nor David Herdson are sending out Conservative flyers that put in imperceptibly small print that they're from the Conservative Party but instead appears to be from PB. That's the difference.
OGH is regularly invited onto the media as an expert due to this site, this is a partisan advert that pretends to be independent expertise and is really party spin.
First, no one compels you to post here and OGH's record as an LD activist is well known. Second, this is OGH's business and livelihood and he can promote it as he sees fit just as anyone else can if, for example, they offered their premises and facilities free of charge to a group or organisation. OGH has never said he provides his site just as an indulgence for individuals to debate politics nor he has ever claimed it to be wholly independent. If you are bothered that in some oblique way you are endorsing an LD candidate by posting here that's for you to resolve.
It isn't acceptable to label the majority of my constituents as racist or to suggest they didn't know what they were voting http://for.It is not the place of politicians to tell the people they were wrong. 7:58 PM - 13 Jun 2018 "
While that might be true, it’s also because the EU does not particularly care about voter preferences throughout Europe in any event - and the ‘reality’ to which he refers is not immutable.
‘Capitulation’ pretty well described the EU’s desired outcome, though.
We talk about the EU as if it were the Borg. In reality, the EU is gravely weakened by the UK’s exit and will become smaller, and more defensive, nervous and inwardly focussed, as a result.
Exactly what Putin wanted.
And a choice it is making itself.
The UK wanted to collaborate on this.
The trouble is thanks to Brexit the UK is no longer as desirable a partner on any project. Who knows when we might choose to walk out? Brexit Britain is diminished.
That’s a silly argument. The UK works and collaborates in close treaty arrangements with countries around the world, and has always met its obligations. It isn’t about to walk out of NATO or fiveeyes, and nor is there any realistic chance it would do so.
The UK has been clear it wants to collaborate closely on foreign and security policy with the EU. The EU is telling it (on Galileo at least) to jog on.
In any case, is Nato really worth much without the US - and who believes that Trump is reliable in the event of a Ukraine-style situation in, say, Estonia?
Trump could well be gone in 3 years or so, and certainly gone in 7 or so. I wouldn't make a long term decision like that just on the basis of one office holder.
I'd say there is a majority for staying pretty close in a/the/arrangement CU, but also to have meaningful immigration controls with the EU. (as an aside I think Sajid has hit the nail on the head this morning, nobody is seriously going to object to more doctors arriving from Singapore, or Canada, or Eithopia to do high paid jobs we want in the NHS. More of this sort of targeted thing please!).
I object. We are one of the most scientifically developed countries in the world, we should be training and exporting doctors and engineers.
We should be offering free scholarships to Ethiopians to train as doctors, and then encouraging them to return to Ethiopia where their new skills are badly needed.
This is what the Labour Party believed in, once upon a time.
As Caroline Flint put it yesterday, why is it so hard for my constituents (in the Don Valley) to train as doctors?
Oh agreed. 100%. I think Flint nailed it.
I think it's crazy if we train fewer doctors than the Netherlands, yes we should be "exporting" the expertise for the good of humanity, but right now Sajid has done the right thing.
Two politicians on opposite sides saying and doing excellent things on consecutive days. I need to lie down.
Can anyone explain (@Foxy?) in simple terms what are the problems with doctor training? Is it a lack of training places, a lack of chemistry teaching in state schools, a lack of resources at universities and teaching hospitals?
There are of course issues with retention (higher proportion of women, willingness to move overseas, NHS morale etc) but I’d class these separately.
Re the Parliamentary arithmetic, that is an excellent post. The most important development this week is actually going to be the Govt now knows there are around 15 MPs on the Labour front who have enough serious concerns about immigration to vote against anything that would bring in FoM. Add that to the five to six usual Labour Brexiteers, that offsets the 15-20 Tory Remain rebels on her own side. So anything that has FoM looks dead in the water.
I'll make the point again that I made earlier - I think Soubry really f**ked it up for the EEA/FoM side with her speech, part because she alienated those 15 Labour MPs (look at Flint's face during Soubry's comments) and because the anti-FoM can constantly replay clips of Soubry saying "suck it up", British workers don't want these jobs etc.
Where I will disagree, and agree with Bardd, is that we should be training more of our own doctors and encouraging social mobility. A big problem here seems to be that it is far more profitable for UK universities to get non-UK students on medical courses where they can charge them a whopping fee so that encourages them to pick overseas students. Surely that should be fixable (with regulation if needed).
Just listened to Anna Soubry's speech yesterday. I know if you are pro-Remain you will say her "suck it up" comments were "refreshing" but she is not exactly doing her bit to dispel the notion that Remainers are arrogant and an elite. She also sounds as though she knows she will not be a MP past this Parliament.
One of the heavily ironic things about hearing the likes of Ken Clarke, Soubry and Grieve wax lyrical about the benefits of openness, immigration and the need to bring down barriers is that they all Barristers, a profession which is the absolute master of erecting numerous arcane barriers to keep out competition and fighting tooth and claw retain their lock on the market.
Yes, I have wondered about this.
Lawyers have in general not suffered very much from competition due to Freedom of Movement, as the legal systems in England & Wales, Scotland are so specific to each country.
This is very different to low-skilled jobs, but also to professional jobs in science, technology and software, and even jobs in the arts and publishing.
I would guess that lawyers and barristers are still almost exclusively English (or Scottish) born, bred and trained.
A Romanian coming to the UK to work as a lawyer would need extensive re-training in English or Scottish law, but a Romanian coming to work as a car-washer or a research scientist or a programmer or a doctor needs little or no re-training.
Lots of lawyers are foreign, but probably more likely to be from the US or Commonwealth than the EU. There are financial pressures on law firms, such as the cost of PII, legal aid cuts, and high rents, but they aren't really affected by foreign competition.
The biggest barrier to competition is the fact that Continental lawyers are not trained in common law.
On of the concerns I had about more integration was the way in which the advantages of the common law were being lost eg the execrable EAW allowing people to be arrested, deported and locked up without even a prima facie case being made against them.
I've always thought it curious how little fuss the legal establishment made about the EAW (while making a fuss about the largely irrelevant Charter of Rights).
I'd say there is a majority for staying pretty close in a/the/arrangement CU, but also to have meaningful immigration controls with the EU. (as an aside I think Sajid has hit the nail on the head this morning, nobody is seriously going to object to more doctors arriving from Singapore, or Canada, or Eithopia to do high paid jobs we want in the NHS. More of this sort of targeted thing please!).
I object. We are one of the most scientifically developed countries in the world, we should be training and exporting doctors and engineers.
We should be offering free scholarships to Ethiopians to train as doctors, and then encouraging them to return to Ethiopia where their new skills are badly needed.
This is what the Labour Party believed in, once upon a time.
As Caroline Flint put it yesterday, why is it so hard for my constituents (in the Don Valley) to train as doctors?
Oh agreed. 100%. I think Flint nailed it.
I think it's crazy if we train fewer doctors than the Netherlands, yes we should be "exporting" the expertise for the good of humanity, but right now Sajid has done the right thing.
Two politicians on opposite sides saying and doing excellent things on consecutive days. I need to lie down.
Can anyone explain (@Foxy?) in simple terms what are the problems with doctor training? Is it a lack of training places, a lack of chemistry teaching in state schools, a lack of resources at universities and teaching hospitals?
There are of course issues with retention (higher proportion of women, willingness to move overseas, NHS morale etc) but I’d class these separately.
It is very simple. It is expensive to train doctors, so the Government caps the number of places artificially at medical school.
From the harsh point of view of economics, it is cheaper to get another country to train a doctor, and then we steal the doctor.
Flint nailed it. It is an excellent question, and if more Labour MPs were asking it, I would be voting Labour.
"Why is it so hard for my constituents to become a doctor?" Every useless Welsh Labour MP should be asking themselves that question.
Just listened to the podcast. If you consider reversing Brexit to be the most important political campaign of your life (as I do) then the last few days have been disappointing.
A week ago Boris and J R-M's stars were on the wane and Tory Remainers were starting to assert themselves. Brexit was going so badly that the built in Remain majority in Parliament looked like they might mobilize in the national interest. If May was forced out she wouldn't be replaced by one of the headbangers but by Javid. So the fear of the lunatics taking over the asylum was severely reduced.
Compromises could be made. The wild ones-Boris Fox and the Bulldog-could be fired and the sensible majority could reassert itself. A period of quiet reflection would very likely lead to BINO or even a moratorium while we reflected on where we were going leading to another referendum in a few years time
But then yesterday it became obvious that Corbyn the treacherous bastard is a Leaver. With the leader of the biggest parliamentary block of Remainers at war with his own troops we're back to square one.
Corbyn wants the Tories to own BREXIT but the PLP suicide squad cant help themselves.
Just listened to the podcast. If you consider reversing Brexit to be the most important political campaign of your life (as I do) then the last few days have been disappointing.
A week ago Boris and J R-M's stars were on the wane and Tory Remainers were starting to assert themselves. Brexit was going so badly that the built in Remain majority in Parliament looked like they might mobilize in the national interest. If May was forced out she wouldn't be replaced by one of the headbangers but by Javid. So the fear of the lunatics taking over the asylum was severely reduced.
Compromises could be made. The wild ones-Boris Fox and the Bulldog-could be fired and the sensible majority could reassert itself. A period of quiet reflection would very likely lead to BINO or even a moratorium while we reflected on where we were going leading to another referendum in a few years time
But then yesterday it became obvious that Corbyn the treacherous bastard is a Leaver. With the leader of the biggest parliamentary block of Remainers at war with his own troops we're back to square one.
Corbyn wants the Tories to own BREXIT but the PLP suicide squad cant help themselves.
So what exactly is his Brexit plan?
Do nothing to stop it, let the tories rip themselves to pieces and come in afterwards. I'd have thought that'd been obvious for a long time
Just listened to the podcast. If you consider reversing Brexit to be the most important political campaign of your life (as I do) then the last few days have been disappointing.
A week ago Boris and J R-M's stars were on the wane and Tory Remainers were starting to assert themselves. Brexit was going so badly that the built in Remain majority in Parliament looked like they might mobilize in the national interest. If May was forced out she wouldn't be replaced by one of the headbangers but by Javid. So the fear of the lunatics taking over the asylum was severely reduced.
Compromises could be made. The wild ones-Boris Fox and the Bulldog-could be fired and the sensible majority could reassert itself. A period of quiet reflection would very likely lead to BINO or even a moratorium while we reflected on where we were going leading to another referendum in a few years time
But then yesterday it became obvious that Corbyn the treacherous bastard is a Leaver. With the leader of the biggest parliamentary block of Remainers at war with his own troops we're back to square one.
Corbyn wants the Tories to own BREXIT but the PLP suicide squad cant help themselves.
So what exactly is his Brexit plan?
Do nothing to stop it, let the tories rip themselves to pieces and come in afterwards. I'd have thought that'd been obvious for a long time
Do you think the country will be impressed by that sort of passive opportunism? I don't.
I'd say there is a majority for staying pretty close in a/the/arrangement CU, but also to have meaningful immigration controls with the EU. (as an aside I think Sajid has hit the nail on the head this morning, nobody is seriously going to object to more doctors arriving from Singapore, or Canada, or Eithopia to do high paid jobs we want in the NHS. More of this sort of targeted thing please!).
I object. We are one of the most scientifically developed countries in the world, we should be training and exporting doctors and engineers.
We should be offering free scholarships to Ethiopians to train as doctors, and then encouraging them to return to Ethiopia where their new skills are badly needed.
This is what the Labour Party believed in, once upon a time.
As Caroline Flint put it yesterday, why is it so hard for my constituents (in the Don Valley) to train as doctors?
Oh agreed. 100%. I think Flint nailed it.
I think it's crazy if we train fewer doctors than the Netherlands, yes we should be "exporting" the expertise for the good of humanity, but right now Sajid has done the right thing.
Two politicians on opposite sides saying and doing excellent things on consecutive days. I need to lie down.
Can anyone explain (@Foxy?) in simple terms what are the problems with doctor training? Is it a lack of training places, a lack of chemistry teaching in state schools, a lack of resources at universities and teaching hospitals?
There are of course issues with retention (higher proportion of women, willingness to move overseas, NHS morale etc) but I’d class these separately.
It is very simple. It is expensive to train doctors, so the Government caps the number of places artificially at medical school.
"Why is it so hard for my constituents to become a doctor?" Every useless Welsh Labour MP should be asking themselves that question.
I'm not sure I accept it's a matter of cost, medicine and the law are the last two closed shop professions. Neither of them are actually all that demanding academically but supply is artificially restricted. It's the same families and social classes generation after generation, cosy club.
I'm amazed there isn't more coverage of the "Habsburg" group Manafort set up to lobby for Yanukovych and Putin: includes Romano Prodi, Alfred Gusenbauer and Javier Solana.
I'd say there is a majority for staying pretty close in a/the/arrangement CU, but also to have meaningful immigration controls with the EU. (as an aside I think Sajid has hit the nail on the head this morning, nobody is seriously going to object to more doctors arriving from Singapore, or Canada, or Eithopia to do high paid jobs we want in the NHS. More of this sort of targeted thing please!).
I object. We are one of the most scientifically developed countries in the world, we should be training and exporting doctors and engineers.
We should be offering free scholarships to Ethiopians to train as doctors, and then encouraging them to return to Ethiopia where their new skills are badly needed.
This is what the Labour Party believed in, once upon a time.
As Caroline Flint put it yesterday, why is it so hard for my constituents (in the Don Valley) to train as doctors?
Oh agreed. 100%. I think Flint nailed it.
I think it's crazy if we train fewer doctors than the Netherlands, yes we should be "exporting" the expertise for the good of humanity, but right now Sajid has done the right thing.
Two politicians on opposite sides saying and doing excellent things on consecutive days. I need to lie down.
Can anyone explain (@Foxy?) in simple terms what are the problems with doctor training? Is it a lack of training places, a lack of chemistry teaching in state schools, a lack of resources at universities and teaching hospitals?
There are of course issues with retention (higher proportion of women, willingness to move overseas, NHS morale etc) but I’d class these separately.
It is very simple. It is expensive to train doctors, so the Government caps the number of places artificially at medical school.
"Why is it so hard for my constituents to become a doctor?" Every useless Welsh Labour MP should be asking themselves that question.
I'm not sure I accept it's a matter of cost, medicine and the law are the last two closed shop professions. Neither of them are actually all that demanding academically but supply is artificially restricted. It's the same families and social classes generation after generation, cosy club.
That may well influence the policy, especially for Law, I agree.
While that might be true, it’s also because the EU does not particularly care about voter preferences throughout Europe in any event - and the ‘reality’ to which he refers is not immutable.
‘Capitulation’ pretty well described the EU’s desired outcome, though.
We talk about the EU as if it were the Borg. In reality, the EU is gravely weakened by the UK’s exit and will become smaller, and more defensive, nervous and inwardly focussed, as a result.
Exactly what Putin wanted.
And a choice it is making itself.
The UK wanted to collaborate on this.
The trouble is thanks to Brexit the UK is no longer as desirable a partner on any project. Who knows when we might choose to walk out? Brexit Britain is diminished.
That’s a silly argument. The UK works and collaborates in close treaty arrangements with countries around the world, and has always met its obligations. It isn’t about to walk out of NATO or fiveeyes, and nor is there any realistic chance it would do so.
The UK has been clear it wants to collaborate closely on foreign and security policy with the EU. The EU is telling it (on Galileo at least) to jog on.
In any case, is Nato really worth much without the US - and who believes that Trump is reliable in the event of a Ukraine-style situation in, say, Estonia?
Trump could well be gone in 3 years or so, and certainly gone in 7 or so. I wouldn't make a long term decision like that just on the basis of one office holder.
I would imagine if Trump gets re-elected, he'd make a play for revoking the 22nd amendment. Still, he can't live forever even if he is very healthy - probably the healthiest person he knows.
While that might be true, it’s also because the EU does not particularly care about voter preferences throughout Europe in any event - and the ‘reality’ to which he refers is not immutable.
‘Capitulation’ pretty well described the EU’s desired outcome, though.
We talk about the EU as if it were the Borg. In reality, the EU is gravely weakened by the UK’s exit and will become smaller, and more defensive, nervous and inwardly focussed, as a result.
Exactly what Putin wanted.
And a choice it is making itself.
The UK wanted to collaborate on this.
The trouble is thanks to Brexit the UK is no longer as desirable a partner on any project. Who knows when we might choose to walk out? Brexit Britain is diminished.
That’s a silly argument. The UK works and collaborates in close treaty arrangements with countries around the world, and has always met its obligations. It isn’t about to walk out of NATO or fiveeyes, and nor is there any realistic chance it would do so.
The UK has been clear it wants to collaborate closely on foreign and security policy with the EU. The EU is telling it (on Galileo at least) to jog on.
In any case, is Nato really worth much without the US - and who believes that Trump is reliable in the event of a Ukraine-style situation in, say, Estonia?
Trump could well be gone in 3 years or so, and certainly gone in 7 or so. I wouldn't make a long term decision like that just on the basis of one office holder.
No, but it is more than just one office holder. What is Nato *for*? Put another way, why is it in the US's interests to guarantee Estonia against Russia?
The USA's big strategic challenge of the 21st century is China and, hance, managing how that country's expanding influence will expand across Asia, into Africa, and, consequently, into the Pacific and Indian Oceans, conflicts with the US's interests. In that game, Russia is, if not an ally, then certainly with aligned interests.
According to the HESA, approximately 10,500 places out of the 65,000 students of medicine and dentistry in 2016/7 were non-UK, with c. 80% coming from non-EU countries,
That is 10,500 places not available to UK students and where the UK educates the doctors who, in most cases, will take their knowledge home.
If we want to boost the number of home grown doctors, put a annual cap (let's say 5000) of places that can be offered to non-UK students. Universities will hate it because they lose the fees but it will be of benefit to society.
The Donald actually hit the nail on the head when he asked why the US was allowing Chinese students to come to study in the US and then take the knowledge accrued home with them with no benefit to the US. We need to start thinking the same.
I'd say there is a majority for staying pretty close in a/the/arrangement CU, but also to have meaningful immigration controls with the EU. (as an aside I think Sajid has hit the nail on the head this morning, nobody is seriously going to object to more doctors arriving from Singapore, or Canada, or Eithopia to do high paid jobs we want in the NHS. More of this sort of targeted thing please!).
I object. We are one of the most scientifically developed countries in the world, we should be training and exporting doctors and engineers.
We should be offering free scholarships to Ethiopians to train as doctors, and then encouraging them to return to Ethiopia where their new skills are badly needed.
This is what the Labour Party believed in, once upon a time.
As Caroline Flint put it yesterday, why is it so hard for my constituents (in the Don Valley) to train as doctors?
Oh agreed. 100%. I think Flint nailed it.
I think it's crazy if we train fewer doctors than the Netherlands, yes we should be "exporting" the expertise for the good of humanity, but right now Sajid has done the right thing.
Two politicians on opposite sides saying and doing excellent things on consecutive days. I need to lie down.
Can anyone explain (@Foxy?) in simple terms what are the problems with doctor training? Is it a lack of training places, a lack of chemistry teaching in state schools, a lack of resources at universities and teaching hospitals?
There are of course issues with retention (higher proportion of women, willingness to move overseas, NHS morale etc) but I’d class these separately.
It is very simple. It is expensive to train doctors, so the Government caps the number of places artificially at medical school.
"Why is it so hard for my constituents to become a doctor?" Every useless Welsh Labour MP should be asking themselves that question.
I'm not sure I accept it's a matter of cost, medicine and the law are the last two closed shop professions. Neither of them are actually all that demanding academically but supply is artificially restricted. It's the same families and social classes generation after generation, cosy club.
Medicine is not "actually all that demanding academically"?! Compared with what?
Looking at the HESA website, 10500 of those studying dentistry and medicine in 2016/7 were non-UK out of a total of 65,000. c. 80% of the non-UK students were from non-EU countries
So we are training over 10000 students per year to build up knowledge which, in most cases, they will take home. While they pay fees, that benefits the university only. The wider cost of supporting medical training is borne by the UK taxpayer.
Surely an obvious route would be to put a cap on the number of foreign students allowed per year (let's say 5%, so just over 3K) and retain the rest for UK students, and then do something on the social mobility front? That would mean an extra 7,500 students per year being trained up who would, very likely, continue to work in the UK. The universities would hate it because they lost the fees but it would benefit society.
Re the Parliamentary arithmetic, that is an excellent post. The most important development this week is actually going to be the Govt now knows there are around 15 MPs on the Labour front who have enough serious concerns about immigration to vote against anything that would bring in FoM. Add that to the five to six usual Labour Brexiteers, that offsets the 15-20 Tory Remain rebels on her own side. So anything that has FoM looks dead in the water.
I'll make the point again that I made earlier - I think Soubry really f**ked it up for the EEA/FoM side with her speech, part because she alienated those 15 Labour MPs (look at Flint's face during Soubry's comments) and because the anti-FoM can constantly replay clips of Soubry saying "suck it up", British workers don't want these jobs etc.
Where I will disagree, and agree with Bardd, is that we should be training more of our own doctors and encouraging social mobility. A big problem here seems to be that it is far more profitable for UK universities to get non-UK students on medical courses where they can charge them a whopping fee so that encourages them to pick overseas students. Surely that should be fixable (with regulation if needed).
Yes, I agree with Bardd. See my post in reply to his. We should train more, but that's going to take 6 years plus to make any difference at all even if we started now.
Looking at the HESA website, 10500 of those studying dentistry and medicine in 2016/7 were non-UK out of a total of 65,000. c. 80% of the non-UK students were from non-EU countries
So we are training over 10000 students per year to build up knowledge which, in most cases, they will take home. While they pay fees, that benefits the university only. The wider cost of supporting medical training is borne by the UK taxpayer.
Surely an obvious route would be to put a cap on the number of foreign students allowed per year (let's say 5%, so just over 3K) and retain the rest for UK students, and then do something on the social mobility front? That would mean an extra 7,500 students per year being trained up who would, very likely, continue to work in the UK. The universities would hate it because they lost the fees but it would benefit society.
I'm also with The Donald on this one when he asked why is the US giving so much knowledge to Chinese students, via university courses, who then return to China and benefit that economy without benefiting the US. It is time we started to think more about our own interests.
Surely GPS is a boringly mature technology which works fine in theory and works fine in practice, and there's only so much to be gained by refining your accuracy form the nanometer range down to the picometer? The fun stuff is jamming, spoofing and generally messing about with the other players. Galileo was always hopelessly insecure for having too many nation states involved, and now it's also obsolescent and compromised by the fact that a formerly friendly, now neutral power knows how it works. Nice little positioning system you have there, M Barnier, what a shame if the documentation were to show up on wikileaks.
Not my area of expertise particularly but is the ability of hostile countries to jam GPS signals seriously limited by *not understanding how they work*???
Not my area of expertise either, but I am guessing from all the emphasis on how toppity-woppity secret all aspects of Galileo participation are, that there's details about how the system works which it is better to keep to oneself.
I guess that a good Labour result in Lewisham East would depend on a fairly high turnout in the areas with a large proportion of black Caribbean and black African people. If turnout is disappointing in those areas the result might be closer than expected.
Just listened to the podcast. If you consider reversing Brexit to be the most important political campaign of your life (as I do) then the last few days have been disappointing.
A week ago Boris and J R-M's stars were on the wane and Tory Remainers were starting to assert themselves. Brexit was going so badly that the built in Remain majority in Parliament looked like they might mobilize in the national interest. If May was forced out she wouldn't be replaced by one of the headbangers but by Javid. So the fear of the lunatics taking over the asylum was severely reduced.
Compromises could be made. The wild ones-Boris Fox and the Bulldog-could be fired and the sensible majority could reassert itself. A period of quiet reflection would very likely lead to BINO or even a moratorium while we reflected on where we were going leading to another referendum in a few years time
But then yesterday it became obvious that Corbyn the treacherous bastard is a Leaver. With the leader of the biggest parliamentary block of Remainers at war with his own troops we're back to square one.
Corbyn wants the Tories to own BREXIT but the PLP suicide squad cant help themselves.
So what exactly is his Brexit plan?
Do nothing to stop it, let the tories rip themselves to pieces and come in afterwards. I'd have thought that'd been obvious for a long time
Do you think the country will be impressed by that sort of passive opportunism? I don't.
The thing about passive opportunism is that the casual observer doesn't notice it either way. The country will neither be impressed nor repelled.
The only thing wrong with Mike Smithson's letter is that he doesn't declare how much money he lost betting on the Lib Dems to win seats at GE2010. There are times when it is harder to be objective.
Surely GPS is a boringly mature technology which works fine in theory and works fine in practice, and there's only so much to be gained by refining your accuracy form the nanometer range down to the picometer? The fun stuff is jamming, spoofing and generally messing about with the other players. Galileo was always hopelessly insecure for having too many nation states involved, and now it's also obsolescent and compromised by the fact that a formerly friendly, now neutral power knows how it works. Nice little positioning system you have there, M Barnier, what a shame if the documentation were to show up on wikileaks.
Galileo is a white elephant. In the long run we will likely be glad to be shot of it.
I object. We are one of the most scientifically developed countries in the world, we should be training and exporting doctors and engineers.
We should be offering free scholarships to Ethiopians to train as doctors, and then encouraging them to return to Ethiopia where their new skills are badly needed.
This is what the Labour Party believed in, once upon a time.
As Caroline Flint put it yesterday, why is it so hard for my constituents (in the Don Valley) to train as doctors?
Oh agreed. 100%. I think Flint nailed it.
I think it's crazy if we train fewer doctors than the Netherlands, yes we should be "exporting" the expertise for the good of humanity, but right now Sajid has done the right thing.
Two politicians on opposite sides saying and doing excellent things on consecutive days. I need to lie down.
Can anyone explain (@Foxy?) in simple terms what are the problems with doctor training? Is it a lack of training places, a lack of chemistry teaching in state schools, a lack of resources at universities and teaching hospitals?
There are of course issues with retention (higher proportion of women, willingness to move overseas, NHS morale etc) but I’d class these separately.
It is very simple. It is expensive to train doctors, so the Government caps the number of places artificially at medical school.
"Why is it so hard for my constituents to become a doctor?" Every useless Welsh Labour MP should be asking themselves that question.
I'm not sure I accept it's a matter of cost, medicine and the law are the last two closed shop professions. Neither of them are actually all that demanding academically but supply is artificially restricted. It's the same families and social classes generation after generation, cosy club.
Medicine is not "actually all that demanding academically"?! Compared with what?
We should be very clear to seperate medical research and the actual practice of medicine.
Compared with most science and engineering topics being a modern GP is a doddle, it doesn't require that much brain power.
It's a job performed by over qualified, mostly bored people. Frankly most people with 3 Cs at A level could get through a medical degree and survive perfectly well in general practice.
Flint is right, we should increase supply and strip the profession of it's mystique.
Medicine is not "actually all that demanding academically"?! Compared with what?
Quantum gravity. Theoretical physics. Data science. Object-oriented programming. Chemistry. Pure mathematics. Computational engineering. Statistics.
As people have said, you need high grades because the number of places is very limited.
At research level, medicine is highly demanding, but not at the level of training or general practice.
Pah! Pure sciences maybe; O-O programming, data science, statistics - you must be joking!
I note you don't include any liberal arts topics in your list (unsuprisingly).
I definitely wouldn't put statistics or programming into a list of "hard to do" stuff. Though maybe we should add statistics for a while, given the poor quality coming out of the ONS.
Medicine is not "actually all that demanding academically"?! Compared with what?
Quantum gravity. Theoretical physics. Data science. Object-oriented programming. Chemistry. Pure mathematics. Computational engineering. Statistics.
As people have said, you need high grades because the number of places is very limited.
At research level, medicine is highly demanding, but not at the level of training or general practice.
Medical diagnosis is one of the areas which artificial intelligence is going to perform better at than humans. For example, breast screening analysis is already best done by computer.
I can recall back in the 1970s introducing a one year trial for credit scoring bank loan applications. Half the applications were credit scored and half judged by credit officers. Before the trial was half way through it was agreed that all loans would be credited scored because it was so much better at excluding defaulters.
For skilled work it is better to use the accumulated experience of many people than rely on the experience of a single person.
While that might be true, it’s also because the EU does not particularly care about voter preferences throughout Europe in any event - and the ‘reality’ to which he refers is not immutable.
‘Capitulation’ pretty well described the EU’s desired outcome, though.
We talk about the EU as if it were the Borg. In reality, the EU is gravely weakened by the UK’s exit and will become smaller, and more defensive, nervous and inwardly focussed, as a result.
Exactly what Putin wanted.
And a choice it is making itself.
The UK wanted to collaborate on this.
The trouble is thanks to Brexit the UK is no longer as desirable a partner on any project. Who knows when we might choose to walk out? Brexit Britain is diminished.
That’s a silly argument. The UK works and collaborates in close treaty arrangements with countries around the world, and has always met its obligations. It isn’t about to walk out of NATO or fiveeyes, and nor is there any realistic chance it would do so.
The UK has been clear it wants to collaborate closely on foreign and security policy with the EU. The EU is telling it (on Galileo at least) to jog on.
In any case, is Nato really worth much without the US - and who believes that Trump is reliable in the event of a Ukraine-style situation in, say, Estonia?
Trump could well be gone in 3 years or so, and certainly gone in 7 or so. I wouldn't make a long term decision like that just on the basis of one office holder.
I would imagine if Trump gets re-elected, he'd make a play for revoking the 22nd amendment. Still, he can't live forever even if he is very healthy - probably the healthiest person he knows.
I think that after his second term he will want to retire to spend more time with his money
Looking at the HESA website, 10500 of those studying dentistry and medicine in 2016/7 were non-UK out of a total of 65,000. c. 80% of the non-UK students were from non-EU countries
So we are training over 10000 students per year to build up knowledge which, in most cases, they will take home. While they pay fees, that benefits the university only. The wider cost of supporting medical training is borne by the UK taxpayer.
Surely an obvious route would be to put a cap on the number of foreign students allowed per year (let's say 5%, so just over 3K) and retain the rest for UK students, and then do something on the social mobility front? That would mean an extra 7,500 students per year being trained up who would, very likely, continue to work in the UK. The universities would hate it because they lost the fees but it would benefit society.
But the fees that the non-EU students pay subsidise the UK students. So if we cut the overseas students, then we have to increase the fees for UK students, or make up that money elsewhere.
Comments
But, it's power is still a shadow of what it was in the 19th century or the 1950's.
He's been a lifelong Leaver. You're deluded if you thought otherwise.
Other tip is to lay England.
Lawyers have in general not suffered very much from competition due to Freedom of Movement, as the legal systems in England & Wales, Scotland are so specific to each country.
This is very different to low-skilled jobs, but also to professional jobs in science, technology and software, and even jobs in the arts and publishing.
I would guess that lawyers and barristers are still almost exclusively English (or Scottish) born, bred and trained.
A Romanian coming to the UK to work as a lawyer would need extensive re-training in English or Scottish law, but a Romanian coming to work as a car-washer or a research scientist or a programmer or a doctor needs little or no re-training.
Cuh....sometimes I wonder why I bother.....
Meanwhile, we re-invigorate EFTA by re-joining (we were members from 1960 to 1973 and no one objected then) and perhaps agree to take on the leadership of the organisation and build it as a loose association of collaborating free trading nations.
The Prime Minister has occasionally hinted at wanting something "unique" for the UK so perhaps she has decided to follow my advice (nothing wrong with that).
Russian Purchasing Power Parity GDP (which is the important one, given most of their military resources are purchased internally) is 35% higher than ours. Their natural resources and military capability is far in excess of the UK's. There is no sensible way 'we could take on Putin if we wanted to'.
How many contracts to build the top secret electronics at the heart of the system have been awarded to Morocco?
Oh.
As they did with Croatia / Brasil in 2014 and Mexico / South Africa in 2010.
We would be unique in being in ESA, and being excluded from (parts of) the project.
As to whether OGH is still "active", that's his business and he makes no secret of it. You and other Conservatives choose to post here and that's your privilege subject to Mike's rules.
As for the content of the threads, we get an excellent weekly contribution from David Herdosn who is, I believe, a Conservative member and activist. Indeed, one of the strengths of this forum has been and continues to be the quality of the thread titles.
Looking forward to Portugal v Spain tomorrow.
On the betting opportunities for next Con leader, I think it was David L who said that the next leader is almost certainly within the Cabinet (or attends Cabinet). That sounds right; given the turmoil over Brexit there will be a desire to make sure it is someone who can command some level of respect. I also think the next leader will have to have two things (1) being known as a Brexit supporter - many place the problems with May (maybe unfavourably) over Brexit as due to the fact she doesn't really believe in it - but not a frothing Brexiteer and (2) and maybe more importantly, someone who is prepared to be decisive in their thinking to counteract Corbyn, who is not afraid of a fight to defend their principles and who comes across well.
Looking at the current Cabinet, that means you can probably rule out the bulk - Hammond, Lidlington, Gauke, Mundell, Cairns, Clark, Brokenshire, Bradley, Hinds, Lewis, Truss, Wright, Grayling, mainly on the lack of personality front. Perry is too much of a remainer. Nokes will not recover from WIndrush. I know someone mentioned Matt Hancock but he seems too linked with Remain and, probably more importantly, a Cameron/Osborne style character, which will be out of favour. Williamson will think he is a candidate but I doubt he will make it. Fox would be out also on frothing / character traits as well as Leadsom and probably you can count off David Davis on a weaker basis on both points.
That leaves Johnson, Hunt, Javid, McVey, Mourdant and Gove. Of those, I think Johnson will be seen as too fluffy and too much of a risk. Gove, I suspects, knows he has too much baggage to be seen as PM and would settle for CoE, where he is better suited. As for Hunt, while he now backs Leave, the Health tenure would just overshadow his leadership and it would focus attention on an area favourable to Labour.
That leaves Javid, McVey and Mourdant. Unfortunately, I don't think the MPs will think it is the right time for a Muslim leader. The Conservative base is moving more WWC and, rightly or wrongly, there will be a concern he could put off some of that base, which is probably unfounded. On Mourdant, she is a Brexiteer and comes off well but maybe seen as a bit too "posh" (I know, it sounds stupid) in the current environment.
That leads to McVey who is a 100/1 bet.
Vote LibDem*
*contractual obligations for site participation satisfied.
Both on the Portugal match and to win the tournament.
This has been obvious all the way through.
You could say that this would be very different had, say, Chuka Ummuna become Labour leader in 2015. But then it's plausible that a Labour Party led by him would have experienced the landslide defeat we expected in 2017.
Given the number of retail businesses which are struggling some others must be doing very well.
https://mobile.twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/status/1007176545650335745
'If Conservative and Labour voters were to lend their vote to Jo Swinson and the Liberal Democrats, they can stop the SNP from winning in East Dunbartonshire.'
Was it ever revealed who paid for that mail shot, or is that part of the Swinson 'vanishing' election costs brouhaha?
OGH is regularly invited onto the media as an expert due to this site, this is a partisan advert that pretends to be independent expertise and is really party spin.
The votes over the past few days may show way the wind is blowing?
Just a few straws:-
Tory rebels on the "Parliament should have the final say" seem to be about 15-20? We don't know for sure because it was never put to test, but must be more than 10 to put HMG into a U turn/holding pattern for talks. Those 15-20 seem to consist of the Ultras, Grieve, Soubry, and Clarke, and a more biddable rest. On a /the CU, similar numbers (?) but it seems a bit more fudgable as to "a", "the", "arrangement" etc, at least for now, so it passed last night, but it still lurks beneath the surface. Whether Barnier will take too much fudge is a different matter, but possible if the Irish think it's some fudge or the teeth breaking rock of queues at Rosslare.
Labour's official position in so far as I can work out (I am genuinely not meaning to be sarcastic there, I personally am a little hazy on this), seems to be "we want EEA/SM but we're not going to call it that, we're going to call it "full access", with restrictions on FOM".
Actually, had Cameron been able to put that to the nation he'd have romped home, so Corbyn's current position is, to be fair, probably not far off what a workable consensus looks like in Middle England. It's just not on offer from the EU (so far), so is a great thing for the Opposition to tout, because they don't have to deliver it.
However, Labour has 70+ hard core Remainers who don't care, a very small number of Ultras the other way (Hoey/Field etc) but also to be fair (and this surprised me) clearly a not inconsiderable number (given HoC maths) of the Flint persuasion who get that the electorate told them something very deep felt in June 2016, and they'd better do something about it. There is more unease about being too "Remainy" in Labour Leave seats than perhaps I had thought.
So where does that leave us?
I'd say there is a majority for staying pretty close in a/the/arrangement CU, but also to have meaningful immigration controls with the EU. (as an aside I think Sajid has hit the nail on the head this morning, nobody is seriously going to object to more doctors arriving from Singapore, or Canada, or Eithopia to do high paid jobs we want in the NHS. More of this sort of targeted thing please!).
So CU/Controls: Am I 100% happy with that? - no. Could I live with it for now? - yes. ( I think the economics would follow as the world develops and over the years the desirability of an EU/CU would decline anyway).
If we could cross party such a position, it would immensely strengthen our hand with the 27 I feel. I suspect that's flying pig territory. My real doubt is how committed is "official Labour" to restricting FOM? I always get the feeling they'd jump ship on that at the first opportunity.
There are some odd people about!
On of the concerns I had about more integration was the way in which the advantages of the common law were being lost eg the execrable EAW allowing people to be arrested, deported and locked up without even a prima facie case being made against them.
I think that's a fairly accurate assessment.
Missing out the extremists, Labour's cunning plan is to offer a close market relationship outside the EU with changes to FOM.
Anyone with a brain cell knows that can't be and never will be on offer. All 27 would want the same deal (well, the voters would). But loss of unlimited FOM would be a major setback to the whole EU plan.
But as you say, Labour can offer it, and claim they could deliver it.
We should be offering free scholarships to Ethiopians to train as doctors, and then encouraging them to return to Ethiopia where their new skills are badly needed.
This is what the Labour Party believed in, once upon a time.
As Caroline Flint put it yesterday, why is it so hard for my constituents (in the Don Valley) to train as doctors?
In any case, is Nato really worth much without the US - and who believes that Trump is reliable in the event of a Ukraine-style situation in, say, Estonia?
Others may have the latest position.
However, the Swiss, I believe, have an insurance based health system, and a more contributory benefits system so it's much harder to pitch up from other parts of Europe and claim anything like tax credits, because my understanding is that sort of thing is much more restricted in Switzerland.
This was one of Cameron's stumbling blocks. The EU simply refused to allow any difference to be had between UK and EU27 (well 26 because we've always had special deals with Ireland) citizens.
We could tear up the benefits system and make it more insurance/contributory and have far more power to do something about FOM, but I suspect the will is not there for such upheaval.
I think it's crazy if we train fewer doctors than the Netherlands, yes we should be "exporting" the expertise for the good of humanity, but right now Sajid has done the right thing.
Two politicians on opposite sides saying and doing excellent things on consecutive days. I need to lie down.
OGH has never said he provides his site just as an indulgence for individuals to debate politics nor he has ever claimed it to be wholly independent. If you are bothered that in some oblique way you are endorsing an LD candidate by posting here that's for you to resolve.
There are of course issues with retention (higher proportion of women, willingness to move overseas, NHS morale etc) but I’d class these separately.
Re the Parliamentary arithmetic, that is an excellent post. The most important development this week is actually going to be the Govt now knows there are around 15 MPs on the Labour front who have enough serious concerns about immigration to vote against anything that would bring in FoM. Add that to the five to six usual Labour Brexiteers, that offsets the 15-20 Tory Remain rebels on her own side. So anything that has FoM looks dead in the water.
I'll make the point again that I made earlier - I think Soubry really f**ked it up for the EEA/FoM side with her speech, part because she alienated those 15 Labour MPs (look at Flint's face during Soubry's comments) and because the anti-FoM can constantly replay clips of Soubry saying "suck it up", British workers don't want these jobs etc.
Where I will disagree, and agree with Bardd, is that we should be training more of our own doctors and encouraging social mobility. A big problem here seems to be that it is far more profitable for UK universities to get non-UK students on medical courses where they can charge them a whopping fee so that encourages them to pick overseas students. Surely that should be fixable (with regulation if needed).
Coming over here, saving our lives...
From the harsh point of view of economics, it is cheaper to get another country to train a doctor, and then we steal the doctor.
Flint nailed it. It is an excellent question, and if more Labour MPs were asking it, I would be voting Labour.
"Why is it so hard for my constituents to become a doctor?" Every useless Welsh Labour MP should be asking themselves that question.
Medicine is the most costly degree, though.
The USA's big strategic challenge of the 21st century is China and, hance, managing how that country's expanding influence will expand across Asia, into Africa, and, consequently, into the Pacific and Indian Oceans, conflicts with the US's interests. In that game, Russia is, if not an ally, then certainly with aligned interests.
https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/what-study#
So we are training over 10000 students per year to build up knowledge which, in most cases, they will take home. While they pay fees, that benefits the university only. The wider cost of supporting medical training is borne by the UK taxpayer.
Surely an obvious route would be to put a cap on the number of foreign students allowed per year (let's say 5%, so just over 3K) and retain the rest for UK students, and then do something on the social mobility front? That would mean an extra 7,500 students per year being trained up who would, very likely, continue to work in the UK. The universities would hate it because they lost the fees but it would benefit society.
As people have said, you need high grades because the number of places is very limited.
At research level, medicine is highly demanding, but not at the level of training or general practice.
Compared with most science and engineering topics being a modern GP is a doddle, it doesn't require that much brain power.
It's a job performed by over qualified, mostly bored people. Frankly most people with 3 Cs at A level could get through a medical degree and survive perfectly well in general practice.
Flint is right, we should increase supply and strip the profession of it's mystique.
I note you don't include any liberal arts topics in your list (unsuprisingly).
The basics perhaps. To do it well takes years of learning and practice.
I can recall back in the 1970s introducing a one year trial for credit scoring bank loan applications. Half the applications were credit scored and half judged by credit officers. Before the trial was half way through it was agreed that all loans would be credited scored because it was so much better at excluding defaulters.
For skilled work it is better to use the accumulated experience of many people than rely on the experience of a single person.
So if we cut the overseas students, then we have to increase the fees for UK students, or make up that money elsewhere.
In software, if you are still using the same techniques and libraries that you were two years ago, you are probably out of date.
The research and ongoing learning is phenomenal.