On this interminable train journey I have come across an advert for Ruth Davidson being interviewed by Andrew Neil in London in an event organised by the Spectator. She is promoting her new book, Yes she can, which I confess I have not read yet. That would be an interesting event and perhaps a test if Ruth is ready for the bigger stage. Be great if a PBer was in attendance.
It would be as interesting to see if AN keeps up his (not entirely deserved) reputation for roasting pols of all stripes, though I daresay the event may tend towards the fluffy promo.
You have to applaud Ruth's courage in not getting in any interview practice whatsoever in the lead up to this test.
There are still places available for the event on Monday week. Its £40 for the 75 minute event which includes a free copy of her book - but you get a free ticket if you become a new subscriber to the Spectator which costs £12 for the first 12 editions and you can then cancel it. There is also a no deal Brexit event two days later but unlike Ruth's event it is already sold out.
Thanks for the link. That is really quite a disturbing piece but well worth the read.
One thing perhaps lacking, though she does touch on it, is the importance of independent institutions separate from government in a liberal democracy, but it is a fine piece.
The final paragraph is applicable to the UK:
"More to the point, the principles of competition, even when they encourage talent and create u Here in the UK we live in an era of the quick and easy fix. More people will want the medium sized lie than having to do the work to fix things. I see the danger on the left with Momentum. Others see the danger on the right with... well not sure there is a mass movement alt-right analogue, but there will be if Brexit is frustrated. We have all become way too complacent.
Brexit is the quick and easy fix that those on the right have been gulled into blindly supporting. We have seen its supporters call judges the enemies of the people and call for them to be sacked, attack the governor of the Bank of England and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for expressing inconvenient views about the consequences of Brexit, call for the abolition of the House of Lords for passing amendments that interfere with their vision of Brexit, attack anyone in the media who identifies problems that Brexit will cause and call Remain supporters saboteurs.
Brexit has devastated British political culture. But you don't notice because you fetishise it yourself.
It's the bad faith that many questoin. If your purpose is to stop the process of us leaving the EU, and using the fig leaf of presenting this as 'awkward questions', then yes, like all those who are anti-democratic, you will be strongly challeneged.
If your purpose is to try and channel the government into an agreement which you feel might be a better outcome, than thats different.
(every group in existence has called for the abolition of the house of lords when it has blocked something they agree with).
Those who wish to stop us leaving the EU and using all their efforts to block so and are even egging on the EU to offer us a bad deal as a punishment, what else would you call them?
Thanks for the link. That is really quite a disturbing piece but well worth the read.
One thing perhaps lacking, though she does touch on it, is the importance of independent institutions separate from government in a liberal democracy, but it is a fine piece.
The final paragraph is applicable to the UK:
"More to the point, the principles of competition, even when they encourage talent and create u Here in the UK we live in an era of the quick and easy fix. More people will want the medium sized lie than having to do the work to fix things. I see the danger on the left with Momentum. Others see the danger on the right with... well not sure there is a mass movement alt-right analogue, but there will be if Brexit is frustrated. We have all become way too complacent.
Brexit is the quick and easy fix that those on the right have been gulled into blindly supporting. We have seen its supporters call judges the enemies of the people and call for them to be sacked, attack the governor of the Bank of England and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for expressing inconvenient views about the consequences of Brexit, call for the abolition of the House of Lords for passing amendments that interfere with their vision of Brexit, attack anyone in the media who identifies problems that Brexit will cause and call Remain supporters saboteurs.
Brexit has devastated British political culture. But you don't notice because you fetishise it yourself.
It's the bad faith that many questoin. If your purpose is to stop the process of us leaving the EU, and using the fig leaf of presenting this as 'awkward questions', then yes, like all those who are anti-democratic, you will be strongly challeneged.
If your purpose is to try and channel the government into an agreement which you feel might be a better outcome, than thats different.
(every group in existence has called for the abolition of the house of lords when it has blocked something they agree with).
Those who wish to stop us leaving the EU and using all their efforts to block so and are even egging on the EU to offer us a bad deal as a punishment, what else would you call them?
This is a stock accusation made by Leavers about every query, no matter how reasonable, raised by sceptics. The paranoia has infected the body politic. It is one of the many disasters that Brexit has wrought.
I jokingly said the other day that the GRU officers that poisoned half of Salisbury would claim they were only there on a Stag do....it seems they have come up with an equally unbelievable reason for being there.
I went to York Minster about a decade ago. Somehow, I managed to avoid using chemical weapons on any of the locals.
Mr. Difficile, indeed. Glorifying thuggery is bad enough (and should be unacceptable) for a backbencher. Unforgivable in the man who would be chancellor. We'll see what the media make of it.
I do think the man who was shouting horrible things at JRM's children was behaving disgracefully. He should be ashamed of himself. But I was curious that JRM did not usher the children inside as soon as he saw the man and what he was doing. That would have been my reaction.
And then either engaged with him or just ignored him and gone inside.
MPs' families are off limits. As are death threats, including ones against Corbyn. Or McVeigh. We should not need reminding that some people are inclined to take this stuff seriously - with appalling consequences. It is not hard to have vigorous political debate without threatening violence. Those who do are beyond the pale IMO.
Why should JRM's children feel like they need to be inside as prisoners of their own home?
Easy to be wise after the event. But there were some who knew about this at the time, pointed it out and were very very frustrated that nothing was done. It is not good enough for all the Poo-Bahs now to say that they have learnt lessons, they didn't see it coming etc. They were very specifically warned and ignored those warnings. Unless they have clearly understood their own failings and why they did not take those warnings seriously and know what to do differently next time - and there will be a next time - then focusing only on how the banks have been structured differently or whether there is sufficient international co-operation (what G Brown is talking about today) when it all goes horribly wrong is not enough.
Those who receive warning signals at a very early stage need to know how to act...
And also incentive to act. Perhaps some long term bonus metric (both positive and negative) related to how much the bank loses, relative to its peers, in the next crash ?
Incentives are all very well.
But the key point - not well understood enough, IMO - is that large problems never ever start out as large ones. They start out small and it is only because they are ignored or dealt with ineffectively that they end up large. Problems will always exist so the focus must always be on identifying them early, treating them early and turning them into learning opportunities rather than letting them run on into crises which need to be managed.
The ability and willingness to identify all the small burning matches and join them up to realise that a forest fire may be on the way is what is not as well developed as it should be, both within banks and within the authorities. In part, it is because so many things are silo'd so it is hard to join the dots. In part it is because of a very human tendency to put things into categories: this is for the "serious" box and this is for the "unimportant" box without realising that what is in the latter can often turn into the former if ignored. It's the equivalent of ignoring some small medical symptom - blood in your pee etc - and then later realising you've got a serious illness. And in part it is because people don't want to look into things that are going wrong because no-one likes doing this stuff, until they have to.
The real success is avoiding a crash or a big investigation or crisis. And it is hard to design an incentive linked to that - if I hadn't investigated this odd settlement issue you might have lost £1.5 billion when we finally realised the trader was a fraudster - is not a metric that really works! So we need to have a real understanding of why it really matters to catch matters early and that means understanding why we didn't do so 10 years ago, despite there being plenty of warning signals which were ignored.
I find the articles about RBS interesting up to a point. But there is one very key fact missing, namely, that the authorities - the regulators - were warned in early 2007 about problems relating to the Barclays and RBS bids for ABN Amro. Those problems were not simply related to the size of the bid or the cost or Fred's ego or whatever. They were also about criminality at the start of the process and about some of the other players involved, about which we have heard very much less. It was about the culture that thought this sort of thing acceptable.
Easy to be wise after the event. But there were some who knew about this at the time, pointed it out and were very very frustrated that nothing was done. It is not good enough for all the Poo-Bahs now to say that they have learnt lessons, they didn't see it coming etc. They were very specifically warned and ignored those warnings. Unless they have clearly understood their own failings and why they did not take those warnings seriously and know what to do differently next time - and there will be a next time - then focusing only on how the banks have been structured differently or whether there is sufficient international co-operation (what G Brown is talking about today) when it all goes horribly wrong is not enough.
Those who receive warning signals at a very early stage need to know how to act. There is not enough evidence that those who do receive them really understand the importance of doing this.
The other, even more significant thing, to me was that the PE ratio of RBS was incredibly low by the mid 2000s and the share price started to collapse in April 2007. The government did not buy its shares until November 2008. Why were regulators not inquiring why the share price of the largest bank in the world by balance sheet was in freefall? How on earth did the famous phonecall to Darling saying they had enough money for a few hours come out of the blue?
It is obvious that Brown's failure to have anyone in charge of looking for systemic risk did not help but I still find it shocking that regulators were not crawling all over the bank wondering what the hell was going on and what the bank was proposing to do about it.
But the key point - not well understood enough, IMO - is that large problems never ever start out as large ones. They start out small and it is only because they are ignored or dealt with ineffectively that they end up large. Problems will always exist so the focus must always be on identifying them early, treating them early and turning them into learning opportunities rather than letting them run on into crises which need to be managed.
The ability and willingness to identify all the small burning matches and join them up to realise that a forest fire may be on the way is what is not as well developed as it should be, both within banks and within the authorities. In part, it is because so many things are silo'd so it is hard to join the dots. In part it is because of a very human tendency to put things into categories: this is for the "serious" box and this is for the "unimportant" box without realising that what is in the latter can often turn into the former if ignored. It's the equivalent of ignoring some small medical symptom - blood in your pee etc - and then later realising you've got a serious illness. And in part it is because people don't want to look into things that are going wrong because no-one likes doing this stuff, until they have to.
The real success is avoiding a crash or a big investigation or crisis. And it is hard to design an incentive linked to that - if I hadn't investigated this odd settlement issue you might have lost £1.5 billion when we finally realised the trader was a fraudster - is not a metric that really works! So we need to have a real understanding of why it really matters to catch matters early and that means understanding why we didn't do so 10 years ago, despite there being plenty of warning signals which were ignored.
Trouble is that in government you are right to ignore 99.99% of warnings.
@Cyclefree One question I always ask myself in banking - why has a rogue trader that ended up making supernormal profits never come to light ? Obviously it is because the underlying behaviour will be passed over as it hasn't cost the bank anything, but fundamentally heading outside your remit as a trader and making a whacking great loss are two different things.
Easy to be wise after the event. But there were some who knew about this at the time, pointed it out and were very very frustrated that nothing was done. It is not good enough for all the Poo-Bahs now to say that they have learnt lessons, they didn't see it coming etc. They were very specifically warned and ignored those warnings. Unless they have clearly understood their own failings and why they did not take those warnings seriously and know what to do differently next time - and there will be a next time - then focusing only on how the banks have been structured differently or whether there is sufficient international co-operation (what G Brown is talking about today) when it all goes horribly wrong is not enough.
Those who receive warning signals at a very early stage need to know how to act. There is not enough evidence that those who do receive them really understand the importance of doing this.
The other, even more significant thing, to me was that the PE ratio of RBS was incredibly low by the mid 2000s and the share price started to collapse in April 2007. The government did not buy its shares until November 2008. Why were regulators not inquiring why the share price of the largest bank in the world by balance sheet was in freefall? How on earth did the famous phonecall to Darling saying they had enough money for a few hours come out of the blue?
It is obvious that Brown's failure to have anyone in charge of looking for systemic risk did not help but I still find it shocking that regulators were not crawling all over the bank wondering what the hell was going on and what the bank was proposing to do about it.
I know the answer to that and it is not pretty. They did not understand that that was their job. They were looking at individual trees not the wood. There were links to what was happening in other countries - specifically Italy - and to what other players, a big Spanish bank, an Italian bank and some well-known hedge funds were doing and there were people bringing this to the attention of the authorities - and not just in this country - but there were far too many inexperienced people in those authorities who simply did not understand what they needed to do, not least because so few of them had lived through anything similar and too many of them were too arrogant to ask for advice from those who had.
Thanks for the link. I have read some of her books and will definitely read this later.
At a more mundane level, I am in Europe now, and the extent to which almost every park we have visited (which is a fair few, as I travel with a dog) is now almost a refugee camp and considered off limits by many locals is really quite striking. In England we are concerned about mostly employed and hard working east Europeans when European cities have large numbers of unemployed Africans hanging around day and night. It is hardly surprising there is a political reaction.
That's interesting, where were you? I have read about this issue in Germany but not elsewhere. Saw nothing like it in Holland or Italy (far north, no doubt the south is different).
So far we've been in Munich and Padua, where it was a big problem with large numbers hanging around the station and the main parks. In Padua last night there were probably about fifty locked in when the park closed. We also saw a few apparent migrants way up in the Alps in Merano. Florence tomorrow.
@Cyclefree One question I always ask myself in banking - why has a rogue trader that ended up making supernormal profits never come to light ? Obviously it is because the underlying behaviour will be passed over as it hasn't cost the bank anything, but fundamentally heading outside your remit as a trader and making a whacking great loss are two different things.
Probably because failure gets investigated more than success.
But also because of a similar issue to problem gamblers, once people have 'gone rogue' they likely don't stop until they run out of money. From memory Nick Leeson became more rogue the deeper a hole he got himself and the bank into, had it been successful he wouldn't have gone as rogue. But also if you're rogue and looking for bigger and bigger wins eventually you will fail.
But the key point - not well understood enough, IMO - is that large problems never ever start out as large ones. They start out small and it is only because they are ignored or dealt with ineffectively that they end up large. Problems will always exist so the focus must always be on identifying them early, treating them early and turning them into learning opportunities rather than letting them run on into crises which need to be managed.
The ability and willingness to identify all the small burning matches and join them up to realise that a forest fire may be on the way is what is not as well developed as it should be, both within banks and within the authorities. In part, it is because so many things are silo'd so it is hard to join the dots. In part it is because of a very human tendency to put things into categories: this is for the "serious" box and this is for the "unimportant" box without realising that what is in the latter can often turn into the former if ignored. It's the equivalent of ignoring some small medical symptom - blood in your pee etc - and then later realising you've got a serious illness. And in part it is because people don't want to look into things that are going wrong because no-one likes doing this stuff, until they have to.
The real success is avoiding a crash or a big investigation or crisis. And it is hard to design an incentive linked to that - if I hadn't investigated this odd settlement issue you might have lost £1.5 billion when we finally realised the trader was a fraudster - is not a metric that really works! So we need to have a real understanding of why it really matters to catch matters early and that means understanding why we didn't do so 10 years ago, despite there being plenty of warning signals which were ignored.
Trouble is that in government you are right to ignore 99.99% of warnings.
Maybe. But not in regulators. And the skill is in knowing which ones you need to follow up on. Assessing that takes skill. You may get it wrong. But thinking you don't even need to do that puts you in a very risky position.
Thanks for the link. I have read some of her books and will definitely read this later.
At a more mundane level, I am in Europe now, and the extent to which almost every park we have visited (which is a fair few, as I travel with a dog) is now almost a refugee camp and considered off limits by many locals is really quite striking. In England we are concerned about mostly employed and hard working east Europeans when European cities have large numbers of unemployed Africans hanging around day and night. It is hardly surprising there is a political reaction.
this is the problem caused by Merkel and dumped on the rest of Europe
I think they'd be washing up on Europe's southern shores, Merkel or no.
But the key point - not well understood enough, IMO - is that large problems never ever start out as large ones. They start out small and it is only because they are ignored or dealt with ineffectively that they end up large. Problems will always exist so the focus must always be on identifying them early, treating them early and turning them into learning opportunities rather than letting them run on into crises which need to be managed.
The ability and willingness to identify all the small burning matches and join them up to realise that a forest fire may be on the way is what is not as well developed as it should be, both within banks and within the authorities. In part, it is because so many things are silo'd so it is hard to join the dots. In part it is because of a very human tendency to put things into categories: this is for the "serious" box and this is for the "unimportant" box without realising that what is in the latter can often turn into the former if ignored. It's the equivalent of ignoring some small medical symptom - blood in your pee etc - and then later realising you've got a serious illness. And in part it is because people don't want to look into things that are going wrong because no-one likes doing this stuff, until they have to.
The real success is avoiding a crash or a big investigation or crisis. And it is hard to design an incentive linked to that - if I hadn't investigated this odd settlement issue you might have lost £1.5 billion when we finally realised the trader was a fraudster - is not a metric that really works! So we need to have a real understanding of why it really matters to catch matters early and that means understanding why we didn't do so 10 years ago, despite there being plenty of warning signals which were ignored.
Trouble is that in government you are right to ignore 99.99% of warnings.
Maybe. But not in regulators. And the skill is in knowing which ones you need to follow up on. Assessing that takes skill. You may get it wrong. But thinking you don't even need to do that puts you in a very risky position.
Quite, but we are hard on our politicians. In 2005-2007 we forget the severe amount of terrorist activity. No10 would have been spending a lot of time thinking about that risk.
Thanks for the link. I have read some of her books and will definitely read this later.
At a more mundane level, I am in Europe now, and the extent to which almost every park we have visited (which is a fair few, as I travel with a dog) is now almost a refugee camp and considered off limits by many locals is really quite striking. In England we are concerned about mostly employed and hard working east Europeans when European cities have large numbers of unemployed Africans hanging around day and night. It is hardly surprising there is a political reaction.
That's interesting, where were you? I have read about this issue in Germany but not elsewhere. Saw nothing like it in Holland or Italy (far north, no doubt the south is different).
So far we've been in Munich and Padua, where it was a big problem with large numbers hanging around the station and the main parks. In Padua last night there were probably about fifty locked in when the park closed. We also saw a few apparent migrants way up in the Alps in Merano. Florence tomorrow.
I was in Florence recently, and there weren't very many visible (although there are so many tourists that perhaps they were there but less obvious). In nearby Bologna, though, there were quite a lot.
The Italians get a lot of criticism, but in fact they have been astonishingly tolerant and patient, over quite a few years.
Thanks for the link. I have read some of her books and will definitely read this later.
At a more mundane level, I am in Europe now, and the extent to which almost every park we have visited (which is a fair few, as I travel with a dog) is now almost a refugee camp and considered off limits by many locals is really quite striking. In England we are concerned about mostly employed and hard working east Europeans when European cities have large numbers of unemployed Africans hanging around day and night. It is hardly surprising there is a political reaction.
That's interesting, where were you? I have read about this issue in Germany but not elsewhere. Saw nothing like it in Holland or Italy (far north, no doubt the south is different).
So far we've been in Munich and Padua, where it was a big problem with large numbers hanging around the station and the main parks. In Padua last night there were probably about fifty locked in when the park closed. We also saw a few apparent migrants way up in the Alps in Merano. Florence tomorrow.
I was in Munich in early July. A surprising amount of rough sleepers were in the city centre
I let they were unimpressed with Stonehenge just like most people which visit it.
I was very impressed with Stonehenge, but that might have been more to do with a Great Bustard wandering around the stones. (Apparently she arrives each spring, and is utterly unbothered by the visitors. Normally you can't get within a quarter mile before they fly. She was part of a breeding programme of birds taken from Russia. I'm sure Yeltsin's guys were just checking up on the well-being of their birds in this country. Honestly.)
Easy to be wise after the event. But there were some who knew about this at the time, pointed it out and were very very frustrated that nothing was done. It is not good enough for all the Poo-Bahs now to say that they have learnt lessons, they didn't see it coming etc. They were very specifically warned and ignored those warnings. Unless they have clearly understood their own failings and why they did not take those warnings seriously and know what to do differently next time - and there will be a next time - then focusing only on how the banks have been structured differently or whether there is sufficient international co-operation (what G Brown is talking about today) when it all goes horribly wrong is not enough.
Those who receive warning signals at a very early stage need to know how to act. There is not enough evidence that those who do receive them really understand the importance of doing this.
The other, even more significant thing, to me was that the PE ratio of RBS was incredibly low by the mid 2000s and the share price started to collapse in April 2007. The government did not buy its shares until November 2008. Why were regulators not inquiring why the share price of the largest bank in the world by balance sheet was in freefall? How on earth did the famous phonecall to Darling saying they had enough money for a few hours come out of the blue?
It is obvious that Brown's failure to have anyone in charge of looking for systemic risk did not help but I still find it shocking that regulators were not crawling all over the bank wondering what the hell was going on and what the bank was proposing to do about it.
I know the answer to that and it is not pretty. They did not understand that that was their job. They were looking at individual trees not the wood. There were links to what was happening in other countries - specifically Italy - and to what other players, a big Spanish bank, an Italian bank and some well-known hedge funds were doing and there were people bringing this to the attention of the authorities - and not just in this country - but there were far too many inexperienced people in those authorities who simply did not understand what they needed to do, not least because so few of them had lived through anything similar and too many of them were too arrogant to ask for advice from those who had.
There is a good Alex in the Telegraph today. It starts with reflections about what was learnt as as a result of Lehmans. Who could forget what they were doing when that happened? One of the younger members of staff explains that he was doing his A levels. Conclusion: a very large percentage of those currently working in the City have never seen a crash. Sell.
But the key point - not well understood enough, IMO - is that large problems never ever start out as large ones. They start out small and it is only because they are ignored or dealt with ineffectively that they end up large. Problems will always exist so the focus must always be on identifying them early, treating them early and turning them into learning opportunities rather than letting them run on into crises which need to be managed.
The ability and willingness to identify all the small burning matches and join them up to realise that a forest fire may be on the way is what is not as well developed as it should be, both within banks and within the authorities. In part, it is because so many things are silo'd so it is hard to join the dots. In part it is because of a very human tendency to put things into categories: this is for the "serious" box and this is for the "unimportant" box without realising that what is in the latter can often turn into the former if ignored. It's the equivalent of ignoring some small medical symptom - blood in your pee etc - and then later realising you've got a serious illness. And in part it is because people don't want to look into things that are going wrong because no-one likes doing this stuff, until they have to.
The real success is avoiding a crash or a big investigation or crisis. And it is hard to design an incentive linked to that - if I hadn't investigated this odd settlement issue you might have lost £1.5 billion when we finally realised the trader was a fraudster - is not a metric that really works! So we need to have a real understanding of why it really matters to catch matters early and that means understanding why we didn't do so 10 years ago, despite there being plenty of warning signals which were ignored.
Trouble is that in government you are right to ignore 99.99% of warnings.
Maybe. But not in regulators. And the skill is in knowing which ones you need to follow up on. Assessing that takes skill. You may get it wrong. But thinking you don't even need to do that puts you in a very risky position.
Quite, but we are hard on our politicians. In 2005-2007 we forget the severe amount of terrorist activity. No10 would have been spending a lot of time thinking about that risk.
No 10 would. No 11 and the financial authorities less so though. That's why we have different departments and not one control freak running the entire government.
@Cyclefree One question I always ask myself in banking - why has a rogue trader that ended up making supernormal profits never come to light ? Obviously it is because the underlying behaviour will be passed over as it hasn't cost the bank anything, but fundamentally heading outside your remit as a trader and making a whacking great loss are two different things.
Probably because failure gets investigated more than success.
But also because of a similar issue to problem gamblers, once people have 'gone rogue' they likely don't stop until they run out of money. From memory Nick Leeson became more rogue the deeper a hole he got himself and the bank into, had it been successful he wouldn't have gone as rogue. But also if you're rogue and looking for bigger and bigger wins eventually you will fail.
At my last place of work, by the time I left, one of the risk indicators for a review is a trader who consistently makes high profits. Or profits higher than the risk he is meant to be running. Any good trader will make losses as well as profits. If someone is taking on more risk than they should (even if a particular trade is profitable) that is a warning sign, which should be picked up and stopped.
Generally rogue traders don't make profits. Or those profits were made by breaching risk limits, they think they're brilliant, hubris sets in and they don't realise that they was rather more luck than judgment involved. They make a loss, seek to hide it and then try and trade out of it. That rarely goes well. The art of being a good trader is knowing when to get out of a losing position and limiting your losses. But idiots like Leeson and others think that being a good trader is about making humungous profits all the time. They do not want to admit - and may be reinforced in this by people around them (the "he's a star trader" syndrome) - that they have made a loss so they get into the deception game. And it's all down hill from then on.
But the key point - not well understood enough, IMO - is that large problems never ever start out as large ones. They start out small and it is only because they are ignored or dealt with ineffectively that they end up large. Problems will always exist so the focus must always be on identifying them early, treating them early and turning them into learning opportunities rather than letting them run on into crises which need to be managed.
The ability and willingness to identify all the small burning matches and join them up to realise that a forest fire may be on the way is what is not as well developed as it should be, both within banks and within the authorities. In part, it is because so many things are silo'd so it is hard to join the dots. In part it is because of a very human tendency to put things into categories: this is for the "serious" box and this is for the "unimportant" box without realising that what is in the latter can often turn into the former if ignored. It's the equivalent of ignoring some small medical symptom - blood in your pee etc - and then later realising you've got a serious illness. And in part it is because people don't want to look into things that are going wrong because no-one likes doing this stuff, until they have to.
The real success is avoiding a crash or a big investigation or crisis. And it is hard to design an incentive linked to that - if I hadn't investigated this odd settlement issue you might have lost £1.5 billion when we finally realised the trader was a fraudster - is not a metric that really works! So we need to have a real understanding of why it really matters to catch matters early and that means understanding why we didn't do so 10 years ago, despite there being plenty of warning signals which were ignored.
Trouble is that in government you are right to ignore 99.99% of warnings.
Maybe. But not in regulators. And the skill is in knowing which ones you need to follow up on. Assessing that takes skill. You may get it wrong. But thinking you don't even need to do that puts you in a very risky position.
Quite, but we are hard on our politicians. In 2005-2007 we forget the severe amount of terrorist activity. No10 would have been spending a lot of time thinking about that risk.
No 10 would. No 11 and the financial authorities less so though. That's why we have different departments and not one control freak running the entire government.
Quite. The FSA had an entire department that was meant to be focusing on this. Full of chocolate teapots though.
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
No 10 would. No 11 and the financial authorities less so though. That's why we have different departments and not one control freak running the entire government.
At that time in particular - but more generally no11 has expand its role. The treasury gets heavily involved in domestic and now foreign policy . Right now, whilst it is focussing on Brexit, who knows what is going on.
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
Those who receive warning signals at a very early stage need to know how to act...
And also incentive to act. Perhaps some long term bonus metric (both positive and negative) related to how much the bank loses, relative to its peers, in the next crash ?
Incentives are all very well.
But the key point - not well understood enough, IMO - is that large problems never ever start out as large ones. They start out small and it is only because they are ignored or dealt with ineffectively that they end up large. Problems will always exist so the focus must always be on identifying them early, treating them early and turning them into learning opportunities rather than letting them run on into crises which need to be managed.
The ability and willingness to identify all the small burning matches and join them up to realise that a forest fire may be on the way is what is not as well developed as it should be, both within banks and within the authorities. In part, it is because so many things are silo'd so it is hard to join the dots. In part it is because of a very human tendency to put things into categories: this is for the "serious" box and this is for the "unimportant" box without realising that what is in the latter can often turn into the former if ignored. It's the equivalent of ignoring some small medical symptom - blood in your pee etc - and then later realising you've got a serious illness. And in part it is because people don't want to look into things that are going wrong because no-one likes doing this stuff, until they have to.
The real success is avoiding a crash or a big investigation or crisis. And it is hard to design an incentive linked to that - if I hadn't investigated this odd settlement issue you might have lost £1.5 billion when we finally realised the trader was a fraudster - is not a metric that really works! So we need to have a real understanding of why it really matters to catch matters early and that means understanding why we didn't do so 10 years ago, despite there being plenty of warning signals which were ignored.
I didn't suggest it would be easy - but I was looking for some way to incentivise those at the top to listen to and empower a few more people like your good self before things go wrong, as you suggest.
There seems always to have been a strong incentive to make your pile and move on before the stuff hits the fan. Indeed, a few saw the crash coming with some clarity last time around - and made an awful lot of money betting on it. How do you get institutions to internalise some of that contrarian thinking ?
But the key point - not well understood enough, IMO - is that large problems never ever start out as large ones. They start out small and it is only because they are ignored or dealt with ineffectively that they end up large. Problems will always exist so the focus must always be on identifying them early, treating them early and turning them into learning opportunities rather than letting them run on into crises which need to be managed.
The ability and willingness to identify all the small burning matches and join them up to realise that a forest fire may be on the way is what is not as well developed as it should be, both within banks and within the authorities. In part, it is because so many things are silo'd so it is hard to join the dots. In part it is because of a very human tendency to put things into categories: this is for the "serious" box and this is for the "unimportant" box without realising that what is in the latter can often turn into the former if ignored. It's the equivalent of ignoring some small medical symptom - blood in your pee etc - and then later realising you've got a serious illness. And in part it is because people don't want to look into things that are going wrong because no-one likes doing this stuff, until they have to.
The real success is avoiding a crash or a big investigation or crisis. And it is hard to design an incentive linked to that - if I hadn't investigated this odd settlement issue you might have lost £1.5 billion when we finally realised the trader was a fraudster - is not a metric that really works! So we need to have a real understanding of why it really matters to catch matters early and that means understanding why we didn't do so 10 years ago, despite there being plenty of warning signals which were ignored.
Trouble is that in government you are right to ignore 99.99% of warnings.
Maybe. But not in regulators. And the skill is in knowing which ones you need to follow up on. Assessing that takes skill. You may get it wrong. But thinking you don't even need to do that puts you in a very risky position.
Quite, but we are hard on our politicians. In 2005-2007 we forget the severe amount of terrorist activity. No10 would have been spending a lot of time thinking about that risk.
No 10 would. No 11 and the financial authorities less so though. That's why we have different departments and not one control freak running the entire government.
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
The reason it won't happen is because it would be an admission of failure by the EU. They're supposed to make these places better. And they don't want to lose another piece of their empire.
I think unquestionably the EU has encouraged Eastern European countries along the road to democracy, so it has made those places better.
But this idea of empire doesn't seem right at all, many European countries were resistant to expanding the block, and I doubt many tears would be shed over losing Hungary if they continue to break EU rules and norms.
Much more than just democracy. Travel to Poland regularly since communist times, as I have, and the transformation in infrastructure, transport and housing is remarkable; one of the true success stories of our lifetimes. EU support, direct and indirect, has played a key part in bringing this about. The irony being the UK's role from Thatcher onwards as a leading champion of EU expansion.
Thanks for the link. That is really quite a disturbing piece but well worth the read.
One thing perhaps lacking, though she does touch on it, is the importance of independent institutions separate from government in a liberal democracy, but it is a fine piece.
The final paragraph is applicable to the UK:
"More to the point, the principles of competition, even when they encourage talent and create u Here in the UK we live in an era of the quick and easy fix. More people will want the medium sized lie than having to do the work to fix things. I see the danger on the left with Momentum. Others see the danger on the right with... well not sure there is a mass movement alt-right analogue, but there will be if Brexit is frustrated. We have all become way too complacent.
Brexit is the quick and easy fix that those on the right have been gulled into blindly supporting. We have seen its supporters call judges the enemies of the people and call for them to be sacked, attack the governor of the Bank of England and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for expressing inconvenient views about the consequences of Brexit, call for the abolition of the House of Lords for passing amendments that interfere with their vision of Brexit, attack anyone in the media who identifies problems that Brexit will cause and call Remain supporters saboteurs.
Brexit has devastated British political culture. But you don't notice because you fetishise it yourself.
It's the bad faith that many questoin. If your purpose is to stop the process of us leaving the EU, and using the fig leaf of presenting this as 'awkward questions', then yes, like all those who are anti-democratic, you will be strongly challeneged.
If your purpose is to try and channel the government into an agreement which you feel might be a better outcome, than thats different.
(every group in existence has called for the abolition of the house of lords when it has blocked something they agree with).
Those who wish to stop us leaving the EU and using all their efforts to block so and are even egging on the EU to offer us a bad deal as a punishment, what else would you call them?
This is a stock accusation made by Leavers about every query, no matter how reasonable, raised by sceptics. The paranoia has infected the body politic. It is one of the many disasters that Brexit has wrought.
Alastair. I enjoy reading your posts as they are intellectual and passionate but, as a clever man, can you not see that your ad hominem jibes at people don't win them over to your position? It might make you feel better but they are unnecessary.
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
Yes. But its south of the station. They are on CCTV heading north...
They got lost. Who hasn’t.
This has been some seriously impressive work by MI5/MI6.
Indeed so, it would have been very easy for example to miss that they went from London to Salisbury twice. That said, they didn’t appear to have much interest in basic spy craft, they went by direct routes and visited lots of places more than once - clearly they knew they’d be out of the country long before anyone was looking for them.
After the cathedral, the BP on Wilton Rd is obviously the most exciting place in Salisbury.
Yes. But its south of the station. They are on CCTV heading north...
They got lost. Who hasn’t.
This has been some seriously impressive work by MI5/MI6.
Obviously they couldn't be GRU agents because their eyesight is so poor. Looking on Google Streetview, there's a dirty great Cathedral Spire clearly visible from the station exit.
This is a stock accusation made by Leavers about every query, no matter how reasonable, raised by sceptics. The paranoia has infected the body politic. It is one of the many disasters that Brexit has wrought.
Alastair. I enjoy reading your posts as they are intellectual and passionate but, as a clever man, can you not see that your ad hominem jibes at people don't win them over to your position? It might make you feel better but they are unnecessary.
You wrote an extensive post about the dangers to British democracy, ignoring the main danger, one that is already unfolding, because you support it.
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
"Amid rumours his party could rename itself the “New” Liberal Democrats, he confirmed there were serious discussions on rebranding, and if someone had a better idea than the “two words” Liberal Democrat then “I’m open to that”. "
Shame they can't take the Liberal name back. There is still a functioning Liberal party iirc. Few council seats in West Yorks.
This is a stock accusation made by Leavers about every query, no matter how reasonable, raised by sceptics. The paranoia has infected the body politic. It is one of the many disasters that Brexit has wrought.
Alastair. I enjoy reading your posts as they are intellectual and passionate but, as a clever man, can you not see that your ad hominem jibes at people don't win them over to your position? It might make you feel better but they are unnecessary.
You wrote an extensive post about the dangers to British democracy, ignoring the main danger, one that is already unfolding, because you support it.
Ah. I understand now. The article was talking about how loyalty to parties becomes the key to advancement within, and control of, societies. I see that happening with the Momentum takeover of Labour, but don't see any such activity in any other existing [edit: major] UK party. I wasn't viewing the article through a Brexit lens. Perhaps I should have.
So what is Putin trying to achieve by this RT stunt and how can we (the West) not fall into that trap?
He just demonstrating that he knows we know and that he doesn't give a fuck that we know because there will be no material consequences for Russia.
I think it's even a new form of taunting by demonstrating that even the most ludicrous story will still be believed by Kremlin apologists.
But in turn, that allows us to know who those apologists are - and to take measures to keep them from power (I was thinking by voting against them, rather than the use of military grade nerve agents on them.....)
I told you so. Raab had a tin ear when he hit out at JL. What on earth has got into the Tories that makes them almost automatically criticise those who ought to be their natural supporters?
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
"Amid rumours his party could rename itself the “New” Liberal Democrats, he confirmed there were serious discussions on rebranding, and if someone had a better idea than the “two words” Liberal Democrat then “I’m open to that”. "
Shame they can't take the Liberal name back. There is still a functioning Liberal party iirc. Few council seats in West Yorks.
What about Free Liberals?
Never was there a time when we more needed a strong Liberal party. Vince would have to go before this even becomes a possibility, of course.
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
"Amid rumours his party could rename itself the “New” Liberal Democrats, he confirmed there were serious discussions on rebranding, and if someone had a better idea than the “two words” Liberal Democrat then “I’m open to that”. "
Shame they can't take the Liberal name back. There is still a functioning Liberal party iirc. Few council seats in West Yorks.
What about Free Liberals?
How about Free Radicals? (A short lived uncharged molecule, typically highly reactive)
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
"Amid rumours his party could rename itself the “New” Liberal Democrats, he confirmed there were serious discussions on rebranding, and if someone had a better idea than the “two words” Liberal Democrat then “I’m open to that”. "
Shame they can't take the Liberal name back. There is still a functioning Liberal party iirc. Few council seats in West Yorks.
What about Free Liberals?
Considering they don't like votes that go against them or want the public will to be implemented how about the illiberal undemocratic party?
I told you so. Raab had a tin ear when he hit out at JL. What on earth has got into the Tories that makes them almost automatically criticise those who ought to be their natural supporters?
The Tories are a mess. Are they pro-capitalism or not. Maybot with some of rip of Miliband price fixing ideas suggests they are very confused.
An anti-capitalist Tory party is a bit like an institutionally racist Labour party...oh wait...
The real success is avoiding a crash or a big investigation or crisis. And it is hard to design an incentive linked to that - if I hadn't investigated this odd settlement issue you might have lost £1.5 billion when we finally realised the trader was a fraudster - is not a metric that really works! So we need to have a real understanding of why it really matters to catch matters early and that means understanding why we didn't do so 10 years ago, despite there being plenty of warning signals which were ignored.
Trouble is that in government you are right to ignore 99.99% of warnings.
Maybe. But not in regulators. And the skill is in knowing which ones you need to follow up on. Assessing that takes skill. You may get it wrong. But thinking you don't even need to do that puts you in a very risky position.
Quite, but we are hard on our politicians. In 2005-2007 we forget the severe amount of terrorist activity. No10 would have been spending a lot of time thinking about that risk.
No 10 would. No 11 and the financial authorities less so though. That's why we have different departments and not one control freak running the entire government.
Quite. The FSA had an entire department that was meant to be focusing on this. Full of chocolate teapots though.
IIRC the FSA couldn't be arsed to inspect Northern Rock because it was based in Newcastle and the poor loves couldn't face a 3 hour train journey decided that telephone supervision of Northern Rock was adequate - I once had dinner with someone who worked in the FSA who argued that the only real problem with Northern Rock was the story leaked and the proles found out...(I paraphrase, but the sentiment was there)
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
"Amid rumours his party could rename itself the “New” Liberal Democrats, he confirmed there were serious discussions on rebranding, and if someone had a better idea than the “two words” Liberal Democrat then “I’m open to that”. "
Shame they can't take the Liberal name back. There is still a functioning Liberal party iirc. Few council seats in West Yorks.
What about Free Liberals?
How about Free Radicals? (A short lived uncharged molecule, typically highly reactive)
How about a rebranding as the SMUG Party? Same middling, uninspiring group....
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
"Amid rumours his party could rename itself the “New” Liberal Democrats, he confirmed there were serious discussions on rebranding, and if someone had a better idea than the “two words” Liberal Democrat then “I’m open to that”. "
Shame they can't take the Liberal name back. There is still a functioning Liberal party iirc. Few council seats in West Yorks.
What about Free Liberals?
How about Free Radicals? (A short lived uncharged molecule, typically highly reactive)
The New Romantics ? (An equally short-lived movement.)
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
"Amid rumours his party could rename itself the “New” Liberal Democrats, he confirmed there were serious discussions on rebranding, and if someone had a better idea than the “two words” Liberal Democrat then “I’m open to that”. "
Shame they can't take the Liberal name back. There is still a functioning Liberal party iirc. Few council seats in West Yorks.
What about Free Liberals?
How about Free Radicals? (A short lived uncharged molecule, typically highly reactive)
The Pointless Party? We win if nobody remembers them.
Sir Vince Cable today reveals he is “sneaking Tory MPs into his office” for chats about potential defections to the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
"Amid rumours his party could rename itself the “New” Liberal Democrats, he confirmed there were serious discussions on rebranding, and if someone had a better idea than the “two words” Liberal Democrat then “I’m open to that”. "
Shame they can't take the Liberal name back. There is still a functioning Liberal party iirc. Few council seats in West Yorks.
What about Free Liberals?
How about Free Radicals? (A short lived uncharged molecule, typically highly reactive)
The New Romantics ? (An equally short-lived movement.)
If I was doing a weekend's sightseeing from Moscow to Salisbury, is it plausible that I wouldn't visit Stonehenge? Famous world-wide and 10km out of Salisbury.
Comments
http://events.spectator.co.uk/events/yes-can-ruth-davidson-conversation-andrew-neil/
That we might have just relegated Lancashire is an awesome feeling.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/09/the-tories-are-conspiring-to-chuck-the-chequers-plan/
https://twitter.com/LukeSmithF1/status/1040179671445303296
If your purpose is to try and channel the government into an agreement which you feel might be a better outcome, than thats different.
(every group in existence has called for the abolition of the house of lords when it has blocked something they agree with).
Those who wish to stop us leaving the EU and using all their efforts to block so and are even egging on the EU to offer us a bad deal as a punishment, what else would you call them?
Russia Today have an interview with two Russian tourists, who spent a couple of days in Salisbury because of the beautiful cathedral.
https://order-order.com/2018/09/13/skripal-suspects-extraordinary-interview/
I went to York Minster about a decade ago. Somehow, I managed to avoid using chemical weapons on any of the locals.
Mr. Difficile, indeed. Glorifying thuggery is bad enough (and should be unacceptable) for a backbencher. Unforgivable in the man who would be chancellor. We'll see what the media make of it.
As predicted on PB, Putin takes these things exceptionally seriously:
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1040162899052904448
But the key point - not well understood enough, IMO - is that large problems never ever start out as large ones. They start out small and it is only because they are ignored or dealt with ineffectively that they end up large. Problems will always exist so the focus must always be on identifying them early, treating them early and turning them into learning opportunities rather than letting them run on into crises which need to be managed.
The ability and willingness to identify all the small burning matches and join them up to realise that a forest fire may be on the way is what is not as well developed as it should be, both within banks and within the authorities. In part, it is because so many things are silo'd so it is hard to join the dots. In part it is because of a very human tendency to put things into categories: this is for the "serious" box and this is for the "unimportant" box without realising that what is in the latter can often turn into the former if ignored. It's the equivalent of ignoring some small medical symptom - blood in your pee etc - and then later realising you've got a serious illness. And in part it is because people don't want to look into things that are going wrong because no-one likes doing this stuff, until they have to.
The real success is avoiding a crash or a big investigation or crisis. And it is hard to design an incentive linked to that - if I hadn't investigated this odd settlement issue you might have lost £1.5 billion when we finally realised the trader was a fraudster - is not a metric that really works! So we need to have a real understanding of why it really matters to catch matters early and that means understanding why we didn't do so 10 years ago, despite there being plenty of warning signals which were ignored.
It is obvious that Brown's failure to have anyone in charge of looking for systemic risk did not help but I still find it shocking that regulators were not crawling all over the bank wondering what the hell was going on and what the bank was proposing to do about it.
Obviously it is because the underlying behaviour will be passed over as it hasn't cost the bank anything, but fundamentally heading outside your remit as a trader and making a whacking great loss are two different things.
Like there won't be time for Tom Watson either.
I fear by making something so ridiculous, we will send it up he will be successful in trivialising the whole thing.
But also because of a similar issue to problem gamblers, once people have 'gone rogue' they likely don't stop until they run out of money. From memory Nick Leeson became more rogue the deeper a hole he got himself and the bank into, had it been successful he wouldn't have gone as rogue. But also if you're rogue and looking for bigger and bigger wins eventually you will fail.
The Italians get a lot of criticism, but in fact they have been astonishingly tolerant and patient, over quite a few years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nknYtlOvaQ0&
At my last place of work, by the time I left, one of the risk indicators for a review is a trader who consistently makes high profits. Or profits higher than the risk he is meant to be running. Any good trader will make losses as well as profits. If someone is taking on more risk than they should (even if a particular trade is profitable) that is a warning sign, which should be picked up and stopped.
Generally rogue traders don't make profits. Or those profits were made by breaching risk limits, they think they're brilliant, hubris sets in and they don't realise that they was rather more luck than judgment involved. They make a loss, seek to hide it and then try and trade out of it. That rarely goes well. The art of being a good trader is knowing when to get out of a losing position and limiting your losses. But idiots like Leeson and others think that being a good trader is about making humungous profits all the time. They do not want to admit - and may be reinforced in this by people around them (the "he's a star trader" syndrome) - that they have made a loss so they get into the deception game. And it's all down hill from then on.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Lib-Dem leader said “conversations” were ongoing with “four or five” Conservative MPs unhappy with the direction their party is taking.
None were yet ready to switch parties, but he predicted several would if Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson take over as Tory leader.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/sir-vince-cable-sneaking-several-tory-mps-into-his-office-to-discuss-potential-defections-to-libdems-a3934951.html
There seems always to have been a strong incentive to make your pile and move on before the stuff hits the fan.
Indeed, a few saw the crash coming with some clarity last time around - and made an awful lot of money betting on it. How do you get institutions to internalise some of that contrarian thinking ?
With obvious splits in all parties, there’s got to be a reasonable chance of one malcontent crossing the floor in the next few weeks.
Whether they are a person of high principals or a traitorous pigdog depends of course on whether they join one’s own party or leave it for another.
This has been some seriously impressive work by MI5/MI6.
I’ll ask Shadsy to do a market if an MP will do a Mark Reckless.
https://twitter.com/george_osborne/status/1040195799144120323?s=21
After the cathedral, the BP on Wilton Rd is obviously the most exciting place in Salisbury.
Shame they can't take the Liberal name back. There is still a functioning Liberal party iirc. Few council seats in West Yorks.
What about Free Liberals?
"The response in Colorado has been generally not snarky...."
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/13/hickenlooper-2020-presidential-bid-821223
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45501205
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/sep/13/guardian-cricket-writers-pick-greatest-england-cricketers-all-time
I'd pick Grace, followed by Hobbs, and then Botham some way behind.
An anti-capitalist Tory party is a bit like an institutionally racist Labour party...oh wait...
(An equally short-lived movement.)
I suppose it should be expected from the former Chief of Staff to David Davis.