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Last weekend I did a piece on who will be the next Chancellor and my central premise was that Boris Johnson would leave Jeremy Hunt at King Charles Street lest he adds another malcontent on the backbenches so dabbling in this market didn’t really interest me as I might end up tying up my money for a long time. The events in the Strait of Hormuz probably ensures Boris Johnson decides to keep Hunt there for continuity reasons alone.
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Sure why not, it's basically a proxy bet on Boris failing quickly.
A lot of ways it could go wrong but clear value.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9553021/boris-johnson-sack-jeremy-hunt/
Remind me again why it is necessary for May to resign on Wednesday?
And JRM as favourite? Words fail me.
Mildly peeved to discover the result is tomorrow rather than today. Thought it'd be 11am on Monday. Oh well.
The LibDems that is ....
Speculation that the winner will travel to Bedford to kiss hands with Mike Smithson to be anointed as Prime Minister In Waiting (forever) and First Lord of the Bar Charts are yet to be confirmed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/exploration/multimedia/NASABudgetHistory.pdf
One thing that sticks in my mind (whether it's correct or not) is that US citizens spent more on cosmetics than they did on the space race.
As an aside, I love it when people blame Nixon for 'destroying' the US space industry. In reality, Congress had already made it clear that they were very uninterested in further space exploits well before Apollo 11. Even JFK was having second thoughts about thee Apollo program before he died, and approached the Russians about making it a joint project ...
Just like Trump in the White House, expect a succession of hugely funny leaks revealing that Boris's bluster tries and spectacularly fails to deal with complex issues. Its going to be funny. Very tragically Oh God thats My Country down the Pan funny.
Hammond as King Over The Water - sitting on his alternative seat of power at the back saying "I told you so" as everything he said would happen does happen, is going to look like a colossus compared to Bozza. And the Tories will hate him for it.
This is a government begging to be brought down from the outset.
The recent Jodrell Bank documentary had Whitehall phoning Bernard Lovell to ask about tracking Sputnik. Lovell pointed out anyone with a radio could do so because it was broadcasting pings. No, not the satellite, came the reply, the rocket (which was basically an ICBM with a satellite where the nuclear warhead would be).
The struggle for liberation of all people is never complete and must always be renewed. As a movement, we educate ourselves and each other to better stand in solidarity with and unite all those facing oppression and discrimination.
That's why we are launching education materials for our members and supporters to help them confront bigotry, wherever it arises. Over the coming months, the party will produce educational materials on a number of specific forms of racism and bigotry. Our first materials are on antisemitism, recognising that anti-Jewish bigotry has reared its head in our movement.
Browse our new antisemitism minisite
Read our new leaflet on antisemitism
Hatred towards Jewish people is rising in many parts of the world. Our party is not immune from that poison – and we must drive it out from our movement.
While other political parties and some of the media exaggerate and distort the scale of the problem in our party, we must face up to the unsettling truth that a small number of Labour members hold antisemitic views and a larger number don't recognise antisemitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories.
The evidence is clear enough. The worst cases of antisemitism in our party have included Holocaust denial, crude Jewish-banker stereotypes, conspiracy theories blaming Israel for 9/11 or every war on the Rothschild family, and even one member who appeared to believe that Hitler had been misunderstood.
So please engage with the materials we are producing, which will be placed on a page on our website, along with other resources, so our movement can be the strongest anti-racist force in our country.
I have learned so much, I hope you will too, so that together we can fight these evils.
In solidarity,
Jeremy Corbyn
Leader of the Labour Party"
BTW: re the Irish border - for all the political aspects, isn't it ultimately true that the reason the Republic don't want a hard border is because of the economic damage it will do to them? So when all the Brexiteers waffle on about how "the UK won't impose any border controls, it will be the EU that are responsible for a hard border" they are effectively saying that they will protect the Southern Irish economy, but do little to help the North?
It's like the wider bizarre suggestions that the UK should not worry about trade agreements because we will just retain 0% tariffs on everything. As if the basic purpose of Free trade agreement is to enable the buy stuff as cheap as possible, when actually it is to sell (using incoming trade barriers as leverage).
Then came Sputnik, an area where Russia really was ahead: although only because the US hadn't really got into it - as well as the USAF and other branches having competing programs, they were concerned that launching a satellite might cause political problems because of overflight of unfriendly countries - an issue the Russians neatly solved with Sputnik.
Space was the only area where the Russians were beating the Americans, and getting to the Moon was a good way of beating them. In mid-1966, the Americans finally overtook the Russians in terms of space capability. Apollo 11 proved that.
The Russians didn't even commit to going to the Moon until two or three years after JFK mainlined the Apollo program. It's an interesting alternative history to consider what might have happened if they'd committed earlier, and if Korolev hadn't died. The Russians might have easily won.
Understand that and you understand why they talk nonsense pretty much all the time and why their "solutions" are no such thing, being little more than "Do what I want, because I say so".
"Do what I want, because I say so" should be followed by"'or I'll send a gunboat!"
And it gave the US their pre-eminence in chip manufacturing
A spoilt child who has never grown up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi6fjs_8Yx8
Conservative MPs are damned fools for backing Boris so much. If it weren't known he was an incompetent then one might forgive them, but he's held high office and was distinctly unimpressive.
Perhaps beyond the Peter Principle there's the Boris Principle, when someone's proven rubbish at their current job and gets promoted anyway.
But it unquestionably cemented US technical dominance. NASA bought 60% of the entire output of the nascent chip industry for about half a decade, so probably enabled the establishment of the industry’s extremely high (and now self-sustaining) level of R&D spending.
The reason they look wrong is that any Cabinet needs to balance various wings of the party and pay due heed to the result of the leadership contest, where Hunt and Javid did well. In Boris's case, he also needs to defuse accusations of racism and misogyny. Most of the rumoured Cabinets look like a Brexiteer's wet dream rather than anything politically viable.
I do think he is less confident than some on here of winning a snap GE and that a man as insecure as he appears to be will be petrified at the prospect of being the shortest or near shortest serving PM in history, and that's the only thing that might prevent one from occurring even if it means him backpedaling on other things .
As Jo Grimond wasn't on the ballot again I decided not to cast a ballot which was the second reason I couldn't vote. Inexplicably it would appear that my activities at Auchentennach Castle preclude me from joining the yellow peril.
Apparently there was some disquiet in the LibDems that I was an entryist intent on malevolent activities .... As if ....
Phil Hammond is only the latest, saying he’ll vote against anything a Conservative government proposes, but without voting against the government itself in a vote of confidence.
The Fixed Term Parliaments Act has a lot to answer for, if it were not in place then the original vote on the Withdrawal Agreement would have been a vote of confidence, and voting it down would have led to an election months ago - rather than the endless stalemate out politicians seem determined to perpetuate due to their lack of willingness to support positively any outcome at all.
Anyway, back to watching moon landing videos, much more enjoyable than politics on a hot and sunny day.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/eu-prepares-huge-aid-package-for-ireland-dnckkgp5t
It's just another example of those involved using processes as an excuse for their actions.
(Mrs Sandpit still won’t let me go to Chernobyl
The resultant N1 was in Saturn V class - more powerful in some ways, less capable in others. The decision to use many smaller rocket engines makes sense in some ways - they were very reliable engines, and they didn't have to undergo the somewhat problematic engine development program the US did with the F1 engines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)#Comparison_with_Saturn_V
IMV the Russian's biggest mistake was in not creating an all-up test rig. The Americans did this with the Saturn V, where they could test all five first-stage F1 engines in one go. Instead, the Russians decided to test 'live' on a rocket - and they expected failures as a result.
In a way, their 'more but smaller' attitude to large rockets was shown to be correct by the Falcon 9 Heavy, which uses 27 smaller engines. With time and political will, the N1 would have been a superb rocket.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh_gP5aF3ys
He has the hard date of Oct 31 coming up. I doubt he wants a No Deal any more than May did. Easy to get into; hard to get out of. He seems to think something will turn up that is good enough for most people. That outcome depends on highly sceptical people giving him the benefit of an enormous doubt or willing to own part of Johnson's humiliation.
As for Ireland being supported by the USA, Trump of course told Varadkar an Irish border wall 'would work very well'
https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/donald-trump-ireland-visit-irish-border-wall-brexit-leo-varadkar-meeting/
Either you agree with Corbyn that there's an issue, or you don't.
https://twitter.com/jdportes/status/1153049938705690624?s=21
My guesses, though: Mordaunt to FS, Gove to Home, Zac to Defra, Saj to Chancellor (despite the rumour), IDS to defence. Spin will be "diversity under Boris, open to the world".
Hunt doesn't determine if he wins or loses, voters do. He doesn't have to agree to get demoted, if he loses Boris has every right to tell him to get stuffed.
How can you not know Dover is on the way to France? Or that the Irish peace was hard won? How can anyone simultaneously believe the EU prevents Britain making its own trade deals but that after Brexit we can make one with Germany? How can you believe FTAs are important but be so cavalier about losing the ones we already have via the EU? How can you rail against European standards and tribunals but welcome American ones that will be far more onerous.
The problem is not that Brexiteers are wrong but much of the time they are not even wrong, so far removed are they from reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
Johnson's casual rhetoric has made leaving on 31st October without a deal the only viable option. Unless he has been telling the biggest whoppers ever exhuming Mrs May's deal or revoking are simply not available. Does anyone think Johnson and his acolytes have been working feverishly in the shadows to mitigate the effects of no deal.
JRM as FS? There is value in the comedy factor at least.
With the Labour party my belief that Corbyn isn't the messiah is clearly a disqualification which might explain their antipathy to Jews who've had a messiah problem for over 2,000 years let alone Jezza's short tenure in that role.
As for the Conservatives their headlong addiction in following Labour in electing a clown as their leader does somewhat put me at odds with my belief that having a buffoon as Prime Minister disqualifies that party from enjoying my endorsement.
Further if I was a member of The OMRLP I'd be seeking clarification from the Electoral Commission as to whether it is lawful for the Conservative and Labour parties to emulate my party to such an extent that voters might assume they were both breakaway groups from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party !!
I suppose not such a problem for those on the left who believe that the U.K. doesn’t operate an independent defence policy anyway, but we’ve surely at least got to pretend?
I repeat, Boris will not impose a hard border in Ireland but use a technical solution instead, the WTO is hardly going to invade Northern Ireland to impose one is it and given Trump had little time for the WTO at present it does not exactly have much strength to impose its will anyway
"Earlier this month, PoliticsHome revealed that Labour general secretary Jennie Formby asked both the Jewish Labour Movement and Jewish Leadership Council to endorse the document, but they refused. JLM chair Mike Katz commented: “If they think we are going to mark their overdue homework for them then they have another thing coming.”
Otoh if the BoE forecasts are in any way correct that No Deal Brexit would mean a 9.3% reduction in UK GDP over 15 years, it might be reasonably accurate to say in 2034 that Brexit had 'consumed' 9.3% of GDP.
Of course the sage of NE Somerset has said ND Brexit would provide an £80b boost to the economy, so other views are available.