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HYUFD

Margaret Thatcher's notes on who in her cabinet was 'one of us' and who was not
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2013/03/margaret-thatcher-listed-her-cabinet-allies-and-opponents-who-would-cameron-list-today.html

JamesKelly

It seems the bunker mentality set in almost from the start with Thatcher. Notable that Willie Whitelaw isn't in either column.

HYUFD

Whitelaw was probably a 1/2 like Fowler

AndyJS

Interesting essay from former Prospect Magazine editor David Goodhart:

"Why we on the Left made an epic mistake on immigration

Among Left-leaning ‘Hampstead’ liberals like me, there has long been what you might call a ‘discrimination assumption’ when it comes to the highly charged issue of immigration.

Our instinctive reaction has been that Britain is a relentlessly racist country bent on thwarting the lives of ethnic minorities, that the only decent policy is to throw open our doors to all and that those with doubts about how we run our multi-racial society are guilty of prejudice.

And that view — echoed in Whitehall, Westminster and town halls around the country — has been the prevailing ideology, setting the tone for the immigration debate":

http://bit.ly/10tGtbT

sam

It is incredible, and I mean that in the exact sense of the word, not credible, hard to believe, that anyone could watch the debate between Gove and Thornberry on QT and think Thornberry came out on top

sam

@andyjs

So true, but you might as well piss into the wind as post that on here

fitalass

Ed Miliband reckons that Labour can salvage the UK's lost decade, the man is delusional if he thinks the architects of that last decade can fix it. Its like ground hog day all over again, Labour always leave an enormous economic mess behind them when they dash to the exits and leave Office, and then they bleat in Opposition that they could have fixed it with less pain than the awful and evil Tories. Yada Yada............With Labour there never is any pain, and that is because they are never allowed near power until the problem is fixed. Labour are incapable of making the tough decisions that allows the economic clean up to commence behind them. They had nearly two years in Office before the last GE to prove this fact wrong, they flunked it yet again, and then ran away.

JamesKelly

"Yada Yada............"

Ah. I gather that's a Gove tribute gag - not because I saw Question Time, but because I read Cristina Odone's Love Letter to Michael.

fitalass

James, what can I say, like Gove I spent many years living in Aberdeen.

AndyJS

Peter Mandelson launches an attack on Ed Balls:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2297754/We-need-politician-fight-fight-past-Lord-Mandelson-blasts-Ed-Balls-negative-strategy-economy.html

fitalass

Thornberry has an amazing ability to turn off even the most left leaning audience on Question Time. I couldn't believe it when she was put up against Michael Gove to represent the Labour response of the Budget this week. Where was Ed Balls, or failing his appearance, one of his Shadow Treasury sidekicks?

edmundintokyo

OT, Paddy Power offering 9/4 on Bitcoin hitting $500 by the end of the year.

http://finextra.com/News/FullStory.aspx?newsitemid=24665&topic=payments

That may reflect the probability of it happening fairly, but the only worse value bet I can think of is betting on the end of the world.

edmundintokyo

OT, I like this commenting system, but how did it know what I looked like, and where did it get that picture of me? Spooky.

Lucian_Fletcher

Bloody hell, Cook. England 8/1. First day 1 wicket. Second day 10 with another 20 overs left. Great bloody insertion!

RobD

@SeanT - you can edit your comment by putting your mouse over the top right (of your comment). You can do this for an hour after your post.

edmundintokyo

@SeanT I can widget up a reply button if we stay on this long-term.

I'm also thinking of adding Like and Dislike buttons, but not connecting them to anything, so that angry people can click "Dislike" and feel better.

JohnLoony

Utterly no yes almost

fitalass

The Question Time audience openly laughed at the Labour line of 'lets wait and see' to avoid producing a coherent and credible economic policy. Interesting that the Labour Shadow Cabinet were so afraid of going head to head with Gove on QT. But then Gove wasn't just on top of his brief and that of his colleagues in Government, he was also extremely articulate in explaining their policies too.

AveryLP

@tim

How interesting to see you sneak online in the middle of the night to repeat news discussed on thread earlier in the evening!

The markets, the opposition and the media were expecting Fitch to downgrade the UK from its AAA rating immediately following the March budget. This didn't happen and Fitch instead put the UK on negative watch. In the circumstances this was good news for both the UK and George Osborne and can be taken as a sign of relative confidence in Osborne's budget.

Sterling did fall on the Fitch announcement at 1:00 pm ET. It fell from $1.5245 to $1.5209 almost immediately but then recovered back to $1.5246 by 4:00 pm. As good a sign as any that the market was not in the least perturbed by Fitch's announcement. This is unsurprising given the far more significant events current in Cyprus, Spain and Italy.

As for the impact of the UK budget, there has been no significant deterioration in the two key targets in the Government's fiscal mandate.

The OBR, in its March Economic and Fiscal Overview (EFO), predicted that the Government had a greater than 50% chance of meeting its target of balancing the Cyclically Adjusted Current Budget (CACB) over a rolling, five year period. The predicted margins and timing of meeting this target marginally improved over the previous forecast in December.

On the Debt to GDP ratio falling by 2015-16, the OBR's predicted outcome in March was marginally worse than it had been in December.

The degrees of difference between the OBR's December and March forecasts on fiscal targets were so small as to be insignificant. This conclusion applies not just because of the "considerable uncertainty" of the forecasts as repeatedly stated by the OBR, but also because the March EFO did not take the budget measures fully into account, nor the latest ONS figures on borrowing. More importantly the OBR's March did not include any impact from banking sectpr asset sales in its forward forecasts,

In the circumstances, Fitch quite correctly decided to delay any decision on whether to downgrade the UK's credit rating until further information becomes available on budget impact assessment, recent debt management performance and future government plans for asset sales. Fitch's decision to place the UK on negative watch is though a fair assessment of the current state of the UK economy.

The real measure of Osborne's performance on fiscal consolidation lies in the UK's borrowing costs. You should note that the yields on 10 year UK gilts marginally fell over the course of the day to 1.85%, the second lowest rate in Europe.

The UK economy may not be performing to everyone's hopes or expectations, especially those which applied in 2010, but it is currently outperforming all its major competitors in Europe in growth and all bar Germany in borrowing costs.

The journey to port may now be taking longer but there is significant confidence in the markets and credit rating agencies that Osborne is charting the right course. What is uncertain is the turbulence of the economic seas.

NickPalmer

Hello from Ho Chi Minh City, where it's nudging 100 degrees F - some snow would be nice. Gravitated back to the incredible Nikko, which remains the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in (better than Claridges where we stayed for a night on honeymoon), at £60/night. [I must stop channeling SeanT]

That widget looks useful - does it have a PC incarnation that we can download?

SouthamObserver

Snow here, though it looks vulnerable to thaw. What a winter. Funnily enough, down in NZ they seem to be having an endless summer - last week's rain notwithstanding. I guess the lesson is that we need to remember it's called global warming, not UK, European or Northern Hemisphere warming. But that run of warm winters and scorching summers we had a few years back seem a long time ago now. As long as the water levels are OK, I'll take warm or chilly - especially if there's snow at Christmas.

An interesting financial factoid for you: the Greek shares index has risen by over 20% in the last year. That makes it one of Europe's top performers over that period. The FTSE 100 is up just under 10%, CAC is up just under 9%, DAX up by 13%. For the brave investor Greece currently offers plenty of opportunities. There's always an upside if you look hard enough!

Edin_Rokz

OT: Back of an envelope calculation. The cost of Vanilla is $550 a month or $6600/year. I am well aware of the currency exchange rate, but also that it is variable. So for the sake of a worst case scenario, let's change the dollars for £'s.
I would guess that there are about 300 active or wannabe posters which looks like a membership cost of £20 a year.
I would like to say that there is every possibility that this would make a small profit for OGH, which I think he really deserves for all the work he has done.
Also for the record and from experience, the results of PPC and advertising on a site is minimal as ad blindness takes effect.

NickPalmer

A membership fee of £20/year would radically change the site - I doubt if there would really be more than 50 people who would cough up rather than 300 (typical attendance at a PB event is a few dozen, I think?). There are vast numbers of lurkers, but willingness to pay for any kind of internet service is notoriously sticky. I would probably pay but I don't think Vanilla is actually that much better than the much-despised Disqus, which was becoming manageable once we learned not to do replies (which we're not doing here anyway).

Financier

NP

I agree. Vanilla does not auto-refresh as far as I can see and so does not appear to be better (and justify its fee) than Disqus as long as the latter is used in a disciplined matter.

To post this comment I had to re-sign in, even though the "keep signed in" box was already ticked.

Are there any benefits to Vanilla that have not been revealed?

peter_from_putney

testing edit facility - yes it work ..... Great!

peter_from_putney

I very much doubt that a formalised subscription charge for PB, would work and certainly any such arrangement would drastically reduce the traffic to the site and thereby its essential attraction.

For PB to continue on a self-financing basis, it would seem that some way must be found of increasing its commercial income, which may or may not involve introducing a sponsor, as well as a rather more upfront approach towards seeking donations from users of the site, tied in with say a PayPal facility.

After all, if almost £1500 was collected recently to fund the site's occasional cartoonist's technical requirements, it shouldn't prove too difficult to raise approximately three times that amount over a 12 month period to pay for the facilities to be provided by Vanilla or whoever.