That could help Labour. I firmly believe Brexit Party helped the Tories here in the North. I have relatives who were lifelong Labour voters who would never be seen dead voting Tory and still dislike the Tories now who voted Brexit Party.
The Tories won Brexiteers who were prepared to vote Tory. The Brexit Party provided an outlet for Brexiteers who would never vote Tory so that they didn't vote Labour instead.
There's many wild assumptions about how many seats the Tories would have won if the Brexit Party vote was added to theirs, but equally if the Brexit Party vote went to Labour then Labour would have held much of the former red wall.
The Tories have 4 years in government now to try and prove they can work well for the North so those voters having broken the habit of voting Labour don't return to them next time.
Yep. There's going to be a good opportunity for a psephologist to analyse the impact of the Brexit Party standing or not standing in certain seats and areas.
There's definitely some seats where they took a bunch of Lab votes and let Con win from second, and others where they took votes from Lab and Con, letting Lab hold on.
On the policy issues, I expect that we are about to see the proverbial Northern Powerhouse on steriods, many towns that voted Con for the first time this year will undoubtedly have investment and opportunity poured into them over the next four years.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
On topic. Well written provocative piece. Good to see your name beneath a header Thommo.
The bottom line, before acting learn the learn the lessons of history?
As time passes there is much to learn from the 13 years of blairite rule. Increasingly in hindsight it appears liassez faire and mistake ridden. It appears valueless unproductive shortermist spinning for large majorities not properly planning for the future. In hindsight the comfortable working majorities appear a missed opportunity. The 13 years of New Labour appears to have been rubbish.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
I have been popping in and out these last few days and making the occasional comment but it seems most things are in limbo and little happening
I just want to say I have not gone away but am about to embark on a complete re-decoration of our lounge, dining room, snug, and hall which will keep me busy over the next 4 - 6 weeks.
It is also good to keep active at my time of life
What needs to happen by March or so to meet an end of 2020 deadline, and probably is happening behind the scenes with no debate, is the complete dismemberment of the UK's trading relationships. Nothing to see here; no-one is interested.
Good luck with your DIY.
Thank you re my DIY but I am very optimistic about 2020 and beyond
I cannot expect those who want to remainto share an optimistic view as it is contrary to their hopes the whole thing is a disaster and we may change our mind and rejoin.
After 31st January any hope of re-joining is years away, if at all
You must not confuse, as all too many - some of them on here - do, those who hope Brexit is a disaster in order to make some point (such people are pretty silly IMO) and those who fear it will not bring the anticipated joys and will be much tougher than anticipated.
Being realistic about the challenges is not a bad place to be. Certainly better than believing what you want to be true rather than looking at the facts and basing opinions on those.
I am sorry but I 100% believe that a lot of people on here hope it is a disaster in order to make a point/win an argument. You must have clocked that this is a place where people would rather argue black was white than concede a point after a lengthy discussion, and trip over themselves to say "I told you so"?
As I've said before I've been pro-Europe since the early 60's. I sincerely hope I see us get back into the EU before I die ...... but since I'm 82 this year I wonder if that's a bit of a forlorn hope. I fear for the UK outside the EU, but for the sake of my children and grandchildren, some of whom still live here, and will, I expect, continue to do so, I hope my fears are not realised.
I would devolve as much as possible to the Counties, and let the people in the counties themselves decide whether to co-operate or compete with their neighbours.
Fe would even help address regional imbalances. I don't see England's overwhelming dominance as the problem that some do, providing the competences of the national assemblies are clearly defined.
It's neturn resulting in London schemes getting automatic favouritism over the rest of England.
We have some of the poorest regions in Europe for a reason, and that reason is that decision making is biased towards London. An English Parliament doesn't solve that - regional governments do.
Wasn't a referendum on regional government comprehensively defeated when trialed in the North East?
Yep - see my pre
The problem isn’t the cities anymore. The cities with their act together have worked out what Manchester have worked out. George Osborne meant it. Places that were once bywords for urban squalor are becoming engines of growth and magnets of talent.
The consequences for the towns and less cosmopolitan (clue: cosmopolitan doesn’t mean areas that have simply replaced lots of poor white peoples with lots of poor immigrants) areas is that the young and talented go off to university and don’t return.
The next big challenge is how do these areas cope with this, is it enough for them to be in charge of their own destiny? Or does that just make the current gerontocracy in these areas double down with more of what’s repelling them?
Yes, I think this a big part of the problem of the "left behind areas". The talented youngsters go off to big city universities and enjoy the cosmopolitan life there. There is decreasingly little to pull them back to the smaller towns and cities. The boomer factor (the percentage of the population 54+ on the parliamentary demographics) was a pretty strong predictor of which Northern seats would be Tory gains.
In part it is a cultural change to the consumerism of experience rather than the consumerism of things.
On that final point most certainly. Old people think the shopping centre is about Debenhams, House of Fraser with possibly a bit of lunch. Younger people see the shopping centre as a place to meet up, socialise, enjoy themselves and maybe do a bit of shopping, or at least pick up their online package from Next.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I think it will be a much greater part of the electorate than population. Unless those EU nationals have taken British citizenship they quite rightly have no say.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I think it will be a much greater part of the electorate than population. Unless those EU nationals have taken British citizenship they quite rightly have no say.
Oops, should have said populace there, but you have a valid point. The proportion of white British in the electorate is probably closer to 90% than 80%.
I have been popping in and out these last few days and making the occasional comment but it seems most things are in limbo and little happening
I just want to say I have not gone away but am about to embark on a complete re-decoration of our lounge, dining room, snug, and hall which will keep me busy over the next 4 - 6 weeks.
It is also good to keep active at my time of life
What needs to happen by March or so to meet an end of 2020 deadline, and probably is happening behind the scenes with no debate, is the complete dismemberment of the UK's trading relationships. Nothing to see here; no-one is interested.
Good luck with your DIY.
Thank you re my DIY but I am very optimistic about 2020 and beyond
I cannot expect those who want to remainto share an optimistic view as it is contrary to their hopes the whole thing is a disaster and we may change our mind and rejoin.
After 31st January any hope of re-joining is years away, if at all
You must not confuse, as all too many - some of them on here - do, those who hope Brexit is a disaster in order to make some point (such people are pretty silly IMO) and those who fear it will not bring the anticipated joys and will be much tougher than anticipated.
Being realistic about the challenges is not a bad place to be. Certainly better than believing what you want to be true rather than looking at the facts and basing opinions on those.
I am sorry but I 100% believe that a lot of people on here hope it is a disaster in order to make a point/win an argument. You must have clocked that this is a place where people would rather argue black was white than concede a point after a lengthy discussion, and trip over themselves to say "I told you so"?
I think this is projection. It's usually Brexiteers, frequently retirees on final salary pensions who have no real connection to the economy, for whom this is all a game. I sincerely hope Brexit isn't a total disaster, because if it is I will lose my job and won't be able to pay my mortgage. Of course whether Brexit is a disaster or not will have nothing to do with what anyone on here thinks or does, but will be determined by whether the UK government has any kind of plan to make it work and on whether both parties to the negotiations next year are open to compromise. I'm not holding my breath on either score.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Because urban seats aren't the majority of the country. And we have had Tory-led government and Tory PMs and Chancellors for virtually a decade now.
Plus the emphasis for 22 years hasn't been urban areas. In the late noughties the emphasis wasn't on the Tories failure in urban areas (since the Tories relative to the rest of the nation did OK in Southern urban areas) it was the Tories failure in the North. A failure which has been addressed.
Given the Tories have just won nearly two-thirds of English seats, a higher proportion than Blair ever managed, it seems perverse to be talking about Tory failures though - just what share do you want them to win?
The failures matter because they set the scene for the interesting phenomenon you write about. Isn't it interesting that the Conservatives keep gaining votes? I liked the header. It sets up a puzzle to which the big macro-level answer is Tony Blair. So what I am saying is that when you look at the micro level, there is a different answer to the puzzle. Winning Bishop Auckland no longer means a 150-seat majority because of losses in places like Manchester and almost anywhere Merseyside - to choose only Northern areas. So then the answer to the puzzle is that these areas both explain why the swing-back didn't happen, and prove that the pendulum itself isn't even the only model. There are also competing macro-level stories, the main one being the realignment of the LDs as a party replacing Labour in well-off areas, instead of a legacy non-Anglican vote in rural areas. But I wanted to tell a micro-level story. Anyway, it's not devolution!
On topic. Well written provocative piece. Good to see your name beneath a header Thommo.
The bottom line, before acting learn the learn the lessons of history?
As time passes there is much to learn from the 13 years of blairite rule. Increasingly in hindsight it appears liassez faire and mistake ridden. It appears valueless unproductive shortermist spinning for large majorities not properly planning for the future. In hindsight the comfortable working majorities appear a missed opportunity. The 13 years of New Labour appears to have been rubbish.
Thanks egg. A while back a few people (not me) kept complaining that the threads were being written by people critical to Leave and TSE kept saying that the threads were written by volunteers and if anyone wanted to write a piece they could do so and it would be considered. So eventually I decided to take up the gauntlet, asked TSE for guidelines and now this the third piece of mine he's graciously published. Ironically none of those were directly on the topic of Brexit. I did have a draft one that was going to be published on Brexit but it got overtaken by events so I didn't finalise it.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
As Labour needs to win back white working class areas to win a majority, the Tories already have a big majority despite losing big cities and urban areas, that is why.
If the Tories won urban areas as well we would effectively become a 1 party state
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
I have been popping in and out these last few days and making the occasional comment but it seems most things are in limbo and little happening
I just want to say I have not gone away but am about to embark on a complete re-decoration of our lounge, dining room, snug, and hall which will keep me busy over the next 4 - 6 weeks.
It is also good to keep active at my time of life
What needs to happen by March or so to meet an end of 2020 deadline, and probably is happening behind the scenes with no debate, is the complete dismemberment of the UK's trading relationships. Nothing to see here; no-one is interested.
Good luck with your DIY.
Thank you re my DIY but I am very optimistic about 2020 and beyond
I cannot expect those who want to remainto share an optimistic view as it is contrary to their hopes the whole thing is a disaster and we may change our mind and rejoin.
After 31st January any hope of re-joining is years away, if at all
You must not confuse, as all too many - some of them on here - do, those who hope Brexit is a disaster in order to make some point (such people are pretty silly IMO) and those who fear it will not bring the anticipated joys and will be much tougher than anticipated.
Being realistic about the challenges is not a bad place to be. Certainly better than believing what you want to be true rather than looking at the facts and basing opinions on those.
I am sorry but I 100% believe that a lot of people on here hope it is a disaster in order to make a point/win an argument. You must have clocked that this is a place where people would rather argue black was white than concede a point after a lengthy discussion, and trip over themselves to say "I told you so"?
I think this is projection. It's usually Brexiteers, frequently retirees on final salary pensions who have no real connection to the economy, for whom this is all a game. I sincerely hope Brexit isn't a total disaster, because if it is I will lose my job and won't be able to pay my mortgage. Of course whether Brexit is a disaster or not will have nothing to do with what anyone on here thinks or does, but will be determined by whether the UK government has any kind of plan to make it work and on whether both parties to the negotiations next year are open to compromise. I'm not holding my breath on either score.
Certainly a big gamble for a lot of people and not convinced the Tories will really be concerned about your interests to be fair. Neither would Labour of course. There will surely be some casualties along the way even if it pans out long term.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
Ah but if Scotland had been independent then Scotland could have built up a sovereign wealth fund like Norway's. That is part of the emotive case for independence, even if it does necessitate the invention of a time machine. In the real world, that money has long since disappeared.
But the whole United Kingdom might be better had the money been invested rather than spent.
Mrs Thatcher did create an economic revolution, it is true, with a bonfire of controls, free markets and so on. But it is also true she pissed away not one but two magic money trees, including North Sea Oil revenues, on current spending not investment, much of it subsidising the welfare state as industrial decline led to mass unemployment.
On topic. Well written provocative piece. Good to see your name beneath a header Thommo.
The bottom line, before acting learn the learn the lessons of history?
As time passes there is much to learn from the 13 years of blairite rule. Increasingly in hindsight it appears liassez faire and mistake ridden. It appears valueless unproductive shortermist spinning for large majorities not properly planning for the future. In hindsight the comfortable working majorities appear a missed opportunity. The 13 years of New Labour appears to have been rubbish.
They were generally thirteen years of competent if unremarkable government, and one major foreign policy disaster.
They ended in a wholly unnecessary internal Party civil war.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
Yeah but the evil Tories forced the SNP to do it by, err, being downright evil!
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I just mean, as far as I can tell, nobody ever asked what should the Conservatives do to make themselves more appealing to Brent Central. I remember the narrative being about town and suburban seats outside London that were indeed very much overwhelmingly white at the time. The assumption was simply that something would come up, but there was no fetishisation of one ethnic community over another in the way that non-WWC people's narrative fetishises WWC as a symbol of why Labour is bad.
On topic. Well written provocative piece. Good to see your name beneath a header Thommo.
The bottom line, before acting learn the learn the lessons of history?
As time passes there is much to learn from the 13 years of blairite rule. Increasingly in hindsight it appears liassez faire and mistake ridden. It appears valueless unproductive shortermist spinning for large majorities not properly planning for the future. In hindsight the comfortable working majorities appear a missed opportunity. The 13 years of New Labour appears to have been rubbish.
Thanks egg. A while back a few people (not me) kept complaining that the threads were being written by people critical to Leave and TSE kept saying that the threads were written by volunteers and if anyone wanted to write a piece they could do so and it would be considered. So eventually I decided to take up the gauntlet, asked TSE for guidelines and now this the third piece of mine he's graciously published. Ironically none of those were directly on the topic of Brexit. I did have a draft one that was going to be published on Brexit but it got overtaken by events so I didn't finalise it.
It's a good piece, and a very different skill writing a lead article rather than just banging the keyboard in the comments. I once tried writing a piece on 'Brexit and Aviation', and it quickly descended into acronym soup from which it was difficult to put something together that a non-aviator could understand - which kinda defeated the whole point of it! Kudos to those who write the headers, even those with which I personally disagree. More people should volunteer pieces to Mike and Eagles if they can.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I just mean, as far as I can tell, nobody ever asked what should the Conservatives do to make themselves more appealing to Brent Central. I remember the narrative being about town and suburban seats outside London that were indeed very much overwhelmingly white at the time. The assumption was simply that something would come up, but there was no fetishisation of one ethnic community over another in the way that non-WWC people's narrative fetishises WWC as a symbol of why Labour is bad.
We already know, housing, housing, housing. Other than that, we aren't going to pander to Islamists to win votes like Jez.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I just mean, as far as I can tell, nobody ever asked what should the Conservatives do to make themselves more appealing to Brent Central. I remember the narrative being about town and suburban seats outside London that were indeed very much overwhelmingly white at the time. The assumption was simply that something would come up, but there was no fetishisation of one ethnic community over another in the way that non-WWC people's narrative fetishises WWC as a symbol of why Labour is bad.
But why would they focus their efforts on making themselves appealing to groups that combined are 10% or less of the electorate? Their chosen strategy appears to have been the winning one.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I just mean, as far as I can tell, nobody ever asked what should the Conservatives do to make themselves more appealing to Brent Central. I remember the narrative being about town and suburban seats outside London that were indeed very much overwhelmingly white at the time. The assumption was simply that something would come up, but there was no fetishisation of one ethnic community over another in the way that non-WWC people's narrative fetishises WWC as a symbol of why Labour is bad.
We already know, housing, housing, housing. Other than that, we aren't going to pander to Islamists to win votes like Jez.
Transport and communications infrastructure, as well as housing, housing and housing.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
As Labour needs to win back white working class areas to win a majority, the Tories already have a big majority despite losing big cities and urban areas, that is why.
If the Tories won urban areas as well we would effectively become a 1 party state
Point being, up until two weeks ago, a competing hypothesis was that the Conservatives would have actually won in 2010, and 2017, and won a more workable majority in 2015, had they held onto seats in Manchester and Reading and Brighton and Ilford that were not problematic in 1992. We could have told ourselves a narrative that the Conservatives NEEDED those areas, be they metropolitan, ethnic-minority, whatever.
Instead, the Conservatives found a different route to victory. Labour, in turn, may find its own different route to victory.
I have been popping in and out these last few days and making the occasional comment but it seems most things are in limbo and little happening
I just want to say I have not gone away but am about to embark on a complete re-decoration of our lounge, dining room, snug, and hall which will keep me busy over the next 4 - 6 weeks.
It is also good to keep active at my time of life
What needs to happen by March or so to meet an end of 2020 deadline, and probably is happening behind the scenes with no debate, is the complete dismemberment of the UK's trading relationships. Nothing to see here; no-one is interested.
Good luck with your DIY.
Thank you re my DIY but I am very optimistic about 2020 and beyond
I cannot expect those who want to remainto share an optimistic view as it is contrary to their hopes the whole thing is a disaster and we may change our mind and rejoin.
After 31st January any hope of re-joining is years away, if at all
You must not confuse, as all too many - some of them on here - do, those who hope Brexit is a disaster in order to make some point (such people are pretty silly IMO) and those who fear it will not bring the anticipated joys and will be much tougher than anticipated.
Being realistic about the challenges is not a bad place to be. Certainly better than believing what you want to be true rather than looking at the facts and basing opinions on those.
I am sorry but I 100% believe that a lot of people on here hope it is a disaster in order to make a point/win an argument. You must have clocked that this is a place where people would rather argue black was white than concede a point after a lengthy discussion, and trip over themselves to say "I told you so"?
Some do. But not all. Me, for instance.
Equally, some of those who are Brexit enthusiasts are inclined to ignore many of the practical issues arising. A stupid approach because if you ignore the practical issues you are making it less likely that it will succeed, at least on your own terms.
Belief is not a practical answer to the what, where, how questions that, say, a farmer needs answering when deciding how many ewes to put in a breeding programme without knowing to whom the lambs can be sold and at what price. For example.
On topic. Well written provocative piece. Good to see your name beneath a header Thommo.
The bottom line, before acting learn the learn the lessons of history?
As time passes there is much to learn from the 13 years of blairite rule. Increasingly in hindsight it appears liassez faire and mistake ridden. It appears valueless unproductive shortermist spinning for large majorities not properly planning for the future. In hindsight the comfortable working majorities appear a missed opportunity. The 13 years of New Labour appears to have been rubbish.
Thanks egg. A while back a few people (not me) kept complaining that the threads were being written by people critical to Leave and TSE kept saying that the threads were written by volunteers and if anyone wanted to write a piece they could do so and it would be considered. So eventually I decided to take up the gauntlet, asked TSE for guidelines and now this the third piece of mine he's graciously published. Ironically none of those were directly on the topic of Brexit. I did have a draft one that was going to be published on Brexit but it got overtaken by events so I didn't finalise it.
Your politics are all wrong but your thread pieces are good, Thommo. Please let's see more in 2020.
Writing these pieces is quite an art. It's years since i did one but I recall them being as difficult as anything I ever wrote. Economy is essential and the skill to put over a point in the space available is one that few possess.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
Yeah, yeah.
"Claim that fire service paying VAT was ‘SNP policy’ is Mostly False
The ultimate decision over whether Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue would be liable for VAT was not taken by the Scottish Government, which actively lobbied the UK government to allow an exemption for the services. This lobbying was rejected."
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
Nope, they started to pay VAT in 2013, as a direct result of decisions taken by the Scottish Parliament with the information about VAT in hand.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Just the £1.2 billion on Sullom Voe terminal, for example. With the 6,000 construction jobs. The tax breaks to make investments like that happen didn't come from Edinburgh.
And if Scotland had been an independent country when the oil was developed, then the political risk would have been far greater than for a UK development - meaning the development costs would have been greater and the net take less.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I just mean, as far as I can tell, nobody ever asked what should the Conservatives do to make themselves more appealing to Brent Central. I remember the narrative being about town and suburban seats outside London that were indeed very much overwhelmingly white at the time. The assumption was simply that something would come up, but there was no fetishisation of one ethnic community over another in the way that non-WWC people's narrative fetishises WWC as a symbol of why Labour is bad.
But why would they focus their efforts on making themselves appealing to groups that combined are 10% or less of the electorate? Their chosen strategy appears to have been the winning one.
Older Northern WWC are also about 10% or less of the electorate. Again - who chooses the narrative and cui bono!
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I just mean, as far as I can tell, nobody ever asked what should the Conservatives do to make themselves more appealing to Brent Central. I remember the narrative being about town and suburban seats outside London that were indeed very much overwhelmingly white at the time. The assumption was simply that something would come up, but there was no fetishisation of one ethnic community over another in the way that non-WWC people's narrative fetishises WWC as a symbol of why Labour is bad.
But why would they focus their efforts on making themselves appealing to groups that combined are 10% or less of the electorate? Their chosen strategy appears to have been the winning one.
Older Northern WWC are also about 10% or less of the electorate. Again - who chooses the narrative and cui bono!
That seems very unlikely, do you have the maths for that?
I have been popping in and out these last few days and making the occasional comment but it seems most things are in limbo and little happening
I just want to say I have not gone away but am about to embark on a complete re-decoration of our lounge, dining room, snug, and hall which will keep me busy over the next 4 - 6 weeks.
It is also good to keep active at my time of life
What needs to happen by March or so to meet an end of 2020 deadline, and probably is happening behind the scenes with no debate, is the complete dismemberment of the UK's trading relationships. Nothing to see here; no-one is interested.
Good luck with your DIY.
Thank you re my DIY but I am very optimistic about 2020 and beyond
I cannot expect those who want to remainto share an optimistic view as it is contrary to their hopes the whole thing is a disaster and we may change our mind and rejoin.
After 31st January any hope of re-joining is years away, if at all
I am sorry but I 100% believe that a lot of people on here hope it is a disaster in order to make a point/win an argument. You must have clocked that this is a place where people would rather argue black was white than concede a point after a lengthy discussion, and trip over themselves to say "I told you so"?
I think this is projection. It's usually Brexiteers, frequently retirees on final salary pensions who have no real connection to the economy, for whom this is all a game. I sincerely hope Brexit isn't a total disaster, because if it is I will lose my job and won't be able to pay my mortgage. Of course whether Brexit is a disaster or not will have nothing to do with what anyone on here thinks or does, but will be determined by whether the UK government has any kind of plan to make it work and on whether both parties to the negotiations next year are open to compromise. I'm not holding my breath on either score.
It’s not really about Brexit, it’s the psychology of stubborn, argumentative people who have strong political beliefs and are reluctant to concede a point, and PB has a much, much higher proportion of them than almost anywhere else.
They say that something is a bad idea, so it won’t happen, then, when it happens, they say it will be a disaster, because they don’t accept the fact that their argument lost the vote as any kind of proof they were wrong about the betting markets or unrepresentative of/out of touch with public opinion.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on SNIP
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
Nope, they started to pay VAT in 2013, as a direct result of decisions taken by the Scottish Parliament with the information about VAT in hand.
It was just Tory nastiness to spite the SNP. Typical of the petty way they treat Scotland in a particularly nasty way. Can you name any English emergency services paying VAT perchance.
OT Tony Blair looks very old these days. On entering Downing Street, Blair looked younger than his years but now the reverse is true and he could easily be taken for mid-70s or older.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
No they haven't. I have only heard about this just now, but it's pretty easy to find out that when they were local authority administered they qualified for a VAT rebate the same as anyone else. The Scottish Government was repeatedly warned in discussions that it would lose this rebate if it consolidated them under national control in the way it proposed, but decided to go ahead anyway. The UK Government has now reinstated a VAT rebate, but the Scottish Government has demanded a refund of what has already been paid, which even you must admit is pretty breathtaking considering the loss is entirely due to their own actions.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on SNIP
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
Nope, they started to pay VAT in 2013, as a direct result of decisions taken by the Scottish Parliament with the information about VAT in hand.
It was just Tory nastiness to spite the SNP. Typical of the petty way they treat Scotland in a particularly nasty way. Can you name any English emergency services paying VAT perchance.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on SNIP
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
Nope, they started to pay VAT in 2013, as a direct result of decisions taken by the Scottish Parliament with the information about VAT in hand.
It was just Tory nastiness to spite the SNP. Typical of the petty way they treat Scotland in a particularly nasty way. Can you name any English emergency services paying VAT perchance.
So - about that "always"
SNP types have strange definitions don't they, "always" and "once in a generation"
There are no safe seats. The opportunity for Labour And the Lib Dem’s is the soft Tory underbelly in England. We’ve already seen signs of that. With the right leaders they could make further gains.
Everything is upside down.
Yep. And tories could make further gains from Labour in the north and Midlands.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on SNIP
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
Nope, they started to pay VAT in 2013, as a direct result of decisions taken by the Scottish Parliament with the information about VAT in hand.
It was just Tory nastiness to spite the SNP. Typical of the petty way they treat Scotland in a particularly nasty way. Can you name any English emergency services paying VAT perchance.
So - about that "always"
SNP types have strange definitions don't they, "always" and "once in a generation"
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on SNIP
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
Nope, they started to pay VAT in 2013, as a direct result of decisions taken by the Scottish Parliament with the information about VAT in hand.
It was just Tory nastiness to spite the SNP. Typical of the petty way they treat Scotland in a particularly nasty way. Can you name any English emergency services paying VAT perchance.
Also as well as MoD Police we can add British Transport Police and Civil Nuclear Police Authority.
IE all non-local Police authorities which is what the SNP chose to make Police Scotland. SNPs choice and didn't apply pre-2013 (some "always" - was 2012 before "always")?
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
SNIP
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
Are you sure they paid VAT before 2012?
The SNP changed how emergency services are ran.
They may have had the waiver prior to 2012 , the charges were applied just out of Tory badness, there was no need or reasoning behind it other than trying to do down the SNP. It is typical of the petty behaviour of London towards the Scottish Government and the Tory petty nastiness has led us to where we are, about to go our separate ways.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
No they haven't. I have only heard about this just now, but it's pretty easy to find out that when they were local authority administered they qualified for a VAT rebate the same as anyone else. The Scottish Government was repeatedly warned in discussions that it would lose this rebate if it consolidated them under national control in the way it proposed, but decided to go ahead anyway. The UK Government has now reinstated a VAT rebate, but the Scottish Government has demanded a refund of what has already been paid, which even you must admit is pretty breathtaking considering the loss is entirely due to their own actions.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on SNIP
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
Nope, they started to pay VAT in 2013, as a direct result of decisions taken by the Scottish Parliament with the information about VAT in hand.
It was just Tory nastiness to spite the SNP. Typical of the petty way they treat Scotland in a particularly nasty way. Can you name any English emergency services paying VAT perchance.
Malc, read the article. It was not nastiness in any way shape or form. It was simple incompetence by the SNP, or worse, deliberately taking a step that they knew would lose Scotland money in order to create another rift with the UK Government.
Labour's wipe-out and the rise of the SNP are Blair's fault, or devolution's fault? Up to a point, Lord Copper. You'd need to explain what is different between Wales and Scotland.
Blair and devolution are only half the answer. The other half is Mrs Thatcher using Scotland as a test bed for the hated poll tax and North Sea Oil as a magic money tree, squandering "Scotland's Oil" on subsidising the unemployment she created, on current expenditure rather than investment. Even now in the SNP's case for independence, there is an element of wistfully eyeing Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
This perceived misuse of Scotland's people and resources is what drove the importance of anti-Conservativism in Scotland, and the rise of the SNP. Mrs Thatcher's first two election victories, in 1979 and 1983, included 22 and 21 Scottish seats. This was to fall to one or none between 1997 and 2017.
It wasn’t and isn’t ‘Scotland’s oil’. It’s the United Kingdom’s...
Just a pity that more than 95% of it was spent down south, union of equals my arse. Robbing barstewards more like.
There's the problem. 95% of the UK *is* down south. Actually it's more like 92% of the population but you get the drift. There are only 5.5 million Scots among 66 million Britons. This is, after all, part of the case for independence: that Scotland is somehow overshadowed or submerged in the UK.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Just the £1.2 billion on Sullom Voe terminal, for example. With the 6,000 construction jobs. The tax breaks to make investments like that happen didn't come from Edinburgh.
And if Scotland had been an independent country when the oil was developed, then the political risk would have been far greater than for a UK development - meaning the development costs would have been greater and the net take less.
You mean like Norway , where they are stuck with a trillion they don't know what to spend it on. How lucky were we to be looked after by the Tories.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
Nope, they started to pay VAT in 2013, as a direct result of decisions taken by the Scottish Parliament with the information about VAT in hand.
It was just Tory nastiness to spite the SNP. Typical of the petty way they treat Scotland in a particularly nasty way. Can you name any English emergency services paying VAT perchance.
LOL.
It's quite simple:
Local services paid for by locally-raised taxes to local authorities are exempt from VAT.
National services paid for by national governments are subject to VAT.
In 2012, the SNP government in Scotland decided to abolish local police and fire departments, and replace them with centrally-managed national police and fire departments. It was noted at the time that this would make those services subject to VAT, but the SNP government in Scotland pressed ahead anyway.
None of this has anything to do with "Westminster" or "Tories", it was purely because of the SNP government in Scotland, and their desire to bring the emergency services under their own control.
They may have had the waiver prior to 2012 , the charges were applied just out of Tory badness, there was no need or reasoning behind it other than trying to do down the SNP. It is typical of the petty behaviour of London towards the Scottish Government and the Tory petty nastiness has led us to where we are, about to go our separate ways.
The laws on the s.33 waiver were written two decades prior to the SNPs change so how is that "Tory petty nastiness"?
The laws on Police Scotland that the SNP chose to apply are the same laws that apply to the British Transport Police and others which is why they too pay VAT. Are the Tories being petty to the British Transport Police which have the same laws apply to them for the same reason?
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
Nope, they started to pay VAT in 2013, as a direct result of decisions taken by the Scottish Parliament with the information about VAT in hand.
It was just Tory nastiness to spite the SNP. Typical of the petty way they treat Scotland in a particularly nasty way. Can you name any English emergency services paying VAT perchance.
LOL.
It's quite simple:
Local services paid for by locally-raised taxes to local authorities are exempt from VAT.
National services paid for by national governments are subject to VAT.
In 2012, the SNP government in Scotland decided to abolish local police and fire departments, and replace them with centrally-managed national police and fire departments. It was noted at the time that this would make those services subject to VAT, but the SNP government in Scotland pressed ahead anyway.
None of this has anything to do with "Westminster" or "Tories", it was purely because of the SNP government in Scotland, and their desire to bring the emergency services under their own control.
Also interestingly the rules about the local/national distinction are European Union inspired and the European Union would object to losing money if the UK government chose to exempt national services . . . and of course the SNP want us to be in the EU. Go figure!
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I just mean, as far as I can tell, nobody ever asked what should the Conservatives do to make themselves more appealing to Brent Central. I remember the narrative being about town and suburban seats outside London that were indeed very much overwhelmingly white at the time. The assumption was simply that something would come up, but there was no fetishisation of one ethnic community over another in the way that non-WWC people's narrative fetishises WWC as a symbol of why Labour is bad.
But why would they focus their efforts on making themselves appealing to groups that combined are 10% or less of the electorate? Their chosen strategy appears to have been the winning one.
Older Northern WWC are also about 10% or less of the electorate. Again - who chooses the narrative and cui bono!
That seems very unlikely, do you have the maths for that?
Sure, it is a rough estimate. Taking the most generous definition of "Northern", North + Midlands + Wales, and omitting the major metro areas, is maybe one in three seats. Say half the population will be traditional working-class, 90% of whom will (edit: not!) be ethnic minority including Irish/Poles/etc., and most of whom are older (because traditional class maps to age).
You mean like Norway , where they are stuck with a trillion they don't know what to spend it on. How lucky were we to be looked after by the Tories.
I tend to agree with Malc that more could have been spent locally. It is curious to me visiting Aberdeen - which don't get me wrong, is a fine, well-kept city, why it isn't the Dubai of the North. I do not pretend to understand the economics of it though.
The answer to the why-no-swing-back question is that the Conservatives enjoyed 2 years of majority government, and that was barely, in the last 22 years Nothing to swing back from except in 2017.
It sometimes seems that more mental effort has been spent on 2 weeks of Labour white working-class losses than on 22 years of Conservative failure to win back urban seats John Major won, which makes you wonder who chooses the narrative, cui bono, and if white people matter more in it!
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I just mean, as far as I can tell, nobody ever asked what should the Conservatives do to make themselves more appealing to Brent Central. I remember the narrative being about town and suburban seats outside London that were indeed very much overwhelmingly white at the time. The assumption was simply that something would come up, but there was no fetishisation of one ethnic community over another in the way that non-WWC people's narrative fetishises WWC as a symbol of why Labour is bad.
But why would they focus their efforts on making themselves appealing to groups that combined are 10% or less of the electorate? Their chosen strategy appears to have been the winning one.
Older Northern WWC are also about 10% or less of the electorate. Again - who chooses the narrative and cui bono!
That seems very unlikely, do you have the maths for that?
Sure, it is a rough estimate. Taking the most generous definition of "Northern", North + Midlands + Wales, and omitting the major metro areas, is maybe one in three seats. Say half the population will be traditional working-class, 90% of whom will (edit: not!) be ethnic minority including Irish/Poles/etc., and most of whom are older (because traditional class maps to age).
On topic, I agree that Blair policies have contributed to the current political situation, but it was I believe a different Blair policy which has had the biggest effect. The conscious and quite deliberate decision to abandon the largest demographic - those who work in, or own, SME's - has finally cost Labour dear. While Mandelson was right at the time ("they have nowhere else to go") it was only a matter of time before somebody tapped in to this vast and decisive demographic. Johnson and Cummings have now done so twice - in the Brexit referendum and here. Add to this a labour leader whose policies would have been utterly catastrophic for anyone working in or owning an SME and the effect was pronounced. And the problem Labour has is that the notion that Johnson needs to do a lot to hold onto this demographic is fallacious - all he has to do is improve on the big fat zero that has been done for over 20 years.
Here's the explanation on VAT for emergency services. Basically an SNP bungle and then an attempt to blame it on Westminster.
Bungle my arse, Tory nastiness pure and simple, hiding behind whitewash.
SNP power grab pure and simple.
"there is no doubt that the Treasury’s position was well known to the Scottish Government prior to the reforms. It is simply not possible to credibly argue that the loss of the VAT rebate was anything other than a risk the SNP willingly accepted."
Not that arguing without credibility would ever stop our malc!
Finished the Witcher last night on Netflix. It's starts unevenly, but once it gets going it's really good. Highly recommended. Cavill and Chalotra are great in it as well.
I'd have liked them to get Idris Elba for Vilgefortz, but it probably wasn't in the budget.
I'll persevere then. Underwhelmed by the opening episode....
I won’t spoil it but it’s essentially 8 episodes for what is an introduction. I enjoyed it but I quite liked the books (albeit as classic long flight reading) and the Witcher 3 RPG is outstanding.
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I just mean, as far as I can tell, nobody ever asked what should the Conservatives do to make themselves more appealing to Brent Central. I remember the narrative being about town and suburban seats outside London that were indeed very much overwhelmingly white at the time. The assumption was simply that something would come up, but there was no fetishisation of one ethnic community over another in the way that non-WWC people's narrative fetishises WWC as a symbol of why Labour is bad.
But why would they focus their efforts on making themselves appealing to groups that combined are 10% or less of the electorate? Their chosen strategy appears to have been the winning one.
Older Northern WWC are also about 10% or less of the electorate. Again - who chooses the narrative and cui bono!
That seems very unlikely, do you have the maths for that?
Sure, it is a rough estimate. Taking the most generous definition of "Northern", North + Midlands + Wales, and omitting the major metro areas, is maybe one in three seats. Say half the population will be traditional working-class, 90% of whom will (edit: not!) be ethnic minority including Irish/Poles/etc., and most of whom are older (because traditional class maps to age).
So that's a no, then?
I really don't know what to say. Are you being intentionally impolite to avoid discussing your own beliefs in the matter? Because it's evident that the number is not going to be even 20%.
I have been popping in and out these last few days and making the occasional comment but it seems most things are in limbo and little happening
I just want to say I have not gone away but am about to embark on a complete re-decoration of our lounge, dining room, snug, and hall which will keep me busy over the next 4 - 6 weeks.
It is also good to keep active at my time of life
What needs to happen by March or so to meet an end of 2020 deadline, and probably is happening behind the scenes with no debate, is the complete dismemberment of the UK's trading relationships. Nothing to see here; no-one is interested.
Good luck with your DIY.
Thank you re my DIY but I am very optimistic about 2020 and beyond
I cannot expect those who want to remainto share an optimistic view as it is contrary to their hopes the whole thing is a disaster and we may change our mind and rejoin.
After 31st January any hope of re-joining is years away, if at all
You must not confuse, as all too many - some of them on here - do, those who hope Brexit is a disaster in order to make some point (such people are pretty silly IMO) and those who fear it will not bring the anticipated joys and will be much tougher than anticipated.
Being realistic about the challenges is not a bad place to be. Certainly better than believing what you want to be true rather than looking at the facts and basing opinions on those.
I am sorry but I 100% believe that a lot of people on here hope it is a disaster in order to make a point/win an argument. You must have clocked that this is a place where people would rather argue black was white than concede a point after a lengthy discussion, and trip over themselves to say "I told you so"?
As I've said before I've been pro-Europe since the early 60's. I sincerely hope I see us get back into the EU before I die ...... but since I'm 82 this year I wonder if that's a bit of a forlorn hope. I fear for the UK outside the EU, but for the sake of my children and grandchildren, some of whom still live here, and will, I expect, continue to do so, I hope my fears are not realised.
I am younger than you, Mr Cole, but have three kids and a grandchild. I very much hope we make a success out of Brexit as its their futures that will be affected if we do not. I have never seen how the benefits outweigh the negatives, and still don't. However, we are where we are and there is no going back. Rejoining the EU is a non-starter as far as I am concerned. Avoiding self-harm is what matters now.
You also have to bear in mind that central government had to offer sweeteners to get those developments built in the first place. They needed recouping over time. If 5% of the gross revenues was spent in Scotland, I'd suggest they did rather well.
F**k all was spent in Scotland, we have to apy all our infrastructure out of the % of our money that gets returned to us, we also pay for London infrastructure as they count that as beneficial to us. We are shafted regularly. Our emergency services are only ones in UK to pay VAT , I could go on and on, we are getting a shit sandwich.
Yours didn't pay VAT previously did they? I thought it was a decision of the SNPs that made them pay VAT.
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
They have always paid VAT, only place in UK where emergency services are treated like it.
Nope, they started to pay VAT in 2013, as a direct result of decisions taken by the Scottish Parliament with the information about VAT in hand.
It was just Tory nastiness to spite the SNP. Typical of the petty way they treat Scotland in a particularly nasty way. Can you name any English emergency services paying VAT perchance.
LOL.
It's quite simple:
Local services paid for by locally-raised taxes to local authorities are exempt from VAT.
National services paid for by national governments are subject to VAT.
In 2012, the SNP government in Scotland decided to abolish local police and fire departments, and replace them with centrally-managed national police and fire departments. It was noted at the time that this would make those services subject to VAT, but the SNP government in Scotland pressed ahead anyway.
None of this has anything to do with "Westminster" or "Tories", it was purely because of the SNP government in Scotland, and their desire to bring the emergency services under their own control.
Nothing to with us Tories, guv, we had no power to exempt Scottish Police from VAT.
'Chancellor Philip Hammond revealed in the 2017 budget that the exemption would be extended to include SFRS and Police Scotland.'
"Claim that fire service paying VAT was ‘SNP policy’ is Mostly False
The ultimate decision over whether Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue would be liable for VAT was not taken by the Scottish Government, which actively lobbied the UK government to allow an exemption for the services. This lobbying was rejected."
That is truly desperate. Nobody here has claimed that 'being charged VAT' was Scottish Government policy. It's just been explained that the change was a result of Scottish Government policy, and that they were well aware of the change, but decided to proceed. As that article confirms.
Nothing to with us Tories, guv, we had no power to exempt Scottish Police from VAT.
'Chancellor Philip Hammond revealed in the 2017 budget that the exemption would be extended to include SFRS and Police Scotland.'
It is embarrassing that you've decided to try and argue this one. And doing so on the basis of Phillip Hammond sparing the SNP's blushes by extending the exemption. No good deed goes unpunished.
"Claim that fire service paying VAT was ‘SNP policy’ is Mostly False
The ultimate decision over whether Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue would be liable for VAT was not taken by the Scottish Government, which actively lobbied the UK government to allow an exemption for the services. This lobbying was rejected."
That is truly desperate. Nobody here has claimed that 'being charged VAT' was Scottish Government policy. It's just been explained that the change was a result of Scottish Government policy, and that they were well aware of the change, but decided to proceed. As that article confirms.
But we agree that the obstructively petty decision to apply VAT to Scottish Police and Fire and Rescue 2013-17 was entirely down to the UK government. Glad we cleared that up.
The last 10 years have shown that predicting what will happen over the next decade is brave, to say the least. So much is going to depend on how Brexit does end up playing out. Whether we like it or not, it is going to dominate - politically and economically.
"Claim that fire service paying VAT was ‘SNP policy’ is Mostly False
The ultimate decision over whether Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue would be liable for VAT was not taken by the Scottish Government, which actively lobbied the UK government to allow an exemption for the services. This lobbying was rejected."
That is truly desperate. Nobody here has claimed that 'being charged VAT' was Scottish Government policy. It's just been explained that the change was a result of Scottish Government policy, and that they were well aware of the change, but decided to proceed. As that article confirms.
But we agree that the obstructively petty decision to apply VAT to Scottish Police and Fire and Rescue 2013-17 was entirely down to the UK government. Glad we cleared that up.
No, the SNP knew the law, were told that would be the outcome and chose to proceed without agreeing a change to the law first. The law applying to Scottish services were the same as those applying to British ones like British Transport Police.
The last 10 years have shown that predicting what will happen over the next decade is brave, to say the least. So much is going to depend on how Brexit does end up playing out. Whether we like it or not, it is going to dominate - politically and economically.
It is not. Two/Three years from now, it will be what was all the fuss about.
The last 10 years have shown that predicting what will happen over the next decade is brave, to say the least. So much is going to depend on how Brexit does end up playing out. Whether we like it or not, it is going to dominate - politically and economically.
It is not. Two/Three years from now, it will be what was all the fuss about.
Indeed. Countries around the globe manage just fine without being in a supranational federation like the EU. The idea the UK can't cope is preposterous. The only people expecting it to dominate are those who think it will be a disaster because their minds are closed to any alternative.
Well they do form an overwhelming majority of the populace.
White people are a large, though not overwhelming, majority. White British is 80% in England and Wales. I think that's the population in question here rather than people in Scotland or Polish or Romanian people.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
Makes sense that the narrative is focused around the group that makes up 80%+ of the electorate, doesn't it?
I just mean, as far as I can tell, nobody ever asked what should the Conservatives do to make themselves more appealing to Brent Central. I remember the narrative being about town and suburban seats outside London that were indeed very much overwhelmingly white at the time. The assumption was simply that something would come up, but there was no fetishisation of one ethnic community over another in the way that non-WWC people's narrative fetishises WWC as a symbol of why Labour is bad.
But why would they focus their efforts on making themselves appealing to groups that combined are 10% or less of the electorate? Their chosen strategy appears to have been the winning one.
Older Northern WWC are also about 10% or less of the electorate. Again - who chooses the narrative and cui bono!
That seems very unlikely, do you have the maths for that?
Sure, it is a rough estimate. Taking the most generous definition of "Northern", North + Midlands + Wales, and omitting the major metro areas, is maybe one in three seats. Say half the population will be traditional working-class, 90% of whom will (edit: not!) be ethnic minority including Irish/Poles/etc., and most of whom are older (because traditional class maps to age).
So that's a no, then?
I really don't know what to say. Are you being intentionally impolite to avoid discussing your own beliefs in the matter? Because it's evident that the number is not going to be even 20%.
No, but you seem very certain about that figure, additionally it's not just the North, it's the Midlands, Wales and South East who all have similar demographic profiles of white working class people who have been ignored for 20+ years. You are the one concentrating on this narrow north vs urban bullshit, no one else is.
"Claim that fire service paying VAT was ‘SNP policy’ is Mostly False
The ultimate decision over whether Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue would be liable for VAT was not taken by the Scottish Government, which actively lobbied the UK government to allow an exemption for the services. This lobbying was rejected."
That is truly desperate. Nobody here has claimed that 'being charged VAT' was Scottish Government policy. It's just been explained that the change was a result of Scottish Government policy, and that they were well aware of the change, but decided to proceed. As that article confirms.
But we agree that the obstructively petty decision to apply VAT to Scottish Police and Fire and Rescue 2013-17 was entirely down to the UK government. Glad we cleared that up.
There was no decision to apply VAT. There was only ineligibility for the exemption, which the SNP was warned about well in advance. Is it obstructively petty of the UK Government to charge the transport police and the MOD police VAT?
It must be truly bizarre being you, and having to argue black is white for the sake of the cause. Do they give you a manual? When it's all been for nothing it's going to come very hard to you. I suppose you'll just fight on like a Japanese soldier after WW2.
Nothing to with us Tories, guv, we had no power to exempt Scottish Police from VAT.
'Chancellor Philip Hammond revealed in the 2017 budget that the exemption would be extended to include SFRS and Police Scotland.'
It is embarrassing that you've decided to try and argue this one. And doing so on the basis of Phillip Hammond sparing the SNP's blushes by extending the exemption. No good deed goes unpunished.
It is mildly embarrassing to be spending time arguing with a few wee English reactionaries about what goes on in Scotland I admit, but it's that or the hoovering, so..
On topic, I agree that Blair policies have contributed to the current political situation, but it was I believe a different Blair policy which has had the biggest effect. The conscious and quite deliberate decision to abandon the largest demographic - those who work in, or own, SME's - has finally cost Labour dear. While Mandelson was right at the time ("they have nowhere else to go") it was only a matter of time before somebody tapped in to this vast and decisive demographic. Johnson and Cummings have now done so twice - in the Brexit referendum and here. Add to this a labour leader whose policies would have been utterly catastrophic for anyone working in or owning an SME and the effect was pronounced. And the problem Labour has is that the notion that Johnson needs to do a lot to hold onto this demographic is fallacious - all he has to do is improve on the big fat zero that has been done for over 20 years.
I had an idea in 2003, pitched it to an SME with under 20 employees, they liked it, gave me a share in the business and 16 years later we have been through one exit worth £93 million, a subsequent merger and I am now part of the leadership that runs a company with over 350 employees, offices in three countries and an annual turnover just shy of £50 million. There were no government policies during any of that time that prevented us from doing what we wanted to do. Brexit won't either, to be fair - though it will mean we invest less in growing our UK operation and may lead us to open an office in the Single Market. I suspect a Corbyn government may have been different and affected us and many others very negatively, but by and large good management, good products and a bit of luck are what count. If you have those you can deal with pretty much anything.
What is it with England and piss poor first innings ? We might eek out 290 here which would be a very good final innings total considering its a fair match pitch. If England didn't dig such big holes we'd win more !
On topic: The Tories have really sealed up much of the Southwest since 1997. I'd be interested to see the vote totals for that region alone over time.
The last 10 years have shown that predicting what will happen over the next decade is brave, to say the least. So much is going to depend on how Brexit does end up playing out. Whether we like it or not, it is going to dominate - politically and economically.
We should start a control list. Let's see how many big things we end up doing in the next decade that we could not have done as EU members. I predict it will be a very short one.
Buttler exposing Archer by taking single off first ball. Presumably he's given up. The only reason that Archer is as high as 9 is that Broad and Anderson are in the team.
The last 10 years have shown that predicting what will happen over the next decade is brave, to say the least. So much is going to depend on how Brexit does end up playing out. Whether we like it or not, it is going to dominate - politically and economically.
We should start a control list. Let's see how many big things we end up doing in the next decade that we could not have done as EU members. I predict it will be a very short one.
OT Tony Blair looks very old these days. On entering Downing Street, Blair looked younger than his years but now the reverse is true and he could easily be taken for mid-70s or older.
Buttler exposing Archer by taking single off first ball. Presumably he's given up. The only reason that Archer is as high as 9 is that Broad and Anderson are in the team.
And gone. Totally predictable.
That’s slightly unfair. Archer is a decent batsman with first class centuries to his credit.
Is anyone however going to say Buttler is making a good fist of this?
The last 10 years have shown that predicting what will happen over the next decade is brave, to say the least. So much is going to depend on how Brexit does end up playing out. Whether we like it or not, it is going to dominate - politically and economically.
We should start a control list. Let's see how many big things we end up doing in the next decade that we could not have done as EU members. I predict it will be a very short one.
We'll do some pretty meaningless trade deals. Individuals and businesses will enjoy fewer freedoms than they do now. The executive will be a lot more powerful. We'll muddle through.
The last 10 years have shown that predicting what will happen over the next decade is brave, to say the least. So much is going to depend on how Brexit does end up playing out. Whether we like it or not, it is going to dominate - politically and economically.
It is not. Two/Three years from now, it will be what was all the fuss about.
I think (tentatively) perhaps a middle option -- it will have had a significant (though hard to conclusively pin down and thus infinitely arguable) economic effect, but it won't be in the interests of either main party for it to remain the dominant political narrative, and so it won't feel like a major and ongoing argument.
Buttler exposing Archer by taking single off first ball. Presumably he's given up. The only reason that Archer is as high as 9 is that Broad and Anderson are in the team.
And gone. Totally predictable.
That’s slightly unfair. Archer is a decent batsman with first class centuries to his credit.
Is anyone however going to say Buttler is making a good fist of this?
Archer's batting at international level has been below pathetic and so was that. Buttler needs to do a Stokes here and get them all. Unfortunately he doesn't have Leach to hang around at the other end.
Buttler exposing Archer by taking single off first ball. Presumably he's given up. The only reason that Archer is as high as 9 is that Broad and Anderson are in the team.
And gone. Totally predictable.
That’s slightly unfair. Archer is a decent batsman with first class centuries to his credit.
Is anyone however going to say Buttler is making a good fist of this?
Archer's batting at international level has been below pathetic and so was that. Buttler needs to do a Stokes here and get them all. Unfortunately he doesn't have Leach to hang around at the other end.
Comments
There's definitely some seats where they took a bunch of Lab votes and let Con win from second, and others where they took votes from Lab and Con, letting Lab hold on.
On the policy issues, I expect that we are about to see the proverbial Northern Powerhouse on steriods, many towns that voted Con for the first time this year will undoubtedly have investment and opportunity poured into them over the next four years.
All this has happened before, of course. After the war, when machines replaced agricultural labourers in the rural belt of seats in counties with a large non-conformist (albeit white) minority, from Norfolk to Somerset.
The bottom line, before acting learn the learn the lessons of history?
As time passes there is much to learn from the 13 years of blairite rule. Increasingly in hindsight it appears liassez faire and mistake ridden. It appears valueless unproductive shortermist spinning for large majorities not properly planning for the future. In hindsight the comfortable working majorities appear a missed opportunity. The 13 years of New Labour appears to have been rubbish.
I fear for the UK outside the EU, but for the sake of my children and grandchildren, some of whom still live here, and will, I expect, continue to do so, I hope my fears are not realised.
Experience, Experience, Experience.
If the Tories won urban areas as well we would effectively become a 1 party state
Seems odd to blame the UK government for the SNPs decision.
But the whole United Kingdom might be better had the money been invested rather than spent.
Mrs Thatcher did create an economic revolution, it is true, with a bonfire of controls, free markets and so on. But it is also true she pissed away not one but two magic money trees, including North Sea Oil revenues, on current spending not investment, much of it subsidising the welfare state as industrial decline led to mass unemployment.
They ended in a wholly unnecessary internal Party civil war.
.....Nah, didn't think so.
Instead, the Conservatives found a different route to victory. Labour, in turn, may find its own different route to victory.
Equally, some of those who are Brexit enthusiasts are inclined to ignore many of the practical issues arising. A stupid approach because if you ignore the practical issues you are making it less likely that it will succeed, at least on your own terms.
Belief is not a practical answer to the what, where, how questions that, say, a farmer needs answering when deciding how many ewes to put in a breeding programme without knowing to whom the lambs can be sold and at what price. For example.
Writing these pieces is quite an art. It's years since i did one but I recall them being as difficult as anything I ever wrote. Economy is essential and the skill to put over a point in the space available is one that few possess.
It's why so few volunteer, I guess.
222-5. It's the hope that kills you.
"Claim that fire service paying VAT was ‘SNP policy’ is Mostly False
The ultimate decision over whether Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue would be liable for VAT was not taken by the Scottish Government, which actively lobbied the UK government to allow an exemption for the services. This lobbying was rejected."
https://tinyurl.com/rkydk4p
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-40785226
Here's the explanation on VAT for emergency services. Basically an SNP bungle and then an attempt to blame it on Westminster.
And if Scotland had been an independent country when the oil was developed, then the political risk would have been far greater than for a UK development - meaning the development costs would have been greater and the net take less.
The SNP changed how emergency services are ran.
They say that something is a bad idea, so it won’t happen, then, when it happens, they say it will be a disaster, because they don’t accept the fact that their argument lost the vote as any kind of proof they were wrong about the betting markets or unrepresentative of/out of touch with public opinion.
https://www.these-islands.co.uk/publications/i274/why_do_scotlands_emergency_services_pay_vat.aspx
SNP types have strange definitions don't they, "always" and "once in a generation"
IE all non-local Police authorities which is what the SNP chose to make Police Scotland. SNPs choice and didn't apply pre-2013 (some "always" - was 2012 before "always")?
It's quite simple:
Local services paid for by locally-raised taxes to local authorities are exempt from VAT.
National services paid for by national governments are subject to VAT.
In 2012, the SNP government in Scotland decided to abolish local police and fire departments, and replace them with centrally-managed national police and fire departments. It was noted at the time that this would make those services subject to VAT, but the SNP government in Scotland pressed ahead anyway.
None of this has anything to do with "Westminster" or "Tories", it was purely because of the SNP government in Scotland, and their desire to bring the emergency services under their own control.
The laws on Police Scotland that the SNP chose to apply are the same laws that apply to the British Transport Police and others which is why they too pay VAT. Are the Tories being petty to the British Transport Police which have the same laws apply to them for the same reason?
"there is no doubt that the Treasury’s position was well known to the Scottish Government prior to the reforms. It is simply not possible to credibly argue that the loss of the VAT rebate was anything other than a risk the SNP willingly accepted."
Not that arguing without credibility would ever stop our malc!
'Chancellor Philip Hammond revealed in the 2017 budget that the exemption would be extended to include SFRS and Police Scotland.'
It must be truly bizarre being you, and having to argue black is white for the sake of the cause. Do they give you a manual? When it's all been for nothing it's going to come very hard to you. I suppose you'll just fight on like a Japanese soldier after WW2.
If England didn't dig such big holes we'd win more !
On topic: The Tories have really sealed up much of the Southwest since 1997. I'd be interested to see the vote totals for that region alone over time.
Bouncers should be occasional to intimidate and possibly get out the opposition, not every other ball.
And gone. Totally predictable.
Is anyone however going to say Buttler is making a good fist of this?
Or seven decent batsman, with any luck.