Do we know who this Tory MP is? The fact they aren't named in the report suggest they are a nobody (i.e.. "Senior Tory").
Did schools in 1930s Germany have to fly the swastika?
I think they did, as pretty much everyone had to if they didn’t want the SA to pay them unwelcome attention.
But the main act of Nazi propaganda in schools was a large photo of Hitler in every classroom to which children would give a Nazi salute at the start of the day.
And in Weimar Germany.
And in Imperial Germany.
And in Prussia before that.
Germany had big influence in strange places - Fredrick the Great made alot of people say "one of those please" as far as armies went.
So in Peru, they introduced marching... "clubs"? in th schools. Complete with the goose step.
Scene : a quiet afternoon in the Plaza de Armas of Trujillo. The coffee was good, and the first Stinger of the day was doing it's pre-dinner work... Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!
The schools of the town started marching past, by class. Weirds, wacky and a bit hypnotic. All they need was to start singing the "Panzerlied"...
I take it you’re referring to flags, not photos of Hitler?
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Do we know who this Tory MP is? The fact they aren't named in the report suggest they are a nobody (i.e.. "Senior Tory").
Did schools in 1930s Germany have to fly the swastika?
I think they did, as pretty much everyone had to if they didn’t want the SA to pay them unwelcome attention.
But the main act of Nazi propaganda in schools was a large photo of Hitler in every classroom to which children would give a Nazi salute at the start of the day.
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Although if we take the 47 years prior to your birth, back to 1927, only three leaders of the Opposition didn’t become PM - Henderson, Lansbury and Gaitskell.
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Wilson?
I missed the "in December" bit. Wouldn't it have been simpler to say "46"?
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Do we know who this Tory MP is? The fact they aren't named in the report suggest they are a nobody (i.e.. "Senior Tory").
Did schools in 1930s Germany have to fly the swastika?
I think they did, as pretty much everyone had to if they didn’t want the SA to pay them unwelcome attention.
But the main act of Nazi propaganda in schools was a large photo of Hitler in every classroom to which children would give a Nazi salute at the start of the day.
And in Weimar Germany.
And in Imperial Germany.
And in Prussia before that.
Germany had big influence in strange places - Fredrick the Great made alot of people say "one of those please" as far as armies went.
So in Peru, they introduced marching... "clubs"? in th schools. Complete with the goose step.
Scene : a quiet afternoon in the Plaza de Armas of Trujillo. The coffee was good, and the first Stinger of the day was doing it's pre-dinner work... Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!
The schools of the town started marching past, by class. Weirds, wacky and a bit hypnotic. All they need was to start singing the "Panzerlied"...
I take it you’re referring to flags, not photos of Hitler?
No, no time machines....
Flags, marching, singing the national anthem, saluting portraits of the head of state...
I recall the Prussian stuff from a discussion of educational systems in the 19th cent in the UK - the government compiled a report on the various systems around Europe, and the Prussian one was included.
In this instance though, the EU can only donate what the member states give them to donate.
No, they can borrow for this stuff and pay the borrowing costs out of the future budget.
IIRC, there are some fairly serious restrictions on EU borrowing.
Aiui, disaster aid spending is one of the few areas the EU has got room to borrow in the near term and finance it from the day to day budget. Germany is the only country in the EU pulling its weight.
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
On Thatcher-to-Blair-to-Cameron, there was not just an 18 year gap from Con to Lab but also, if you stretch the logic just a little, another 18 year wait until Con again - Cameron being some way short of a majority in 2010, and only crossing the winning line in 2015. If we therefore roll forward 18 years from 2015 then we get to 2033 as a possible year for the start of the next Labour ministry.
A thumping Tory victory in 2023 and a reduced majority in 2028 - it's possible...
Do we know who this Tory MP is? The fact they aren't named in the report suggest they are a nobody (i.e.. "Senior Tory").
Did schools in 1930s Germany have to fly the swastika?
I think they did, as pretty much everyone had to if they didn’t want the SA to pay them unwelcome attention.
But the main act of Nazi propaganda in schools was a large photo of Hitler in every classroom to which children would give a Nazi salute at the start of the day.
Nothing too sinister then!
Well, nobody is proposing that we get anyone to salute photos of the egregious mop head.
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Nothing wrong with the Union Jack, it's the idea that teachers go off for "education" that is sickening.
Imagine it the other way around, how you would cry out
Oh come on, I’d enjoy that.
A compulsory training course on fascism where I get to heckle the third rate drunken tosser from the DfE running it and push them mercilessly all day until they feel pretty well suicidal and therefore understand how teachers in inner city schools feel every day at 4pm - for the first and only time in their pointless and worthless lives - would be fucking hilarious.
Do we know who this Tory MP is? The fact they aren't named in the report suggest they are a nobody (i.e.. "Senior Tory").
Did schools in 1930s Germany have to fly the swastika?
I think they did, as pretty much everyone had to if they didn’t want the SA to pay them unwelcome attention.
But the main act of Nazi propaganda in schools was a large photo of Hitler in every classroom to which children would give a Nazi salute at the start of the day.
And in Weimar Germany.
And in Imperial Germany.
And in Prussia before that.
Germany had big influence in strange places - Fredrick the Great made alot of people say "one of those please" as far as armies went.
So in Peru, they introduced marching... "clubs"? in th schools. Complete with the goose step.
Scene : a quiet afternoon in the Plaza de Armas of Trujillo. The coffee was good, and the first Stinger of the day was doing it's pre-dinner work... Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!
The schools of the town started marching past, by class. Weirds, wacky and a bit hypnotic. All they need was to start singing the "Panzerlied"...
I take it you’re referring to flags, not photos of Hitler?
No, no time machines....
Flags, marching, singing the national anthem, saluting portraits of the head of state...
I recall the Prussian stuff from a discussion of educational systems in the 19th cent in the UK - the government compiled a report on the various systems around Europe, and the Prussian one was included.
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite. Britain has got to find a way of ceasing to fund those who hate it and would use those funds against it. Hate Britain all you want - it's a free country and I support your right to free speech. But please don't expect to be subsidised by Britain in so doing.
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
I am no Corbynite but- unlike Attlee and Thatcher - he appears to be the only Opposition Leader who succeeded in moving the Overton Window without achieving office as PM. Johnson and the Tories have - in essence - copied much of his economic policy!
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Although if we take the 47 years prior to your birth, back to 1927, only three leaders of the Opposition didn’t become PM - Henderson, Lansbury and Gaitskell.
Things can change.
Sure. I just wouldn’t count on it this time
My view is that some periods have high turnovers of PMs (when there is a high likelihood of the LotO taking over), and some periods have low turnover.
That can't be right. Johnson told the Commons last week there was no cut to the army.
There isn't, in a sense. Previously we had an army of 100 000 with 10% of complement unfilled, now we have an army of 90 000 with 100% fill rate. Trebles all round!
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
I am no Corbynite but- unlike Attlee and Thatcher - he appears to be the only Opposition Leader who succeeded in moving the Overton Window without achieving office as PM. Johnson and the Tories have - in essence - copied much of his economic policy!
‘Vote for me. My policies are so extreme they are the right response to a once in a century public health emergency.’
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Although if we take the 47 years prior to your birth, back to 1927, only three leaders of the Opposition didn’t become PM - Henderson, Lansbury and Gaitskell.
Things can change.
Sure. I just wouldn’t count on it this time
My view is that some periods have high turnovers of PMs (when there is a high likelihood of the LotO taking over), and some periods have low turnover.
We're probably due for a change.
It's more likely the change will come from the government benches though. The Tories will dump Boris if he doesn't look like winning.
French Deliveroo customers who received fake bills for hundreds of euros' worth of pizza have failed to see the funny side of the April Fools' joke. On 1 April thousands of customers of the delivery platform across France got confirmation emails for orders totalling over €450 (£380; $530). Many took to social media to express anger at the stunt. Late on Thursday Deliveroo informed its customers via Twitter and email that it had not been serious. "We confirm that it was an April Fool's joke," the clarification read. "You can enjoy the evening by ordering the pizza of your choice." But few customers were amused. One of them said he had "almost had a stroke" after receiving a €466 invoice for 38 pizzas that he had never ordered."
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
I am no Corbynite but- unlike Attlee and Thatcher - he appears to be the only Opposition Leader who succeeded in moving the Overton Window without achieving office as PM. Johnson and the Tories have - in essence - copied much of his economic policy!
‘Vote for me. My policies are so extreme they are the right response to a once in a century public health emergency.’
Hmmm...doesn’t quite do it for me as a slogan.
Also true in wartime - ie 'when the chips are down!'
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Thatcher didn't win in 79 on personality though. That GE was about ideology and change of political direction. Blair had big charisma but Smith would have won too. Tories were clapped out after 18 years. And Cameron? Hmm not sure. More charisma than Brown, yes, but hardly Sunday night at the Palladium.
So you get someone to take their boots off (naturally) and then get a whiff of their smelly feet. They then proceed to impregnate your carpet with the stench, and it takes days to get rid of it.
Still better than walking dog shit through the house, mind.
Oh, and bathroom carpets. The first house we bought had one. We discovered little maggoty things living in it around the bog. Must have lived off splashes of piss. Lovely.
Do we know who this Tory MP is? The fact they aren't named in the report suggest they are a nobody (i.e.. "Senior Tory").
Did schools in 1930s Germany have to fly the swastika?
I think they did, as pretty much everyone had to if they didn’t want the SA to pay them unwelcome attention.
But the main act of Nazi propaganda in schools was a large photo of Hitler in every classroom to which children would give a Nazi salute at the start of the day.
And in Weimar Germany.
And in Imperial Germany.
And in Prussia before that.
Germany had big influence in strange places - Fredrick the Great made alot of people say "one of those please" as far as armies went.
So in Peru, they introduced marching... "clubs"? in th schools. Complete with the goose step.
Scene : a quiet afternoon in the Plaza de Armas of Trujillo. The coffee was good, and the first Stinger of the day was doing it's pre-dinner work... Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!
The schools of the town started marching past, by class. Weirds, wacky and a bit hypnotic. All they need was to start singing the "Panzerlied"...
I take it you’re referring to flags, not photos of Hitler?
No, no time machines....
Flags, marching, singing the national anthem, saluting portraits of the head of state...
I recall the Prussian stuff from a discussion of educational systems in the 19th cent in the UK - the government compiled a report on the various systems around Europe, and the Prussian one was included.
I had no idea you were quite so old...
LOL
Reading the old debates in the parliament is interesting. There was a magnificent one, in the Lords, at the time the Army adopted the Lee Enfield No.4.... a rather learned discussion ensued, with their Lordships asking all kind of interesting questions about the trials and the compromises in the design.
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Thatcher didn't win in 79 on personality though. That GE was about ideology and change of political direction. Blair had big charisma but Smith would have won too. Tories were clapped out after 18 years. And Cameron? Hmm not sure. More charisma than Brown, yes, but hardly Sunday night at the Palladium.
Far from clear that Thatcher would have won in 1978.
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Wilson?
Not in my lifetime!
Take your point. But in the 11 years before another three LOTO's became PM. Heath and Wilson twice. The period 1979 onwards has been pretty damn unusual. Only changing the governing party twice in 42 years and counting... Maybe we just don't go in for it anymore except in extraordinary circumstances?
Do we know who this Tory MP is? The fact they aren't named in the report suggest they are a nobody (i.e.. "Senior Tory").
Did schools in 1930s Germany have to fly the swastika?
I think they did, as pretty much everyone had to if they didn’t want the SA to pay them unwelcome attention.
But the main act of Nazi propaganda in schools was a large photo of Hitler in every classroom to which children would give a Nazi salute at the start of the day.
Nothing too sinister then!
Well, nobody is proposing that we get anyone to salute photos of the egregious mop head.
Not yet, anyway.
And hopefully not during my career in teaching.
I hope and believe your career will outlive his by some way.
Do we know who this Tory MP is? The fact they aren't named in the report suggest they are a nobody (i.e.. "Senior Tory").
Did schools in 1930s Germany have to fly the swastika?
I think they did, as pretty much everyone had to if they didn’t want the SA to pay them unwelcome attention.
But the main act of Nazi propaganda in schools was a large photo of Hitler in every classroom to which children would give a Nazi salute at the start of the day.
And in Weimar Germany.
And in Imperial Germany.
And in Prussia before that.
Germany had big influence in strange places - Fredrick the Great made alot of people say "one of those please" as far as armies went.
So in Peru, they introduced marching... "clubs"? in th schools. Complete with the goose step.
Scene : a quiet afternoon in the Plaza de Armas of Trujillo. The coffee was good, and the first Stinger of the day was doing it's pre-dinner work... Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!
The schools of the town started marching past, by class. Weirds, wacky and a bit hypnotic. All they need was to start singing the "Panzerlied"...
I take it you’re referring to flags, not photos of Hitler?
No, no time machines....
Flags, marching, singing the national anthem, saluting portraits of the head of state...
I recall the Prussian stuff from a discussion of educational systems in the 19th cent in the UK - the government compiled a report on the various systems around Europe, and the Prussian one was included.
I had no idea you were quite so old...
Malmesbury is Father Time. He knows all. He sees all.
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
I am no Corbynite but- unlike Attlee and Thatcher - he appears to be the only Opposition Leader who succeeded in moving the Overton Window without achieving office as PM. Johnson and the Tories have - in essence - copied much of his economic policy!
‘Vote for me. My policies are so extreme they are the right response to a once in a century public health emergency.’
Hmmm...doesn’t quite do it for me as a slogan.
Also true in wartime - ie 'when the chips are down!'
AKA War Socialism.
"The people are going to get one kind of bomber. And it will only come in green."
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Thatcher didn't win in 79 on personality though. That GE was about ideology and change of political direction. Blair had big charisma but Smith would have won too. Tories were clapped out after 18 years. And Cameron? Hmm not sure. More charisma than Brown, yes, but hardly Sunday night at the Palladium.
Far from clear that Thatcher would have won in 1978.
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
French Deliveroo customers who received fake bills for hundreds of euros' worth of pizza have failed to see the funny side of the April Fools' joke. On 1 April thousands of customers of the delivery platform across France got confirmation emails for orders totalling over €450 (£380; $530). Many took to social media to express anger at the stunt. Late on Thursday Deliveroo informed its customers via Twitter and email that it had not been serious. "We confirm that it was an April Fool's joke," the clarification read. "You can enjoy the evening by ordering the pizza of your choice." But few customers were amused. One of them said he had "almost had a stroke" after receiving a €466 invoice for 38 pizzas that he had never ordered."
I saw that. It seems an ugly kind of prank to play on people - imagine someone , not especially rich, not particularly clever in the ways of the world, who gets that and thinks they really have to pay.
Re the Asylum seeker who killed the girl in Exeter - Asylum seekers are here because they are escaping from war zones generally, they have seen things and had experiences that will have seriously messed them up - they probably have a rate of PTSD in comparable with front line military veterans. Shouldn’t they be given therapy or kept an eye on somehow as a matter of course? Not letting anyone off with excuses, but they’re not just everyday people who go bad
French Deliveroo customers who received fake bills for hundreds of euros' worth of pizza have failed to see the funny side of the April Fools' joke. On 1 April thousands of customers of the delivery platform across France got confirmation emails for orders totalling over €450 (£380; $530). Many took to social media to express anger at the stunt. Late on Thursday Deliveroo informed its customers via Twitter and email that it had not been serious. "We confirm that it was an April Fool's joke," the clarification read. "You can enjoy the evening by ordering the pizza of your choice." But few customers were amused. One of them said he had "almost had a stroke" after receiving a €466 invoice for 38 pizzas that he had never ordered."
I saw that. It seems an ugly kind of prank to play on people - imagine someone , not especially rich, not particularly clever in the ways of the world, who gets that and thinks they really have to pay.
It is the worst April Fool's Day joke ever. For a start, it is not remotely funny. "Threaten people with a massive unexpected bill"
Ho Ho Ho
It is like a joke badly translated into a different language by someone with no sense of humour: which, I suspect, is what happened here
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
I am no Corbynite but- unlike Attlee and Thatcher - he appears to be the only Opposition Leader who succeeded in moving the Overton Window without achieving office as PM. Johnson and the Tories have - in essence - copied much of his economic policy!
‘Vote for me. My policies are so extreme they are the right response to a once in a century public health emergency.’
Hmmm...doesn’t quite do it for me as a slogan.
Also true in wartime - ie 'when the chips are down!'
AKA War Socialism.
"The people are going to get one kind of bomber. And it will only come in green."
The B-24 Liberator in the picture was the most mass-produced 4-engine heavy bomber, c. 19,000 built.
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
See the Guardian's hysterical over-reaction to the Sewell Report:
"The Sewell report on racial disparity is an attempt to erase progress and sow division"
"Despite the Sewell report, No 10 can no longer remain in denial about racism"
"The poisonously patronising Sewell report is historically illiterate"
"The Guardian view on botanical gardens: inextricably linked to empire"
They are lemmings, rushing to the cliff of electoral oblivion, and someone quite clever in the Tories is deftly encouraging them
Modern Labour seem to be able to be easily lured into defending everything you imagine a typical old fashioned/old (Red Wall?) Labour voter instinctively dislikes.
Re the Asylum seeker who killed the girl in Exeter - Asylum seekers are here because they are escaping from war zones generally, they have seen things and had experiences that will have seriously messed them up - they probably have a rate of PTSD in comparable with front line military veterans. Shouldn’t they be given therapy or kept an eye on somehow as a matter of course? Not letting anyone off with excuses, but they’re not just everyday people who go bad
That's a rather sensible thought to have. A psychiatrist I knew a while back did quite a bit of work with charities that were dealing with exactly that issue. Not sure what governmental provision is for that, if any...
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Thatcher also got in in 1979 partly because of the Winter of Discontent, strikes and high inflation, Cameron got in in 2010 due to the 2008 crash. Blair got in in 1997 because he moved the Labour Party to the centre, the Major government was divided over Europe, hit by sleaze allegations and due to the ERM crash and the mood for change after 18 years of Tory rule.
French Deliveroo customers who received fake bills for hundreds of euros' worth of pizza have failed to see the funny side of the April Fools' joke. On 1 April thousands of customers of the delivery platform across France got confirmation emails for orders totalling over €450 (£380; $530). Many took to social media to express anger at the stunt. Late on Thursday Deliveroo informed its customers via Twitter and email that it had not been serious. "We confirm that it was an April Fool's joke," the clarification read. "You can enjoy the evening by ordering the pizza of your choice." But few customers were amused. One of them said he had "almost had a stroke" after receiving a €466 invoice for 38 pizzas that he had never ordered."
I saw that. It seems an ugly kind of prank to play on people - imagine someone , not especially rich, not particularly clever in the ways of the world, who gets that and thinks they really have to pay.
It is the worst April Fool's Day joke ever. For a start, it is not remotely funny. "Threaten people with a massive unexpected bill"
Ho Ho Ho
It is like a joke badly translated into a different language by someone with no sense of humour: which, I suspect, is what happened here
It reminds me of a stereotype of the Ugly American Frat Boy kind of humour - humiliate a victim. Then laugh.
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
See the Guardian's hysterical over-reaction to the Sewell Report:
"The Sewell report on racial disparity is an attempt to erase progress and sow division"
"Despite the Sewell report, No 10 can no longer remain in denial about racism"
"The poisonously patronising Sewell report is historically illiterate"
"The Guardian view on botanical gardens: inextricably linked to empire"
They are lemmings, rushing to the cliff of electoral oblivion, and someone quite clever in the Tories is deftly encouraging them
Modern Labour seem to be able to be easily lured into defending everything you imagine a typical old fashioned/old (Red Wall?) Labour voter instinctively dislikes.
The Tories hope to get a majority in 2024 on this stuff. And I can see it happening, as Labour is so clueless.
Pace the Marina Hyde article, the Tories know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it quite expertly (aided by idiot lefties)
eg When you are REALLY ANGRY about RACIST BOTANICAL GARDENS, like the Guardian, and Labour, then you have probably mopped up every single voter in a small corner of London N1, but you have lost several million elsewhere, because sane people think Botanical Gardens are nice quiet places we can all go, to escape this abject lunacy
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
See the Guardian's hysterical over-reaction to the Sewell Report:
"The Sewell report on racial disparity is an attempt to erase progress and sow division"
"Despite the Sewell report, No 10 can no longer remain in denial about racism"
"The poisonously patronising Sewell report is historically illiterate"
"The Guardian view on botanical gardens: inextricably linked to empire"
They are lemmings, rushing to the cliff of electoral oblivion, and someone quite clever in the Tories is deftly encouraging them
Modern Labour seem to be able to be easily lured into defending everything you imagine a typical old fashioned/old (Red Wall?) Labour voter instinctively dislikes.
The Tories hope to get a majority in 2024 on this stuff. And I can see it happening, as Labour is so clueless.
Pace the Marina Hyde article, the Tories know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it quite expertly (aided by idiot lefties)
eg When you are REALLY ANGRY about RACIST BOTANICAL GARDENS, like the Guardian, and Labour, then you have probably mopped up every single voter in a small corner of London N1, but you have lost several million elsewhere, because sane people think Botanical Gardens are nice quiet places we can all go, to escape this abject lunacy
If Labour was led by Clive Lewis maybe, Starmer at least is sensible enough to ensure he is photographed with the Union flag and to largely avoid fighting the culture wars, much as Biden sensibly managed to do in 2020 despite Trump provoking him to do so
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Thatcher also got in in 1979 partly because of the Winter of Discontent, strikes and high inflation, Cameron got in in 2010 due to the 2008 crash. Blair got in in 1997 because he moved the Labour Party to the centre, the Major government was divided over Europe, hit by sleaze allegations and due to the ERM crash and the mood for change after 18 years of Tory rule.
None got in on personality alone
Kinnock didn’t get in when 3m were unemployed, Howard didn’t get in after Blair invaded Iraq, Miliband didn’t get in when Cameron’s party were divided on the referendum...
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
I am no Corbynite but- unlike Attlee and Thatcher - he appears to be the only Opposition Leader who succeeded in moving the Overton Window without achieving office as PM. Johnson and the Tories have - in essence - copied much of his economic policy!
‘Vote for me. My policies are so extreme they are the right response to a once in a century public health emergency.’
Hmmm...doesn’t quite do it for me as a slogan.
Also true in wartime - ie 'when the chips are down!'
AKA War Socialism.
"The people are going to get one kind of bomber. And it will only come in green."
The B-24 Liberator in the picture was the most mass-produced 4-engine heavy bomber, c. 19,000 built.
Though a bit crap in some ways.
Interesting story I am trying to find out about - following the success of the Mosquito, allegedly, North American sketched a 4 Merlin fast bomber, using their Mustang cooling systems and aerodynamic insights....
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
The Tories hope to get a majority in 2024 on this stuff. And I can see it happening, as Labour is so clueless.
Pace the Marina Hyde article, the Tories know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it quite expertly (aided by idiot lefties)
eg When you are REALLY ANGRY about RACIST BOTANICAL GARDENS, like the Guardian, and Labour, then you have probably mopped up every single voter in a small corner of London N1, but you have lost several million elsewhere, because sane people think Botanical Gardens are nice quiet places we can all go, to escape this abject lunacy
I'm not sure there is anything particularly clever about it. The Tories could get a junior SPAD to keep an eye open for things trending on Twitter, when the SPAD finds something the government can announce that they are in favour of whatever is making the Twits angry today. Nine times out of ten that would put the Tories on the side of the majority in the UK.
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
See the Guardian's hysterical over-reaction to the Sewell Report:
"The Sewell report on racial disparity is an attempt to erase progress and sow division"
"Despite the Sewell report, No 10 can no longer remain in denial about racism"
"The poisonously patronising Sewell report is historically illiterate"
"The Guardian view on botanical gardens: inextricably linked to empire"
They are lemmings, rushing to the cliff of electoral oblivion, and someone quite clever in the Tories is deftly encouraging them
Modern Labour seem to be able to be easily lured into defending everything you imagine a typical old fashioned/old (Red Wall?) Labour voter instinctively dislikes.
The Tories hope to get a majority in 2024 on this stuff. And I can see it happening, as Labour is so clueless.
Pace the Marina Hyde article, the Tories know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it quite expertly (aided by idiot lefties)
eg When you are REALLY ANGRY about RACIST BOTANICAL GARDENS, like the Guardian, and Labour, then you have probably mopped up every single voter in a small corner of London N1, but you have lost several million elsewhere, because sane people think Botanical Gardens are nice quiet places we can all go, to escape this abject lunacy
I see Labour as being in a similar place to where the Tories were under William Hague. The Tories saw that Blair won and was cool so they tried putting William Hague in a baseball cap at Alton Towers. Now Labour see that they weren't patriotic and have SKS in front of the Union Jack. The problem is it is putting lipstick on a pig.
SKS makes the right noises but underneath Labour haven't changed. It is probably going to take one more election defeat for them to be willing to get out of their comfort zones.
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Thatcher also got in in 1979 partly because of the Winter of Discontent, strikes and high inflation, Cameron got in in 2010 due to the 2008 crash. Blair got in in 1997 because he moved the Labour Party to the centre, the Major government was divided over Europe, hit by sleaze allegations and due to the ERM crash and the mood for change after 18 years of Tory rule.
None got in on personality alone
Kinnock didn’t get in when 3m were unemployed, Howard didn’t get in after Blair invaded Iraq, Miliband didn’t get in when Cameron’s party were divided on the referendum...
Yes and Kinnock was the more charismatic personality compared to Major, the voters voted for the dull Major to keep Kinnock out as Labour was still seen as too leftwing.
The Tories supported the Iraq War, it was the anti Iraq War LDs who made the biggest gains in 2005.
Cameron managed to get the anti EU right behind him in 2015 to deliver the EU referendum they ultimately got
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
Thatcher also got in in 1979 partly because of the Winter of Discontent, strikes and high inflation, Cameron got in in 2010 due to the 2008 crash. Blair got in in 1997 because he moved the Labour Party to the centre, the Major government was divided over Europe, hit by sleaze allegations and due to the ERM crash and the mood for change after 18 years of Tory rule.
None got in on personality alone
Kinnock didn’t get in when 3m were unemployed, Howard didn’t get in after Blair invaded Iraq, Miliband didn’t get in when Cameron’s party were divided on the referendum...
But by 1987 unemployment was falling. We were experiencing the 'Lawson Boom' for which the reckoning came later.
The Tories hope to get a majority in 2024 on this stuff. And I can see it happening, as Labour is so clueless.
Pace the Marina Hyde article, the Tories know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it quite expertly (aided by idiot lefties)
eg When you are REALLY ANGRY about RACIST BOTANICAL GARDENS, like the Guardian, and Labour, then you have probably mopped up every single voter in a small corner of London N1, but you have lost several million elsewhere, because sane people think Botanical Gardens are nice quiet places we can all go, to escape this abject lunacy
I'm not sure there is anything particularly clever about it. The Tories could get a junior SPAD to keep an eye open for things trending on Twitter, when the SPAD finds something the government can announce that they are in favour of whatever is making the Twits angry today. Nine times out of ten that would put the Tories on the side of the majority in the UK.
A fair point. Perhaps lefty social media is now destroying itself with little assistance from the right. It is, still, quite a spectacle
And it will influence our politics. Ordinary people recoil from this ghastly madness
I wonder if this may be what we have coming tomorrow (on top of formal confirmation of April 12th): a sunshine holiday free-for-all - but only for anybody who has been jabbed twice?
Confinement for the young, playtime for the old - and yet, absolutely no mass importation of Plague variants. Because, although Covid is so fucking lethal that the vaccinated daren't have a cup of tea indoors together, jetting off to the Algarve creates (by means yet to be explained) a miraculous forcefield that renders the virus completely inert.
Imagine going for a relaxing walk in Kew Gardens, only to be confronted by signs informing you that the entire place is a prime example of racism and colonialism.
I wonder if this may be what we have coming tomorrow (on top of formal confirmation of April 12th): a sunshine holiday free-for-all - but only for anybody who has been jabbed twice?
Confinement for the young, playtime for the old - and yet, absolutely no mass importation of Plague variants. Because, although Covid is so fucking lethal that the vaccinated daren't have a cup of tea indoors together, jetting off to the Algarve creates (by means yet to be explained) a miraculous forcefield that renders the virus completely inert.
We are ruled over by imbeciles.
I imagine there will be very few countries that allow you in without a vaccine. Or if they do, you'll be spending the first two weeks of your holiday in quarantine.
The Tories hope to get a majority in 2024 on this stuff. And I can see it happening, as Labour is so clueless.
Pace the Marina Hyde article, the Tories know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it quite expertly (aided by idiot lefties)
eg When you are REALLY ANGRY about RACIST BOTANICAL GARDENS, like the Guardian, and Labour, then you have probably mopped up every single voter in a small corner of London N1, but you have lost several million elsewhere, because sane people think Botanical Gardens are nice quiet places we can all go, to escape this abject lunacy
I'm not sure there is anything particularly clever about it. The Tories could get a junior SPAD to keep an eye open for things trending on Twitter, when the SPAD finds something the government can announce that they are in favour of whatever is making the Twits angry today. Nine times out of ten that would put the Tories on the side of the majority in the UK.
A fair point. Perhaps lefty social media is now destroying itself with little assistance from the right. It is, still, quite a spectacle
And it will influence our politics. Ordinary people recoil from this ghastly madness
Just look at what James O’Brien is trying/failing to be funny about and double down on it to rattle him - hey presto, a shedload of working class votes are yours. He must be the best reverse indicator there is as a gauge of the man on the street
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
I am no Corbynite but- unlike Attlee and Thatcher - he appears to be the only Opposition Leader who succeeded in moving the Overton Window without achieving office as PM. Johnson and the Tories have - in essence - copied much of his economic policy!
‘Vote for me. My policies are so extreme they are the right response to a once in a century public health emergency.’
Hmmm...doesn’t quite do it for me as a slogan.
Also true in wartime - ie 'when the chips are down!'
AKA War Socialism.
"The people are going to get one kind of bomber. And it will only come in green."
The B-24 Liberator in the picture was the most mass-produced 4-engine heavy bomber, c. 19,000 built.
Though a bit crap in some ways.
Interesting story I am trying to find out about - following the success of the Mosquito, allegedly, North American sketched a 4 Merlin fast bomber, using their Mustang cooling systems and aerodynamic insights....
I wonder if this may be what we have coming tomorrow (on top of formal confirmation of April 12th): a sunshine holiday free-for-all - but only for anybody who has been jabbed twice?
Confinement for the young, playtime for the old - and yet, absolutely no mass importation of Plague variants. Because, although Covid is so fucking lethal that the vaccinated daren't have a cup of tea indoors together, jetting off to the Algarve creates (by means yet to be explained) a miraculous forcefield that renders the virus completely inert.
We are ruled over by imbeciles.
We seem to have made a mess of travel restrictions at each stage up to now, so I expect we will keep doing so.
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
Not a spoof. It is incredible. They are self-immolating
God damn those RACIST FLOWERS. And those Nazi TREES. And shrubs! Always knew those evil SHRUBS were BIGOTS: like all white people.
Ideally, we should concrete over Kew Gardens and build a seventeen million metre high memorial to Winnie Mandela
‘Kew Gardens has recently published a 10-year plan, which places a need to decolonise its collections'?
How in the name of Christ do you decolonise a collection of plants? Pull up and burn all the imperialist colonialist racist European flowers and plant more oppressed African ones? The mind boggles.
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
See the Guardian's hysterical over-reaction to the Sewell Report:
"The Sewell report on racial disparity is an attempt to erase progress and sow division"
"Despite the Sewell report, No 10 can no longer remain in denial about racism"
"The poisonously patronising Sewell report is historically illiterate"
"The Guardian view on botanical gardens: inextricably linked to empire"
They are lemmings, rushing to the cliff of electoral oblivion, and someone quite clever in the Tories is deftly encouraging them
Modern Labour seem to be able to be easily lured into defending everything you imagine a typical old fashioned/old (Red Wall?) Labour voter instinctively dislikes.
The Tories hope to get a majority in 2024 on this stuff. And I can see it happening, as Labour is so clueless.
Pace the Marina Hyde article, the Tories know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it quite expertly (aided by idiot lefties)
eg When you are REALLY ANGRY about RACIST BOTANICAL GARDENS, like the Guardian, and Labour, then you have probably mopped up every single voter in a small corner of London N1, but you have lost several million elsewhere, because sane people think Botanical Gardens are nice quiet places we can all go, to escape this abject lunacy
If Labour was led by Clive Lewis maybe, Starmer at least is sensible enough to ensure he is photographed with the Union flag and to largely avoid fighting the culture wars, much as Biden sensibly managed to do in 2020 despite Trump provoking him to do so
Starmer had himself photographed instinctively genuflecting before the sort of people who set fire to police vans. The recently-discovered union flags are a hopeless attempt at damage control.
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
See the Guardian's hysterical over-reaction to the Sewell Report:
"The Sewell report on racial disparity is an attempt to erase progress and sow division"
"Despite the Sewell report, No 10 can no longer remain in denial about racism"
"The poisonously patronising Sewell report is historically illiterate"
"The Guardian view on botanical gardens: inextricably linked to empire"
They are lemmings, rushing to the cliff of electoral oblivion, and someone quite clever in the Tories is deftly encouraging them
Modern Labour seem to be able to be easily lured into defending everything you imagine a typical old fashioned/old (Red Wall?) Labour voter instinctively dislikes.
The Tories hope to get a majority in 2024 on this stuff. And I can see it happening, as Labour is so clueless.
Pace the Marina Hyde article, the Tories know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it quite expertly (aided by idiot lefties)
eg When you are REALLY ANGRY about RACIST BOTANICAL GARDENS, like the Guardian, and Labour, then you have probably mopped up every single voter in a small corner of London N1, but you have lost several million elsewhere, because sane people think Botanical Gardens are nice quiet places we can all go, to escape this abject lunacy
I see Labour as being in a similar place to where the Tories were under William Hague. The Tories saw that Blair won and was cool so they tried putting William Hague in a baseball cap at Alton Towers. Now Labour see that they weren't patriotic and have SKS in front of the Union Jack. The problem is it is putting lipstick on a pig.
SKS makes the right noises but underneath Labour haven't changed. It is probably going to take one more election defeat for them to be willing to get out of their comfort zones.
I fear it is way, way worse than that.
To be serious, for a moment, let us remember that Donald Trump - a man who is, clearly, to me, demented, venal, immoral and incapable - nearly got re-elected as president of the USA. He got 70m votes and a majority of white votes.
Why? Because lefty, Democrat America is completely seized by this insane Woke agenda, which emanates from academe but has now infected every corner of public life.
The average voter hates Woke-ism the way it displays itself, today. If Trump had been just a shade saner, calmer, more eloquent, less absurdly disgraceful, he would have won.
That is sobering.
It also means that a saner Trump will win, in a big western country, in the end. Le Pen looms in France. White majorities are tired of being hectored, despised and ridiculed by rich elites, even as their lives diminish in quality, and they do their best for their country.
What will stop the March of the Woke? The election of a very hard right figure in a major western nation. And all that flows from that.
That is, unless the lefties see the insanity of what they do, and rein it in. I see no signs of such self-awareness, as they go after RACIST BOTANICAL GARDENS
Imagine going for a relaxing walk in Kew Gardens, only to be confronted by signs informing you that the entire place is a prime example of racism and colonialism.
Yeah, I mean that Chinese-style Pagoda? A pernicious example of Cultural Appropriation if ever there was one!
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
I am no Corbynite but- unlike Attlee and Thatcher - he appears to be the only Opposition Leader who succeeded in moving the Overton Window without achieving office as PM. Johnson and the Tories have - in essence - copied much of his economic policy!
‘Vote for me. My policies are so extreme they are the right response to a once in a century public health emergency.’
Hmmm...doesn’t quite do it for me as a slogan.
Also true in wartime - ie 'when the chips are down!'
AKA War Socialism.
"The people are going to get one kind of bomber. And it will only come in green."
The B-24 Liberator in the picture was the most mass-produced 4-engine heavy bomber, c. 19,000 built.
Though a bit crap in some ways.
Interesting story I am trying to find out about - following the success of the Mosquito, allegedly, North American sketched a 4 Merlin fast bomber, using their Mustang cooling systems and aerodynamic insights....
Was that the NA-116?
Wasn't that the B-29 competitor? The one I heard about was an unarmed fast bomber, supposedly from the same concept as the Mosquito - that a bomber could be as fast as a fighter, if designed that way.
Mind you, a zillion ideas were sketched.
De Havilland's own idea for a 4 Merlin bomber is lost, apparently.
I wonder if this may be what we have coming tomorrow (on top of formal confirmation of April 12th): a sunshine holiday free-for-all - but only for anybody who has been jabbed twice?
Confinement for the young, playtime for the old - and yet, absolutely no mass importation of Plague variants. Because, although Covid is so fucking lethal that the vaccinated daren't have a cup of tea indoors together, jetting off to the Algarve creates (by means yet to be explained) a miraculous forcefield that renders the virus completely inert.
We are ruled over by imbeciles.
We seem to have made a mess of travel restrictions at each stage up to now, so I expect we will keep doing so.
It's just nuts. They are all over the place. Earlier we were told by Johnson that vaccinated people could not meet indoors as vaccines are "not 100% efficient". Which begs the question as to when we will ever be allowed to meet indoors and also why they are bothering with a vaccine passport for meeting people indoors at pubs and theatres?
Now we are told that vaccinated people can go abroad. And come back.
And does anyone remember "data not dates" as the we look at the plummeting case numbers?
I wonder if this may be what we have coming tomorrow (on top of formal confirmation of April 12th): a sunshine holiday free-for-all - but only for anybody who has been jabbed twice?
Confinement for the young, playtime for the old - and yet, absolutely no mass importation of Plague variants. Because, although Covid is so fucking lethal that the vaccinated daren't have a cup of tea indoors together, jetting off to the Algarve creates (by means yet to be explained) a miraculous forcefield that renders the virus completely inert.
We are ruled over by imbeciles.
We seem to have made a mess of travel restrictions at each stage up to now, so I expect we will keep doing so.
It's just nuts. They are all over the place. Earlier we were told by Johnson that vaccinated people could not meet indoors as vaccines are "not 100% efficient". Which begs the question as to when we will ever be allowed to meet indoors and also why they are bothering with a vaccine passport for meeting people indoors at pubs and theatres?
Now we are told that vaccinated people can go abroad. And come back.
And does anyone remember "data not dates" as the we look at the plummeting case numbers?
The report on the Telegraph website suggests that even for "green" countries, people will have to undergo testing regardless of whether they have been vaccinated.
I wonder if this may be what we have coming tomorrow (on top of formal confirmation of April 12th): a sunshine holiday free-for-all - but only for anybody who has been jabbed twice?
Confinement for the young, playtime for the old - and yet, absolutely no mass importation of Plague variants. Because, although Covid is so fucking lethal that the vaccinated daren't have a cup of tea indoors together, jetting off to the Algarve creates (by means yet to be explained) a miraculous forcefield that renders the virus completely inert.
We are ruled over by imbeciles.
I imagine there will be very few countries that allow you in without a vaccine. Or if they do, you'll be spending the first two weeks of your holiday in quarantine.
There are three points here.
Firstly, at the end of all this misery, giving special privileges to the old that are denied to the young is evil.
Secondly, do we really want people going abroad in huge numbers and seeding the country with imported Plague variants when they come back? This plan sounds like an excuse to let holidaymakers go to countries with high or medium disease prevalence just because it will disappoint them not to let them go - yet the Government has already wet itself over the vaccines being less than 100% effective, to the extent that the Prime Minister is pleading with people who have all been vaccinated still not meeting up with one another indoors.
Thirdly, there's the total inconsistency, indeed the sheer stupidity, of approach: if it's perfectly safe for the vaccinated to go abroad then it's certainly safe for them to have the aforementioned tea parties. And. once everyone has been vaccinated, it's also safe to get rid of all the restrictions and not be dicking about with these wretched vaccine passports ID cards. I mean, honestly...
Keir/Kier Starmer would make a pleasant neighbour. He’d bring his wheelie bin in the very day it’s emptied. He’d smile and say hello if we crossed paths on our morning rounds. I doubt he’d annoy me with gangster rap at 3am or throw used jonnies in my garden, as previous neighbours have done.
But he’s not leader of the neighbourhood watch material. And not that I assume to speak for her, but I don’t imagine my wife getting weak at the knees if she saw him jogging up the hill either. In short, he’s stuffed. Next!
Well, it's always good to read such serious, informed, impartial and expert analysis.
Back in the real world, there's what I think and what I think is going on. From a personal perspective (and I would consider myself centre-left in outlook), Starmer has made a decent start. Cleaning the Augean stables of post-Corbyn Labour is and was never going to be easy and it's still very much a work in progress. How it will work in 2024 is hard to know and as Starmer extends his personal influence and control over policy, we'll see what kind of programme Labour puts forward.
The data so persistently put up by @isam tells a story - it doesn't tell the story. These have been unprecedented times and until now it's been easy to counter criticism of the Government and its actions. To paraphrase the American quiz show Jeopardy if the answer is "Labour would have done exactly the same" you can probably work out the question. I struggle to know what Starmer would have done differently had he been Prime Minister - he'd have hidden behind the "science" as adroitly as Johnson and would no doubt have dolled out the cash as enthusiastically as Sunak.
Only now are we starting to see some flickers of deviation from the general "let's get behind the Government" meme. The crisis is easing and normal service is returning and, to be fair, those speculating on the divide between authoritarian and liberal as the new political divide were doing so pre-Covid as well.
I've never voted Labour because they are an authoritarian, centralising party which believes any problem can be solved by enough State and Government (as you can see, I see Starmer and Johnson as two cheeks of the same posterior in that regard). In essence, therefore, why do we need a Labour Government when we already have one?
To be fair, that's just my serious, informed, partial and inexpert analysis but there you go...
I am 47 in December and in my lifetime only 3 LOTOs have become PM - Maggie, Blair and Cameron. It is a very rare occurrence. Those three all had something about them that Foot, Kinnock, Hague, IDS, Howard, Miliband, & Corbyn didn’t. I happen to think Sir Keir fits into the latter group more easily, and there is nothing in any data to persuade me otherwise. The eye test and the numbers concur. I post about it a lot because if you only read the headers you’d think the incumbent who leads the polls in almost every measure is the one who is struggling, and I think that is ridiculous
I am no Corbynite but- unlike Attlee and Thatcher - he appears to be the only Opposition Leader who succeeded in moving the Overton Window without achieving office as PM. Johnson and the Tories have - in essence - copied much of his economic policy!
‘Vote for me. My policies are so extreme they are the right response to a once in a century public health emergency.’
Hmmm...doesn’t quite do it for me as a slogan.
Also true in wartime - ie 'when the chips are down!'
AKA War Socialism.
"The people are going to get one kind of bomber. And it will only come in green."
The B-24 Liberator in the picture was the most mass-produced 4-engine heavy bomber, c. 19,000 built.
Though a bit crap in some ways.
Interesting story I am trying to find out about - following the success of the Mosquito, allegedly, North American sketched a 4 Merlin fast bomber, using their Mustang cooling systems and aerodynamic insights....
Was that the NA-116?
Wasn't that the B-29 competitor? The one I heard about was an unarmed fast bomber, supposedly from the same concept as the Mosquito - that a bomber could be as fast as a fighter, if designed that way.
Mind you, a zillion ideas were sketched.
De Havilland's own idea for a 4 Merlin bomber is lost, apparently.
The only other NA bomber project I think of (and this was actually built) was the XB-28, but it was twin-engined.
I wonder if this may be what we have coming tomorrow (on top of formal confirmation of April 12th): a sunshine holiday free-for-all - but only for anybody who has been jabbed twice?
Confinement for the young, playtime for the old - and yet, absolutely no mass importation of Plague variants. Because, although Covid is so fucking lethal that the vaccinated daren't have a cup of tea indoors together, jetting off to the Algarve creates (by means yet to be explained) a miraculous forcefield that renders the virus completely inert.
We are ruled over by imbeciles.
Aren't we supposed to be using a single dose vaccine pretty soon? Maybe young people could be jabbed with it.
I wonder if this may be what we have coming tomorrow (on top of formal confirmation of April 12th): a sunshine holiday free-for-all - but only for anybody who has been jabbed twice?
Confinement for the young, playtime for the old - and yet, absolutely no mass importation of Plague variants. Because, although Covid is so fucking lethal that the vaccinated daren't have a cup of tea indoors together, jetting off to the Algarve creates (by means yet to be explained) a miraculous forcefield that renders the virus completely inert.
We are ruled over by imbeciles.
We seem to have made a mess of travel restrictions at each stage up to now, so I expect we will keep doing so.
It's just nuts. They are all over the place. Earlier we were told by Johnson that vaccinated people could not meet indoors as vaccines are "not 100% efficient". Which begs the question as to when we will ever be allowed to meet indoors and also why they are bothering with a vaccine passport for meeting people indoors at pubs and theatres?
Now we are told that vaccinated people can go abroad. And come back.
And does anyone remember "data not dates" as the we look at the plummeting case numbers?
How much of the this is actual fact as opposed to newspaper reports?
I recall that we were told by "people in the know" that Rishi was going to do nothing for business or the employed, a few hours before he announced the furlough scheme...
Whether or not anything is 'wrong' with it, it is our national flag, and I'm surprised that teachers who are paid by our state have so much to say about flying the flag of that state on their place of work. I don't really think I want kids to be taught by people who hate their own country.
The school - Pimlico? - that has caved to its kids burning the Union flag, is a disgrace
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
Quite.
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
I wonder if this may be what we have coming tomorrow (on top of formal confirmation of April 12th): a sunshine holiday free-for-all - but only for anybody who has been jabbed twice?
Confinement for the young, playtime for the old - and yet, absolutely no mass importation of Plague variants. Because, although Covid is so fucking lethal that the vaccinated daren't have a cup of tea indoors together, jetting off to the Algarve creates (by means yet to be explained) a miraculous forcefield that renders the virus completely inert.
We are ruled over by imbeciles.
I imagine there will be very few countries that allow you in without a vaccine. Or if they do, you'll be spending the first two weeks of your holiday in quarantine.
There are three points here.
Firstly, at the end of all this misery, giving special privileges to the old that are denied to the young is evil.
Secondly, do we really want people going abroad in huge numbers and seeding the country with imported Plague variants when they come back? This plan sounds like an excuse to let holidaymakers go to countries with high or medium disease prevalence just because it will disappoint them not to let them go - yet the Government has already wet itself over the vaccines being less than 100% effective, to the extent that the Prime Minister is pleading with people who have all been vaccinated still not meeting up with one another indoors.
Thirdly, there's the total inconsistency, indeed the sheer stupidity, of approach: if it's perfectly safe for the vaccinated to go abroad then it's certainly safe for them to have the aforementioned tea parties. And. once everyone has been vaccinated, it's also safe to get rid of all the restrictions and not be dicking about with these wretched vaccine passports ID cards. I mean, honestly...
On your three points.
There is no privilege. Both vaccinated and unvaccinated people will be able to travel. People without vaccination will have more rigorous testing/quarantine, but that simply reflects the fact that vaccinations protect against acquiring the disease.
I agree that travel shouldn't be encouraged, hopefully people will use common sense (I know).
It's not inconsistent because you aren't tested while going to someone's tea party as you are when entering another country, or returning to the UK.
I wonder if this may be what we have coming tomorrow (on top of formal confirmation of April 12th): a sunshine holiday free-for-all - but only for anybody who has been jabbed twice?
Confinement for the young, playtime for the old - and yet, absolutely no mass importation of Plague variants. Because, although Covid is so fucking lethal that the vaccinated daren't have a cup of tea indoors together, jetting off to the Algarve creates (by means yet to be explained) a miraculous forcefield that renders the virus completely inert.
We are ruled over by imbeciles.
I imagine there will be very few countries that allow you in without a vaccine. Or if they do, you'll be spending the first two weeks of your holiday in quarantine.
There are three points here.
Firstly, at the end of all this misery, giving special privileges to the old that are denied to the young is evil.
Secondly, do we really want people going abroad in huge numbers and seeding the country with imported Plague variants when they come back? This plan sounds like an excuse to let holidaymakers go to countries with high or medium disease prevalence just because it will disappoint them not to let them go - yet the Government has already wet itself over the vaccines being less than 100% effective, to the extent that the Prime Minister is pleading with people who have all been vaccinated still not meeting up with one another indoors.
Thirdly, there's the total inconsistency, indeed the sheer stupidity, of approach: if it's perfectly safe for the vaccinated to go abroad then it's certainly safe for them to have the aforementioned tea parties. And. once everyone has been vaccinated, it's also safe to get rid of all the restrictions and not be dicking about with these wretched vaccine passports ID cards. I mean, honestly...
Cf America, allowing travel and society for the vaccinated
They have a point. How can you disallow these things for people who are jabbed and safe?
The message you are sending is, either the vaccines DO work and you can return to normal life, or no, they don't work, stay indoors and at home, until we are all jabbed (but if the jabs don't work why is that any better?)
It's a dilemma for any government. And in terms of the economy and logic they surely have to err on the side of liberty for the jabbed, I reckon - then just hope that everyone gets jabbed so fast it makes no odds, and, also, the young will disobey anyway
Comments
https://twitter.com/CrimeLdn/status/1378087342825746442?s=20
Imagine it the other way around, how you would cry out
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-56620242
Flags, marching, singing the national anthem, saluting portraits of the head of state...
I recall the Prussian stuff from a discussion of educational systems in the 19th cent in the UK - the government compiled a report on the various systems around Europe, and the Prussian one was included.
A thumping Tory victory in 2023 and a reduced majority in 2028 - it's possible...
According to officers involved in the case, he has recent ties to Virginia, the state that borders Washington DC to the south.
Officers say that no prior information about him has been found on any police databases, and that he does not appear to have any ties to the military.
Not yet, anyway.
And hopefully not during my career in teaching.
My taxes pay for that school, those kids, their teachers. It is not a private enterprise.
Fly the damn flag, sack any teacher that objects, and expel any kids that, after a warning, still try to burn the flag. End of.
A compulsory training course on fascism where I get to heckle the third rate drunken tosser from the DfE running it and push them mercilessly all day until they feel pretty well suicidal and therefore understand how teachers in inner city schools feel every day at 4pm - for the first and only time in their pointless and worthless lives - would be fucking hilarious.
We're probably due for a change.
(Rough figures, but broadly correct)
Hmmm...doesn’t quite do it for me as a slogan.
"Deliveroo April Fools' joke backfires in France
French Deliveroo customers who received fake bills for hundreds of euros' worth of pizza have failed to see the funny side of the April Fools' joke. On 1 April thousands of customers of the delivery platform across France got confirmation emails for orders totalling over €450 (£380; $530). Many took to social media to express anger at the stunt. Late on Thursday Deliveroo informed its customers via Twitter and email that it had not been serious. "We confirm that it was an April Fool's joke," the clarification read. "You can enjoy the evening by ordering the pizza of your choice." But few customers were amused. One of them said he had "almost had a stroke" after receiving a €466 invoice for 38 pizzas that he had never ordered."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56617049
Still better than walking dog shit through the house, mind.
Oh, and bathroom carpets. The first house we bought had one. We discovered little maggoty things living in it around the bog. Must have lived off splashes of piss. Lovely.
Reading the old debates in the parliament is interesting. There was a magnificent one, in the Lords, at the time the Army adopted the Lee Enfield No.4.... a rather learned discussion ensued, with their Lordships asking all kind of interesting questions about the trials and the compromises in the design.
There is no evidence it is harming him
But in the 11 years before another three LOTO's became PM.
Heath and Wilson twice.
The period 1979 onwards has been pretty damn unusual.
Only changing the governing party twice in 42 years and counting...
Maybe we just don't go in for it anymore except in extraordinary circumstances?
"The people are going to get one kind of bomber. And it will only come in green."
Tbf the Tories are doing a genius job of making Labour fall the wrong side of all these inflammatory culture war debates.
The "traveller incursions" thing. Jeez
Cf this Marina Hyde article in the Guardian. Perhaps the worst she has ever written, in terms of dull, witless misunderstanding (and she can be a genius writer). They don't know what to do or how to react
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/02/culture-war-government-race-report
See the Guardian's hysterical over-reaction to the Sewell Report:
"The Sewell report on racial disparity is an attempt to erase progress and sow division"
"Despite the Sewell report, No 10 can no longer remain in denial about racism"
"The poisonously patronising Sewell report is historically illiterate"
"The Guardian view on botanical gardens: inextricably linked to empire"
They are lemmings, rushing to the cliff of electoral oblivion, and someone quite clever in the Tories is deftly encouraging them
Ho Ho Ho
It is like a joke badly translated into a different language by someone with no sense of humour: which, I suspect, is what happened here
None got in on personality alone
Good for her!!!
Pace the Marina Hyde article, the Tories know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it quite expertly (aided by idiot lefties)
eg When you are REALLY ANGRY about RACIST BOTANICAL GARDENS, like the Guardian, and Labour, then you have probably mopped up every single voter in a small corner of London N1, but you have lost several million elsewhere, because sane people think Botanical Gardens are nice quiet places we can all go, to escape this abject lunacy
"Kew Gardens is right to confront its role in the history of British colonialism and racism"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/02/the-guardian-view-on-botanical-gardens-inextricably-linked-to-empire
Interesting story I am trying to find out about - following the success of the Mosquito, allegedly, North American sketched a 4 Merlin fast bomber, using their Mustang cooling systems and aerodynamic insights....
God damn those RACIST FLOWERS. And those Nazi TREES. And shrubs! Always knew those evil SHRUBS were BIGOTS: like all white people.
Ideally, we should concrete over Kew Gardens and build a seventeen million metre high memorial to Winnie Mandela
SKS makes the right noises but underneath Labour haven't changed. It is probably going to take one more election defeat for them to be willing to get out of their comfort zones.
The Tories supported the Iraq War, it was the anti Iraq War LDs who made the biggest gains in 2005.
Cameron managed to get the anti EU right behind him in 2015 to deliver the EU referendum they ultimately got
And it will influence our politics. Ordinary people recoil from this ghastly madness
I wonder if this may be what we have coming tomorrow (on top of formal confirmation of April 12th): a sunshine holiday free-for-all - but only for anybody who has been jabbed twice?
Confinement for the young, playtime for the old - and yet, absolutely no mass importation of Plague variants. Because, although Covid is so fucking lethal that the vaccinated daren't have a cup of tea indoors together, jetting off to the Algarve creates (by means yet to be explained) a miraculous forcefield that renders the virus completely inert.
We are ruled over by imbeciles.
To be serious, for a moment, let us remember that Donald Trump - a man who is, clearly, to me, demented, venal, immoral and incapable - nearly got re-elected as president of the USA. He got 70m votes and a majority of white votes.
Why? Because lefty, Democrat America is completely seized by this insane Woke agenda, which emanates from academe but has now infected every corner of public life.
The average voter hates Woke-ism the way it displays itself, today. If Trump had been just a shade saner, calmer, more eloquent, less absurdly disgraceful, he would have won.
That is sobering.
It also means that a saner Trump will win, in a big western country, in the end. Le Pen looms in France. White majorities are tired of being hectored, despised and ridiculed by rich elites, even as their lives diminish in quality, and they do their best for their country.
What will stop the March of the Woke? The election of a very hard right figure in a major western nation. And all that flows from that.
That is, unless the lefties see the insanity of what they do, and rein it in. I see no signs of such self-awareness, as they go after RACIST BOTANICAL GARDENS
Mind you, a zillion ideas were sketched.
De Havilland's own idea for a 4 Merlin bomber is lost, apparently.
https://youtu.be/VajgBW2g9VY
Now we are told that vaccinated people can go abroad. And come back.
And does anyone remember "data not dates" as the we look at the plummeting case numbers?
Firstly, at the end of all this misery, giving special privileges to the old that are denied to the young is evil.
Secondly, do we really want people going abroad in huge numbers and seeding the country with imported Plague variants when they come back? This plan sounds like an excuse to let holidaymakers go to countries with high or medium disease prevalence just because it will disappoint them not to let them go - yet the Government has already wet itself over the vaccines being less than 100% effective, to the extent that the Prime Minister is pleading with people who have all been vaccinated still not meeting up with one another indoors.
Thirdly, there's the total inconsistency, indeed the sheer stupidity, of approach: if it's perfectly safe for the vaccinated to go abroad then it's certainly safe for them to have the aforementioned tea parties. And. once everyone has been vaccinated, it's also safe to get rid of all the restrictions and not be dicking about with these wretched vaccine passports ID cards. I mean, honestly...
I recall that we were told by "people in the know" that Rishi was going to do nothing for business or the employed, a few hours before he announced the furlough scheme...
You are rather over egging it.
There is no privilege. Both vaccinated and unvaccinated people will be able to travel. People without vaccination will have more rigorous testing/quarantine, but that simply reflects the fact that vaccinations protect against acquiring the disease.
I agree that travel shouldn't be encouraged, hopefully people will use common sense (I know).
It's not inconsistent because you aren't tested while going to someone's tea party as you are when entering another country, or returning to the UK.
They have a point. How can you disallow these things for people who are jabbed and safe?
The message you are sending is, either the vaccines DO work and you can return to normal life, or no, they don't work, stay indoors and at home, until we are all jabbed (but if the jabs don't work why is that any better?)
It's a dilemma for any government. And in terms of the economy and logic they surely have to err on the side of liberty for the jabbed, I reckon - then just hope that everyone gets jabbed so fast it makes no odds, and, also, the young will disobey anyway