it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
My point put rather more baldly!
I can tbf see the appeal of some facets of the Boris Brand. The positivity. The light touch. The vivid language. Not everything about it is toxic. But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously. And sadly this comes with the product because it's integral to it.
You can't go to the store and say, "I'll have a Boris but one WITH a moral compass and sense of public service please."
That's not on the shelves.
Well it is though.
"A sense of public service" is typically used as a "redeeming" feature for the absolutely shit Prime Ministers we have had: Theresa May, Gordon Brown
The better Prime Ministers we've had - Boris himself, Dave, Blair - had a void where a moral compass and a sense of public service was meant to be, but they were far, far better Prime Ministers.
No appetite for a debate on "best PMs" but I do find it depressing if you've concluded that moral seriousness and a strong sense of public service is not only surplus to requirements but is actually something to be avoided. As it happens I believe you do genuinely feel this way - which illustrates very well the point I'm making. But I'd ask you to think seriously about it and if possible - with no pressure from me to admit it - realize that you are part of the problem.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
That's the point!
Creating Holyrood without an answer to the WLQ signed the death warrant for the union. Since then the union was doomed, just it took some people a while to realise why. Some are still in denial.
Now the nationalists are in Scotland, have been for 14 years and aren't going anywhere - and they exploit the structural flaw in the union for all they've got. Unless someone magically answers the question that's had no answer for fifty years, the nationalists will keep exploiting the fatal flaw until they inevitably win once.
Well,knock me down with a feather. Ms Markle, according to the Daily Mirror, isn't coming to the funeral, "because she doesn't want to be the centre of attention". Risible! So speaks someone who has sought to be the centre of attention in everything she does !
She's right though. She would be the centre of attention. And that wouldn't be good.
Yes. But why does she feel the need to say that. She had a plausible excuse. She should have STFU.
But she has chosen to make the story about her instead
Blimey she really can't win.
Says nothing: heartless b*tch Says I'm coming: me me me Says I'm not coming: heartless b*tch
Not at all.
I think it was an elegant solution to take doctors advice not to come (I think she should have come to support her husband but that’s up to them).
But not to come because of doctors advice and then brief out a story designed to create a positive news cycle about her is despicable.
And I would never call anyone a bitch.
Amounts to the same thing, Charles. One man's despicable (really - despicable? Of all the things in the world this is despicable?) is another man's b*tch.
And good also to see that you are using the Daily Mirror as your factchecking source. I just had to google MM because I have and had no idea about her various movements and intentions. That you knew shows an unhealthy obsession.
Which is fine. You wouldn't be alone. But then put yourself in the same basket as all those Daily Mirror/Mail reading punters.
As I have said many times previously, either you know the people involved in which case you should STFU or you don't, in which case you should STFU.
When I was at the Palace I knew I could have made £500 every week by divulging some tidbit or other - a nothing story, really - to the press but of course wouldn't have dreamt of doing so.
You position yourself as someone in the know. In which case fucking well behave yourself.
I don’t reveal anything on here that I shouldn’t and I’m certainly not in the “inner circle” of either of the princes - and have no interest in trying to become so - although I’ve met various royals over the years.
It’s just my view based on public information and my read of the situation. Feel free to ignore me if you want to do so, although the fact that you are so defensive suggests I may be reading things right.
I’ve no idea whether the Mirror story is correct or not - but I don’t have the time or energy to fact check every story from a mainstream publication.
Ah right ok s'cool. You don't know anything. No problem.
As for "I've no idea whether the Mirror story is correct or not" - you wanted to believe it such that you were prepared to call MM "despicable" on the back of it.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Mr. Password, you may be right. We'll see how things go (if Taiwan gets hot then the outcome there might determine that).
I've no idea of the detail of the military balance in the Taiwan Strait, but I imagine Xi will wait until confident victory can be achieved within a week - presenting a fait accompli to the world.
This might see it end up endlessly deferred, but I think the potential for miscalculation, and a Chinese military defeat, is low. Though there is the Vietnam precedent.
Victory in a week is decades away. The Taiwanese have been preparing for this for 70+ years. Every beach, street, public building and school is set up to provide as big a kill zone as possible. Every adult male is trained. Short of nuking the island, it can't be taken without vast losses. This is why it hasn't been attempted. I don't expect it soon.
Over a quarter of Taiwan's exports go to China (and another 10% + to Hong Kong), which indicates its economic value to them, and vice versa - and it would be impossible to alternately source computer chips in any volume.
Not impossible that they might try blockading the island, though.
An attack across 80 - 120 miles of sea, against a numerous and well-equipped military, defending its homeland, seems an extremely risky venture to me.
The Chinese strategy isn't invasion. It's gradual encirclement; through the 'The Great Wall of Sand' across the Spratlys and Paracels. One island at a time knowing the "West", in as much as that means anything anymore, won't do anything beyond harsh tweets. They'll do this while ferociously stoking internal dissent in Taiwan until sooner or later a tipping point will be reached.
A good point. We have also missed China's economic colonial takeover of East and Central Africa, while we were all worrying ourselves about MAGA, BREXIT and any other alphabet soup one cares to consider.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
Boris has yet to prove himself against an opponent who is not electoral poison - like Livingstone ans Corbyn
Viewers in Scotland of course have their own programmes (except when the BBC decide to pump out exactly the same stuff on all channels). Having set himself against an opponent who is not electoral poison in Scotland and already been found seriously wanting, BJ has come up with the wizard wheeze of blocking the biggest electoral test going displaying the principle-free, self protecting cunning that is his signature. Will he get away with it...?
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
I probably agree. However nobody ever addresses the fact that no UK Prime Minister is likely to be willing to essentially significantly reduce the prestige of their own position which creating an English First Minister would almostly certainly do.
HYFUD has denied that this would be the case in the past but realistically if most of the UK Prime Minister's day to day responsibilities were delegated to an English First Minister and most of the UK Parliament's money raising powers was delegated to an English Parliament, the UK PM and 'Westminster' would almost certainly be diminished.
It would be arguably the most fundamental change to our constitution since the Act of Union itself.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
My point put rather more baldly!
I can tbf see the appeal of some facets of the Boris Brand. The positivity. The light touch. The vivid language. Not everything about it is toxic. But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously. And sadly this comes with the product because it's integral to it.
You can't go to the store and say, "I'll have a Boris but one WITH a moral compass and sense of public service please."
That's not on the shelves.
Well it is though.
"A sense of public service" is typically used as a "redeeming" feature for the absolutely shit Prime Ministers we have had: Theresa May, Gordon Brown
The better Prime Ministers we've had - Boris himself, Dave, Blair - had a void where a moral compass and a sense of public service was meant to be, but they were far, far better Prime Ministers.
No appetite for a debate on "best PMs" but I do find it depressing if you've concluded that moral seriousness and a strong sense of public service is not only surplus to requirements but is actually something to be avoided. As it happens I believe you do genuinely feel this way - which illustrates very well the point I'm making. But I'd ask you to think seriously about it and if possible - with no pressure from me to admit it - realize that you are part of the problem.
I'm happy with sticking with saying that politicians who bang on about "morals", "moral majority", "moral seriousness" etc are the problem.
As for "public service" it blinds people into dogmatically thinking that what they're doing is right, because its part of the "service".
Keep your morals to yourself. Keep your public service to yourself. Politics should be about us making choices depending upon our own morals thank you. Politics should be about the public choosing what kind of service we want.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
I'll profer my theory again that politics is about who you would prefer to go for a pint with. Boris brand of affability is therefore linked to this in a positive manner.
I think that in every election since 1992 the person who would do better in that social situation is perceived as a winner. I used perceived because this explains 2017 when I wouldn't really want to have a pint with May or Corbyn, but on balance Corbyn might have some tales of fun from the seventies, or some good allotment gags, whereas May was like a computer that needed rebooting.
I honestly believe this is a reflection of post modernism, where actual competence or what people have said does not count, and is replaced with how we feel about something or somebody. This is also driving the move to the extremes of politicians being much more polarised.
Starmer therefore needs somehow to become someone I would like to have a pint with. Anecdotes, gags, strong beliefs but willing to listen to other opinions. If Starmer spent more time in a pub he would be better off!!
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
So the Union doesn't work. Terminate it and Westminster becomes the English Parliament.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5m Peopler saying "Boris is right about lockdown". It doesn't matter. The vital thing is vaccination uptake. This message cuts directly across that. And so soon after the AZ announcement. It's nuts. 15 1 25
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 19m This line from Boris is batshit. Quote Tweet
John Stevens @johnestevens · 38m PM: "The reduction in hospitalisations, deaths and infections has not been achieved by the vaccination programme.
"It's the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement in the pandemic"
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
I think that's a terrible idea.
One person, one vote. If that means England can get its way then so be it, England is over 80% of the union and that's democracy.
If the other nations don't want England to be able to act unilaterally, then they need to be independent of England. Its perfectly viable.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
Depends on the rules of the remaining UK parliment. As said the downside is that the UK parliment would just become neutered and not do very much at all. Maybe Foreign Policy at best.
An attack across 80 - 120 miles of sea, against a numerous and well-equipped military, defending its homeland, seems an extremely risky venture to me.
The Chinese strategy isn't invasion. It's gradual encirclement; through the 'The Great Wall of Sand' across the Spratlys and Paracels. One island at a time knowing the "West", in as much as that means anything anymore, won't do anything beyond harsh tweets. They'll do this while ferociously stoking internal dissent in Taiwan until sooner or later a tipping point will be reached.
From my experience the Taiwanese don't need much outside provocation to dissent. Bolshiest people I've ever encountered. And I mean that in a very nice way.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
Boris has yet to prove himself against an opponent who is not electoral poison - like Livingstone ans Corbyn
So if he beats Starmer - who famously started off with the best LOTO ratings since Blair - that will constitute a genuine triumph against electoral gold? Excellent.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
I think that's a terrible idea.
One person, one vote. If that means England can get its way then so be it, England is over 80% of the union and that's democracy.
If the other nations don't want England to be able to act unilaterally, then they need to be independent of England. Its perfectly viable.
Let's not pretend you don't have a vested interest here. You want English independence so will poo poo any other suggestion to the contrary.
Federalism requires compromise if the Union is to be preserved. You may not want the Union to be preserved but plenty of people do.
On topic (very slightly) I see that Greensill like a lot of affluent Aussies has the marginally weird habit of wearing RM Williams boots as formal wear - another brand besmirched At least BJ is a shit clothes black hole.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
I probably agree. However nobody ever addresses the fact that no UK Prime Minister is likely to be willing to essentially significantly reduce the prestige of their own position which creating an English First Minister would almostly certainly do.
HYFUD has denied that this would be the case in the past but realistically if most of the UK Prime Minister's day to day responsibilities were delegated to an English First Minister and most of the UK Parliament's money raising powers was delegated to an English Parliament, the UK PM and 'Westminster' would almost certainly be diminished.
It would be arguably the most fundamental change to our constitution since the Act of Union itself.
Which is why the union is doomed. The end of the union, like World War I, is a long time coming and seemingly inevitable, and although not many want it, not many want to put the work required to avoid it either.
I am a big price horse bettor, like most people I am a long term loser. I normally bet 5 or 10 quid each way. I have a losing account with Ladbrokes. At the weekend I had a 28/1 winner and yesterday had a 20/1 winner, both £5e/w.. I can go weeks without a winner, I just had a bit of luck.
Last night I tried to place a bet on a unraced 2 year old in the 1.35 at Newmarket called Fourshadesofsilver at the advertised price of 33/1. My reasoning for backing it was that it has the same sire (Ardad, who is in his first season) as the 150/1 first time out 2 year old winner yesterday. Ladbrokes refused to take the bet.
What sort of Gambling Industry do we have in this Country when a company with a multi billion pound turnover like Ladbrokes can refuse to take a £5e/w bet on a race at Flat Racings HQ in Newmarket. It s an absolutely ridiculous situation
Welcome to the club.
I’m gubbed from well over 50 bookmakers.
Practical advice: try betfair or smarkets (or their app, “sbk”)
I just dont get their logic, it was £5 e/w. They will take tens of thousands on the race, what difference does my £5e/w make? If they didn't want to take a bet on the horse why advertise the price?
Im as far from a professional gambler as you can get, my account with Ladbrokes shows that, I just throw darts at big price horses which very occassionally win. .
I remember in 1986 when I was 18 walking into a Leisure Bookmakers in Southampton and having £200 for me and my brother on Dallas to win the Cambridgeshire at 10/1 ( I didn't pay the tax) This was half my monthly wage (My Dad had a tip for it) The cashier took the bet without even thinking about. The horse won and they paid out with a smile. I gave the money back over the next 6 months. What a world we live in now where a billion pound company can refuse a 5E/W bet on the advertised price of a horse.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
I think that's a terrible idea.
One person, one vote. If that means England can get its way then so be it, England is over 80% of the union and that's democracy.
If the other nations don't want England to be able to act unilaterally, then they need to be independent of England. Its perfectly viable.
Let's not pretend you don't have a vested interest here. You want English independence so will poo poo any other suggestion to the contrary.
Federalism requires compromise if the Union is to be preserved. You may not want the Union to be preserved but plenty of people do.
I want the Union to end because I believe in democracy and there is no democratic alternative.
Saying that even if 80% of the UK votes for something, it still can't happen, is not remotely democratic. That is no way to run a country.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
I think that's a terrible idea.
One person, one vote. If that means England can get its way then so be it, England is over 80% of the union and that's democracy.
If the other nations don't want England to be able to act unilaterally, then they need to be independent of England. Its perfectly viable.
Let's not pretend you don't have a vested interest here. You want English independence so will poo poo any other suggestion to the contrary.
Federalism requires compromise if the Union is to be preserved. You may not want the Union to be preserved but plenty of people do.
That works with good faith partners. The SNP are not good faith partners. They want an end to the union.
Its like teaming up with someone who says 'I want to ditch you and will do everything I can to ditch you, and whilst we're together i'm going to keep slagging you off', that's not the basis for a lasting relationship.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
EDIT: I think I mangled my words. I believe the UK parliament would be similar to the existing Commons, but obviously smaller, but with another federal council with the vote of each devolved nation and the 'UK parliament'.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
My point put rather more baldly!
I can tbf see the appeal of some facets of the Boris Brand. The positivity. The light touch. The vivid language. Not everything about it is toxic. But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously. And sadly this comes with the product because it's integral to it.
You can't go to the store and say, "I'll have a Boris but one WITH a moral compass and sense of public service please."
That's not on the shelves.
But a big part of Boris's appeal is what he isn't. Jeremy Corbyn personified what a lot of voters distrust about the left as a whole. Now the cartoon bogeyman has gone, but a lot of what he represented is still there in 'the left'. The dislike of Britain and its history and its instincts and its culture. The instinct that it doesn't particularly like the British and would prefer they were rather different. The constant manufactured outrage. Now, you might well argue that Starmer has tried, with some success, to move away from this. But it doesn't strike voters as instinctive, and voters don't trust the party behind him. If Corbyn is the bogeyman, people aren't convinced that Starmer is not-Corbyn enough. I don't know, realistically, what more he could have done so far, but that's where we are. Boris is still getting a great deal of benefit from being convincingly not Corbyn.
This is a big part of Labour's challenge. The truth is Starmer has marginalized the hard left. The people and attitudes you're talking about are not influential now. But of course Team Tory will run this line for as long as it pays dividends. My feeling is that Starmer is all over this danger and it's right at the top of his list for GE24 to nullify it. Will he succeed? I think he will on this score. Which doesn't mean a Labour government, but it does mean a competitive election.
Oh, I love RM Williams boots, but it's like when someone you like/admire does an ad voice over for some terrible brand, when you see an arsehole wearing your duds a little bit of you dies.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
PS pre-devolution I never really thought about the Union (but then I was 15 years old when devolution occurred), but I don't think that I would have had a problem with the UK surviving in its pre-devolution format.
It is what has changed post-devolution that makes me want Scottish independence as the best thing for Scotland and the best thing for England.
This is what ardent unionists get wrong when they talk about "over 300 years of history". Quite frankly the nearly 300 years of history pre-devolution have effectively been nullified. The current format of the Union is not three centuries old, it is not even a quarter of a century old, and it is structurally flawed and unsustainable.
Since there is no valid fix, since reversing devolution isn't an option, that only leaves one solution . . .
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
I think that's a terrible idea.
One person, one vote. If that means England can get its way then so be it, England is over 80% of the union and that's democracy.
If the other nations don't want England to be able to act unilaterally, then they need to be independent of England. Its perfectly viable.
Let's not pretend you don't have a vested interest here. You want English independence so will poo poo any other suggestion to the contrary.
Federalism requires compromise if the Union is to be preserved. You may not want the Union to be preserved but plenty of people do.
That works with good faith partners. The SNP are not good faith partners. They want an end to the union.
Its like teaming up with someone who says 'I want to ditch you and will do everything I can to ditch you, and whilst we're together i'm going to keep slagging you off', that's not the basis for a lasting relationship.
Aye, poor, old good faith partners BJ and the Tory party being let down by other folk..
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
Although the Welsh government were against Brexit, despite the Welsh voting for it, so on Parliamentary terms it would have been cancelled or voted down despite a majority in the country and a majority in Parliament.
Was going to go to the village pub for a lunch but it's fully booked.
I'm again reminded of PBers' solemn predictions that
a) "few, if any, pubs will open on 12 April" and
b) people will be hesitant to go out even when lockdown eases...
Hmm. How are those predictions working out?
As I said last night, it's very reassuring that the public is much more sensible than the polls have been suggesting. I think on these subjects there's a huge disconnect between what people are telling pollsters vs what they're actually doing in real life. Seeing all of the joy and happiness that socialising brings to everyone was absolutely great. It really was as if a year of utter crap was just bring slowly washed away with beer and shit chatting among friends. I can't wait until the weekend, 17 degrees in the sunshine and dry. Next weekend looks even better for outdoor brunch!
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
Boris has yet to prove himself against an opponent who is not electoral poison - like Livingstone ans Corbyn
Boris also beat Cameron effectively in 2016 when he was de facto leader of the Leave campaign and Cameron was de facto leader of the Remain campaign
Not really. Cameron had a solid base of 48%. Johnson tipped a handful of percentage points over to the Leave camp who otherwise might have stuck with Cameron. It worked for Johnson...eventually.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
@kinabalu Do you really think the current Government has rock bottom standards - they literally could not get any worse?
In the past we have seen child abuse by for example Cyril Smith. We have seen financial misappropriation like cash for questions or cash for honours. We have seen government critics die in mysterious circumstances or David Kelly, and we have seen outright fraud including jail time for some parliamentarians over expenses.
Is there are logical reason to think we have now reached some sort of nadir where all these are superceded. Or do you just not like Boris Johnson?
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5m Peopler saying "Boris is right about lockdown". It doesn't matter. The vital thing is vaccination uptake. This message cuts directly across that. And so soon after the AZ announcement. It's nuts. 15 1 25
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 19m This line from Boris is batshit. Quote Tweet
John Stevens @johnestevens · 38m PM: "The reduction in hospitalisations, deaths and infections has not been achieved by the vaccination programme.
"It's the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement in the pandemic"
A vote for Johnson's conservatives is a vote to ensure you will at least be threatened and intimidated with the prospect of more lockdowns come the autumn and the winter, whether you actually get them or not.
With labour pretending to 'study the detail' before agreeing completely.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
An attack across 80 - 120 miles of sea, against a numerous and well-equipped military, defending its homeland, seems an extremely risky venture to me.
The Chinese strategy isn't invasion. It's gradual encirclement; through the 'The Great Wall of Sand' across the Spratlys and Paracels. One island at a time knowing the "West", in as much as that means anything anymore, won't do anything beyond harsh tweets. They'll do this while ferociously stoking internal dissent in Taiwan until sooner or later a tipping point will be reached.
A good point. We have also missed China's economic colonial takeover of East and Central Africa, while we were all worrying ourselves about MAGA, BREXIT and any other alphabet soup one cares to consider.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
Although the Welsh government were against Brexit, despite the Welsh voting for it, so on Parliamentary terms it would have been cancelled or voted down despite a majority in the country and a majority in Parliament.
You would assume that the legislation authorising the EU referendum, agreed by the "federal council", included a provision that the federal council would have to vote as per the referendum.
In any case once the referendum passed, it would be up to the "UK Parliament", to handle the foreign policy provisions i.e. the Brexit "deal". Our entire legislative framework would be different in such a scenario anyway, and so would voting intention.
There's admittedly lots of holes and complexity in this vague idea, as with any vague idea, but I'm not the one writing the rules, merely proposing a possible framework of a solution that preserves the Union.
Was going to go to the village pub for a lunch but it's fully booked.
Glad to hear that they're busy! Hope you can get a booking soon though. My hairdresser said the same, she's booked up for the next 3 weeks, not a single appointment available and she's raised her prices. I had to get my next appointment booked in yesterday to ensure I'd have a timely haircut!
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
I think that's a terrible idea.
One person, one vote. If that means England can get its way then so be it, England is over 80% of the union and that's democracy.
If the other nations don't want England to be able to act unilaterally, then they need to be independent of England. Its perfectly viable.
Let's not pretend you don't have a vested interest here. You want English independence so will poo poo any other suggestion to the contrary.
Federalism requires compromise if the Union is to be preserved. You may not want the Union to be preserved but plenty of people do.
That works with good faith partners. The SNP are not good faith partners. They want an end to the union.
Its like teaming up with someone who says 'I want to ditch you and will do everything I can to ditch you, and whilst we're together i'm going to keep slagging you off', that's not the basis for a lasting relationship.
Aye, poor, old good faith partners BJ and the Tory party being let down by other folk..
I'm talking about a fundamental basis of support for the union continuing. The truth isn't as clear-cut as that true, but the point remains.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
Was going to go to the village pub for a lunch but it's fully booked.
I'm again reminded of PBers' solemn predictions that
a) "few, if any, pubs will open on 12 April" and
b) people will be hesitant to go out even when lockdown eases...
Hmm. How are those predictions working out?
As I said last night, it's very reassuring that the public is much more sensible than the polls have been suggesting. I think on these subjects there's a huge disconnect between what people are telling pollsters vs what they're actually doing in real life. Seeing all of the joy and happiness that socialising brings to everyone was absolutely great. It really was as if a year of utter crap was just bring slowly washed away with beer and shit chatting among friends. I can't wait until the weekend, 17 degrees in the sunshine and dry. Next weekend looks even better for outdoor brunch!
Many of the polls are based on the premise of a general election where it is essentially Johnson or Starmer.
In the locals, where less is at stake, I wonder if we will see support leaking away from both the main parties and towards greens, yellows, Plaid, Reform and other independents.
I also wonder whether turnout for the big two will be low.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
Although the Welsh government were against Brexit, despite the Welsh voting for it, so on Parliamentary terms it would have been cancelled or voted down despite a majority in the country and a majority in Parliament.
You would assume that the legislation authorising the EU referendum, agreed by the "federal council", included a provision that the federal council would have to vote as per the referendum.
In any case once the referendum passed, it would be up to the "UK Parliament", to handle the foreign policy provisions i.e. the Brexit "deal". Our entire legislative framework would be different in such a scenario anyway, and so would voting intention.
There's admittedly lots of holes and complexity in this vague idea, as with any vague idea, but I'm not the one writing the rules, merely proposing a possible framework of a solution that preserves the Union.
Except we have government-by-Parliaments not government-by-referenda.
Is your scheme only for referenda? Because if so Parliament will just act via Parliament and not have any more referenda. That's not a fix.
My current GP seems unable to book me a second dose here in Cumbria because he can't get me into the AccuX booking system - the one which sends you a text inviting you to book - despite me being registered with the practice and no longer with my old practice. The NHS helpline won't help as they're just using AZ vaccines and I can't book centrally as it says I'm not eligible having got my first dose through my previous GP in February, despite having transferred to my current GP in January.
Anyway I have now got my old GP in London to put me on the booking system. Got my invitation yesterday to book in London but there are no slots available.
So am checking three times day and have my bag packed for an urgent drive down to London to get my second Pfizer dose. I hope they really do have enough second doses and I'm not going to miss out.
Apparently a nearby surgery is getting a load of Pfizer doses shortly so I'm going to ring them to see if they'll let me have one. Unlikely but worth a shot.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
Well yeah, that's federalism.
Which works when the numbers of federal states are high enough so not one can dominate. In the UK we would, have 5 states, and one which is 10 times as big as the closest other.
An attack across 80 - 120 miles of sea, against a numerous and well-equipped military, defending its homeland, seems an extremely risky venture to me.
The Chinese strategy isn't invasion. It's gradual encirclement; through the 'The Great Wall of Sand' across the Spratlys and Paracels. One island at a time knowing the "West", in as much as that means anything anymore, won't do anything beyond harsh tweets. They'll do this while ferociously stoking internal dissent in Taiwan until sooner or later a tipping point will be reached.
A good point. We have also missed China's economic colonial takeover of East and Central Africa, while we were all worrying ourselves about MAGA, BREXIT and any other alphabet soup one cares to consider.
And an untested (and undermanned) British Aircraft carrier with other countries' untested aircraft, ships and crew to protect it aint going to achieve very much in the meantime.....
Was going to go to the village pub for a lunch but it's fully booked.
I'm again reminded of PBers' solemn predictions that
a) "few, if any, pubs will open on 12 April" and
b) people will be hesitant to go out even when lockdown eases...
Hmm. How are those predictions working out?
As I said last night, it's very reassuring that the public is much more sensible than the polls have been suggesting. I think on these subjects there's a huge disconnect between what people are telling pollsters vs what they're actually doing in real life. Seeing all of the joy and happiness that socialising brings to everyone was absolutely great. It really was as if a year of utter crap was just bring slowly washed away with beer and shit chatting among friends. I can't wait until the weekend, 17 degrees in the sunshine and dry. Next weekend looks even better for outdoor brunch!
Agreed! I'm off for my first pint tonight, then thinking about options for the weekend. A friend reports that she can't find a table anywhere in central London and is having to go out to Clapham for a Saturday lunch with her girlfriends.
I'm sure PBers nationwide will pass on their sympathies.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
Well yeah, that's federalism.
Which works when the numbers of federal states are high enough so not one can dominate. In the UK we would, have 5 states, and one which is 10 times as big as the closest other.
What country works on that basis?
What is the alternative if you want to keep the Union?
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
My point put rather more baldly!
I can tbf see the appeal of some facets of the Boris Brand. The positivity. The light touch. The vivid language. Not everything about it is toxic. But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously. And sadly this comes with the product because it's integral to it.
You can't go to the store and say, "I'll have a Boris but one WITH a moral compass and sense of public service please."
That's not on the shelves.
The trickier question is whether such a thing can exist.
If you take the last couple of winning PMs, Blair and Cameron, they both started projecting that sunny optimism. 1992 Major had a lovely smile. But the sunshine gradually faded as reality hit, compromises were made with reality and the effect of getting things wrong hit home.
The Boris difference is to just ignore all that, so that the sunshine continues. My working assumption thus far has been that nobody can be that hollow indefinitely. And that the fall of Boris will be a sudden shattering rather than an accumulation of dents and scratches. Maybe ten years time, maybe ten minutes.
But maybe Boris has hit on disconnecting his moral compass as a winning formula. There's a hideous logic there, and he's not unique in doing it.
Yes, great point, depressing point. If you are sufficiently flamboyant in your disregard for "norms", you can maybe pull of that trick whereby people judge you differently. They don't have the same expectations of you as they do of others. You get a pass. Trump did this. It's a terrible thing and it's why despite being a very firm leftie, I find this aspect of politics - culture and standards - more important than policy. Policy is the easy bit.
It’s the one things he’s genuinely world class at.
What he actually said is not wholly unreasonable, given that had we been trying to do vaccinations in a raging pandemic it would rapidly have spiralled out of control before the vaccines took effect. It was the lockdown that brought infections back under control. It’s vaccinations that will keep them under control, but unlocking will, as he rightly says, see a rise in cases. Due to the high vaccine take up in vulnerable groups, it shouldn’t see a major rise in deaths. But it’s very clumsy phrasing and therefore foolish.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
Well yeah, that's federalism.
No its not. Federal structures rely upon states balancing each other out, but the UK isn't federal and has no balance. Its like creating a table where one leg of the table is 10x taller than any of the others legs are then wondering why its unbalanced.
Can you name any federal nation anywhere in the world where one state of the federation makes up anything like over 80% of the populace?
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5m Peopler saying "Boris is right about lockdown". It doesn't matter. The vital thing is vaccination uptake. This message cuts directly across that. And so soon after the AZ announcement. It's nuts. 15 1 25
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 19m This line from Boris is batshit. Quote Tweet
John Stevens @johnestevens · 38m PM: "The reduction in hospitalisations, deaths and infections has not been achieved by the vaccination programme.
"It's the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement in the pandemic"
A vote for Johnson's conservatives is a vote to ensure you will at least be threatened and intimidated with the prospect of more lockdowns come the autumn and the winter, whether you actually get them or not.
With labour pretending to 'study the detail' before agreeing completely.
Yes the endless drumbeat of "but we could have another lockdown" is oppressive and inhumane. I will not vote for any party that indulges this sort of stuff. So far, the Liberals look like the best bet, but we shall see.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
Well yeah, that's federalism.
No its not. Federal structures rely upon states balancing each other out, but the UK isn't federal and has no balance. Its like creating a table where one leg of the table is 10x taller than any of the others legs are then wondering why its unbalanced.
Can you name any federal nation anywhere in the world where one state of the federation makes up anything like over 80% of the populace?
Ontario has nearly 40% of Canada's population.
Besides it doesn't matter. Since when did Britain copy other people's setups? We do our own thing based on what may work for us.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
I think that's a terrible idea.
One person, one vote. If that means England can get its way then so be it, England is over 80% of the union and that's democracy.
If the other nations don't want England to be able to act unilaterally, then they need to be independent of England. Its perfectly viable.
Let's not pretend you don't have a vested interest here. You want English independence so will poo poo any other suggestion to the contrary.
Federalism requires compromise if the Union is to be preserved. You may not want the Union to be preserved but plenty of people do.
That works with good faith partners. The SNP are not good faith partners. They want an end to the union.
Its like teaming up with someone who says 'I want to ditch you and will do everything I can to ditch you, and whilst we're together i'm going to keep slagging you off', that's not the basis for a lasting relationship.
Aye, poor, old good faith partners BJ and the Tory party being let down by other folk..
I'm talking about a fundamental basis of support for the union continuing. The truth isn't as clear-cut as that true, but the point remains.
For the last 20+ years part of the fundamental basis of of support for the union continuing is HMG accepting and supporting devolution. Brexit and BJ & co have changed that, and as ye sow so shall ye reap.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
Well yeah, that's federalism.
Which works when the numbers of federal states are high enough so not one can dominate. In the UK we would, have 5 states, and one which is 10 times as big as the closest other.
What country works on that basis?
What is the alternative if you want to keep the Union?
Now? It's probably too late. The SNP have leveraged nationalism to the point where there isn't a counter balance against it. I'm not saying they are wrong, it's just the forces which are there.
Devomax might be the only way, but then you have issue of the hollowed out UK Parliament. It would be independence to all intents and purposes but without the name.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
Well yeah, that's federalism.
Which works when the numbers of federal states are high enough so not one can dominate. In the UK we would, have 5 states, and one which is 10 times as big as the closest other.
What country works on that basis?
What is the alternative if you want to keep the Union?
Now? It's probably too late. The SNP have leveraged nationalism to the point where there isn't a counter balance against it. I'm not saying they are wrong, it's just the forces which are there.
Devomax might be the only way, but then you have issue of the hollowed out UK Parliament. It would be independence to all intents and purposes but without the name.
Largely the situation now in Canada, where Quebec effectively has devomax
I'll profer my theory again that politics is about who you would prefer to go for a pint with.
Certainly seems to work in US politics:
Biden vs Trump Trump vs Clinton H Obama vs Romney Obama vs McCain (the closest, perhaps) Bush GW vs Kerry Bush GW vs Gore Clinton W vs Dole Clinton W vs Bush GWH Bush GWH vs Dukakis (seemingly the exception, but really won for 'the Gipper') Reagan vs Mondale Reagan vs Carter Carter vs Ford
I'll profer my theory again that politics is about who you would prefer to go for a pint with.
Certainly seems to work in US politics:
Biden vs Trump Trump vs Clinton H Obama vs Romney Obama vs McCain (the closest, perhaps) Bush GW vs Kerry Bush GW vs Gore Clinton W vs Dole Clinton W vs Bush GWH Bush GWH vs Dukakis (seemingly the exception, but really won for 'the Gipper') Reagan vs Mondale Reagan vs Carter Carter vs Ford
Trump was more charismatic than Biden however, Dukakis was also pretty dull in 1988
Boris Johnson is a libertarian.....er.....who.......um......does not want to lock you down.......uh.......for a minute longer than.....aahmm.......necessary.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
I think that's a terrible idea.
One person, one vote. If that means England can get its way then so be it, England is over 80% of the union and that's democracy.
If the other nations don't want England to be able to act unilaterally, then they need to be independent of England. Its perfectly viable.
Let's not pretend you don't have a vested interest here. You want English independence so will poo poo any other suggestion to the contrary.
Federalism requires compromise if the Union is to be preserved. You may not want the Union to be preserved but plenty of people do.
That works with good faith partners. The SNP are not good faith partners. They want an end to the union.
Its like teaming up with someone who says 'I want to ditch you and will do everything I can to ditch you, and whilst we're together i'm going to keep slagging you off', that's not the basis for a lasting relationship.
Aye, poor, old good faith partners BJ and the Tory party being let down by other folk..
I'm talking about a fundamental basis of support for the union continuing. The truth isn't as clear-cut as that true, but the point remains.
For the last 20+ years part of the fundamental basis of of support for the union continuing is HMG accepting and supporting devolution. BJ & co have changed that, and as ye sow so shall ye reap.
A push for independence is not devolution it's separatism. It's the SNP which aren't interested in devolution as the endgame.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
Well yeah, that's federalism.
Which works when the numbers of federal states are high enough so not one can dominate. In the UK we would, have 5 states, and one which is 10 times as big as the closest other.
What country works on that basis?
What is the alternative if you want to keep the Union?
Now? It's probably too late. The SNP have leveraged nationalism to the point where there isn't a counter balance against it. I'm not saying they are wrong, it's just the forces which are there.
Devomax might be the only way, but then you have issue of the hollowed out UK Parliament. It would be independence to all intents and purposes but without the name.
Largely the situation now in Canada, where Quebec effectively has devomax
Scotland already has a better deal than Quebec. At least it can field its own sports team at our three major sports, unlike Quebec, which is represented under Canada. Sports representation is a major source of national pride – even Hong Kong has its national own sports teams, unlike Quebec.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
@kinabalu Do you really think the current Government has rock bottom standards - they literally could not get any worse?
In the past we have seen child abuse by for example Cyril Smith. We have seen financial misappropriation like cash for questions or cash for honours. We have seen government critics die in mysterious circumstances or David Kelly, and we have seen outright fraud including jail time for some parliamentarians over expenses.
Is there are logical reason to think we have now reached some sort of nadir where all these are superceded. Or do you just not like Boris Johnson?
The symbols are everywhere, I'm afraid. I don't remember any other Prime Minister of recent times proudly making his own brother a Lord, for instance. There's a quality that's not just present but even shameless, not solely nudge-and-wink but even rub-it-in-your-face proud.
Trump is the most obvious reference point for this ironic and shameless approach, rather than any previous modern British Prime Ministers - even if Johnson has moved further away from Trumpism since Cummings's departure.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
Well yeah, that's federalism.
No its not. Federal structures rely upon states balancing each other out, but the UK isn't federal and has no balance. Its like creating a table where one leg of the table is 10x taller than any of the others legs are then wondering why its unbalanced.
Can you name any federal nation anywhere in the world where one state of the federation makes up anything like over 80% of the populace?
Ontario has nearly 40% of Canada's population.
Besides it doesn't matter. Since when did Britain copy other people's setups? We do our own thing based on what may work for us.
There's a world of difference between one state having nearly 40% of the overall population - and one state having over 80% of the overall population.
Its entirely possible for other provinces to outvote Ontario, its far harder to do so with England.
Anyway disenfranchising 80% of the country like you propose doesn't "work for us".
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
Boris has yet to prove himself against an opponent who is not electoral poison - like Livingstone ans Corbyn
Is what people who say he is a "winner" forget. I canvassed for him for mayor, god help me, and in many neighbourhoods the conversation went: "Ken Livingstone". Same for the Corbyn GE.
Ken Livingstone managed to win in the first place even without the advantage of a party machine behind him. He clearly didn't start out as electoral poison.
Perhaps Johnson's electoral strength is such that he makes his opponents look like complete no-hopers?
Yep. Boris Johnson is more asset than liability. I think people are kidding themselves if they believe he keeps passing electoral tests only (or even mainly) because of poor opposition. I want Labour to win enough seats at the next election to put Starmer into number 10 and I'll feel more hopeful of that against any opponent bar Johnson. Unfortunately (although not for my betting) I see little chance of a change of Con leader before the GE.
I don't know.
When the fall comes it will be swift and brutal. Whether that comes before the next GE is open for debate. In some respects Johnson having to carry the can for the economic aftermath of his Covid spending, both reasonable and profligate might be poetic justice. I am now expecting a spending led economic boom, before everyone runs out of borrowed money, and the inevitable bust.
I agree on the economy. He'll have no interest in 'sound money', none at all.
And I suppose he could crash and burn this side of the GE but I don't see it myself. You can still get 1.3 on him being PM beyond 30 June 2022 which strikes me as excellent value. I'm long of that at 1.9 from a while ago and I'm not even remotely tempted to close it out.
But here's hoping. I have quite a few bets on atm that I'd be happy to lose and that one is top of the list.
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
Well yeah, that's federalism.
No its not. Federal structures rely upon states balancing each other out, but the UK isn't federal and has no balance. Its like creating a table where one leg of the table is 10x taller than any of the others legs are then wondering why its unbalanced.
Can you name any federal nation anywhere in the world where one state of the federation makes up anything like over 80% of the populace?
Ontario has nearly 40% of Canada's population.
Besides it doesn't matter. Since when did Britain copy other people's setups? We do our own thing based on what may work for us.
There's a world of difference between one state having nearly 40% of the overall population - and one state having over 80% of the overall population.
Its entirely possible for other provinces to outvote Ontario, its far harder to do so with England.
Anyway disenfranchising 80% of the country like you propose doesn't "work for us".
You call it disenfranchising. I however, also as an Englishman, view it as a sensible compromise to preserve the Union.
I don't feel my life or voice will be diminished by such a setup, especially as 99% of policy that effects my everyday life will be determined by the English Parliament in which Scotland or Wales will have no say.
Boris Johnson is a libertarian.....er.....who.......um......does not want to lock you down.......uh.......for a minute longer than.....aahmm.......necessary.
That's right which is why what he said was entirely correct.
The fall in cases happened primarily due to lockdown not just vaccines. As we're coming out of lockdown cases may increase again, we need to live with that - and its all the more important now that you get the vaccine as going forwards there won't be a lockdown to keep you safe so you need to be vaccinated instead.
Was going to go to the village pub for a lunch but it's fully booked.
Glad to hear that they're busy! Hope you can get a booking soon though. My hairdresser said the same, she's booked up for the next 3 weeks, not a single appointment available and she's raised her prices. I had to get my next appointment booked in yesterday to ensure I'd have a timely haircut!
Thanks, sure I'll be in a pub garden soon enough
It must be a big relief for the pub to have custom again
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
@kinabalu Do you really think the current Government has rock bottom standards - they literally could not get any worse?
In the past we have seen child abuse by for example Cyril Smith. We have seen financial misappropriation like cash for questions or cash for honours. We have seen government critics die in mysterious circumstances or David Kelly, and we have seen outright fraud including jail time for some parliamentarians over expenses.
Is there are logical reason to think we have now reached some sort of nadir where all these are superceded. Or do you just not like Boris Johnson?
I have a twisted sense of humour - it was entertaining to hear in the early stages of the revolutions of the Rotherham scandal, certain people get upset at the wrong kind of conspiracy being revealed....
Boris reserves the right to lock you down again....
He's actually saying the reverse of that - that as unlocking proceeds, cases will increase and quite possibly hospitalisations and deaths.
He should just keep his gob shut. When the media start screaming about cases rising, then he can explain why it’s happening and that the government are monitoring the situation closely, but hospitalisations is the key measure to keep an eye on.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
My point put rather more baldly!
I can tbf see the appeal of some facets of the Boris Brand. The positivity. The light touch. The vivid language. Not everything about it is toxic. But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously. And sadly this comes with the product because it's integral to it.
You can't go to the store and say, "I'll have a Boris but one WITH a moral compass and sense of public service please."
That's not on the shelves.
The trickier question is whether such a thing can exist.
If you take the last couple of winning PMs, Blair and Cameron, they both started projecting that sunny optimism. 1992 Major had a lovely smile. But the sunshine gradually faded as reality hit, compromises were made with reality and the effect of getting things wrong hit home.
The Boris difference is to just ignore all that, so that the sunshine continues. My working assumption thus far has been that nobody can be that hollow indefinitely. And that the fall of Boris will be a sudden shattering rather than an accumulation of dents and scratches. Maybe ten years time, maybe ten minutes.
But maybe Boris has hit on disconnecting his moral compass as a winning formula. There's a hideous logic there, and he's not unique in doing it.
Yes, great point, depressing point. If you are sufficiently flamboyant in your disregard for "norms", you can maybe pull of that trick whereby people judge you differently. They don't have the same expectations of you as they do of others. You get a pass. Trump did this. It's a terrible thing and it's why despite being a very firm leftie, I find this aspect of politics - culture and standards - more important than policy. Policy is the easy bit.
It's one reason I can't get too worked up about the whole 'why do we call him Boris thing'. It is an advantage now, for sure, but come the point he finally Ratners himself, he'll be more Ratnered as Boris than he will as Johnson.
He's making the point that cases will inevitably rise as we unlock but that we have to accept it and carry on - isn't that exactly what you've been saying?
Boris Johnson has warned that coronavirus infections will rise as lockdown eases, but said there is no reason to change the proposed roadmap to end restrictions.
"People, I don't think, appreciate that it's the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement," Mr Johnson said. "Of course the vaccination programme has helped, but the bulk of work in reducing disease has been done by the lockdown.
"So, as we unlock, the result will inevitably be that we will see more infection, sadly we will see more hospitalisation and deaths. People have just got to understand that."
Boris reserves the right to lock you down again....
He's actually saying the reverse of that - that as unlocking proceeds, cases will increase and quite possibly hospitalisations and deaths.
He should just keep his gob shut. When the media start screaming about cases rising, then he can explain why it’s happening and that the government are monitoring the situation closely, but hospitalisations is the key measure to keep an eye on.
But if you listen to what he said, he's quite right. He's saying that cases will rise and we need to live with that.
He's been saying it for months now. Whitty and Vallance have been saying it for months now. They'll keep saying it. When it happens they can repeat it and say "we did tell you this would happen" and others will say "calm down, we knew this would happen" whereas having prioritised cases and R last year if they just 'shut up' now then the expected eventual rise in cases would be much more alarming.
Was going to go to the village pub for a lunch but it's fully booked.
Glad to hear that they're busy! Hope you can get a booking soon though. My hairdresser said the same, she's booked up for the next 3 weeks, not a single appointment available and she's raised her prices. I had to get my next appointment booked in yesterday to ensure I'd have a timely haircut!
Thanks, sure I'll be in a pub garden soon enough
It must be a big relief for the pub to have custom again
My dad drove round our area and all the pubs are still shut. But there’s one a bit further away that is open.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
My point put rather more baldly!
I can tbf see the appeal of some facets of the Boris Brand. The positivity. The light touch. The vivid language. Not everything about it is toxic. But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously. And sadly this comes with the product because it's integral to it.
You can't go to the store and say, "I'll have a Boris but one WITH a moral compass and sense of public service please."
That's not on the shelves.
But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously.
But what if a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously?
Lo, the insidiousness of the Boris Brand. What it does to otherwise perfectly respectable people is a terrible thing to behold.
Boris Johnson is a libertarian.....er.....who.......um......does not want to lock you down.......uh.......for a minute longer than.....aahmm.......necessary.
That's right which is why what he said was entirely correct.
The fall in cases happened primarily due to lockdown not just vaccines. As we're coming out of lockdown cases may increase again, we need to live with that - and its all the more important now that you get the vaccine as going forwards there won't be a lockdown to keep you safe so you need to be vaccinated instead.
If you look at the case, admissions and other data across the age ranges, it is pretty clear that lockdown has resulted in a massive fall in cases.
What the vaccinations have done is accelerate that fall, and massively reduce deaths by cutting deaths and hospitalisations in the protected groups.
I full expect to see an uptick/slowing of the fall in cases etc in all groups as a result of the unlocking - we should see less for the protected groups, but they aren't 100% protected.
When the school open again, that will add to the uptick.
I'll profer my theory again that politics is about who you would prefer to go for a pint with.
Certainly seems to work in US politics:
Biden vs Trump Trump vs Clinton H Obama vs Romney Obama vs McCain (the closest, perhaps) Bush GW vs Kerry Bush GW vs Gore Clinton W vs Dole Clinton W vs Bush GWH Bush GWH vs Dukakis (seemingly the exception, but really won for 'the Gipper') Reagan vs Mondale Reagan vs Carter Carter vs Ford
Trump was more charismatic than Biden however, Dukakis was also pretty dull in 1988
The post was about who you'd rather have beer with, not who is more charismatic.
He's making the point that cases will inevitably rise as we unlock but that we have to accept it and carry on - isn't that exactly what you've been saying?
Boris Johnson has warned that coronavirus infections will rise as lockdown eases, but said there is no reason to change the proposed roadmap to end restrictions.
"People, I don't think, appreciate that it's the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement," Mr Johnson said. "Of course the vaccination programme has helped, but the bulk of work in reducing disease has been done by the lockdown.
"So, as we unlock, the result will inevitably be that we will see more infection, sadly we will see more hospitalisation and deaths. People have just got to understand that."
In terms of legacy — it took a good 10-20 years before the true consequences of Devolution have only started to become clear.
We will have to wait the same time period before the true consequences of Brexit start to become clear.
Labour introduced the Minimum Wage but it was the Conservatives who ran with it with the "National Living Wage" etc. Perhaps in 10 years it will be Labour pushing "Brexit" to a new level.
There's so many unknowns.
Blame the consequences of devolution on the Blair years if you want. Devolution worked reasonably well (NI excepted for traditional reasons) until Johnson came in with his boots on.
Oh cut the crap.
It worked so well that Scotland has had a dominant nationalist majority in Holyrood since long before Johnson came in.
Asymmetric devolution has made a pigs breakfast of the union for years now. There is no solution to the WLQ, Holyrood has power but no responsibility so can just blame Westminster for everything bad, there's no English devolution and so on and so forth. Its a mess and not one of Johnson's making - not one that anybody has a solution for because there is no solution.
No matter what you do England will forever be worth more than 80% of MPs because simply England outweighs all nations tremendously. Its not a stable situation for a federal structure.
The WLQ predates Holyrood by 20+ years.
There needs to be an English Parliament.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Agreed. Really the only thing which will save 'the union' will be devo max, and the removing of this tension.
but devomax doesn't work when one country will always overwhelm the other 3 as it has 80% of the population so will always end up with 80% of the vote.
I like @Luckyguy1983 's suggestion to give the proportional equivalent of one vote to each devolved nation and one vote to the "UK" parliament. That means that England only ever needs the support of one other home nation to railroad anything through, reflecting its relative size and importance.
Not sure if that's what you intended, but kind of implicit that the 'UK' Parliament would always support England..
Well the 'UK' Parliament would be on a 1 person 1 vote basis so would usually reflect England's wishes.
And so we have the WLQ. On a fundamental head count, England always gets it's way.
Brexit would have been like this:
England - Yes Wales - Yes UK - Yes Scotland - No Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
That's an utter dogs dinner, you could have a situation where a vast majority of people want a policy but blockers in the other home nations have comparatively a vast higher level of influence.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England 45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
Well yeah, that's federalism.
No its not. Federal structures rely upon states balancing each other out, but the UK isn't federal and has no balance. Its like creating a table where one leg of the table is 10x taller than any of the others legs are then wondering why its unbalanced.
Can you name any federal nation anywhere in the world where one state of the federation makes up anything like over 80% of the populace?
Ontario has nearly 40% of Canada's population.
Besides it doesn't matter. Since when did Britain copy other people's setups? We do our own thing based on what may work for us.
There's a world of difference between one state having nearly 40% of the overall population - and one state having over 80% of the overall population.
Its entirely possible for other provinces to outvote Ontario, its far harder to do so with England.
Anyway disenfranchising 80% of the country like you propose doesn't "work for us".
You call it disenfranchising. I however, also as an Englishman, view it as a sensible compromise to preserve the Union.
I don't feel my life or voice will be diminished by such a setup, especially as 99% of policy that effects my everyday life will be determined by the English Parliament in which Scotland or Wales will have no say.
It also should be noted that in my original suggestion (thanks for the mention @Gallowgate ), the 'Council of the Isles' would be a rubber stamping body, with initiatives coming from the UK Parliament or from the UK PM exercising his Royal prerogative powers. So the England can't really be 'railroaded' - it can be (if you look at it that way) restrained a bit.
Example:
UK PM wishes to invade France. He may or may not wish to have a HOC vote about it, which we assume he wins. The decision yes or no passes to the COTI UK votes yes England votes yes Scotland votes no NI votes no Wales votes no War does not pass. We do not invade France, we send them a strongly worded email instead.
If this happens, do you really foresee riots on the streets of Orpington because the tiny home nations frustrated the will of the English masses? I don't. I think most would be extremely relieved because they didn't want to invade France, and the UK parliament vote in favour was a whipped affair. In fact nobody wants to invade France because it's a shit idea, and the COTI has succeeded in saving the UK treasury a lot of money and thousands of peoples' lives.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
My point put rather more baldly!
I can tbf see the appeal of some facets of the Boris Brand. The positivity. The light touch. The vivid language. Not everything about it is toxic. But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously. And sadly this comes with the product because it's integral to it.
You can't go to the store and say, "I'll have a Boris but one WITH a moral compass and sense of public service please."
That's not on the shelves.
But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously.
But what if a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously?
Lo, the insidiousness of the Boris Brand. What it does to otherwise perfectly respectable people is a terrible thing to behold.
You are the ghost of the late Jerry Falwell, Sr. and I claim $5.
I am a big price horse bettor, like most people I am a long term loser. I normally bet 5 or 10 quid each way. I have a losing account with Ladbrokes. At the weekend I had a 28/1 winner and yesterday had a 20/1 winner, both £5e/w.. I can go weeks without a winner, I just had a bit of luck.
Last night I tried to place a bet on a unraced 2 year old in the 1.35 at Newmarket called Fourshadesofsilver at the advertised price of 33/1. My reasoning for backing it was that it has the same sire (Ardad, who is in his first season) as the 150/1 first time out 2 year old winner yesterday. Ladbrokes refused to take the bet.
What sort of Gambling Industry do we have in this Country when a company with a multi billion pound turnover like Ladbrokes can refuse to take a £5e/w bet on a race at Flat Racings HQ in Newmarket. It s an absolutely ridiculous situation
Welcome to the club.
I’m gubbed from well over 50 bookmakers.
Practical advice: try betfair or smarkets (or their app, “sbk”)
I just dont get their logic, it was £5 e/w. They will take tens of thousands on the race, what difference does my £5e/w make? If they didn't want to take a bet on the horse why advertise the price?
Im as far from a professional gambler as you can get, my account with Ladbrokes shows that, I just throw darts at big price horses which very occassionally win. .
I remember in 1986 when I was 18 walking into a Leisure Bookmakers in Southampton and having £200 for me and my brother on Dallas to win the Cambridgeshire at 10/1 ( I didn't pay the tax) This was half my monthly wage (My Dad had a tip for it) The cashier took the bet without even thinking about. The horse won and they paid out with a smile. I gave the money back over the next 6 months. What a world we live in now where a billion pound company can refuse a 5E/W bet on the advertised price of a horse.
If they wait long enough to find out that you didn't win those bets by luck, they'll have lost more money to you.
The stats tell them they make more profit by cutting off people who make winning bets. It's a farce, yes, but they don't exist to provide you with a service. They exist to make a profit from people who make losing bets. It's why they loved FOBTs so much.
Perhaps there should be a change in the law, and advertising odds should oblige a bookmaker to accept a bet up to a certain stake at those odds - but until the law is changed they will certainly act to maximise their profits.
I think that Devomax could work and would be preferable to breakup. The federal government would be responsible for central bank/currency, borrowing limits, foreign policy, defence, immigration and some federal infrastructure. Everything else including tax rates, social security, pensions, criminal justice and laws would be devolved. Preserving an internal free market would be federal but maybe with some veto mechanisms by the nations. There would have to be a written constitution and restructuring of parliament. I would favour Westminster commons sitting as both Federal and an English subset and a reduction in size. A really imaginative second chamber approach also needed. It could work.
Boris reserves the right to lock you down again....
He's actually saying the reverse of that - that as unlocking proceeds, cases will increase and quite possibly hospitalisations and deaths.
He should just keep his gob shut. When the media start screaming about cases rising, then he can explain why it’s happening and that the government are monitoring the situation closely, but hospitalisations is the key measure to keep an eye on.
But if you listen to what he said, he's quite right. He's saying that cases will rise and we need to live with that.
He's been saying it for months now. Whitty and Vallance have been saying it for months now. They'll keep saying it. When it happens they can repeat it and say "we did tell you this would happen" and others will say "calm down, we knew this would happen" whereas having prioritised cases and R last year if they just 'shut up' now then the expected eventual rise in cases would be much more alarming.
He said that people need to understand that the fall in COVID cases has not been achieved by the vaccines.
Now, had he added “alone” to the end of his sentence then that would have been better, though I’d rather he didn’t say things that could be misconstrued when we still need to encourage vaccinations.
But he didn’t. All I’m hearing is the PM suggesting that the vaccines aren’t helping stop the spread of the virus.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
My point put rather more baldly!
I can tbf see the appeal of some facets of the Boris Brand. The positivity. The light touch. The vivid language. Not everything about it is toxic. But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously. And sadly this comes with the product because it's integral to it.
You can't go to the store and say, "I'll have a Boris but one WITH a moral compass and sense of public service please."
That's not on the shelves.
But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously.
But what if a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously?
Lo, the insidiousness of the Boris Brand. What it does to otherwise perfectly respectable people is a terrible thing to behold.
Very much as Trump got his supporters to enjoy the ironic and transgressive theatre, all a joke for ironic and worldly people on too-easily-offended liberals, until he was getting some of them to smash the windows of the Capitol.
it's impossible for this particular government to get a grip on this particular problem - rock bottom standards in public life - because it is led by an individual whose (very powerful) political brand is built upon encouraging the perception that such matters are "dull" and even a teeny bit "party pooping". So long as the public keep buying into the brand, keep rewarding its owner with their votes, there is no chance whatsoever of any progress on this. It will have to wait until there's a change at the top. Not any old change either. A big change.
BoZo's brand is built on cheating and lies.
The public are apparently fully supportive of that.
My point put rather more baldly!
I can tbf see the appeal of some facets of the Boris Brand. The positivity. The light touch. The vivid language. Not everything about it is toxic. But what is toxic - very - is the idea that a moral compass and a sense of public service is for po-faced dullards who take themselves and life too seriously. And sadly this comes with the product because it's integral to it.
You can't go to the store and say, "I'll have a Boris but one WITH a moral compass and sense of public service please."
That's not on the shelves.
Well it is though.
"A sense of public service" is typically used as a "redeeming" feature for the absolutely shit Prime Ministers we have had: Theresa May, Gordon Brown
The better Prime Ministers we've had - Boris himself, Dave, Blair - had a void where a moral compass and a sense of public service was meant to be, but they were far, far better Prime Ministers.
No appetite for a debate on "best PMs" but I do find it depressing if you've concluded that moral seriousness and a strong sense of public service is not only surplus to requirements but is actually something to be avoided. As it happens I believe you do genuinely feel this way - which illustrates very well the point I'm making. But I'd ask you to think seriously about it and if possible - with no pressure from me to admit it - realize that you are part of the problem.
I'm happy with sticking with saying that politicians who bang on about "morals", "moral majority", "moral seriousness" etc are the problem.
As for "public service" it blinds people into dogmatically thinking that what they're doing is right, because its part of the "service".
Keep your morals to yourself. Keep your public service to yourself. Politics should be about us making choices depending upon our own morals thank you. Politics should be about the public choosing what kind of service we want.
Not banging on about honesty and integrity. Just demonstrating some. It's important and ought to be a low bar.
Demand a little more, Philip. Politics is not like running a supermarket.
Comments
Creating Holyrood without an answer to the WLQ signed the death warrant for the union. Since then the union was doomed, just it took some people a while to realise why. Some are still in denial.
Now the nationalists are in Scotland, have been for 14 years and aren't going anywhere - and they exploit the structural flaw in the union for all they've got. Unless someone magically answers the question that's had no answer for fifty years, the nationalists will keep exploiting the fatal flaw until they inevitably win once.
As for "I've no idea whether the Mirror story is correct or not" - you wanted to believe it such that you were prepared to call MM "despicable" on the back of it.
All four Parliaments then need to raise most of their own money.
Not impossible that they might try blockading the island, though.
Having set himself against an opponent who is not electoral poison in Scotland and already been found seriously wanting, BJ has come up with the wizard wheeze of blocking the biggest electoral test going displaying the principle-free, self protecting cunning that is his signature. Will he get away with it...?
https://twitter.com/thetimesscot/status/1381856059615293441?s=20
HYFUD has denied that this would be the case in the past but realistically if most of the UK Prime Minister's day to day responsibilities were delegated to an English First Minister and most of the UK Parliament's money raising powers was delegated to an English Parliament, the UK PM and 'Westminster' would almost certainly be diminished.
It would be arguably the most fundamental change to our constitution since the Act of Union itself.
As for "public service" it blinds people into dogmatically thinking that what they're doing is right, because its part of the "service".
Keep your morals to yourself. Keep your public service to yourself. Politics should be about us making choices depending upon our own morals thank you. Politics should be about the public choosing what kind of service we want.
I think that in every election since 1992 the person who would do better in that social situation is perceived as a winner. I used perceived because this explains 2017 when I wouldn't really want to have a pint with May or Corbyn, but on balance Corbyn might have some tales of fun from the seventies, or some good allotment gags, whereas May was like a computer that needed rebooting.
I honestly believe this is a reflection of post modernism, where actual competence or what people have said does not count, and is replaced with how we feel about something or somebody. This is also driving the move to the extremes of politicians being much more polarised.
Starmer therefore needs somehow to become someone I would like to have a pint with. Anecdotes, gags, strong beliefs but willing to listen to other opinions. If Starmer spent more time in a pub he would be better off!!
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
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5m
Peopler saying "Boris is right about lockdown". It doesn't matter. The vital thing is vaccination uptake. This message cuts directly across that. And so soon after the AZ announcement. It's nuts.
15
1
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(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
·
19m
This line from Boris is batshit.
Quote Tweet
John Stevens
@johnestevens
· 38m
PM: "The reduction in hospitalisations, deaths and infections has not been achieved by the vaccination programme.
"It's the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement in the pandemic"
One person, one vote. If that means England can get its way then so be it, England is over 80% of the union and that's democracy.
If the other nations don't want England to be able to act unilaterally, then they need to be independent of England. Its perfectly viable.
Then the issue is why have a union at all?
Bolshiest people I've ever encountered.
And I mean that in a very nice way.
Federalism requires compromise if the Union is to be preserved. You may not want the Union to be preserved but plenty of people do.
At least BJ is a shit clothes black hole.
Im as far from a professional gambler as you can get, my account with Ladbrokes shows that, I just throw darts at big price horses which very occassionally win. .
I remember in 1986 when I was 18 walking into a Leisure Bookmakers in Southampton and having £200 for me and my brother on Dallas to win the Cambridgeshire at 10/1 ( I didn't pay the tax) This was half my monthly wage (My Dad had a tip for it) The cashier took the bet without even thinking about. The horse won and they paid out with a smile. I gave the money back over the next 6 months. What a world we live in now where a billion pound company can refuse a 5E/W bet on the advertised price of a horse.
a) "few, if any, pubs will open on 12 April" and
b) people will be hesitant to go out even when lockdown eases...
Hmm. How are those predictions working out?
Saying that even if 80% of the UK votes for something, it still can't happen, is not remotely democratic. That is no way to run a country.
Its like teaming up with someone who says 'I want to ditch you and will do everything I can to ditch you, and whilst we're together i'm going to keep slagging you off', that's not the basis for a lasting relationship.
EDIT: I think I mangled my words. I believe the UK parliament would be similar to the existing Commons, but obviously smaller, but with another federal council with the vote of each devolved nation and the 'UK parliament'.
England - Yes
Wales - Yes
UK - Yes
Scotland - No
Northern Ireland - No
Brexit goes through constitutionally. If Wales had also voted against, it would not have passed, despite England.
It is what has changed post-devolution that makes me want Scottish independence as the best thing for Scotland and the best thing for England.
This is what ardent unionists get wrong when they talk about "over 300 years of history". Quite frankly the nearly 300 years of history pre-devolution have effectively been nullified. The current format of the Union is not three centuries old, it is not even a quarter of a century old, and it is structurally flawed and unsustainable.
Since there is no valid fix, since reversing devolution isn't an option, that only leaves one solution . . .
In the past we have seen child abuse by for example Cyril Smith. We have seen financial misappropriation like cash for questions or cash for honours. We have seen government critics die in mysterious circumstances or David Kelly, and we have seen outright fraud including jail time for some parliamentarians over expenses.
Is there are logical reason to think we have now reached some sort of nadir where all these are superceded. Or do you just not like Boris Johnson?
With labour pretending to 'study the detail' before agreeing completely.
Say on a vote we have:
80/20 England
45/55 Other countries.
I won't do the maths, but on that basis the vote would fail even if maybe 60-70% of overall votes were for it.
In fact, in a campaign, you wouldn't put any resources for 'no' into England, just go for the others, as the vote in England doesn't matter anymore.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-lockdown-is-main-reason-for-drop-in-coronavirus-cases-and-deaths-not-vaccinations-says-boris-johnson-12274266
In any case once the referendum passed, it would be up to the "UK Parliament", to handle the foreign policy provisions i.e. the Brexit "deal". Our entire legislative framework would be different in such a scenario anyway, and so would voting intention.
There's admittedly lots of holes and complexity in this vague idea, as with any vague idea, but I'm not the one writing the rules, merely proposing a possible framework of a solution that preserves the Union.
In the locals, where less is at stake, I wonder if we will see support leaking away from both the main parties and towards greens, yellows, Plaid, Reform and other independents.
I also wonder whether turnout for the big two will be low.
Is your scheme only for referenda? Because if so Parliament will just act via Parliament and not have any more referenda. That's not a fix.
What country works on that basis?
I'm sure PBers nationwide will pass on their sympathies.
A truly moronic intervention.
It’s the one things he’s genuinely world class at.
What he actually said is not wholly unreasonable, given that had we been trying to do vaccinations in a raging pandemic it would rapidly have spiralled out of control before the vaccines took effect. It was the lockdown that brought infections back under control. It’s vaccinations that will keep them under control, but unlocking will, as he rightly says, see a rise in cases. Due to the high vaccine take up in vulnerable groups, it shouldn’t see a major rise in deaths. But it’s very clumsy phrasing and therefore foolish.
Marking beckons. Have a good afternoon.
Can you name any federal nation anywhere in the world where one state of the federation makes up anything like over 80% of the populace?
Besides it doesn't matter. Since when did Britain copy other people's setups? We do our own thing based on what may work for us.
Devomax might be the only way, but then you have issue of the hollowed out UK Parliament. It would be independence to all intents and purposes but without the name.
Biden vs Trump
Trump vs Clinton H
Obama vs Romney
Obama vs McCain (the closest, perhaps)
Bush GW vs Kerry
Bush GW vs Gore
Clinton W vs Dole
Clinton W vs Bush GWH
Bush GWH vs Dukakis (seemingly the exception, but really won for 'the Gipper')
Reagan vs Mondale
Reagan vs Carter
Carter vs Ford
Trump is the most obvious reference point for this ironic and shameless approach, rather than any previous modern British Prime Ministers - even if Johnson has moved further away from Trumpism since Cummings's departure.
US regulators recommend a pause in Johnson and Johnson vaccine due to blood clots
Is that not the vaccine the EU were depending on
Its entirely possible for other provinces to outvote Ontario, its far harder to do so with England.
Anyway disenfranchising 80% of the country like you propose doesn't "work for us".
And I suppose he could crash and burn this side of the GE but I don't see it myself. You can still get 1.3 on him being PM beyond 30 June 2022 which strikes me as excellent value. I'm long of that at 1.9 from a while ago and I'm not even remotely tempted to close it out.
But here's hoping. I have quite a few bets on atm that I'd be happy to lose and that one is top of the list.
I don't feel my life or voice will be diminished by such a setup, especially as 99% of policy that effects my everyday life will be determined by the English Parliament in which Scotland or Wales will have no say.
The fall in cases happened primarily due to lockdown not just vaccines. As we're coming out of lockdown cases may increase again, we need to live with that - and its all the more important now that you get the vaccine as going forwards there won't be a lockdown to keep you safe so you need to be vaccinated instead.
It must be a big relief for the pub to have custom again
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-lockdown-pubs-restaurants-shops-cases-deaths/
Boris Johnson has warned that coronavirus infections will rise as lockdown eases, but said there is no reason to change the proposed roadmap to end restrictions.
"People, I don't think, appreciate that it's the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement," Mr Johnson said. "Of course the vaccination programme has helped, but the bulk of work in reducing disease has been done by the lockdown.
"So, as we unlock, the result will inevitably be that we will see more infection, sadly we will see more hospitalisation and deaths. People have just got to understand that."
He's been saying it for months now. Whitty and Vallance have been saying it for months now. They'll keep saying it. When it happens they can repeat it and say "we did tell you this would happen" and others will say "calm down, we knew this would happen" whereas having prioritised cases and R last year if they just 'shut up' now then the expected eventual rise in cases would be much more alarming.
What the vaccinations have done is accelerate that fall, and massively reduce deaths by cutting deaths and hospitalisations in the protected groups.
I full expect to see an uptick/slowing of the fall in cases etc in all groups as a result of the unlocking - we should see less for the protected groups, but they aren't 100% protected.
When the school open again, that will add to the uptick.
If we eliminate every medicine that has a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of severe side effects or death we will soon have no medicine at all.
Anyone want to bet that it
- goes up
- stays the same
- goes down
from this point on.
Example:
UK PM wishes to invade France. He may or may not wish to have a HOC vote about it, which we assume he wins.
The decision yes or no passes to the COTI
UK votes yes
England votes yes
Scotland votes no
NI votes no
Wales votes no
War does not pass. We do not invade France, we send them a strongly worded email instead.
If this happens, do you really foresee riots on the streets of Orpington because the tiny home nations frustrated the will of the English masses? I don't. I think most would be extremely relieved because they didn't want to invade France, and the UK parliament vote in favour was a whipped affair. In fact nobody wants to invade France because it's a shit idea, and the COTI has succeeded in saving the UK treasury a lot of money and thousands of peoples' lives.
When anyone in politics starts talking about morals it is time to pack your bags and run screaming away from them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority
The stats tell them they make more profit by cutting off people who make winning bets. It's a farce, yes, but they don't exist to provide you with a service. They exist to make a profit from people who make losing bets. It's why they loved FOBTs so much.
Perhaps there should be a change in the law, and advertising odds should oblige a bookmaker to accept a bet up to a certain stake at those odds - but until the law is changed they will certainly act to maximise their profits.
Now, had he added “alone” to the end of his sentence then that would have been better, though I’d rather he didn’t say things that could be misconstrued when we still need to encourage vaccinations.
But he didn’t. All I’m hearing is the PM suggesting that the vaccines aren’t helping stop the spread of the virus.
Demand a little more, Philip. Politics is not like running a supermarket.