Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
I'm still laying England, although I now think there's a good chance I'll lose.
I think at around 6/4 the England price is about right. Surprising given the hype as I would lay them at evens at this stage and expected the price to be a bit lower than 6/4 . Away from betting I dont realy want an England win , football dominates the sporting landscape too much anyway and the awards and platitudes for basically kicking a ball into a net (or heading it as England are genuinely good at!) will be far over the top compared to what really matters in life or indeed even in sport. Casino Royale is right that the knee thing will rise again (if they do win)as a divisive issue.
I'd endorse Dr Foxy's comments about football and father-son bonding. Younger Son wanted to go and watch Southend (yes, really!) when he was about 9, but we lived 10 miles away. So I took him and that ended up with a couple of season tickets for two or three years until he got to secondary school and could go on his own. Now, when he's around or we're with him, we still go to matches, although no longer Southend. Never had quite the same 'both do' with Elder Son.
The worst thing my Dad ever did to me was make me a Spurs fan. It's been the biggest source of misery in my life. And now I have done it to my own kids and the first grandson.
Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.
Even if they did get an indictment against Trump Organisation on these charges, I'm not sure Americans will get too worked up over the news that someone got a free car and someone else was not taxed on a golfing holiday. Obviously, prosecutors will be hoping more comes out in the wash.
Sajid Javid's arrival seems to have coincided with a policy shift. It makes me think that Matt Hancock and his coterie of white coats held huge sway over Gov't policy. Javid and Sunak appear now to have shifted the weight towards 'learning to live with it' which is, frankly, brilliant news. The link between cases and deaths has been broken by the vaccines and we need to roll up our sleeves and get on with life. Banish fear. Live.
It does also show how incredibly weak Boris Johnson is. He gets pushed and pulled around, almost certainly in large part because he's lazy and doesn't have a grasp of the facts. I don't think he's as bright as he seems to think he is.
I've wondered if the opposite is true. If Boris had had enough of Hancock's loony lockdownism, but didn't want to have open war with the zero covidians by sacking him to change policy, what could be better than pushing him out over a scandal, and installing a less insane health secretary. It wouldn't shock me if Boris's people were behind that video ending up in the public domain, to give Boris some cover to bin him.
Boris could have fired him on the Friday - the fact he didn't destroys your argument
Mr. Observer, equating support for the BLM gesture (even if they claim it's nothing to do with BLM despite being the exact same thing they were doing in the name of BLM...) with remembrance of those who perished in war is ridiculous.
Even if they did get an indictment against Trump Organisation on these charges, I'm not sure Americans will get too worked up over the news that someone got a free car and someone else was not taxed on a golfing holiday. Obviously, prosecutors will be hoping more comes out in the wash.
As noted on an earlier thread, the key indictment is falsifying records.
If that is proven (or admitted), all the loans shoring up the Trump Empire are in doubt.
Sajid Javid's arrival seems to have coincided with a policy shift. It makes me think that Matt Hancock and his coterie of white coats held huge sway over Gov't policy. Javid and Sunak appear now to have shifted the weight towards 'learning to live with it' which is, frankly, brilliant news. The link between cases and deaths has been broken by the vaccines and we need to roll up our sleeves and get on with life. Banish fear. Live.
It does also show how incredibly weak Boris Johnson is. He gets pushed and pulled around, almost certainly in large part because he's lazy and doesn't have a grasp of the facts. I don't think he's as bright as he seems to think he is.
I've wondered if the opposite is true. If Boris had had enough of Hancock's loony lockdownism, but didn't want to have open war with the zero covidians by sacking him to change policy, what could be better than pushing him out over a scandal, and installing a less insane health secretary. It wouldn't shock me if Boris's people were behind that video ending up in the public domain, to give Boris some cover to bin him.
That would still show him as weak as hed chosen to rely on nefarious methods to achieve a result available far more simply, to avoid a confrontation.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
If you'd spent more time on here (rather than Twitter, where you now reside) you'll know I repeatedly said I don't approve of booing.
I look forward to you withdrawing your remark.
Happy to withdraw. Johnson and Patel should have said the same. But they didn't because they thought there may be political opportunities.
Thank you. Appreciated.
I don't agree on Johnson and Patel. I think it's only with political leadership that certain divisive Woke troupes can be challenged, and I think they're playing a representative role there.
I am slightly less impressed with Patel as she said whether to boo was "up to the fans" well after the tournament started, which I didn't think was quite cricket.
Took my other son to football matches. Same response. Bored out of his mind. Which, frankly, I can understand when watching England. For all the talk of the goals it was a boring game yesterday, especially in the first half. England are a very tedious side to watch. In contrast to the crazy Italians.
Cricket on the other hand, now there's a magnificent game. One of the best days out ever was with my older son at the 2005 Ashes. We were there in the Hollies Stand at Edgbaston on Day Three. What a day.
Mr. Observer, equating support for the BLM gesture (even if they claim it's nothing to do with BLM despite being the exact same thing they were doing in the name of BLM...) with remembrance of those who perished in war is ridiculous.
What is ridiculous is allowing an extremist organisation to take ownership of a gesture that was specifically and solely conceived as a means to express opposition to racism.
Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is: "Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businesses
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?
It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.
I see not liking Clarkson is a sign of people’s ghastly, woke proclivities. Thankfully his fanbois’ political allegiances remain totes unpredictable.
Personally it’s his 'haw haw, I'm a mechanical Luddite me!' attitude that irks me, it’s like learning Kenneth Clark produced this sort of thing in his spare time:
FPT - I tried to recommend Clarkson's Farm to a couple we were renting our self-catering place from last week in Devon. They'd moved down from Oxfordshire 5 years ago. She was an ex primary school teacher and he an ex estate agent.
As soon as I got the word "Clarkson" out of my mouth she said 'oh' and looked uncomfortably at the ground, and he grunted and said he was a 'wanker'. That told me so much about them and their politics.
His name is still a swear word amongst bien-pensant Guardianista circles, and they really struggle to get past it.
Didn’t Clarkson vote Remain? Don’t think he’s a fan of Brexit. I’m a Guardian-reading Remainer. Been watching Top Gear since the William Woollard days, I think Jezza is a sound bloke beneath the irascible Gammony character he’s constructed for himself. Not a fan of the farming thing though, watched the first one the other week not been tempted back.
Edit: Not that you mention Brexit, but the picture you painted conjures up a mental image of bitter Remainers!
He did tell me he voted Remain! I didn't raise it - my father did (who goes straight in there with the big stuff, rather embarrassingly) and that flushed it out, although he did say he hated the EU's bureaucracy as well.
I said to him to give it a try anyway as it shows a different side of Clarkson and the spotlight it shines onto the economics of farming is genuinely interesting.
FWIW, I think Jezza's politics are genuinely similar to Cameron/Osborne - he's a liberal establishment Tory.
I think you and @northern_monkey are right re Clarkson. I am a fan. I find him very entertaining. I also think it is an act exaggerating his obvious hatred of jobs worth and bureaucracy with which I have a lot in common, but contrary to popular belief (because of his act) I reckon he is an orange book liberal or liberal conservative. However I wouldn't dare say that to his face.
I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.
The best part of 20 years ago me and a couple of mates jumped the fence at Donington for the super bike race. It was when Rossi was dominant. When these bikes go past the noise is like God tearing a hole in the sky, they’re awesome machines.
Mr. Observer, an extremist organisation is a fair description.
Didn't footballers wear shirts with BLM written on it? And Sky (broadcaster of the football) openly support the movement?
It's dumb. Linked arms or some other gesture that isn't the exact same thing they were doing in the name of the statue-smashing imbeciles is a straightforward step.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
If you'd spent more time on here (rather than Twitter, where you now reside) you'll know I repeatedly said I don't approve of booing.
I look forward to you withdrawing your remark.
Happy to withdraw. Johnson and Patel should have said the same. But they didn't because they thought there may be political opportunities.
I see not liking Clarkson is a sign of people’s ghastly, woke proclivities. Thankfully his fanbois’ political allegiances remain totes unpredictable.
Personally it’s his 'haw haw, I'm a mechanical Luddite me!' attitude that irks me, it’s like learning Kenneth Clark produced this sort of thing in his spare time:
I think the thing most people like or admire (if not like) about Clarkson is the ability to think independently and not be afraid or peer pressured out of it to go against the prevailing mood music. Doesn't really matter about his actual views or politics just that he does have those views irrespective of what the zeitgeist is . Even more impressive for him as he has done this from a fairly liberal metro entrenched view of the world from within his old employer the BBC .
Its also why a lot of people admire (and find interesting) Galloway, Ken Livingstone , Thatcher , Farage , David Icke etc . Its why a lot of people dont admire most modern MPs who rely on focus groups and on message instructions (sam e in corporate world as well)
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
FPT - I tried to recommend Clarkson's Farm to a couple we were renting our self-catering place from last week in Devon. They'd moved down from Oxfordshire 5 years ago. She was an ex primary school teacher and he an ex estate agent.
As soon as I got the word "Clarkson" out of my mouth she said 'oh' and looked uncomfortably at the ground, and he grunted and said he was a 'wanker'. That told me so much about them and their politics.
His name is still a swear word amongst bien-pensant Guardianista circles, and they really struggle to get past it.
His a wanker though, only gammons like him.
Doesn't like 911s. Total arsehole and Pound Shop Harry Metcalfe. (From whom JC cribbed the farm idea.)
Yes. Harry knows his cars, talks with passion and knowledge, and the farm bit is interesting as well. Having had endless trailers of it played on Prime I gave Clarkson's Farm 15 minutes. It was unwatchable. Its painfully scripted and not funny.
Even if they did get an indictment against Trump Organisation on these charges, I'm not sure Americans will get too worked up over the news that someone got a free car and someone else was not taxed on a golfing holiday. Obviously, prosecutors will be hoping more comes out in the wash.
As noted on an earlier thread, the key indictment is falsifying records.
If that is proven (or admitted), all the loans shoring up the Trump Empire are in doubt.
With Trump I'm wary as I find him so odious a personality I find it impossible to understand him or the appeal he undoubtedly has with lots and lots of people.
Accordingly I'm wary of something that seems like it would so simply and quickly ruin him, if proven.
I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.
The best part of 20 years ago me and a couple of mates jumped the fence at Donington for the super bike race. It was when Rossi was dominant. When these bikes go past the noise is like God tearing a hole in the sky, they’re awesome machines.
My early memory is of standing on the bank at Woodcote corner at Silverstone, watching Senna’s red and white McLaren scream by producing sparks. We knew it was the Brazilian, because of the bright yellow helmet. 1988, I would have been ten.
Sadly, while today’s F1 power units are astonishing technical achievements, they lack the utterly visceral noise produced by engines of the past. The v12s of 2004 and 2005 were probably the peak.
I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.
The best part of 20 years ago me and a couple of mates jumped the fence at Donington for the super bike race. It was when Rossi was dominant. When these bikes go past the noise is like God tearing a hole in the sky, they’re awesome machines.
Rossi has always been GP rather than WSB hasn’t he? Both classes of bikes sound fantastic though.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
There a few posts coming up on my Facebook page referring to the fact that half the squad are of immigrant stock. All positive; reminding readers that we need immigrants in all sorts of walks of life.
I'm slightly worried because the flip-side of that argument is that these players are somehow not properly British. I hope we do not follow the American route of hyphenated nationalities, of Irish-English, Jamaican-English and so on.
How’s about we concentrate more on the content of people’s character, than the colour of their skin?
The current trend is very worrying. “Anti-racism” appears to be just racism, treating people differently according to how they look.
We should. But too many people don't. These peope who boo their own team for pointing out your racism when you boo and name call the immigrants - and then claim that you are the real victim. White privilege in an absolute nutshell.
Mr. Observer, an extremist organisation is a fair description.
Didn't footballers wear shirts with BLM written on it? And Sky (broadcaster of the football) openly support the movement?
It's dumb. Linked arms or some other gesture that isn't the exact same thing they were doing in the name of the statue-smashing imbeciles is a straightforward step.
I am happy to accept that the England players are telling the truth about why they take the knee. Maybe what they are doing is dumb. I don't think so, but it's entirely legitimate to disagree. The issue is the booing and the failure of Johnson, Patel and various other right wing populists now jumping on the England bandwagon to condemn it.
I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.
England vs Sri Lanka. 50 over game at Bristol, too!
Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.
Campaigning is a brilliant way to derisk the prosecutions. He'll be right in the middle of the run up to primaries or even later and it will be "the liberals are trying to prosecute me for being your President". Makes a straight forward matter of law hyper political and brings the GOP stooges in to try and gum up the works.
As the Donald confesses to his rallies he is guilty as charged. But why should that be the law anyway, lets get it changed.
Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is: "Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businesses
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?
It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.
I find it a strange policy. It's exactly the same Little England protectionism they accuse Leavers of. Or maybe Remainers are protectionist at heart, and if we can no longer participate in intra-EU protectionism, we'll have to have UK protectionism.
I see not liking Clarkson is a sign of people’s ghastly, woke proclivities. Thankfully his fanbois’ political allegiances remain totes unpredictable.
Personally it’s his 'haw haw, I'm a mechanical Luddite me!' attitude that irks me, it’s like learning Kenneth Clark produced this sort of thing in his spare time:
I think the thing most people like or admire (if not like) about Clarkson is the ability to think independently and not be afraid or peer pressured out of it to go against the prevailing mood music. Doesn't really matter about his actual views or politics just that he does have those views irrespective of what the zeitgeist is . Even more impressive for him as he has done this from a fairly liberal metro entrenched view of the world from within his old employer the BBC .
Its also why a lot of people admire (and find interesting) Galloway, Ken Livingstone , Thatcher , Farage , David Icke etc . Its why a lot of people dont admire most modern MPs who rely on focus groups and on message instructions (sam e in corporate world as well)
It's funny - I find Clarkson entirely predictable and, therefore, rather dull. You just know what he is going to say. Very rich TV presenter buys farm, makes TV programme about the struggle to make it work to help pay for it has been done many times before, hasn't it?
I think Trump is enormous value for the nomination, but I think that bet is much better value than for the Presidency itself. On that I will defer to the judgement of my Staten Island raised mother-in-law. She was confident that Covid would sink Trump - and it did. She is now confident that Trump will not be able to shrug off the label of being a loser, and that will be enough to prevent him from winning the Presidency.
Now, Trump has convinced GOP primary voters that he didn't actually lose, but that won't be enough to win him the general. While GOP states have moved to disenfranchise likely Dem voters, if the vote against Trump is strong enough from Independents then it can be enough to overcome such efforts.
That said, I'm more worried about the certification of the result than the votes themselves. If there is any way of being able to bet that bypasses the certification shenanigans then that would be worth considering. A GOP-controlled Congress, particularly the House, might well install Trump as President regardless.
Heart for sure, no way should England be anywhere near favourites, Spain and Italy look miles better teams and England will do well to beat Denmark, absolutely deluded.
Do you think you might be a teeny-tiny bit biased?
Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.
Campaigning is a brilliant way to derisk the prosecutions. He'll be right in the middle of the run up to primaries or even later and it will be "the liberals are trying to prosecute me for being your President". Makes a straight forward matter of law hyper political and brings the GOP stooges in to try and gum up the works.
As the Donald confesses to his rallies he is guilty as charged. But why should that be the law anyway, lets get it changed.
The issue in his favour, is that the NY attorney general, who is the chief prosecutor, is a directly elected Democrat, who’s campaining for re-election this year on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”. The whole thing is hyper-political, and has been from the start.
I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.
The best part of 20 years ago me and a couple of mates jumped the fence at Donington for the super bike race. It was when Rossi was dominant. When these bikes go past the noise is like God tearing a hole in the sky, they’re awesome machines.
Rossi has always been GP rather than WSB hasn’t he? Both classes of bikes sound fantastic though.
He raced a WSBK spec. VTR1000 at the Suzuka 8 Hour in 2002 but he's never been in WSBK. The wait continues for the first MotoGP/WSBK double champion.
Been a while since I posted any moths for your delight, but I thought you might like this Lunar Hornet Moth, an astounding example of mimicry by one utterly harmless critter of another feared one, here the Hornet.
(It and two others came to a pheromone lure, which in itself was one of the more bizarre (but as it turned out, welcome) Christmas presents I have ever received!)
Nice one. What were you trying to lure, a clearwing?
Where you you get the pheromone lures from? What is the best time of day to put them out and where - hang on a tree I guess?
This came to a lure specifically for this species. You can get them from Anglian Lepidopterist Supplies. Alternatively, eBay has a selection, or there are Dutch companies that have a very wide range of species-specific lures. They are mostly to attract agricultural pests. However, the art is still somewhat in its infancy. We are trying to establish which species regularly come to lures intended for totally different species.
They are of interest because many of these species are not attracted to light traps or lures so are often unseen. We have no little or means of knowing the health or otherwise of these species in an ecosystem. Just this year, we have discovered that a lure for a pest of fruit trees is irresistible to another species that lives on oak trees. Previously thought rare, Pammene giganteana pops up in good numbers in a broad swathe of the country.
An ongoing project, but this study of the "by-catch" of pheromone lures is proving illuminating to the wider presence of a number of species.
This is another of the clearwing species, Yellow-legged Clearwing, which came in to a lure for that species. There had previously been no evidence of it being locally resident.
Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is: "Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businesses
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?
It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.
I find it a strange policy. It's exactly the same Little England protectionism they accuse Leavers of. Or maybe Remainers are protectionist at heart, and if we can no longer participate in intra-EU protectionism, we'll have to have UK protectionism.
I understand what they are trying to do. We should have a "Buy British Build British Eat British" campaign to pull back from the worst excesses of free trade where you can import something from far away that is no different to what we can do here other than a few pennies of additional profit.
That can't be by creating a walled garden though or we get the 1970s British Car industry again where management is clueless the unions are lunatics and the products are a crap design with worse build quality.
Been a while since I posted any moths for your delight, but I thought you might like this Lunar Hornet Moth, an astounding example of mimicry by one utterly harmless critter of another feared one, here the Hornet.
(It and two others came to a pheromone lure, which in itself was one of the more bizarre (but as it turned out, welcome) Christmas presents I have ever received!)
Nice one. What were you trying to lure, a clearwing?
Where you you get the pheromone lures from? What is the best time of day to put them out and where - hang on a tree I guess?
This came to a lure specifically for this species. You can get them from Anglian Lepidopterist Supplies. Alternatively, eBay has a selection, or there are Dutch companies that have a very wide range of species-specific lures. They are mostly to attract agricultural pests. However, the art is still somewhat in its infancy. We are trying to establish which species regularly come to lures intended for totally different species.
They are of interest because many of these species are not attracted to light traps or lures so are often unseen. We have no little or means of knowing the health or otherwise of these species in an ecosystem. Just this year, we have discovered that a lure for a pest of fruit trees is irresistible to another species that lives on oak trees. Previously thought rare, Pammene giganteana pops up in good numbers in a broad swathe of the country.
An ongoing project, but this study of the "by-catch" of pheromone lures is proving illuminating to the wider presence of a number of species.
This is another of the clearwing species, Yellow-legged Clearwing, which came in to a lure for that species. There had previously been no evidence of it being locally resident.
FPT - I tried to recommend Clarkson's Farm to a couple we were renting our self-catering place from last week in Devon. They'd moved down from Oxfordshire 5 years ago. She was an ex primary school teacher and he an ex estate agent.
As soon as I got the word "Clarkson" out of my mouth she said 'oh' and looked uncomfortably at the ground, and he grunted and said he was a 'wanker'. That told me so much about them and their politics.
His name is still a swear word amongst bien-pensant Guardianista circles, and they really struggle to get past it.
His a wanker though, only gammons like him.
He's someone certain type of people love to hate, but they also can't resist watching his programmes - which is why he gets such high viewing figures.
What are the viewing figures? Is there any evidence that people that hate him can't resist watching his programmes or is that just something you made up?
With you and Sean T singing his praises you could also say that a "certain type of person" loves him.
Mr. Observer, an extremist organisation is a fair description.
Didn't footballers wear shirts with BLM written on it? And Sky (broadcaster of the football) openly support the movement?
It's dumb. Linked arms or some other gesture that isn't the exact same thing they were doing in the name of the statue-smashing imbeciles is a straightforward step.
I am happy to accept that the England players are telling the truth about why they take the knee. Maybe what they are doing is dumb. I don't think so, but it's entirely legitimate to disagree. The issue is the booing and the failure of Johnson, Patel and various other right wing populists now jumping on the England bandwagon to condemn it.
While at the same time making excuses for that English cricket player who was spewing bile all over social media.
The significance of this byelection is not that it is a triumph achieved, but a catastrophe averted. “It avoids a disastrous sequence of events for Keir,” observes one member of the shadow cabinet. If Labour had lost this byelection, hard on the heels of the drubbing in Hartlepool, Sir Keir would have been framed in an even more doomy narrative.
If a reprieve is all it turns out to be, he will soon be under pressure again. He needs to turn this breathing space into a turning point. The pandemic and the restrictions it has imposed on campaigning have provided some excuse for Sir Keir’s struggles to achieve connections with the public, but it is not an alibi that will serve him for much longer.
Every Starmer-sympathetic MP I have spoken to, and many of the Starmer-sceptic ones as well, agree that his speech to this autumn’s party conference is taking on a critical importance. The conference stage is always a big moment for opposition leaders, because they get many fewer opportunities than prime ministers to grab the attention of the public. The imperative for this one to be a success is intense because he has yet to deliver a proper conference speech since he became leader.
A wafer-thin byelection win in a seat Labour already held is no proof that Sir Keir has what it takes to beat Mr Johnson. It does offer him a fresh opportunity to address the anxieties about his leadership and persuade people that he is a man with a plan. He has been given extra time that he cannot afford to squander.
'The Walkingtons decided they had to relocate lock, stock and barrel with their two children – after whom the company is named – last autumn and are now in the process of moving into new premises in Romania, where they are not only free of Brexit bureaucracy but are also benefiting from abundant skilled labour and help from the country’s authorities.
Six months after the UK finally left the EU’s single market, thousands of other small companies have faced similar problems, and many have either relocated entirely to the EU or set up branches or warehouses inside the EU to avoid the export delays and costs. Advisers at the Department for International Trade have encouraged many to do so.'
Heart for sure, no way should England be anywhere near favourites, Spain and Italy look miles better teams and England will do well to beat Denmark, absolutely deluded.
I see not liking Clarkson is a sign of people’s ghastly, woke proclivities. Thankfully his fanbois’ political allegiances remain totes unpredictable.
Personally it’s his 'haw haw, I'm a mechanical Luddite me!' attitude that irks me, it’s like learning Kenneth Clark produced this sort of thing in his spare time:
I think the thing most people like or admire (if not like) about Clarkson is the ability to think independently and not be afraid or peer pressured out of it to go against the prevailing mood music. Doesn't really matter about his actual views or politics just that he does have those views irrespective of what the zeitgeist is . Even more impressive for him as he has done this from a fairly liberal metro entrenched view of the world from within his old employer the BBC .
Its also why a lot of people admire (and find interesting) Galloway, Ken Livingstone , Thatcher , Farage , David Icke etc . Its why a lot of people dont admire most modern MPs who rely on focus groups and on message instructions (sam e in corporate world as well)
It's funny - I find Clarkson entirely predictable and, therefore, rather dull. You just know what he is going to say. Very rich TV presenter buys farm, makes TV programme about the struggle to make it work to help pay for it has been done many times before, hasn't it?
“Been done many times before”
1 Has it? I can’t think of any examples, though I may not have been paying attention.
2 Even if it has, formula TV is not always a bad thing: someone is murdered, eccentric detective solves the case is the basic plot of hundreds of series of books and TV shows.
None of this is a comment of Clarkson’s show. I will give it a go, but having grown up on a farm I will probably have a different perspective on it to many here.
Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is: "Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businesses
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?
It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.
I find it a strange policy. It's exactly the same Little England protectionism they accuse Leavers of. Or maybe Remainers are protectionist at heart, and if we can no longer participate in intra-EU protectionism, we'll have to have UK protectionism.
I understand what they are trying to do. We should have a "Buy British Build British Eat British" campaign to pull back from the worst excesses of free trade where you can import something from far away that is no different to what we can do here other than a few pennies of additional profit.
That can't be by creating a walled garden though or we get the 1970s British Car industry again where management is clueless the unions are lunatics and the products are a crap design with worse build quality.
Just imagine Jeremy Clarkson in a Maxi. Sounds like a Viz cartoon.
Was busy yesterday so wasn't here - did we get any talk of the Morrisons deal? Awful news for the company, this PE operation is going to gut them like one of the fish they will soon no longer sell from their fish counters.
Morrisons is - was - a unique retail operation in that it had true vertical integration. It owned production companies who make most of their baked and fresh products exclusively for them. It owned most of the stores. In not paying rent and not paying manufacturer profit margins it could make exactly what its customers wanted and sold them at a keen price.
Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is: "Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businesses
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?
It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.
I find it a strange policy. It's exactly the same Little England protectionism they accuse Leavers of. Or maybe Remainers are protectionist at heart, and if we can no longer participate in intra-EU protectionism, we'll have to have UK protectionism.
I understand what they are trying to do. We should have a "Buy British Build British Eat British" campaign to pull back from the worst excesses of free trade where you can import something from far away that is no different to what we can do here other than a few pennies of additional profit.
That can't be by creating a walled garden though or we get the 1970s British Car industry again where management is clueless the unions are lunatics and the products are a crap design with worse build quality.
What Red Robbo got right is the government needed to invest in BL if it were to have a prayer of competing with European car manufacturers. As it was, all 70s and 80s BL development was an exercise in rummaging through the parts bin to reuse existing engines and components, with some belated badge engineered Hondas.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
There a few posts coming up on my Facebook page referring to the fact that half the squad are of immigrant stock. All positive; reminding readers that we need immigrants in all sorts of walks of life.
I'm slightly worried because the flip-side of that argument is that these players are somehow not properly British. I hope we do not follow the American route of hyphenated nationalities, of Irish-English, Jamaican-English and so on.
How’s about we concentrate more on the content of people’s character, than the colour of their skin?
The current trend is very worrying. “Anti-racism” appears to be just racism, treating people differently according to how they look.
We should. But too many people don't. These peope who boo their own team for pointing out your racism when you boo and name call the immigrants - and then claim that you are the real victim. White privilege in an absolute nutshell.
The grand projet of the right currently is to convince everyone else that open racists, Nazi saluters and white supremacists are absolutely nothing to do with them. We all know what the S in NSDAP stood for after all.
I watched the first 30 mins of the footy with my teenage son who then went off to watch something else and I also switched over.
Tell it not in Gath but I find England's style of play dull to watch.
Emma Raducanu on the other hand was fantastic yesterday. A thrilling game, but then I guess you need to like tennis.
I had the chance last night of a pair of Centre or No.1 court tickets for Monday at £140 a piece but I turned them down. Possibly mad of me but I enjoyed my time there last week at £30 a piece and that will do me.
There's also the small matter of the England v India test series coming up, which should be fantastic.
To be honest, anything that knocks covid off the front pages is okay if it doesn't involve tragedy. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that Sky News had nothing about covid on their front. Bravo for that I say. The thing is no longer a mass killer, thanks to the vaccines, and it needs to be dealt with as such.
Sport? Today is the Austrian Grand Prix followed by Indycar at Mid Ohio.
World Superbike at the pearl of the East Midlands (Donington). Although no SuperSports as Brexit has made it nonviable for the smaller teams. Unregistered (ie race) bikes need carnets.
The best part of 20 years ago me and a couple of mates jumped the fence at Donington for the super bike race. It was when Rossi was dominant. When these bikes go past the noise is like God tearing a hole in the sky, they’re awesome machines.
Rossi has always been GP rather than WSB hasn’t he? Both classes of bikes sound fantastic though.
You may well be right, I wasn’t a particular fan I just tagged along for shits and gigs. Deffo the Rossi one, he’s the only rider I know!
I think Trump is enormous value for the nomination, but I think that bet is much better value than for the Presidency itself. On that I will defer to the judgement of my Staten Island raised mother-in-law. She was confident that Covid would sink Trump - and it did. She is now confident that Trump will not be able to shrug off the label of being a loser, and that will be enough to prevent him from winning the Presidency.
Now, Trump has convinced GOP primary voters that he didn't actually lose, but that won't be enough to win him the general. While GOP states have moved to disenfranchise likely Dem voters, if the vote against Trump is strong enough from Independents then it can be enough to overcome such efforts.
That said, I'm more worried about the certification of the result than the votes themselves. If there is any way of being able to bet that bypasses the certification shenanigans then that would be worth considering. A GOP-controlled Congress, particularly the House, might well install Trump as President regardless.
I have to agree with your mother-in-law there, as you can easily imagine Trump being labelled with the lose tag and watch him going apeshit mad everytime someone mentions it.
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
Was busy yesterday so wasn't here - did we get any talk of the Morrisons deal? Awful news for the company, this PE operation is going to gut them like one of the fish they will soon no longer sell from their fish counters.
Morrisons is - was - a unique retail operation in that it had true vertical integration. It owned production companies who make most of their baked and fresh products exclusively for them. It owned most of the stores. In not paying rent and not paying manufacturer profit margins it could make exactly what its customers wanted and sold them at a keen price.
No more. PE will sell off everything that moves.
It's one of the few times you actually want Amazon buying a company as it would then stand a chance of surviving as it is.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
There a few posts coming up on my Facebook page referring to the fact that half the squad are of immigrant stock. All positive; reminding readers that we need immigrants in all sorts of walks of life.
I'm slightly worried because the flip-side of that argument is that these players are somehow not properly British. I hope we do not follow the American route of hyphenated nationalities, of Irish-English, Jamaican-English and so on.
Yes, I prefer the counter-argument to the anti-immigration folk that we're all immigrants if you go back far enough - as per the Stewart Lee routine: "Those Beaker people, coming over here, with their beakers.."
The other problem is that it concedes ground to the good immigrant/bad immigrant argument. Does it really make any difference to how we should feel about immigration from the Windrush generation that their descendants are now in the England football team? That implies that if there weren't any players in the England team from the background, that they weren't immigrants good enough to be here.
Was busy yesterday so wasn't here - did we get any talk of the Morrisons deal? Awful news for the company, this PE operation is going to gut them like one of the fish they will soon no longer sell from their fish counters.
Morrisons is - was - a unique retail operation in that it had true vertical integration. It owned production companies who make most of their baked and fresh products exclusively for them. It owned most of the stores. In not paying rent and not paying manufacturer profit margins it could make exactly what its customers wanted and sold them at a keen price.
No more. PE will sell off everything that moves.
No discussion and the only thing in favour of this PE deal seems to be it is not quite as bad as the previous PE deal. Maybe HMG will block it. On an even wider point, is the increasing trend of PE taking over and de-listing companies a good thing?
Mr. Observer, an extremist organisation is a fair description.
Didn't footballers wear shirts with BLM written on it? And Sky (broadcaster of the football) openly support the movement?
It's dumb. Linked arms or some other gesture that isn't the exact same thing they were doing in the name of the statue-smashing imbeciles is a straightforward step.
I am happy to accept that the England players are telling the truth about why they take the knee. Maybe what they are doing is dumb. I don't think so, but it's entirely legitimate to disagree. The issue is the booing and the failure of Johnson, Patel and various other right wing populists now jumping on the England bandwagon to condemn it.
While at the same time making excuses for that English cricket player who was spewing bile all over social media.
Ollie Robinson was not spewing bile all over social media. He posted some offensive tweets as a teenager.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
Johnson never endorsed booing. His initial statement fell short of condemning it but said that he wanted the whole country to get behind the team. A few days later he said the booing was totally wrong.
Patel, of course, is another matter. She described taking the knee as "gesture politics" and said fans have the right to boo.
This Diana statue with the random children. Did the sculptor misread the brief? If it was an order for a statue of Michael Jackson then perhaps add the kids.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
Yes, booing is what football fans do. It’s not going to be a great look for the media to have spent a season bemoaning a lack of fans only to moan about them when they don’t behave as they’d wish.
On the Henry dedication, no. Read the article and you’ll see that it was IFAB who had put a stop to any messages on undershirts.
I feel it’s a deeply naive view to act as if politics and sport haven’t been entwined with one another for decades. Sport does not exist in a vacuum that you can separate from the rest of society. A lot of it comes across as some people who have more right leaning or Conservative views being uncomfortable whenever a public figures expresses what they deem to be liberal or left leaning views.
This then leads to the idea that sportspeople, or even public figures outside of politics more generally should have to be neutral actors just to not make some people uncomfortable. Interestingly, many of these same people who want this are often accusing others of being ‘over sensitive’ and ‘snowflakes.’
Frank Lampard is known for his conservative political persuasion, I’ve never felt that he shouldn’t have a right to express his views just because he’s a footballer. Or that he shouldn’t express them because it’s ‘divisive’ or whatever. I don’t agree with him, but I don’t feel victimised everytime a public figure says something I don’t like.
As for taking the knee and BLM, BLM the movement predates the organisation. I find it odd the idea everyone who supported or sympathised with the movement should now completely detach themselves from it because some people decided to set up a political party in its name, years after the movement began. Or why the organisation BLM should suddenly represent BLM more so than the many people who were supportive of the movement.
Even if they did get an indictment against Trump Organisation on these charges, I'm not sure Americans will get too worked up over the news that someone got a free car and someone else was not taxed on a golfing holiday. Obviously, prosecutors will be hoping more comes out in the wash.
As noted on an earlier thread, the key indictment is falsifying records.
If that is proven (or admitted), all the loans shoring up the Trump Empire are in doubt.
With Trump I'm wary as I find him so odious a personality I find it impossible to understand him or the appeal he undoubtedly has with lots and lots of people.
Accordingly I'm wary of something that seems like it would so simply and quickly ruin him, if proven.
The USA could be in a lot of trouble if it had a leader who was like Trump, but more intelligent when it comes to removing any obstacles to his exercise of power. When all is said and done, Trump is a blowhard.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
There a few posts coming up on my Facebook page referring to the fact that half the squad are of immigrant stock. All positive; reminding readers that we need immigrants in all sorts of walks of life.
I'm slightly worried because the flip-side of that argument is that these players are somehow not properly British. I hope we do not follow the American route of hyphenated nationalities, of Irish-English, Jamaican-English and so on.
Yes, I prefer the counter-argument to the anti-immigration folk that we're all immigrants if you go back far enough - as per the Stewart Lee routine: "Those Beaker people, coming over here, with their beakers.." .
We're also all royal if you look back far enough, and doubtless all slaves too. And all African.
It's like saying "In the long run, we're all dead". We still need to worry about the short and medium term.
Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.
Campaigning is a brilliant way to derisk the prosecutions. He'll be right in the middle of the run up to primaries or even later and it will be "the liberals are trying to prosecute me for being your President". Makes a straight forward matter of law hyper political and brings the GOP stooges in to try and gum up the works.
As the Donald confesses to his rallies he is guilty as charged. But why should that be the law anyway, lets get it changed.
The issue in his favour, is that the NY attorney general, who is the chief prosecutor, is a directly elected Democrat, who’s campaining for re-election this year on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”. The whole thing is hyper-political, and has been from the start.
The American system is utterly stupid. The law is the law and it appears the Trump mob are in it up to their necks. But it becomes political because they elect the DA and police chiefs etc - madness.
This Diana statue with the random children. Did the sculptor misread the brief? If it was an order for a statue of Michael Jackson then perhaps add the kids.
There was a Welsh Labour councillor who wrote to Private Eye, about twenty years ago, suggesting the Diana Memorial Fountain be in the form of a "giant spurting phallus."
I see not liking Clarkson is a sign of people’s ghastly, woke proclivities. Thankfully his fanbois’ political allegiances remain totes unpredictable.
Personally it’s his 'haw haw, I'm a mechanical Luddite me!' attitude that irks me, it’s like learning Kenneth Clark produced this sort of thing in his spare time:
I think the thing most people like or admire (if not like) about Clarkson is the ability to think independently and not be afraid or peer pressured out of it to go against the prevailing mood music. Doesn't really matter about his actual views or politics just that he does have those views irrespective of what the zeitgeist is . Even more impressive for him as he has done this from a fairly liberal metro entrenched view of the world from within his old employer the BBC .
Its also why a lot of people admire (and find interesting) Galloway, Ken Livingstone , Thatcher , Farage , David Icke etc . Its why a lot of people dont admire most modern MPs who rely on focus groups and on message instructions (sam e in corporate world as well)
It's funny - I find Clarkson entirely predictable and, therefore, rather dull. You just know what he is going to say. Very rich TV presenter buys farm, makes TV programme about the struggle to make it work to help pay for it has been done many times before, hasn't it?
Farmers quite like it, listening to reviews on farming today.
It gets more of the complexity across, and the range of things that have to be juggled every day.
Within the framework of a Clarkson-style semi comic strip.
Personally I prefer it to him attempting to be too serious - when he did the VC documentary and St Nazaire raid he skipped over a lot of elements, and much of it was a repeat of overimagined wartime legend.
One thing i wonder about the Trump thing is whether the Federal authorities, which might in normal times have stepped in to take over the case at some point, will be reluctant to do so because of a fear that a future GOP President might then pardon anyone convicted or likely to be convicted...
I'd endorse Dr Foxy's comments about football and father-son bonding. Younger Son wanted to go and watch Southend (yes, really!) when he was about 9, but we lived 10 miles away. So I took him and that ended up with a couple of season tickets for two or three years until he got to secondary school and could go on his own. Now, when he's around or we're with him, we still go to matches, although no longer Southend. Never had quite the same 'both do' with Elder Son.
The worst thing my Dad ever did to me was make me a Spurs fan. It's been the biggest source of misery in my life. And now I have done it to my own kids and the first grandson.
Harrowing story, and all too common.
#EndTheCycle
Grew up almost equidistant between Swindon and Southampton. Dad chose to take me to Swindon. #39yearsofhurt. They fuck you up your mum and dad...
I feel it’s a deeply naive view to act as if politics and sport haven’t been entwined with one another for decades. Sport does not exist in a vacuum that you can separate from the rest of society. A lot of it comes across as some people who have more right leaning or Conservative views being uncomfortable whenever a public figures expresses what they deem to be liberal or left leaning views.
This then leads to the idea that sportspeople, or even public figures outside of politics more generally should have to be neutral actors just to not make some people uncomfortable. Interestingly, many of these same people who want this are often accusing others of being ‘over sensitive’ and ‘snowflakes.’
Frank Lampard is known for his conservative political persuasion, I’ve never felt that he shouldn’t have a right to express his views just because he’s a footballer. Or that he shouldn’t express them because it’s ‘divisive’ or whatever. I don’t agree with him, but I don’t feel victimised everytime a public figure says something I don’t like.
As for taking the knee and BLM, BLM the movement predates the organisation. I find it odd the idea everyone who supported or sympathised with the movement should now completely detach themselves from it because some people decided to set up a political party in its name, years after the movement began. Or why the organisation BLM should suddenly represent BLM more so than the many people who were supportive of the movement.
Very well said!
Part of the problem is influential sports and media stars tend to be younger so probably are naturally more socially liberal than those who moan about them. It is also why the right may win the short term electoral spoils from the culture war as the voters skew older, but they will lose the long term war as todays kids will listed to the younger influencers more than the moaners.
Was busy yesterday so wasn't here - did we get any talk of the Morrisons deal? Awful news for the company, this PE operation is going to gut them like one of the fish they will soon no longer sell from their fish counters.
Morrisons is - was - a unique retail operation in that it had true vertical integration. It owned production companies who make most of their baked and fresh products exclusively for them. It owned most of the stores. In not paying rent and not paying manufacturer profit margins it could make exactly what its customers wanted and sold them at a keen price.
No more. PE will sell off everything that moves.
No discussion and the only thing in favour of this PE deal seems to be it is not quite as bad as the previous PE deal. Maybe HMG will block it. On an even wider point, is the increasing trend of PE taking over and de-listing companies a good thing?
Correct on Morrisons; that's why I shop there.
How they dealt with the My Lidl Pony scandal was instructive imo.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
There a few posts coming up on my Facebook page referring to the fact that half the squad are of immigrant stock. All positive; reminding readers that we need immigrants in all sorts of walks of life.
I'm slightly worried because the flip-side of that argument is that these players are somehow not properly British. I hope we do not follow the American route of hyphenated nationalities, of Irish-English, Jamaican-English and so on.
Yes, I prefer the counter-argument to the anti-immigration folk that we're all immigrants if you go back far enough - as per the Stewart Lee routine: "Those Beaker people, coming over here, with their beakers.."
The other problem is that it concedes ground to the good immigrant/bad immigrant argument. Does it really make any difference to how we should feel about immigration from the Windrush generation that their descendants are now in the England football team? That implies that if there weren't any players in the England team from the background, that they weren't immigrants good enough to be here.
I am on 23rd July Zooming into a lecture on the Celts, the invite to which says 'They appeared four thousand years ago, from the steppes somewhere north of the Caspian, moving constantly westward with their animals and carts. Never stopping long enough to build towns or cities; unusually quarrelsome, their warrior culture seemed mostly to be an internal affair, tribe versus tribe.' Migration into Western Europe and the Northwestern European islands from places South and West seems to be the traditional pattern, established over thousands of years. As I'm at least 50% Celtic, according to Ancestry I'm interested. Most of the rest is SE Midlands, but Ancestry's genetic screening isn't sophisticated enough, apparently, to determine how much of that, if any, is pre-Saxon.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
Yes, booing is what football fans do. It’s not going to be a great look for the media to have spent a season bemoaning a lack of fans only to moan about them when they don’t behave as they’d wish.
On the Henry dedication, no. Read the article and you’ll see that it was IFAB who had put a stop to any messages on undershirts.
IFAB? No matter if FIFA doesn't itself make money from shirt sponsorship, it will want to protect its clients further down the food chain who do. The whole stuff about poppies etc is to make sure nothing gets in the way of the sponsor's message.
I feel it’s a deeply naive view to act as if politics and sport haven’t been entwined with one another for decades. Sport does not exist in a vacuum that you can separate from the rest of society. A lot of it comes across as some people who have more right leaning or Conservative views being uncomfortable whenever a public figures expresses what they deem to be liberal or left leaning views.
This then leads to the idea that sportspeople, or even public figures outside of politics more generally should have to be neutral actors just to not make some people uncomfortable. Interestingly, many of these same people who want this are often accusing others of being ‘over sensitive’ and ‘snowflakes.’
Frank Lampard is known for his conservative political persuasion, I’ve never felt that he shouldn’t have a right to express his views just because he’s a footballer. Or that he shouldn’t express them because it’s ‘divisive’ or whatever. I don’t agree with him, but I don’t feel victimised everytime a public figure says something I don’t like.
As for taking the knee and BLM, BLM the movement predates the organisation. I find it odd the idea everyone who supported or sympathised with the movement should now completely detach themselves from it because some people decided to set up a political party in its name, years after the movement began. Or why the organisation BLM should suddenly represent BLM more so than the many people who were supportive of the movement.
Super Frankie Lampard is a Tory? Never knew that. I wasn’t impressed with Hector Bellerin’s “Fuck Boris” Tweet on the day of the 2019 GE. But that’s his own account and he can do what he likes on there.
Would we tolerate any party political messaging on the pitch itself? Probably not, but I’m not sure where the line would be drawn.
The problem is the whole “how can anyone object to anti-racist gestures?” Well, the same could be asked of the poppy shirts. Who could possibly object to those? James McClean did. And that’s why these things aren’t good ideas, in my opinion.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
Johnson never endorsed booing. His initial statement fell short of condemning it but said that he wanted the whole country to get behind the team. A few days later he said the booing was totally wrong.
Patel, of course, is another matter. She described taking the knee as "gesture politics" and said fans have the right to boo.
Of course they should have the right to boo, it is a free country. They may be stubbornly not listening to why people are taking the knee, but some people are stubborn and ill informed. And taking the knee is gesture politics, it is the literal definition of it! Gesture politics is not bad by definition as Patel may assume, it has its use for those without direct political power.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
Yes, booing is what football fans do. It’s not going to be a great look for the media to have spent a season bemoaning a lack of fans only to moan about them when they don’t behave as they’d wish.
On the Henry dedication, no. Read the article and you’ll see that it was IFAB who had put a stop to any messages on undershirts.
IFAB? No matter if FIFA doesn't itself make money from shirt sponsorship, it will want to protect its clients further down the food chain who do. The whole stuff about poppies etc is to make sure nothing gets in the way of the sponsor's message.
The International Football Assocation Board. They govern the laws of the game. It has eight members - four permanent (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and four rotating members from the rest of the world. Any changes to the laws of the game require six votes.
Not sure they’re motivated by money, but you might be right.
FPT - I tried to recommend Clarkson's Farm to a couple we were renting our self-catering place from last week in Devon. They'd moved down from Oxfordshire 5 years ago. She was an ex primary school teacher and he an ex estate agent.
As soon as I got the word "Clarkson" out of my mouth she said 'oh' and looked uncomfortably at the ground, and he grunted and said he was a 'wanker'. That told me so much about them and their politics.
His name is still a swear word amongst bien-pensant Guardianista circles, and they really struggle to get past it.
'The Walkingtons decided they had to relocate lock, stock and barrel with their two children – after whom the company is named – last autumn and are now in the process of moving into new premises in Romania, where they are not only free of Brexit bureaucracy but are also benefiting from abundant skilled labour and help from the country’s authorities.
Six months after the UK finally left the EU’s single market, thousands of other small companies have faced similar problems, and many have either relocated entirely to the EU or set up branches or warehouses inside the EU to avoid the export delays and costs. Advisers at the Department for International Trade have encouraged many to do so.'
The DIT bit did surprise me a little ...
Its true! The official government advice from DiT was that the border issues everyone raised were unsolvable and the solution was to set up an in-market subsidiary. Once you do that its easier for some businesses to simply move.
Its not just GB. Obviously we used to ship to NI when that still existed as a UK customs zone. RoI was a bolt-on to our market. I'm now in negotiations with an Irish company to distribute my clients products in that market. Not only will they ship products direct to bypass GB, they will then be able to supply NI as well. A clear loss of trade for GB who used to act as the warehouse and distribution hub for the entire British isles.
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.
Certainly the US polling shows that the GOP is still very much Trump's party.
If Trump wants to run again in 2024 he is therefore highly likely to win the GOP nomination for a third time, a feat only previously achieved by Nixon.
However with President Biden still governing as a relative moderate and with solid approval ratings he is unlikely to defeat the incumbent if he runs again, in which case I think Trump would likely sit it out and let a fellow Trumpite like DeSantis get the nod.
However if Biden steps down and VP Harris ends up the 2024 Democratic nominee then Trump would fancy his chances as she would allow him to run the divisive, culture war campaign he wants far more than Biden would
Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.
Campaigning is a brilliant way to derisk the prosecutions. He'll be right in the middle of the run up to primaries or even later and it will be "the liberals are trying to prosecute me for being your President". Makes a straight forward matter of law hyper political and brings the GOP stooges in to try and gum up the works.
As the Donald confesses to his rallies he is guilty as charged. But why should that be the law anyway, lets get it changed.
The issue in his favour, is that the NY attorney general, who is the chief prosecutor, is a directly elected Democrat, who’s campaining for re-election this year on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”. The whole thing is hyper-political, and has been from the start.
The American system is utterly stupid. The law is the law and it appears the Trump mob are in it up to their necks. But it becomes political because they elect the DA and police chiefs etc - madness.
Yes, it makes no sense at all. I can understand electing a police commissioner, but elected prosecutors make the whole investigation process political. There may or may not be problems with Trump’s companies, but it comes across to outsiders as a witch hunt when the prosecutor is so partisan.
This Diana statue with the random children. Did the sculptor misread the brief? If it was an order for a statue of Michael Jackson then perhaps add the kids.
There was a Welsh Labour councillor who wrote to Private Eye, about twenty years ago, suggesting the Diana Memorial Fountain be in the form of a "giant spurting phallus."
Frankie Boyle’s infamous joke about the Diana memorial was much better.
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.
Whether they should be is irrelevant. The system for ranking points is set, and the sides are where they are. If the rankings are out of kilter with perceptions of ability, that reflects that sides only play a restricted number of other sides in a period. When did we last play Brazil in competition?
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.
Brazil? I couldn’t sleep the other night and put on the Copa America. It was Brazil v Chile and the standard was terrible. Europe had all four semi finalists in 2018, I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens again next year.
Any legal difficulties can be strung out until he's back in the Whitehouse.
They could when he was President. Not sure how he delays it now.
How long do you think it would take them to get an indictment, a conviction and exhaust all appeals in NY? The sum total of my legal knowledge of these matters is from watching Billions but my guess is a very long time.
Campaigning is a brilliant way to derisk the prosecutions. He'll be right in the middle of the run up to primaries or even later and it will be "the liberals are trying to prosecute me for being your President". Makes a straight forward matter of law hyper political and brings the GOP stooges in to try and gum up the works.
As the Donald confesses to his rallies he is guilty as charged. But why should that be the law anyway, lets get it changed.
The issue in his favour, is that the NY attorney general, who is the chief prosecutor, is a directly elected Democrat, who’s campaining for re-election this year on a platform of “Get Donald Trump”. The whole thing is hyper-political, and has been from the start.
The American system is utterly stupid. The law is the law and it appears the Trump mob are in it up to their necks. But it becomes political because they elect the DA and police chiefs etc - madness.
Yes, it makes no sense at all. I can understand electing a police commissioner, but elected prosecutors make the whole investigation process political. There may or may not be problems with Trump’s companies, but it comes across to outsiders as a witch hunt when the prosecutor is so partisan.
The American political apparatus is utterly mad but for Trump I think if he did less crimes he would probably have less trouble with the law.
On topic I have backed both bets for a while and the nomination since the Biden inauguration. I was originally a layer of Trump presidency as dont think he can win, but switched position as it has become clear he does not need to win. If the Republicans win enough office holders in the mid terms, they will just lie about the winner, and it will be more effective next time with moderates purged and the pathway of what needs to happen clearer.
Still I must disagree with the last four words, the nomination is by far the better bet. I think he is between 2.5-3 for the nomination and 7-10 for the presidency (harder to judge).
Looking at the Labour announcement on their website*, there doesn't seem to be much to it. I suppose things like this are the normal work of an Opposition - make an announcement where you promise to do something good, which involves criticising the government for not managing to make it happen, or for actively making the situation worse. Make lots of these announcements to gain attention - so necessarily there can't be too much concrete in each one.
The one thing that is in it is: "Passing a law requiring public bodies to report on how much they are buying from British businesses including SMEs."
I guess an issue here is how complicated this could get, bearing in mind how complicated in can be for rules of origin in trade deals.
What counts as a British business? e.g. Is Morrisons still a British business when it is taken over by the American private equity company? Their HQ will be in the UK, is that enough? Or, as in the case of Morrisons, they also own a lot of UK based food production facilities.
AstraZeneca too - are they too Swedish to count as British?
If I provide consultancy services do I count as 100% British, or because I work on a laptop manufactured abroad, running software developed abroad, does that mean I have non-British inputs, so I can only claim to be 80% British? That's the same as for, say, a British loo roll company important wood pulp, say.
Rachel Reeves: Labour will be on the side of British businesses
"Sets out proposals to insert clauses into government contracts that would "help give more public contracts to British businesses", and to require public bodies to report how much they are buying from UK firms; "
New Labour gave loads of contracts to the UK firm Capita.....I guess she doesn't quite mean that though?
"Pledges government support for businesses seeking to set up factories in the UK in order to "reshore" or "near-shore" production "so that their supply chains are less complicated and shorter" "
Sounds a bit Trumpian....Red meat for the red wall...but not really realistic in the 21st Century globalized economy, unless they are going to have a trade war with China?
I think it an astute policy. Brexit could be Free Trade or it could be protectionism. That is potentially clear red water that is popular in Labour target seats. I am not so convinced about "Free Trade" as many. It worked for us in the 19th century, at a time when we were economically and militarily dominant in the world. That isn't the 21st Century position though.
1 - I don't think it was "Free Trade" in Victorian times. Wasn't it "Empire Free Trade", which was code for protecting markets such as India for ourselves?
It is a fascinating and nuanced area. We get howls of outrage when big stuff gets bought from overseas even if a UK build isn't an option. As an example Tees Valley Titan Ben Houchen complaining that the order for new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro had gone abroad when it should* have gone to Hitachi. That (a) Hitachi didn't have a suitable model to offer, (b) their Newton Aycliffe factory couldn't produce any new orders on the timescales demanded and (c) any Hitachi win would have gone to their Italian factory who have both the capacy and the expertise for such an order didn't bother him or the people who he influences.
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.
I find it a strange policy. It's exactly the same Little England protectionism they accuse Leavers of. Or maybe Remainers are protectionist at heart, and if we can no longer participate in intra-EU protectionism, we'll have to have UK protectionism.
I understand what they are trying to do. We should have a "Buy British Build British Eat British" campaign to pull back from the worst excesses of free trade where you can import something from far away that is no different to what we can do here other than a few pennies of additional profit.
That can't be by creating a walled garden though or we get the 1970s British Car industry again where management is clueless the unions are lunatics and the products are a crap design with worse build quality.
I did encounter similar views the other day on a Belgian beer fan group on Facebook. Most of the members have of course been bemoaning the fact that mail ordering beer from the EU has become difficult since Brexit, not helped by the fact that one of the main suppliers manage to go bust during lockdown, how is beyond me but apparently he rented a new warehouse and I suspect he over-extended himself, maybe by losing too much business during the move to new premises. Anyway, this arch-Remainer was saying that the balance of payments has tanked, the economy is in freefall, however much we like Belgian beers we should at very least be buying from UK importers and preferably drinking Briish beer.
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.
Whether they should be is irrelevant. The system for ranking points is set, and the sides are where they are. If the rankings are out of kilter with perceptions of ability, that reflects that sides only play a restricted number of other sides in a period. When did we last play Brazil in competition?
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
Agreed. On "But they are expressing an opinion". Are they? They all have the same opinion then?
Isn't it more likely that this is an example of a gruesome corporate virtue-signal by the FA seeking to project an image? This is not the same as the kick it out initiative. I wouldn't boo wither, but I'd turn my back to the players (as a protest to the FA rather than the players themselves who are caught up in this).
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.
Whether they should be is irrelevant. The system for ranking points is set, and the sides are where they are. If the rankings are out of kilter with perceptions of ability, that reflects that sides only play a restricted number of other sides in a period. When did we last play Brazil in competition?
I feel it’s a deeply naive view to act as if politics and sport haven’t been entwined with one another for decades. Sport does not exist in a vacuum that you can separate from the rest of society. A lot of it comes across as some people who have more right leaning or Conservative views being uncomfortable whenever a public figures expresses what they deem to be liberal or left leaning views.
This then leads to the idea that sportspeople, or even public figures outside of politics more generally should have to be neutral actors just to not make some people uncomfortable. Interestingly, many of these same people who want this are often accusing others of being ‘over sensitive’ and ‘snowflakes.’
Frank Lampard is known for his conservative political persuasion, I’ve never felt that he shouldn’t have a right to express his views just because he’s a footballer. Or that he shouldn’t express them because it’s ‘divisive’ or whatever. I don’t agree with him, but I don’t feel victimised everytime a public figure says something I don’t like.
As for taking the knee and BLM, BLM the movement predates the organisation. I find it odd the idea everyone who supported or sympathised with the movement should now completely detach themselves from it because some people decided to set up a political party in its name, years after the movement began. Or why the organisation BLM should suddenly represent BLM more so than the many people who were supportive of the movement.
Super Frankie Lampard is a Tory? Never knew that. I wasn’t impressed with Hector Bellerin’s “Fuck Boris” Tweet on the day of the 2019 GE. But that’s his own account and he can do what he likes on there.
Would we tolerate any party political messaging on the pitch itself? Probably not, but I’m not sure where the line would be drawn.
The problem is the whole “how can anyone object to anti-racist gestures?” Well, the same could be asked of the poppy shirts. Who could possibly object to those? James McClean did. And that’s why these things aren’t good ideas, in my opinion.
Re Frank Lampard - yep. Sol Campbell’s been pretty vocal about his conservative beliefs as well. Mourinho has been rumoured to be pretty right wing, I believe he did endorse the conservative candidate for the Portuguese presidency in the last few years as well. Bellerin’s been pretty vocal about his liberal/left leaning beliefs for years now, so his tweet on GE day didn’t surprise me.
In my view just because someone might object or disagree with a gesture doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done. People rarely all agree on something. People should be free to express both their agreement and disagreement with a gesture.
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.
Whether they should be is irrelevant. The system for ranking points is set, and the sides are where they are. If the rankings are out of kilter with perceptions of ability, that reflects that sides only play a restricted number of other sides in a period. When did we last play Brazil in competition?
On topic I have backed both bets for a while and the nomination since the Biden inauguration. I was originally a layer of Trump presidency as dont think he can win, but switched position as it has become clear he does not need to win. If the Republicans win enough office holders in the mid terms, they will just lie about the winner, and it will be more effective next time with moderates purged and the pathway of what needs to happen clearer.
Still I must disagree with the last four words, the nomination is by far the better bet. I think he is between 2.5-3 for the nomination and 7-10 for the presidency (harder to judge).
The number of times he talks about how well he has done in cognitative tests suggests to me that somebody within his close circle has convinced him to do them quite regularly - and that can only because they think he is right on the brink of dementia... (and somehow they have convinced him that doing well in them is something to boast about)
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
Agreed. On "But they are expressing an opinion". Are they? They all have the same opinion then?
Isn't it more likely that this is an example of a gruesome corporate virtue-signal by the FA seeking to project an image? This is not the same as the kick it out initiative. I wouldn't boo wither, but I'd turn my back to the players (as a protest to the FA rather than the players themselves who are caught up in this).
It is completely up to the players, but eh why not blame the FA?
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
Agreed. On "But they are expressing an opinion". Are they? They all have the same opinion then?
Isn't it more likely that this is an example of a gruesome corporate virtue-signal by the FA seeking to project an image? This is not the same as the kick it out initiative. I wouldn't boo wither, but I'd turn my back to the players (as a protest to the FA rather than the players themselves who are caught up in this).
The FA want to project an anti-racism image? How awful.
Back home, Boris Johnson has hitherto been a lucky general. He may be about to ride the same luck with England at the Euros.
England looked pretty good last night but they've still not played a decent side. That might not happen until the final. If it's England v Italy then on neutral territory you'd back the Italians. On home turf? Well, they may do it. Johnson will saunter in and make it look like another triumph for St George.
I am not so sure. A few weeks ago, Johnson, Patel and various other Tory politicians were very happy to endorse the booing of England players because they thought it would play well in the country. They better hope that if the England team is victorious that is not brought up a fair bit - and is not mentioned at any Downing Street reception.
One of the biggest risks of an England victory is that it turbocharges the knee and BLM, and further accentuates divisions, rather than people recognising that a truce was basically called over it and the FA have quietly agreed an exit strategy for next season.
It won't be the Conservatives who try to exploit it for those ends - the usual suspects will find it simply irresistible - so when they do I'll look forward to hearing your condemnation of them trying to start an unnecessary culture war.
Ha, ha - Johnson and Patel decided there were votes in a culture war against the England team. People will remember that as they now seek to climb on board the bandwagon. I doubt it will hurt them very much but it will probably mean they don't reap the feelgood dividends that unequivocal support from the start may have done.
They were reflecting the fact that almost half of football fans and a bigger proportion in the country didn't like The Knee, that it was likely to divide rather than unite people and it was unnecessary. In the end, the fans and the country decided to call a truce (despite not liking it then and still not liking it now) because backing the team unequivocally is more important - everyone wants a win; no-one wants any distractions.
As usual, those objecting to a "culture war" are really objecting to anyone putting up resistance to their prosecution of it.
As usual, those who object to what the England players have made clear is a simple act of anti-racist solidarity decide that it is a declaration of war against them.
Not liking the knee is not the same as actively booing those who take the knee. It is very different. Like you, Johnson and Patel failed to make the distinction, so now look even more opportunistic as they jump on the England bandwagon than would otherwise have been the case.
I don’t know if I’ll boo or not - I’m too polite, really. But if I do it’ll be because I don’t want the game I love to be infected with politics.
I thought it was ridiculous that Titi got into trouble for dedicating a goal to the birth of a child. But nearly 20 years on, I can see why there was a zero tolerance to this sort of thing.
Isn't that just protecting sponsorship income? Shirt sponsorship is sold for vast amounts and they don't want anything to get in the way of that.
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
Yes, booing is what football fans do. It’s not going to be a great look for the media to have spent a season bemoaning a lack of fans only to moan about them when they don’t behave as they’d wish.
On the Henry dedication, no. Read the article and you’ll see that it was IFAB who had put a stop to any messages on undershirts.
IFAB? No matter if FIFA doesn't itself make money from shirt sponsorship, it will want to protect its clients further down the food chain who do. The whole stuff about poppies etc is to make sure nothing gets in the way of the sponsor's message.
The International Football Assocation Board. They govern the laws of the game. It has eight members - four permanent (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and four rotating members from the rest of the world. Any changes to the laws of the game require six votes.
Not sure they’re motivated by money, but you might be right.
I admit I am a cynic who believes that top flight football is not about moving the ball about, it's about moving money about
England are the highest ranked team still in the tournament. In the current FIFA world rankings to 27th May, England are ranked 4, Spain are 6, Italy 7 and Denmark 10. Also, England''s semi-final is at Wembley, as is the final. None of that means England will win but it is not surprising they are favourites.
Italy should be higher than 7, probably top 3 with France and Brazil, the rest about right. Home advantage should make England favourites if they get to the final even vs a better Italian team.
Whether they should be is irrelevant. The system for ranking points is set, and the sides are where they are. If the rankings are out of kilter with perceptions of ability, that reflects that sides only play a restricted number of other sides in a period. When did we last play Brazil in competition?
2002. Before that, 1970.
Poor timing on both counts!
If my reference is correct, England have never beaten Brazil in a competitive match.
Comments
Casino Royale is right that the knee thing will rise again (if they do win)as a divisive issue.
#EndTheCycle
If that is proven (or admitted), all the loans shoring up the Trump Empire are in doubt.
I don't agree on Johnson and Patel. I think it's only with political leadership that certain divisive Woke troupes can be challenged, and I think they're playing a representative role there.
I am slightly less impressed with Patel as she said whether to boo was "up to the fans" well after the tournament started, which I didn't think was quite cricket.
Cricket on the other hand, now there's a magnificent game. One of the best days out ever was with my older son at the 2005 Ashes. We were there in the Hollies Stand at Edgbaston on Day Three. What a day.
So a policy that tries to force a buy British practice will be popular and is the logical outturn of a Brexit solution that has fucked supply chains. Start making stuff here again, specialised in a small walled garden market. And then wonder why everything is so expensive - blame "the bosses" for that later on.
Then again, what is "British". If I import forrin stuff as a British company for sale in the GB market is that now "British" as the company is here paying taxes and employing people here? There will be loads of edge cases, so many that it isn't edge and is more normal than not. Which is the problem with protectionism - it always fails. Even if you start from a position of having the best supply base in the world - and we do not - a walled garden always falls behind the free traders as they have to adapt and innovate and we do not.
Personally it’s his 'haw haw, I'm a mechanical Luddite me!' attitude that irks me, it’s like learning Kenneth Clark produced this sort of thing in his spare time:
Didn't footballers wear shirts with BLM written on it? And Sky (broadcaster of the football) openly support the movement?
It's dumb. Linked arms or some other gesture that isn't the exact same thing they were doing in the name of the statue-smashing imbeciles is a straightforward step.
Have a good day everyone.
Its also why a lot of people admire (and find interesting) Galloway, Ken Livingstone , Thatcher , Farage , David Icke etc . Its why a lot of people dont admire most modern MPs who rely on focus groups and on message instructions (sam e in corporate world as well)
As it happens I don’t like poppies on shirts either. Not sure if you remember, but that happened quite gradually. One team did it and then a few more.
Man Utd wouldn’t join in and got criticised. I suspect they understood why it wasn’t a good idea.
Accordingly I'm wary of something that seems like it would so simply and quickly ruin him, if proven.
Sadly, while today’s F1 power units are astonishing technical achievements, they lack the utterly visceral noise produced by engines of the past. The v12s of 2004 and 2005 were probably the peak.
As the Donald confesses to his rallies he is guilty as charged. But why should that be the law anyway, lets get it changed.
Now, Trump has convinced GOP primary voters that he didn't actually lose, but that won't be enough to win him the general. While GOP states have moved to disenfranchise likely Dem voters, if the vote against Trump is strong enough from Independents then it can be enough to overcome such efforts.
That said, I'm more worried about the certification of the result than the votes themselves. If there is any way of being able to bet that bypasses the certification shenanigans then that would be worth considering. A GOP-controlled Congress, particularly the House, might well install Trump as President regardless.
They are of interest because many of these species are not attracted to light traps or lures so are often unseen. We have no little or means of knowing the health or otherwise of these species in an ecosystem. Just this year, we have discovered that a lure for a pest of fruit trees is irresistible to another species that lives on oak trees. Previously thought rare, Pammene giganteana pops up in good numbers in a broad swathe of the country.
An ongoing project, but this study of the "by-catch" of pheromone lures is proving illuminating to the wider presence of a number of species.
This is another of the clearwing species, Yellow-legged Clearwing, which came in to a lure for that species. There had previously been no evidence of it being locally resident.
That can't be by creating a walled garden though or we get the 1970s British Car industry again where management is clueless the unions are lunatics and the products are a crap design with worse build quality.
With you and Sean T singing his praises you could also say that a "certain type of person" loves him.
The significance of this byelection is not that it is a triumph achieved, but a catastrophe averted. “It avoids a disastrous sequence of events for Keir,” observes one member of the shadow cabinet. If Labour had lost this byelection, hard on the heels of the drubbing in Hartlepool, Sir Keir would have been framed in an even more doomy narrative.
If a reprieve is all it turns out to be, he will soon be under pressure again. He needs to turn this breathing space into a turning point. The pandemic and the restrictions it has imposed on campaigning have provided some excuse for Sir Keir’s struggles to achieve connections with the public, but it is not an alibi that will serve him for much longer.
Every Starmer-sympathetic MP I have spoken to, and many of the Starmer-sceptic ones as well, agree that his speech to this autumn’s party conference is taking on a critical importance. The conference stage is always a big moment for opposition leaders, because they get many fewer opportunities than prime ministers to grab the attention of the public. The imperative for this one to be a success is intense because he has yet to deliver a proper conference speech since he became leader.
A wafer-thin byelection win in a seat Labour already held is no proof that Sir Keir has what it takes to beat Mr Johnson. It does offer him a fresh opportunity to address the anxieties about his leadership and persuade people that he is a man with a plan. He has been given extra time that he cannot afford to squander.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/04/out-how-brexit-sent-one-uk-tennis-kit-firm-to-romania
'The Walkingtons decided they had to relocate lock, stock and barrel with their two children – after whom the company is named – last autumn and are now in the process of moving into new premises in Romania, where they are not only free of Brexit bureaucracy but are also benefiting from abundant skilled labour and help from the country’s authorities.
Six months after the UK finally left the EU’s single market, thousands of other small companies have faced similar problems, and many have either relocated entirely to the EU or set up branches or warehouses inside the EU to avoid the export delays and costs. Advisers at the Department for International Trade have encouraged many to do so.'
The DIT bit did surprise me a little ...
1 Has it? I can’t think of any examples, though I may not have been paying attention.
2 Even if it has, formula TV is not always a bad thing: someone is murdered, eccentric detective solves the case is the basic plot of hundreds of series of books and TV shows.
None of this is a comment of Clarkson’s show. I will give it a go, but having grown up on a farm I will probably have a different perspective on it to many here.
Morrisons is - was - a unique retail operation in that it had true vertical integration. It owned production companies who make most of their baked and fresh products exclusively for them. It owned most of the stores. In not paying rent and not paying manufacturer profit margins it could make exactly what its customers wanted and sold them at a keen price.
No more. PE will sell off everything that moves.
For first time friends offer an explanation: she was giving Bethell "presentational advice"
Bethell declined to provide evidence
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f9860442-dbf7-11eb-9988-ad45b1fbe7e6?shareToken=95183e583c315cfa670262b55013f039
On taking the knee I am ambivalent. Racism needs to be protested against, but it might have been better if the English footballers hadn't chosen a gesture associated with an extremist organisation. I certainly wouldn't boo. But they are expressing an opinion and surely it is legitimate to express one back. It's not so much whether you support booing but whether it is a legitimate expression of free speech. And in the context of a football match where people boo, and sing and chant stuff you wouldn't do in polite company. So my view is probably, no I don't think booing is OK, but I wouldn't ban it either as I don't seek to ban everything I disapprove of.
The other problem is that it concedes ground to the good immigrant/bad immigrant argument. Does it really make any difference to how we should feel about immigration from the Windrush generation that their descendants are now in the England football team? That implies that if there weren't any players in the England team from the background, that they weren't immigrants good enough to be here.
https://twitter.com/telegraph/status/1411594311632932865?s=21
Patel, of course, is another matter. She described taking the knee as "gesture politics" and said fans have the right to boo.
On the Henry dedication, no. Read the article and you’ll see that it was IFAB who had put a stop to any messages on undershirts.
This then leads to the idea that sportspeople, or even public figures outside of politics more generally should have to be neutral actors just to not make some people uncomfortable. Interestingly, many of these same people who want this are often accusing others of being ‘over sensitive’ and ‘snowflakes.’
Frank Lampard is known for his conservative political persuasion, I’ve never felt that he shouldn’t have a right to express his views just because he’s a footballer. Or that he shouldn’t express them because it’s ‘divisive’ or whatever. I don’t agree with him, but I don’t feel victimised everytime a public figure says something I don’t like.
As for taking the knee and BLM, BLM the movement predates the organisation. I find it odd the idea everyone who supported or sympathised with the movement should now completely detach themselves from it because some people decided to set up a political party in its name, years after the movement began. Or why the organisation BLM should suddenly represent BLM more so than the many people who were supportive of the movement.
It's like saying "In the long run, we're all dead". We still need to worry about the short and medium term.
It gets more of the complexity across, and the range of things that have to be juggled every day.
Within the framework of a Clarkson-style semi comic strip.
Personally I prefer it to him attempting to be too serious - when he did the VC documentary and St Nazaire raid he skipped over a lot of elements, and much of it was a repeat of overimagined wartime legend.
They fuck you up your mum and dad...
Part of the problem is influential sports and media stars tend to be younger so probably are naturally more socially liberal than those who moan about them. It is also why the right may win the short term electoral spoils from the culture war as the voters skew older, but they will lose the long term war as todays kids will listed to the younger influencers more than the moaners.
How they dealt with the My Lidl Pony scandal was instructive imo.
'They appeared four thousand years ago, from the steppes somewhere north of the Caspian, moving constantly westward with their animals and carts. Never stopping long enough to build towns or cities; unusually quarrelsome, their warrior culture seemed mostly to be an internal affair, tribe versus tribe.'
Migration into Western Europe and the Northwestern European islands from places South and West seems to be the traditional pattern, established over thousands of years. As I'm at least 50% Celtic, according to Ancestry I'm interested. Most of the rest is SE Midlands, but Ancestry's genetic screening isn't sophisticated enough, apparently, to determine how much of that, if any, is pre-Saxon.
Would we tolerate any party political messaging on the pitch itself? Probably not, but I’m not sure where the line would be drawn.
The problem is the whole “how can anyone object to anti-racist gestures?” Well, the same could be asked of the poppy shirts. Who could possibly object to those? James McClean did. And that’s why these things aren’t good ideas, in my opinion.
Not sure they’re motivated by money, but you might be right.
Its not just GB. Obviously we used to ship to NI when that still existed as a UK customs zone. RoI was a bolt-on to our market. I'm now in negotiations with an Irish company to distribute my clients products in that market. Not only will they ship products direct to bypass GB, they will then be able to supply NI as well. A clear loss of trade for GB who used to act as the warehouse and distribution hub for the entire British isles.
If Trump wants to run again in 2024 he is therefore highly likely to win the GOP nomination for a third time, a feat only previously achieved by Nixon.
However with President Biden still governing as a relative moderate and with solid approval ratings he is unlikely to defeat the incumbent if he runs again, in which case I think Trump would likely sit it out and let a fellow Trumpite like DeSantis get the nod.
However if Biden steps down and VP Harris ends up the 2024 Democratic nominee then Trump would fancy his chances as she would allow him to run the divisive, culture war campaign he wants far more than Biden would
Still I must disagree with the last four words, the nomination is by far the better bet. I think he is between 2.5-3 for the nomination and 7-10 for the presidency (harder to judge).
https://www.eloratings.net/
Although a fast declining and aging Belgium are too high in both.
Note these are also up to date whereas England and Italy have both won a lot of matches since the official rankings on 27th May.
Isn't it more likely that this is an example of a gruesome corporate virtue-signal by the FA seeking to project an image? This is not the same as the kick it out initiative. I wouldn't boo wither, but I'd turn my back to the players (as a protest to the FA rather than the players themselves who are caught up in this).
In my view just because someone might object or disagree with a gesture doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done. People rarely all agree on something. People should be free to express both their agreement and disagreement with a gesture.
https://www.11v11.com/teams/england/tab/opposingTeams/opposition/Brazil/