Tory poll numbers is still basically unchanged at ~42% (perhaps down 1%).
Anyone who can stare at the chart Mike posted and tell me that the blue graph shows Tory poll numbers as "still basically unchanged" is either living in an altered reality to the rest of the world or needs to go to the opticians.
That chart is odds expressed as %-chances, NOT poll numbers.
FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.
The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.
Most seem totally tone deaf to this.
Instead of bringing the culture war narrative to it, what do *you* think?
Just seen this:
(1) I think it's wrong to enshrine a GDP requirement in law. I'd have it as a rolling target over 3-5 years - sometime it might be 0.5% and sometimes 0.9% depending on circumstance, such as natural disasters requiring a rise or poor strategic alignment and business cases driving a defensible fall - but with political accountability not legal sanction. (2) I'd link it to the national interest. We should have an aid & development review - like we do the defence review - that has a public debate. Aid should be directly linked to things like regional stability, climate change mitigation, migration challenges, and the furtherance of our values. (3) I'd funnel less directly through aid agencies "to spend" which I view, and I think the public views, as institutional largesse with some vested interests attached and run more directly from DfID along business case lines. I'd link everything back to strategy and policy. These would be publicly available for scrutiny.
I don’t have much of a problem with any of that - and proposals along those lines might well receive cross party (though not unanimous) support. Abruptly cutting aid by 30% in the middle of a global pandemic doesn’t really fall under any of that rubric, though.
I completely support bringing the deficit under control which is why I think the right decision was made today.
I don't see how you square the circle of wanting to live within our means and claim that cutting the deficit by £4bn in a vote today is "a drop in the ocean".
To paraphrase someone £4bn here, £4bn there and soon we're talking real money.
If you want us to live in our means and oppose this cut then what would you cut instead?
I don't oppose the cut - that's a misrepresentation of what I actually said..
I also said this £4 billion was the first step - the significance (as you put it) may be that it is the first step.
What would you do to reduce the deficit? End the triple lock, come up with a funding solution to adult social care that recognises, as per the vaccine, we will have an individual responsibility to provide adequate provision for ourselves in older age?
Well as I said the £4bn is a very significant chunk of the structural deficit - and of course its £4bn per annum, not a one off £4bn.
Next step absolutely 100% needs to be for Sunak to address the triple lock and the ludicrous suggestion of 8% increase in pensions this year.
Looking at international aid solely through its effect on British politics, it's definitely in keeping with the new voters that Johnson has won to make this move. What those voters also want is to see that money spent three times over on them, with no tax rises.
I reckon those posters arguing about closing the deficit will be lucky if Johnson only spends the money saved three times over and not five.
The best argument I've ever heard against international aid is that we've been doing it for 40 years and nothing has changed. The budgets got bigger, the charity fat cats got richer but the poor are still poor and East Asia managed to lift itself out of poverty without aid.
Re East Asia, I don't think that's strictly true. Back in the 1960s and 70s, to prevent the spread of Communism in the region, they were massive recipients of American foreign aid.
Professor Chris Whitty @CMO_England As we move to the next stage of the COVID response, it is essential we change behaviour slowly and steadily.
These papers give some of the data which show why going slowly will reduce the risk to all.
Prof. Christina Pagel @chrischirp · 26m what does going slowly mean though? Are we each meant to judge for ourslves when it's 'safe' to move to the next stage? How? Based on what? I'd hoped that was what govt would do tbh.
Did I ever post the article Pagel wrote in about Sept 19 arguing, mathematically, that the opposition parties should vote for an early GE as their best chance of stopping Brexit? Thanks Christina. That’s worked out wonderfully for us.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
This is why I have so much more respect for programmes like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation etc than I do for Oxfam, UKAID and the like.
They seem to have business rather than political acumen at rolling out programmes for mass vaccinations etc
The big clue is how much the established aid charities hate Bill Gates, because he's cutting out the ineffective middlemen. See also people criticising Zuckerberg, because apparently there is a "wrong" way to give away 90% of your money to the world's poorest people.
If I was being really cynical, I might add that Oxfam et al are terrified that the corporate world might actually solve the problems they've been tinkering around the edges of for decades, and put them all out of business.
FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.
The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.
Most seem totally tone deaf to this.
Instead of bringing the culture war narrative to it, what do *you* think?
Just seen this:
(1) I think it's wrong to enshrine a GDP requirement in law. I'd have it as a rolling target over 3-5 years - sometime it might be 0.5% and sometimes 0.9% depending on circumstance, such as natural disasters requiring a rise or poor strategic alignment and business cases driving a defensible fall - but with political accountability not legal sanction. (2) I'd link it to the national interest. We should have an aid & development review - like we do the defence review - that has a public debate. Aid should be directly linked to things like regional stability, climate change mitigation, migration challenges, and the furtherance of our values. (3) I'd funnel less directly through aid agencies "to spend" which I view, and I think the public views, as institutional largesse with some vested interests attached and run more directly from DfID along business case lines. I'd link everything back to strategy and policy. These would be publicly available for scrutiny.
I don’t necessarily disagree with any of this.
However, these are not at all the arguments being presented.
Instead, the government has torched both a manifesto commitment *and* one of the final fig-leaves of Britain’s soft power leadership in order to “own the libs”.
Let's say I agree with that for a second, don't you think "the libs" should look to own the argument along the lines I've suggested rather than playing into the Government's hands?
Tory poll numbers is still basically unchanged at ~42% (perhaps down 1%).
Anyone who can stare at the chart Mike posted and tell me that the blue graph shows Tory poll numbers as "still basically unchanged" is either living in an altered reality to the rest of the world or needs to go to the opticians.
That chart is odds expressed as %-chances, NOT poll numbers.
The best argument I've ever heard against international aid is that we've been doing it for 40 years and nothing has changed. The budgets got bigger, the charity fat cats got richer but the poor are still poor and East Asia managed to lift itself out of poverty without aid.
Re East Asia, I don't think that's strictly true. Back in the 1960s and 70s, to prevent the spread of Communism in the region, they were massive recipients of American foreign aid.
But how much has Europe shovelled into Africa? It's still, frankly, a shithole that Africans want to escape from. You can't just look at American aid to Korea and say aid is a success. The west has collectively pissed away hundreds of billions in Africa and the poor are still poor, the dictators have got bulging bank accounts and charities have paid their directors handsome fees and defined benefit pensions.
It has to be said that aid to South Korea, the Philippines and South Vietnam in the Cold War was a distinctly mixed blessing. The corruption of Syngman Rhee, the destruction of Filipino agriculture and the annihilation of the South Vietnamese economy all spring to mind as unintended consequences.
They’re not the example I would choose of successful aid programmes, put it that way.
Postwar S Korea was literally the poorest country in the world. I’d say the aid program was unusually successful; the later democratisation bit probably wouldn’t have happened without prosperity and the higher education that came with it. But you’re of course right that aid alone doesn’t determine outcomes - and it’s entirely possible that it can be spent in unproductive or counterproductive ways.
An even greater success story is Singapore. It was a mosquito ridden toilet at the back end of the Empire with some nice buildings, a colourful-ish history, and no future, when it decided to go indy from Malaysia
Now it is one of the richest and most successful cities on earth. Astonishing
How much aid was it given? None? Trillions? I dunno, genuinely, but I doubt it was much
Of course it was hugely assisted by a numerate, ambitious high IQ Chinese workforce. And some gifted leaders
In have no special solutions but it needs a rethink. Fundamentally I think 'Trade not Aid' is the best approach. If Adam Smith is right then the essentials of an economy which works by the 'invisible hand' are: Good governance, equal justice, and a peaceful system in which there is an infrastructure (roads, ports, banking) in which people can reliably and honestly farm, manufacture, supply services and trade domestically and internationally.
Aid which recognises this would be useful, but not otherwise. For example I would think that no aid to a country with inadequate governance can ever be any use, unless it is to address that issue (sadly, it is usually called imperialism). Short term emergency aid is different of course.
BTW among the scandals of the late and unlamented EU was the high tariffs on the produce of poor African farmers, and the even higher tariffs on foodstuffs (coffee for example) processed there rather than in the EU.
(OK, I know, they actually will, but a man can dream.)
I dunno- the pitch does seem awfully placid. And Hampshire... bless 'em... do have a record of not quite closing these sort of games out this season.
Sweet dreams.
And Gloucestershire have lost the one batsman playing with the temperament and technique to bat out the day (Bracey).
Plus they are missing four first choice batsmen in Dent, Cockbain, Charlesworth and Van Buuren.
They just are not going to do it. This isn’t the Rose Bowl.
A positive Covid Test might save them, but nothing else will.
Truthfully, although Gloucestershire have won as many matches Hampshire probably deserve their top two finish. They’ve had off days but they’ve also played some superb cricket.
The best argument I've ever heard against international aid is that we've been doing it for 40 years and nothing has changed. The budgets got bigger, the charity fat cats got richer but the poor are still poor and East Asia managed to lift itself out of poverty without aid.
Re East Asia, I don't think that's strictly true. Back in the 1960s and 70s, to prevent the spread of Communism in the region, they were massive recipients of American foreign aid.
But how much has Europe shovelled into Africa? It's still, frankly, a shithole that Africans want to escape from. You can't just look at American aid to Korea and say aid is a success. The west has collectively pissed away hundreds of billions in Africa and the poor are still poor, the dictators have got bulging bank accounts and charities have paid their directors handsome fees and defined benefit pensions.
It has to be said that aid to South Korea, the Philippines and South Vietnam in the Cold War was a distinctly mixed blessing. The corruption of Syngman Rhee, the destruction of Filipino agriculture and the annihilation of the South Vietnamese economy all spring to mind as unintended consequences.
They’re not the example I would choose of successful aid programmes, put it that way.
Postwar S Korea was literally the poorest country in the world. I’d say the aid program was unusually successful; the later democratisation bit probably wouldn’t have happened without prosperity and the higher education that came with it. But you’re of course right that aid alone doesn’t determine outcomes - and it’s entirely possible that it can be spent in unproductive or counterproductive ways.
An even greater success story is Singapore. It was a mosquito ridden toilet at the back end of the Empire with some nice buildings, a colourful-ish history, and no future, when it decided to go indy from Malaysia
Now it is one of the richest and most successful cities on earth. Astonishing
How much aid was it given? None? Trillions? I dunno, genuinely, but I doubt it was much
Of course it was hugely assisted by a numerate, ambitious high IQ Chinese workforce. And some gifted leaders
And geography: being a natural port in that location was a massive head start.
Lee Kuan Yew has a claim to being one of the greatest politicians of the 20th century. An extraordinary life. Singapore is very much his legacy
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
Sir John Major really hasn’t pulled any punches. “It seems we can afford a national yacht that no one either wants or needs, while cutting help to some of the most miserable and destitute in the world.
That’s not a Conservatism I recognise.”
What was the overseas aid budget when he was PM? Lets see....
I think this is the fundamental problem with many of the complaints. By making it an issue primarily of morals, which I totally get, it invites those comparisons to past governments in the UK or present governments elsewhere in the world, who may well be lower even with the reduction. Of course, if one sees it in moral terms failures elsewhere doesn't mean the decision here is ok, but it does undermine it for a lot of people, particularly when a lot of people don't like the budget anyway and others will be uncertain how much is the 'right' amount.
Selling it as effective spending is, of course, harder.
Indeed. There is no 'right' amount. If you believe it is effective, then moral answer is always 'more', and never 'less'.
But as John Major obviously found when he was in the hot seat, the political answer may be different.
Again, this just seems to be a proxy for 'I don't like this government'. Which may be fair comment, but is again missing the target.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
You know, maybe we're doing it completely wrong. Maybe we run a competition for one country to be our sole recipient of foreign aid for the next five years. That country gets the equivalent of 0.5% of UK GDP for five successive years, and also gets a free trade agreement, and as much support as we can give. This wouldn't be charity led - it would be direct government support, with the goal of using five years to dramatically improve infrastructure at all levels - human, health, water, ports/airports, legal structures, education. etc.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
Looking at international aid solely through its effect on British politics, it's definitely in keeping with the new voters that Johnson has won to make this move. What those voters also want is to see that money spent three times over on them, with no tax rises.
I reckon those posters arguing about closing the deficit will be lucky if Johnson only spends the money saved three times over and not five.
If the aim is deficit-closing, BoJo shouldn't be spending the money at all on anything. And whilst that may happen, I find it really hard to envision. Meanwhile, the easy spending cuts have basically run out of road now. From here onwards, making the books balance is going to inconvenience UK voters. I don't think the PM is going to like that at all.
Professor Chris Whitty @CMO_England As we move to the next stage of the COVID response, it is essential we change behaviour slowly and steadily.
These papers give some of the data which show why going slowly will reduce the risk to all.
Prof. Christina Pagel @chrischirp · 26m what does going slowly mean though? Are we each meant to judge for ourslves when it's 'safe' to move to the next stage? How? Based on what? I'd hoped that was what govt would do tbh.
Did I ever post the article Pagel wrote in about Sept 19 arguing, mathematically, that the opposition parties should vote for an early GE as their best chance of stopping Brexit? Thanks Christina. That’s worked out wonderfully for us.
FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.
The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.
Most seem totally tone deaf to this.
Instead of bringing the culture war narrative to it, what do *you* think?
Just seen this:
(1) I think it's wrong to enshrine a GDP requirement in law. I'd have it as a rolling target over 3-5 years - sometime it might be 0.5% and sometimes 0.9% depending on circumstance, such as natural disasters requiring a rise or poor strategic alignment and business cases driving a defensible fall - but with political accountability not legal sanction. (2) I'd link it to the national interest. We should have an aid & development review - like we do the defence review - that has a public debate. Aid should be directly linked to things like regional stability, climate change mitigation, migration challenges, and the furtherance of our values. (3) I'd funnel less directly through aid agencies "to spend" which I view, and I think the public views, as institutional largesse with some vested interests attached and run more directly from DfID along business case lines. I'd link everything back to strategy and policy. These would be publicly available for scrutiny.
I don’t necessarily disagree with any of this.
However, these are not at all the arguments being presented.
Instead, the government has torched both a manifesto commitment *and* one of the final fig-leaves of Britain’s soft power leadership in order to “own the libs”.
Let's say I agree with that for a second, don't you think "the libs" should look to own the argument along the lines I've suggested rather than playing into the Government's hands?
Sure. There is a massive failure of leadership in the centre left.
Not just on this topic; across the board.
Opposition seems to be left to various Tory rebels. I sense no sustained and systematic critique of Borisology, just pearl clutching and by-the-numbers stuff.
Professor Chris Whitty @CMO_England As we move to the next stage of the COVID response, it is essential we change behaviour slowly and steadily.
These papers give some of the data which show why going slowly will reduce the risk to all.
Prof. Christina Pagel @chrischirp · 26m what does going slowly mean though? Are we each meant to judge for ourslves when it's 'safe' to move to the next stage? How? Based on what? I'd hoped that was what govt would do tbh.
Did I ever post the article Pagel wrote in about Sept 19 arguing, mathematically, that the opposition parties should vote for an early GE as their best chance of stopping Brexit? Thanks Christina. That’s worked out wonderfully for us.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?
I don’t know what the true figures are, but I would point out you and Stuart Carroll have just quoted Indie Sage as a source.
Whose figures have - so far - always proven to be false. Largely because they are bunch of third rate lying scum pushing a mad agenda who should be locked up.
So I would say nobody has proved Jackie Baillie is lying.
Can you find the accurate figures.
Sorry to hear that your ability to use the internet has been damaged, so just this once. I’ll let you get your Google-fu mojo back by finding the partially vaxxed figures.
So roughly equal with England and a long way behind Wales.
As for ‘me being unable to used the internet,’ the onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence. The evidence you and your source provided was not evidence because it came from a bunch of liars. Therefore, if you wanted to substantiate your claim you needed to provide proper sources.
The way people write on PB, it's received opinion that the SG is massively behind. Even the more sane Tories said that very recently - but that was well after the crossover. It's weird.
But what I want to know is, what does Mr Drakeford have in his pants, or did someone in London make a mistake with their arithmetic when allocating the juice? Maybe the chap with the calculator was transfered from the Dept of Education.
Age profile. Wales and Scotland are a bit older than England, with a slightly higher proportion of the population over 65 - 21 to 19.3 to 18.5 respectively (we’ve been through this on PB before) so they had more eligible sooner.
Wales also has a much more centralised health system with medium-sized local hospitals at regular intervals. Ideal for a vaccine drive with Pfizer.
Which does mean that Scotland being equal with England is an underperformance.
Doesn't affect the point that PBUnionists were insisting that the raw data were very different even after they weren't.
Also - how accurate is the divisor used? How reliable are the popuilation figures? All those tales of Romanian window cleaners emerging frokm the woodwork to apply for their residency bumf. But a lot fo them have gone home anyway ...
Scotland is underperforming even though it’s ahead is the new ‘Scotland’s is behind on hard vax figs’ which in turn followed on from ‘Scotland’s services are less resilient’. It’s a self comfort thing, very hard to dislodge.
Silkie Carlo @silkiecarlo · 1h The Government just won, 319 votes to 246. We now have mandatory vaccinations in the UK following a snap vote no one knew about, with no evidence provided for it.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
The best argument I've ever heard against international aid is that we've been doing it for 40 years and nothing has changed. The budgets got bigger, the charity fat cats got richer but the poor are still poor and East Asia managed to lift itself out of poverty without aid.
Re East Asia, I don't think that's strictly true. Back in the 1960s and 70s, to prevent the spread of Communism in the region, they were massive recipients of American foreign aid.
But how much has Europe shovelled into Africa? It's still, frankly, a shithole that Africans want to escape from. You can't just look at American aid to Korea and say aid is a success. The west has collectively pissed away hundreds of billions in Africa and the poor are still poor, the dictators have got bulging bank accounts and charities have paid their directors handsome fees and defined benefit pensions.
It has to be said that aid to South Korea, the Philippines and South Vietnam in the Cold War was a distinctly mixed blessing. The corruption of Syngman Rhee, the destruction of Filipino agriculture and the annihilation of the South Vietnamese economy all spring to mind as unintended consequences.
They’re not the example I would choose of successful aid programmes, put it that way.
Postwar S Korea was literally the poorest country in the world. I’d say the aid program was unusually successful; the later democratisation bit probably wouldn’t have happened without prosperity and the higher education that came with it. But you’re of course right that aid alone doesn’t determine outcomes - and it’s entirely possible that it can be spent in unproductive or counterproductive ways.
An even greater success story is Singapore. It was a mosquito ridden toilet at the back end of the Empire with some nice buildings, a colourful-ish history, and no future, when it decided to go indy from Malaysia
Now it is one of the richest and most successful cities on earth. Astonishing
How much aid was it given? None? Trillions? I dunno, genuinely, but I doubt it was much
Of course it was hugely assisted by a numerate, ambitious high IQ Chinese workforce. And some gifted leaders
In have no special solutions but it needs a rethink. Fundamentally I think 'Trade not Aid' is the best approach. If Adam Smith is right then the essentials of an economy which works by the 'invisible hand' are: Good governance, equal justice, and a peaceful system in which there is an infrastructure (roads, ports, banking) in which people can reliably and honestly farm, manufacture, supply services and trade domestically and internationally.
Aid which recognises this would be useful, but not otherwise. For example I would think that no aid to a country with inadequate governance can ever be any use, unless it is to address that issue (sadly, it is usually called imperialism). Short term emergency aid is different of course.
BTW among the scandals of the late and unlamented EU was the high tariffs on the produce of poor African farmers, and the even higher tariffs on foodstuffs (coffee for example) processed there rather than in the EU.
Under the Lome agreements and "Everything but Arms" deal, African countries had preferential access to EU markets. Indeed the USA went to the WHO arguing this was unfair access.
Professor Chris Whitty @CMO_England As we move to the next stage of the COVID response, it is essential we change behaviour slowly and steadily.
These papers give some of the data which show why going slowly will reduce the risk to all.
Prof. Christina Pagel @chrischirp · 26m what does going slowly mean though? Are we each meant to judge for ourslves when it's 'safe' to move to the next stage? How? Based on what? I'd hoped that was what govt would do tbh.
Did I ever post the article Pagel wrote in about Sept 19 arguing, mathematically, that the opposition parties should vote for an early GE as their best chance of stopping Brexit? Thanks Christina. That’s worked out wonderfully for us.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
You know, maybe we're doing it completely wrong. Maybe we run a competition for one country to be our sole recipient of foreign aid for the next five years. That country gets the equivalent of 0.5% of UK GDP for five successive years, and also gets a free trade agreement, and as much support as we can give. This wouldn't be charity led - it would be direct government support, with the goal of using five years to dramatically improve infrastructure at all levels - human, health, water, ports/airports, legal structures, education. etc.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
That doesn't sound like a bad approach.
As I understand it, over recent years the UK has concentrated mainly on concentrating on specific goals - girls education is one that I remember hearing about, but also some others. My impression is that we'd been reasonably successful in comparison with earlier decades.
My personal approach would be to concentrate on one single goal - ending hunger - and concentrating our resources on that. Maybe part of this would be motivated by guilt, over the many famines Britain played a role in, but I think we could do more good by concentrating on doing one thing than by dispersing our efforts, I'd just be concentrating thematically rather than geographically.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
You know, maybe we're doing it completely wrong. Maybe we run a competition for one country to be our sole recipient of foreign aid for the next five years. That country gets the equivalent of 0.5% of UK GDP for five successive years, and also gets a free trade agreement, and as much support as we can give. This wouldn't be charity led - it would be direct government support, with the goal of using five years to dramatically improve infrastructure at all levels - human, health, water, ports/airports, legal structures, education. etc.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
I assume tongue in cheek, but anyway:
1) Presumably all other rich countries would just withdraw aid to the target, so the net effect would be minimal.
2) "Basic principles" might need to include women's and minority rights, which most (all?) of the potential targets would struggle to meet properly in the short to medium term.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
Silkie Carlo @silkiecarlo · 1h The Government just won, 319 votes to 246. We now have mandatory vaccinations in the UK following a snap vote no one knew about, with no evidence provided for it.
I don't think parliament is required to provide evidence for its decisions? People have tried challenging decisions on the reasoning given for instance and I don't think that generally works.
As for no one knowing about it, well, it's true this is the first I've heard about it, but then we do rely on opposition and the media for these things to make sure we know.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
If the Tories were in govt you might have a point, but what we have is a bunch of English Nationalists masquerading as Tories.
I am glad that the Italians won the football tournament. I dread to think of the political propaganda that Boris would have made of it in this, the Year of Brexit.
THE most powerful naval flotilla to sail from Britain since Falklands War has been struck by a major Covid outbreak - after sailors went raving in Cyprus. Almost half the warships in RN carrier strike group have been hit by ‘rona
I'd happier see her give away her earnings to charities than our taxes.
Did you not like May as PM? Honestly? I'd never have guessed....
It's curious we treat our former Prime Ministers much worse than America treats its former Presidents (or at least that used to be the case).
Jimmy Carter may not have been the most successful POTUS but are we to denigrate the work he has done since leaving office (Habitats for Humanity seems entirely laudable)?
Bill Clinton was involved with George HW Bush on hurricane relief and has done other philanthropic activities. George W Bush seems to be regarded with a fondness which he perhaps wasn't while in office (except by supporters of Trump but they loathe Obama almost as much).
We should, I think, seek to utilise ex-Prime MInisters in some way but that seems not to be how we operate - rehabilitation for their time in office seems to take several decades.
Except the next ex-PM please. Just pay him off, which is what he wants anyway.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
(OK, I know, they actually will, but a man can dream.)
I dunno- the pitch does seem awfully placid. And Hampshire... bless 'em... do have a record of not quite closing these sort of games out this season.
Sweet dreams.
And Gloucestershire have lost the one batsman playing with the temperament and technique to bat out the day (Bracey).
Plus they are missing four first choice batsmen in Dent, Cockbain, Charlesworth and Van Buuren.
They just are not going to do it. This isn’t the Rose Bowl.
A positive Covid Test might save them, but nothing else will.
Truthfully, although Gloucestershire have won as many matches Hampshire probably deserve their top two finish. They’ve had off days but they’ve also played some superb cricket.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
Marcus Rashford is an intelligent and excellent role model and the whole country should support him, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka against this racist abuse
No, I meant the twats in the photo waving Black Lives Matter placards, promoting a vile Marxist group which wants to defund the police, destroy capitalism, and break down the family. They are stupid arseholes at best
Rashford is an apparently pleasant chap, with a tough and interesting backstory, who has done really positive things, in his status as a multi-millionaire. He's not a saint, but he is a force for good, on the whole
These pillocks in the photo saying Black Lives Matter can do one
Looks like you lost your culture war, and didnt even get to extra time, let alone penalties......
The culture war was started by the left, and it's a war they're going to lose.
What in your opinion, was the first move in the culture war?
FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.
The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.
Most seem totally tone deaf to this.
Instead of bringing the culture war narrative to it, what do *you* think?
Just seen this:
(1) I think it's wrong to enshrine a GDP requirement in law. I'd have it as a rolling target over 3-5 years - sometime it might be 0.5% and sometimes 0.9% depending on circumstance, such as natural disasters requiring a rise or poor strategic alignment and business cases driving a defensible fall - but with political accountability not legal sanction. (2) I'd link it to the national interest. We should have an aid & development review - like we do the defence review - that has a public debate. Aid should be directly linked to things like regional stability, climate change mitigation, migration challenges, and the furtherance of our values. (3) I'd funnel less directly through aid agencies "to spend" which I view, and I think the public views, as institutional largesse with some vested interests attached and run more directly from DfID along business case lines. I'd link everything back to strategy and policy. These would be publicly available for scrutiny.
I don’t necessarily disagree with any of this.
However, these are not at all the arguments being presented.
Instead, the government has torched both a manifesto commitment *and* one of the final fig-leaves of Britain’s soft power leadership in order to “own the libs”.
Let's say I agree with that for a second, don't you think "the libs" should look to own the argument along the lines I've suggested rather than playing into the Government's hands?
Sure. There is a massive failure of leadership in the centre left.
Not just on this topic; across the board.
Opposition seems to be left to various Tory rebels. I sense no sustained and systematic critique of Borisology, just pearl clutching and by-the-numbers stuff.
And, whilst Conservative rebels and Conservatives-in-exile clearly have something to contribute to this, there are lots of reasons why they can only be a secondary contribution to this.
The lobotomisation of politics, especially in Labour under Corbyn, has a baleful shadow. And it's pretty obvious that post-Boris Conservatives are going to fall into a similar trap.
Did I ever post the article Pagel wrote in about Sept 19 arguing, mathematically, that the opposition parties should vote for an early GE as their best chance of stopping Brexit? Thanks Christina. That’s worked out wonderfully for us.
Actually, she was right.
The Conservative poll rating rose inexorably through autumn 2019 - the Opposition parties should have called a GE as soon as Johnson became Prime Minister.
I doubt it would have mattered - as soon as Farage decided he wasn't going to fight it and backed Johnson, it was all over. Even in August, the combined Conservative/BXP vote was in the mid-40s.
The best argument I've ever heard against international aid is that we've been doing it for 40 years and nothing has changed. The budgets got bigger, the charity fat cats got richer but the poor are still poor and East Asia managed to lift itself out of poverty without aid.
Re East Asia, I don't think that's strictly true. Back in the 1960s and 70s, to prevent the spread of Communism in the region, they were massive recipients of American foreign aid.
But how much has Europe shovelled into Africa? It's still, frankly, a shithole that Africans want to escape from. You can't just look at American aid to Korea and say aid is a success. The west has collectively pissed away hundreds of billions in Africa and the poor are still poor, the dictators have got bulging bank accounts and charities have paid their directors handsome fees and defined benefit pensions.
It has to be said that aid to South Korea, the Philippines and South Vietnam in the Cold War was a distinctly mixed blessing. The corruption of Syngman Rhee, the destruction of Filipino agriculture and the annihilation of the South Vietnamese economy all spring to mind as unintended consequences.
They’re not the example I would choose of successful aid programmes, put it that way.
Postwar S Korea was literally the poorest country in the world. I’d say the aid program was unusually successful; the later democratisation bit probably wouldn’t have happened without prosperity and the higher education that came with it. But you’re of course right that aid alone doesn’t determine outcomes - and it’s entirely possible that it can be spent in unproductive or counterproductive ways.
An even greater success story is Singapore. It was a mosquito ridden toilet at the back end of the Empire with some nice buildings, a colourful-ish history, and no future, when it decided to go indy from Malaysia
Now it is one of the richest and most successful cities on earth. Astonishing
How much aid was it given? None? Trillions? I dunno, genuinely, but I doubt it was much
Of course it was hugely assisted by a numerate, ambitious high IQ Chinese workforce. And some gifted leaders
Britain rebuilt things after a fashion, immediately after the war - and while Korea was being devastated by the US/China struggle, Singapore boomed on the demand for tin and rubber: http://countrystudies.us/singapore/9.htm
THE most powerful naval flotilla to sail from Britain since Falklands War has been struck by a major Covid outbreak - after sailors went raving in Cyprus. Almost half the warships in RN carrier strike group have been hit by ‘rona
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
Of how it is used, yes. Understood? Well, it isn't understood. Because the anti-woke steadfastly refuse to define it.
My favourite battle of the Culture War has been today's abject change by the self proclaimed "anti-Woke" GB News, in having the first television presenter "to take the knee" on camera in support of black British footballers.
As a member of iSAGE sport committee, i correctly predicted England would win the cricket even when they lost Stokes with still nearly 200 still required ;-)
Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?
I don’t know what the true figures are, but I would point out you and Stuart Carroll have just quoted Indie Sage as a source.
Whose figures have - so far - always proven to be false. Largely because they are bunch of third rate lying scum pushing a mad agenda who should be locked up.
So I would say nobody has proved Jackie Baillie is lying.
Can you find the accurate figures.
Sorry to hear that your ability to use the internet has been damaged, so just this once. I’ll let you get your Google-fu mojo back by finding the partially vaxxed figures.
So roughly equal with England and a long way behind Wales.
As for ‘me being unable to used the internet,’ the onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence. The evidence you and your source provided was not evidence because it came from a bunch of liars. Therefore, if you wanted to substantiate your claim you needed to provide proper sources.
The way people write on PB, it's received opinion that the SG is massively behind. Even the more sane Tories said that very recently - but that was well after the crossover. It's weird.
But what I want to know is, what does Mr Drakeford have in his pants, or did someone in London make a mistake with their arithmetic when allocating the juice? Maybe the chap with the calculator was transfered from the Dept of Education.
Age profile. Wales and Scotland are a bit older than England, with a slightly higher proportion of the population over 65 - 21 to 19.3 to 18.5 respectively (we’ve been through this on PB before) so they had more eligible sooner.
Wales also has a much more centralised health system with medium-sized local hospitals at regular intervals. Ideal for a vaccine drive with Pfizer.
Which does mean that Scotland being equal with England is an underperformance.
Doesn't affect the point that PBUnionists were insisting that the raw data were very different even after they weren't.
Also - how accurate is the divisor used? How reliable are the popuilation figures? All those tales of Romanian window cleaners emerging frokm the woodwork to apply for their residency bumf. But a lot fo them have gone home anyway ...
I wouldn’t have used the word ‘lagging’ on these figures. But given its population profile, its ethnic makeup and its healthcare system, Scotland’s performance in vaccination has been less impressive than England or Wales. Not Northern Ireland, where different factors apply.
But that, to a great degree, is a sign of how successful England and Wales have been rather than a reflection on Scotland. France would bite your hand off for Scotland’s figures.
The Scots were also working much more systematically through trhe generations than in England, dealing with the oldest first - quite a striking difference on the graph of percentages (and targeting deaths even more). No idea how far that reflects recipient anti vaxxer sentiment mind. But not much in it.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
Did I ever post the article Pagel wrote in about Sept 19 arguing, mathematically, that the opposition parties should vote for an early GE as their best chance of stopping Brexit? Thanks Christina. That’s worked out wonderfully for us.
Actually, she was right.
The Conservative poll rating rose inexorably through autumn 2019 - the Opposition parties should have called a GE as soon as Johnson became Prime Minister.
I doubt it would have mattered - as soon as Farage decided he wasn't going to fight it and backed Johnson, it was all over. Even in August, the combined Conservative/BXP vote was in the mid-40s.
Silkie Carlo @silkiecarlo · 1h The Government just won, 319 votes to 246. We now have mandatory vaccinations in the UK following a snap vote no one knew about, with no evidence provided for it.
THE most powerful naval flotilla to sail from Britain since Falklands War has been struck by a major Covid outbreak - after sailors went raving in Cyprus. Almost half the warships in RN carrier strike group have been hit by ‘rona
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
Of how it is used, yes. Understood? Well, it isn't understood. Because the anti-woke steadfastly refuse to define it.
My favourite battle of the Culture War has been today's abject change by the self proclaimed "anti-Woke" GB News, in having the first television presenter "to take the knee" on camera in support of black British footballers.
This has all been a bit 'bouleversant' for the right-populists, as the French would say. Downing Street has been all at sea today because the intersection between England football patriotism and what it's stereotyped as an entire and monolithic 'woke' agenda is immediately electorally, and even more broadly culturally in the long term, damaging for it.
FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.
The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.
Most seem totally tone deaf to this.
Instead of bringing the culture war narrative to it, what do *you* think?
Just seen this:
(1) I think it's wrong to enshrine a GDP requirement in law. I'd have it as a rolling target over 3-5 years - sometime it might be 0.5% and sometimes 0.9% depending on circumstance, such as natural disasters requiring a rise or poor strategic alignment and business cases driving a defensible fall - but with political accountability not legal sanction. (2) I'd link it to the national interest. We should have an aid & development review - like we do the defence review - that has a public debate. Aid should be directly linked to things like regional stability, climate change mitigation, migration challenges, and the furtherance of our values. (3) I'd funnel less directly through aid agencies "to spend" which I view, and I think the public views, as institutional largesse with some vested interests attached and run more directly from DfID along business case lines. I'd link everything back to strategy and policy. These would be publicly available for scrutiny.
I don’t necessarily disagree with any of this.
However, these are not at all the arguments being presented.
Instead, the government has torched both a manifesto commitment *and* one of the final fig-leaves of Britain’s soft power leadership in order to “own the libs”.
Let's say I agree with that for a second, don't you think "the libs" should look to own the argument along the lines I've suggested rather than playing into the Government's hands?
Sure. There is a massive failure of leadership in the centre left.
Not just on this topic; across the board.
Opposition seems to be left to various Tory rebels. I sense no sustained and systematic critique of Borisology, just pearl clutching and by-the-numbers stuff.
And, whilst Conservative rebels and Conservatives-in-exile clearly have something to contribute to this, there are lots of reasons why they can only be a secondary contribution to this.
The lobotomisation of politics, especially in Labour under Corbyn, has a baleful shadow. And it's pretty obvious that post-Boris Conservatives are going to fall into a similar trap.
Actually they are already there. Borisology is a simply a populism pure and simple. As we have both noted, it will be fascinating to see how this collides with the fiscal hawks in Treasury and elsewhere (Javid, Truss).
But this is a country with a built-in preference for Conservative government, and this is re-inforced by the media at large - so Boris has more leeway in this respect.
As a member of iSAGE sport committee, i correctly predicted England would win the cricket even when they lost Stokes with still nearly 200 still required ;-)
I did say one of stokes or vince needed to get a ton. Gregory was superb too. Only criticism is they both got out before finishing the job. But that’s a minor point,
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
Of how it is used, yes. Understood? Well, it isn't understood. Because the anti-woke steadfastly refuse to define it.
My favourite battle of the Culture War has been today's abject change by the self proclaimed "anti-Woke" GB News, in having the first television presenter "to take the knee" on camera in support of black British footballers.
Some lush comments underneath. Most declaring they'll switch off for good. One lone voice saying "actually isn't this what freedom of speech is all about?"
Did I ever post the article Pagel wrote in about Sept 19 arguing, mathematically, that the opposition parties should vote for an early GE as their best chance of stopping Brexit? Thanks Christina. That’s worked out wonderfully for us.
Actually, she was right.
The Conservative poll rating rose inexorably through autumn 2019 - the Opposition parties should have called a GE as soon as Johnson became Prime Minister.
I doubt it would have mattered - as soon as Farage decided he wasn't going to fight it and backed Johnson, it was all over. Even in August, the combined Conservative/BXP vote was in the mid-40s.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?
I don’t know what the true figures are, but I would point out you and Stuart Carroll have just quoted Indie Sage as a source.
Whose figures have - so far - always proven to be false. Largely because they are bunch of third rate lying scum pushing a mad agenda who should be locked up.
So I would say nobody has proved Jackie Baillie is lying.
Can you find the accurate figures.
Sorry to hear that your ability to use the internet has been damaged, so just this once. I’ll let you get your Google-fu mojo back by finding the partially vaxxed figures.
So roughly equal with England and a long way behind Wales.
As for ‘me being unable to used the internet,’ the onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence. The evidence you and your source provided was not evidence because it came from a bunch of liars. Therefore, if you wanted to substantiate your claim you needed to provide proper sources.
The way people write on PB, it's received opinion that the SG is massively behind. Even the more sane Tories said that very recently - but that was well after the crossover. It's weird.
But what I want to know is, what does Mr Drakeford have in his pants, or did someone in London make a mistake with their arithmetic when allocating the juice? Maybe the chap with the calculator was transfered from the Dept of Education.
Age profile. Wales and Scotland are a bit older than England, with a slightly higher proportion of the population over 65 - 21 to 19.3 to 18.5 respectively (we’ve been through this on PB before) so they had more eligible sooner.
Wales also has a much more centralised health system with medium-sized local hospitals at regular intervals. Ideal for a vaccine drive with Pfizer.
Which does mean that Scotland being equal with England is an underperformance.
Doesn't affect the point that PBUnionists were insisting that the raw data were very different even after they weren't.
Also - how accurate is the divisor used? How reliable are the popuilation figures? All those tales of Romanian window cleaners emerging frokm the woodwork to apply for their residency bumf. But a lot fo them have gone home anyway ...
Scotland is underperforming even though it’s ahead is the new ‘Scotland’s is behind on hard vax figs’ which in turn followed on from ‘Scotland’s services are less resilient’. It’s a self comfort thing, very hard to dislodge.
I must say it was quitre something for SLAB Unionists to complain that the Scots were doing the same thing as souyh of the border in terms of 8 vs 4 weeks.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
Did I ever post the article Pagel wrote in about Sept 19 arguing, mathematically, that the opposition parties should vote for an early GE as their best chance of stopping Brexit? Thanks Christina. That’s worked out wonderfully for us.
Actually, she was right.
The Conservative poll rating rose inexorably through autumn 2019 - the Opposition parties should have called a GE as soon as Johnson became Prime Minister.
I doubt it would have mattered - as soon as Farage decided he wasn't going to fight it and backed Johnson, it was all over. Even in August, the combined Conservative/BXP vote was in the mid-40s.
The best argument I've ever heard against international aid is that we've been doing it for 40 years and nothing has changed. The budgets got bigger, the charity fat cats got richer but the poor are still poor and East Asia managed to lift itself out of poverty without aid.
Re East Asia, I don't think that's strictly true. Back in the 1960s and 70s, to prevent the spread of Communism in the region, they were massive recipients of American foreign aid.
But how much has Europe shovelled into Africa? It's still, frankly, a shithole that Africans want to escape from. You can't just look at American aid to Korea and say aid is a success. The west has collectively pissed away hundreds of billions in Africa and the poor are still poor, the dictators have got bulging bank accounts and charities have paid their directors handsome fees and defined benefit pensions.
This is corner-of-a-pub-in-Chigwell chat. Depressing.
You might not like the conclusions mate, doesn't change the facts on the ground. The poor in Africa are still very poor, our aid programmes have achieved little to nothing to help them.
That’s not true, though, is it? See the assessments upthread; also @TSE’s post.
I mean that's the same as professors banging on about Eastern Europeans not holding down wages. It's bullshit with "evidence". I've been to Africa more than a few times, I've been to India a lot. My family has roots in both of these places. Whatever the reports and studies say it's just bullshit. You can choose to trust those reports if you want and simply ignore that Africans are no better off than when all of our aid programmes started. In terms of global wealth only Nigeria has advanced on the basis of its oil wealth.
So what you are saying is, you’ve had enough of experts.
I've had enough of white liberal professors driven by colonial guilt. Yes.
By your logic you would eliminate all foreign aid.
Put it like that, it sounds absurd. But it's a very popular proposition;
Within the poll, we further provided the UK public with a list of regions and asked which they would most support the UK providing development funding being direct towards, providing a ‘none of these’ option at the end of the list. Given this list, a significant minority of respondents (35%) stated that they would not support the foreign aid budget being spent at all. This figure included over half of respondents aged 55. Moreover, just 15% of 2019 Labour voters hold the view that the foreign aid budget being spent at all, in stark contrast to the 57% of Conservatives who would support not spending the foreign aid budget at all.
There's certainly a case to be made to let people donate to well ran aid charities if they want to rather than spending taxes on it.
The aid organisations I have the most respect for are organisations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation etc which have raised their money privately and have a ruthless determination to spend money on projects that work, not spending money on theatre of convincing politicians or the public to keep giving them more money.
For all of the negative things that could be said about Bill Gates and Microsoft, the B&M Foundation is an astonishing thing to do, and it has been done very well indeed by looking at a charity in a businesslike way.
I think he was genuinely astonished at how much his shares in Microsoft became worth, and realised that several generations of his family would be unbelievely wealthy on 1% of his net worth. So fair play to him.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
Of how it is used, yes. Understood? Well, it isn't understood. Because the anti-woke steadfastly refuse to define it.
My favourite battle of the Culture War has been today's abject change by the self proclaimed "anti-Woke" GB News, in having the first television presenter "to take the knee" on camera in support of black British footballers.
Some lush comments underneath. Most declaring they'll switch off for good. One lone voice saying "actually isn't this what freedom of speech is all about?"
It couldn’t have happened to a nicer tv channel. Is Andrew Neil back from his extended holidays yet?
This is a ridiculous position. I am all for masks on things like public transport, they do something, but they won't prevent another lockdown. Its a total lie to position the argument as such.
As linked on the last thread, most spread is in setting where masks will never be, such as within households and friendship groups.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
I'm a bit too knackered to put together a short and well crafted attempt. What I will say is that your definition would mean that the vast majority of the UK population would be described as woke to some extent. That doesn't seem right in terms of current usage of the word!
Did I ever post the article Pagel wrote in about Sept 19 arguing, mathematically, that the opposition parties should vote for an early GE as their best chance of stopping Brexit? Thanks Christina. That’s worked out wonderfully for us.
Actually, she was right.
The Conservative poll rating rose inexorably through autumn 2019 - the Opposition parties should have called a GE as soon as Johnson became Prime Minister.
I doubt it would have mattered - as soon as Farage decided he wasn't going to fight it and backed Johnson, it was all over. Even in August, the combined Conservative/BXP vote was in the mid-40s.
This is a ridiculous position. I am all for masks on things like public transport, they do something, but they won't prevent another lockdown. Its a total lie to position the argument as such.
When do you think Boris will call the next lockdown?
This is a ridiculous position. I am all for masks on things like public transport, they do something, but they won't prevent another lockdown. Its a total lie to position the argument as such.
When do you think Boris will call the next lockdown?
About 2 weeks after he should have.....and with a weeks notice period.
Did I ever post the article Pagel wrote in about Sept 19 arguing, mathematically, that the opposition parties should vote for an early GE as their best chance of stopping Brexit? Thanks Christina. That’s worked out wonderfully for us.
Actually, she was right.
The Conservative poll rating rose inexorably through autumn 2019 - the Opposition parties should have called a GE as soon as Johnson became Prime Minister.
I doubt it would have mattered - as soon as Farage decided he wasn't going to fight it and backed Johnson, it was all over. Even in August, the combined Conservative/BXP vote was in the mid-40s.
Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?
I don’t know what the true figures are, but I would point out you and Stuart Carroll have just quoted Indie Sage as a source.
Whose figures have - so far - always proven to be false. Largely because they are bunch of third rate lying scum pushing a mad agenda who should be locked up.
So I would say nobody has proved Jackie Baillie is lying.
Can you find the accurate figures.
Sorry to hear that your ability to use the internet has been damaged, so just this once. I’ll let you get your Google-fu mojo back by finding the partially vaxxed figures.
So roughly equal with England and a long way behind Wales.
As for ‘me being unable to used the internet,’ the onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence. The evidence you and your source provided was not evidence because it came from a bunch of liars. Therefore, if you wanted to substantiate your claim you needed to provide proper sources.
The way people write on PB, it's received opinion that the SG is massively behind. Even the more sane Tories said that very recently - but that was well after the crossover. It's weird.
But what I want to know is, what does Mr Drakeford have in his pants, or did someone in London make a mistake with their arithmetic when allocating the juice? Maybe the chap with the calculator was transfered from the Dept of Education.
Age profile. Wales and Scotland are a bit older than England, with a slightly higher proportion of the population over 65 - 21 to 19.3 to 18.5 respectively (we’ve been through this on PB before) so they had more eligible sooner.
Wales also has a much more centralised health system with medium-sized local hospitals at regular intervals. Ideal for a vaccine drive with Pfizer.
Which does mean that Scotland being equal with England is an underperformance.
Doesn't affect the point that PBUnionists were insisting that the raw data were very different even after they weren't.
Also - how accurate is the divisor used? How reliable are the popuilation figures? All those tales of Romanian window cleaners emerging frokm the woodwork to apply for their residency bumf. But a lot fo them have gone home anyway ...
Scotland is underperforming even though it’s ahead is the new ‘Scotland’s is behind on hard vax figs’ which in turn followed on from ‘Scotland’s services are less resilient’. It’s a self comfort thing, very hard to dislodge.
And add that old perennial - 'SNP one party state'. This from Tories in the present-day UK with a FPTP Westminster. Had another outing today, staggering along painfully like the elderly Malamute I often see on my monring walk.
Sir John Major really hasn’t pulled any punches. “It seems we can afford a national yacht that no one either wants or needs, while cutting help to some of the most miserable and destitute in the world.
That’s not a Conservatism I recognise.”
What was the overseas aid budget when he was PM? Lets see....
I think this is the fundamental problem with many of the complaints. By making it an issue primarily of morals, which I totally get, it invites those comparisons to past governments in the UK or present governments elsewhere in the world, who may well be lower even with the reduction. Of course, if one sees it in moral terms failures elsewhere doesn't mean the decision here is ok, but it does undermine it for a lot of people, particularly when a lot of people don't like the budget anyway and others will be uncertain how much is the 'right' amount.
Selling it as effective spending is, of course, harder.
Indeed. There is no 'right' amount. If you believe it is effective, then moral answer is always 'more', and never 'less'.
But as John Major obviously found when he was in the hot seat, the political answer may be different.
Again, this just seems to be a proxy for 'I don't like this government'. Which may be fair comment, but is again missing the target.
I think this is what riles some people.
Not only did John Major not do it himself whilst in office, at a time when we were in far better financial shape with a great trajectory to absolute solvency, but the exact same arguments could be deployed for 0.9%, 1.1% or indeed 2% targets. The current 0.7% would be costing "millions of lives" over those higher levels by precisely the same logic and we should be ashamed of ourselves accordingly.
Fundamentally, without caveats or an aid strategy, it's a socialist argument.
Looking at international aid solely through its effect on British politics, it's definitely in keeping with the new voters that Johnson has won to make this move. What those voters also want is to see that money spent three times over on them, with no tax rises.
I reckon those posters arguing about closing the deficit will be lucky if Johnson only spends the money saved three times over and not five.
If the aim is deficit-closing, BoJo shouldn't be spending the money at all on anything. And whilst that may happen, I find it really hard to envision. Meanwhile, the easy spending cuts have basically run out of road now. From here onwards, making the books balance is going to inconvenience UK voters. I don't think the PM is going to like that at all.
Which is why they’re starting with things like Overseas Aid, which most of the government’s voters couldn’t give a sh!t about. Next up will be privatising Channel 4 and cuts in arts subsidies.
The Guardian will go bonkers, but the Red Wall will cheer.
I find the outrage bus about GB News a bit weird. It’s a cable news channel in an age where most people get their news from the interwebs. As quixotic in its own way as the New European or The National.
Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?
I don’t know what the true figures are, but I would point out you and Stuart Carroll have just quoted Indie Sage as a source.
Whose figures have - so far - always proven to be false. Largely because they are bunch of third rate lying scum pushing a mad agenda who should be locked up.
So I would say nobody has proved Jackie Baillie is lying.
Can you find the accurate figures.
Sorry to hear that your ability to use the internet has been damaged, so just this once. I’ll let you get your Google-fu mojo back by finding the partially vaxxed figures.
So roughly equal with England and a long way behind Wales.
As for ‘me being unable to used the internet,’ the onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence. The evidence you and your source provided was not evidence because it came from a bunch of liars. Therefore, if you wanted to substantiate your claim you needed to provide proper sources.
The way people write on PB, it's received opinion that the SG is massively behind. Even the more sane Tories said that very recently - but that was well after the crossover. It's weird.
But what I want to know is, what does Mr Drakeford have in his pants, or did someone in London make a mistake with their arithmetic when allocating the juice? Maybe the chap with the calculator was transfered from the Dept of Education.
Age profile. Wales and Scotland are a bit older than England, with a slightly higher proportion of the population over 65 - 21 to 19.3 to 18.5 respectively (we’ve been through this on PB before) so they had more eligible sooner.
Wales also has a much more centralised health system with medium-sized local hospitals at regular intervals. Ideal for a vaccine drive with Pfizer.
Which does mean that Scotland being equal with England is an underperformance.
Doesn't affect the point that PBUnionists were insisting that the raw data were very different even after they weren't.
Also - how accurate is the divisor used? How reliable are the popuilation figures? All those tales of Romanian window cleaners emerging frokm the woodwork to apply for their residency bumf. But a lot fo them have gone home anyway ...
Scotland is underperforming even though it’s ahead is the new ‘Scotland’s is behind on hard vax figs’ which in turn followed on from ‘Scotland’s services are less resilient’. It’s a self comfort thing, very hard to dislodge.
And add that old perennial - 'SNP one party state'. This from Tories in the present-day UK with a FPTP Westminster. Had another outing today, staggering along painfully like the elderly Malamute I often see on my monring walk.
A bit incontinent and likely to snap if caught unawares?
Looking at international aid solely through its effect on British politics, it's definitely in keeping with the new voters that Johnson has won to make this move. What those voters also want is to see that money spent three times over on them, with no tax rises.
I reckon those posters arguing about closing the deficit will be lucky if Johnson only spends the money saved three times over and not five.
If the aim is deficit-closing, BoJo shouldn't be spending the money at all on anything. And whilst that may happen, I find it really hard to envision. Meanwhile, the easy spending cuts have basically run out of road now. From here onwards, making the books balance is going to inconvenience UK voters. I don't think the PM is going to like that at all.
Which is why they’re starting with things like Overseas Aid, which most of the government’s voters couldn’t give a sh!t about. Next up will be privatising Channel 4 and cuts in arts subsidies.
The Guardian will go bonkers, but the Red Wall will cheer.
BTW among the scandals of the late and unlamented EU was the high tariffs on the produce of poor African farmers, and the even higher tariffs on foodstuffs (coffee for example) processed there rather than in the EU.
That's a bit harsh: in recent years the EU really opened up to poorer countries in Sub-Saharan Africa - signing a number of free trade agreements with them.
Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?
I don’t know what the true figures are, but I would point out you and Stuart Carroll have just quoted Indie Sage as a source.
Whose figures have - so far - always proven to be false. Largely because they are bunch of third rate lying scum pushing a mad agenda who should be locked up.
So I would say nobody has proved Jackie Baillie is lying.
Can you find the accurate figures.
Sorry to hear that your ability to use the internet has been damaged, so just this once. I’ll let you get your Google-fu mojo back by finding the partially vaxxed figures.
So roughly equal with England and a long way behind Wales.
As for ‘me being unable to used the internet,’ the onus is on the person making the claim to provide evidence. The evidence you and your source provided was not evidence because it came from a bunch of liars. Therefore, if you wanted to substantiate your claim you needed to provide proper sources.
The way people write on PB, it's received opinion that the SG is massively behind. Even the more sane Tories said that very recently - but that was well after the crossover. It's weird.
But what I want to know is, what does Mr Drakeford have in his pants, or did someone in London make a mistake with their arithmetic when allocating the juice? Maybe the chap with the calculator was transfered from the Dept of Education.
Age profile. Wales and Scotland are a bit older than England, with a slightly higher proportion of the population over 65 - 21 to 19.3 to 18.5 respectively (we’ve been through this on PB before) so they had more eligible sooner.
Wales also has a much more centralised health system with medium-sized local hospitals at regular intervals. Ideal for a vaccine drive with Pfizer.
Which does mean that Scotland being equal with England is an underperformance.
Doesn't affect the point that PBUnionists were insisting that the raw data were very different even after they weren't.
Also - how accurate is the divisor used? How reliable are the popuilation figures? All those tales of Romanian window cleaners emerging frokm the woodwork to apply for their residency bumf. But a lot fo them have gone home anyway ...
Scotland is underperforming even though it’s ahead is the new ‘Scotland’s is behind on hard vax figs’ which in turn followed on from ‘Scotland’s services are less resilient’. It’s a self comfort thing, very hard to dislodge.
And add that old perennial - 'SNP one party state'. This from Tories in the present-day UK with a FPTP Westminster. Had another outing today, staggering along painfully like the elderly Malamute I often see on my monring walk.
A bit incontinent and likely to snap if caught unawares?
Though I'm not sure where the dog collar and lead fits in with that comparison ...
Those figures look about right to me except for one thing. Tories and NOM have, on the data available right now, nothing to choose between them and no factors which give one result a decisive edge over the other.
Labour can only get a majority with a real black swan event between now and the GE. That is, something unforeseeable for there is no foreseeable way in which Labour can win. This is not impossible, but not more than a 5% chance. So I would put it at Con 47%, NOM 47% Lab 5% Some other result (LD or Green or Centre Left Rainbow Alliance Party majority, or invasion by Martian Party) less than 1%.
On another issued discussed recently, the stickiness of the Tory numbers in polling; one factor in this (ignore southern byelections) is that with the impossibility of a Tory coalition there is only one party to vote for which gives you a chance of a non centre left government; so whereas in the previous era Tory and LD votes could churn around. If you are Tory there is literally nowhere else to go.
War against a nuclear power, a terrorist event on a magnitude at least as great as 911, a global financial crash, and a viral or bacterial epidemic against which there is no effective vaccine - the probability of at least one of these happening before 2024 may be greater than 5%. Which is not to say any of these would increase the Labour vote.
Those who think there is no chance of a Tory-led coalition in 2024 must have excellent distant vision. Perhaps there will even be another AV referendum as a sop. Well OK, scratch the last bit.
FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.
The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.
Most seem totally tone deaf to this.
Instead of bringing the culture war narrative to it, what do *you* think?
Just seen this:
(1) I think it's wrong to enshrine a GDP requirement in law. I'd have it as a rolling target over 3-5 years - sometime it might be 0.5% and sometimes 0.9% depending on circumstance, such as natural disasters requiring a rise or poor strategic alignment and business cases driving a defensible fall - but with political accountability not legal sanction. (2) I'd link it to the national interest. We should have an aid & development review - like we do the defence review - that has a public debate. Aid should be directly linked to things like regional stability, climate change mitigation, migration challenges, and the furtherance of our values. (3) I'd funnel less directly through aid agencies "to spend" which I view, and I think the public views, as institutional largesse with some vested interests attached and run more directly from DfID along business case lines. I'd link everything back to strategy and policy. These would be publicly available for scrutiny.
I don’t necessarily disagree with any of this.
However, these are not at all the arguments being presented.
Instead, the government has torched both a manifesto commitment *and* one of the final fig-leaves of Britain’s soft power leadership in order to “own the libs”.
Let's say I agree with that for a second, don't you think "the libs" should look to own the argument along the lines I've suggested rather than playing into the Government's hands?
Sure. There is a massive failure of leadership in the centre left.
Not just on this topic; across the board.
Opposition seems to be left to various Tory rebels. I sense no sustained and systematic critique of Borisology, just pearl clutching and by-the-numbers stuff.
And, whilst Conservative rebels and Conservatives-in-exile clearly have something to contribute to this, there are lots of reasons why they can only be a secondary contribution to this.
The lobotomisation of politics, especially in Labour under Corbyn, has a baleful shadow. And it's pretty obvious that post-Boris Conservatives are going to fall into a similar trap.
Actually they are already there. Borisology is a simply a populism pure and simple. As we have both noted, it will be fascinating to see how this collides with the fiscal hawks in Treasury and elsewhere (Javid, Truss).
But this is a country with a built-in preference for Conservative government, and this is re-inforced by the media at large - so Boris has more leeway in this respect.
True, but Borisology is also a bit like the "How Hard Can It Be?" sketches on Top Gear. A lot of what the government is doing is recognisable as the sort of thing that Conservative Club Members have wanted to do on a "They should just..." basis for decades. (This is my ancestral tribe, after all). And, unlike Thatcher, Major, Cameron or May, now it's all happening! Yay!
Of course, most of it is balls, which is why previous PMs haven't done any of this stuff. And the contradiction between spenders and scrimpers will come into play eventually. (Having chucked EU payments and Foreign Aid on the fire, I don't see any other easy cuts left.) But that can be postponed for a remarkably long time, especially with someone as fraudulent as Boris in office.
But, when it does go wrong... what then? Having very effectively squeezed all but minions and tawdry lickspittles out of the party, how can post-Johnson Conservatives regenerate?
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
I'm a bit too knackered to put together a short and well crafted attempt. What I will say is that your definition would mean that the vast majority of the UK population would be described as woke to some extent. That doesn't seem right in terms of current usage of the word!
Why don't we ask the Wokefinder General?
He should be along soon, may be he can give us the benefit of his definition. Complete with a ducking-stool test probably.
Looking at international aid solely through its effect on British politics, it's definitely in keeping with the new voters that Johnson has won to make this move. What those voters also want is to see that money spent three times over on them, with no tax rises.
I reckon those posters arguing about closing the deficit will be lucky if Johnson only spends the money saved three times over and not five.
If the aim is deficit-closing, BoJo shouldn't be spending the money at all on anything. And whilst that may happen, I find it really hard to envision. Meanwhile, the easy spending cuts have basically run out of road now. From here onwards, making the books balance is going to inconvenience UK voters. I don't think the PM is going to like that at all.
Which is why they’re starting with things like Overseas Aid, which most of the government’s voters couldn’t give a sh!t about. Next up will be privatising Channel 4 and cuts in arts subsidies.
The Guardian will go bonkers, but the Red Wall will cheer.
Yet the Government is quite happy to give Oxfam etc gift aid diverted from IHT and income tax revenues.It will be interesting to see if they attack that, given the number of 'charities' and dodgy thinktanks which benefit from that.
Of course, the same tax advantage also pertains to political parties as far as IHT is concerned.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
You know, maybe we're doing it completely wrong. Maybe we run a competition for one country to be our sole recipient of foreign aid for the next five years. That country gets the equivalent of 0.5% of UK GDP for five successive years, and also gets a free trade agreement, and as much support as we can give. This wouldn't be charity led - it would be direct government support, with the goal of using five years to dramatically improve infrastructure at all levels - human, health, water, ports/airports, legal structures, education. etc.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
I assume tongue in cheek, but anyway:
1) Presumably all other rich countries would just withdraw aid to the target, so the net effect would be minimal.
2) "Basic principles" might need to include women's and minority rights, which most (all?) of the potential targets would struggle to meet properly in the short to medium term.
3) It all sounds a bit... colonial.
(1) simply isn't true.
Put this in context for a second: Liberia's GDP is $3bn. The UK's GDP is $2.8 trillion. 0.5% of UK GDP is $14bn. If Liberia won our contest, it'd recieve $14bn/year for five years against a GDO of $3bn.
Obviously, if Nigeria (GDP $448bn) won, it would be rather different. But somehow I don't think that's likely.
(2) The money would be so extreme, you might find that governments were suddenly willing to make changes.
(3) So what? And we're not planning on leaving people in country after five years. Also, countries would be competing the be the recipient, which isn't really how colonialism happened (as far as I understand it).
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
Wiki:
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."
We should be concentrating our foreign aid efforts on global vaccine rollouts.
We do. Massively. If you look at GAVI or Medicines for Malaria or COVAX or any number of other organisations it is always the UK at the heart of things
I can’t be the only person who logs on every few hours and see’s a PB header bigging up Starmer’s election chances and yet dips into the comments to find the latest poll has a growing Tory lead and Labour back where they were under Corbyn. Perhaps I’m living in a parallel universe like everyone on Twitter seems to be.
Looking at international aid solely through its effect on British politics, it's definitely in keeping with the new voters that Johnson has won to make this move. What those voters also want is to see that money spent three times over on them, with no tax rises.
I reckon those posters arguing about closing the deficit will be lucky if Johnson only spends the money saved three times over and not five.
If the aim is deficit-closing, BoJo shouldn't be spending the money at all on anything. And whilst that may happen, I find it really hard to envision. Meanwhile, the easy spending cuts have basically run out of road now. From here onwards, making the books balance is going to inconvenience UK voters. I don't think the PM is going to like that at all.
Which is why they’re starting with things like Overseas Aid, which most of the government’s voters couldn’t give a sh!t about. Next up will be privatising Channel 4 and cuts in arts subsidies.
The Guardian will go bonkers, but the Red Wall will cheer.
Yet the Government is quite happy to give Oxfam etc gift aid diverted from IHT and income tax revenues.It will be interesting to see if they attack that, given the number of 'charities' and dodgy thinktanks which benefit from that.
Of course, the same tax advantage also pertains to political parties as far as IHT is concerned.
At least with Gift Aid the vast bulk of the money is coming from private source and the state isn't picking and choosing who to give it to.
Comments
332 for England and
333 for the Tories.
Sweet dreams.
Abruptly cutting aid by 30% in the middle of a global pandemic doesn’t really fall under any of that rubric, though.
Next step absolutely 100% needs to be for Sunak to address the triple lock and the ludicrous suggestion of 8% increase in pensions this year.
I reckon those posters arguing about closing the deficit will be lucky if Johnson only spends the money saved three times over and not five.
If I was being really cynical, I might add that Oxfam et al are terrified that the corporate world might actually solve the problems they've been tinkering around the edges of for decades, and put them all out of business.
CDU/CSU-EPP: 28% (-1)
SPD-S&D: 17% (+0.5)
GRÜNE-G/EFA: 17% (-1)
FDP-RE: 12.5%
AfD-ID: 11% (+1)
LINKE-LEFT: 7%
Aid which recognises this would be useful, but not otherwise. For example I would think that no aid to a country with inadequate governance can ever be any use, unless it is to address that issue (sadly, it is usually called imperialism). Short term emergency aid is different of course.
BTW among the scandals of the late and unlamented EU was the high tariffs on the produce of poor African farmers, and the even higher tariffs on foodstuffs (coffee for example) processed there rather than in the EU.
Plus they are missing four first choice batsmen in Dent, Cockbain, Charlesworth and Van Buuren.
They just are not going to do it. This isn’t the Rose Bowl.
A positive Covid Test might save them, but nothing else will.
Truthfully, although Gloucestershire have won as many matches Hampshire probably deserve their top two finish. They’ve had off days but they’ve also played some superb cricket.
Good night.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
But as John Major obviously found when he was in the hot seat, the political answer may be different.
Again, this just seems to be a proxy for 'I don't like this government'. Which may be fair comment, but is again missing the target.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
Not just on this topic; across the board.
Opposition seems to be left to various Tory rebels. I sense no sustained and systematic critique of Borisology, just pearl clutching and by-the-numbers stuff.
What I have never been able to ascertain is what it means when used by the anti-woke.
@silkiecarlo
·
1h
The Government just won, 319 votes to 246. We now have mandatory vaccinations in the UK following a snap vote no one knew about, with no evidence provided for it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomé_Convention
As I understand it, over recent years the UK has concentrated mainly on concentrating on specific goals - girls education is one that I remember hearing about, but also some others. My impression is that we'd been reasonably successful in comparison with earlier decades.
My personal approach would be to concentrate on one single goal - ending hunger - and concentrating our resources on that. Maybe part of this would be motivated by guilt, over the many famines Britain played a role in, but I think we could do more good by concentrating on doing one thing than by dispersing our efforts, I'd just be concentrating thematically rather than geographically.
1) Presumably all other rich countries would just withdraw aid to the target, so the net effect would be minimal.
2) "Basic principles" might need to include women's and minority rights, which most (all?) of the potential targets would struggle to meet properly in the short to medium term.
3) It all sounds a bit... colonial.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
As for no one knowing about it, well, it's true this is the first I've heard about it, but then we do rely on opposition and the media for these things to make sure we know.
I am glad that the Italians won the football tournament. I dread to think of the political propaganda that Boris would have made of it in this, the Year of Brexit.
THE most powerful naval flotilla to sail from Britain since Falklands War has been struck by a major Covid outbreak - after sailors went raving in Cyprus.
Almost half the warships in RN carrier strike group have been hit by ‘rona
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15584882/royal-navys-fleet-covid-outbreak/
Understood? Well, it isn't understood. Because the anti-woke steadfastly refuse to define it.
Cinema (other options may be available ... )
The lobotomisation of politics, especially in Labour under Corbyn, has a baleful shadow. And it's pretty obvious that post-Boris Conservatives are going to fall into a similar trap.
The Conservative poll rating rose inexorably through autumn 2019 - the Opposition parties should have called a GE as soon as Johnson became Prime Minister.
I doubt it would have mattered - as soon as Farage decided he wasn't going to fight it and backed Johnson, it was all over. Even in August, the combined Conservative/BXP vote was in the mid-40s.
http://countrystudies.us/singapore/9.htm
But yes, they too had their own economic miracle.
https://twitter.com/LoyalDefender2K/status/1414861790333349892?s=19
There is hope for them yet 🤣
Oh is this for carers?
Borisology is a simply a populism pure and simple. As we have both noted, it will be fascinating to see how this collides with the fiscal hawks in Treasury and elsewhere (Javid, Truss).
But this is a country with a built-in preference for Conservative government, and this is re-inforced by the media at large - so Boris has more leeway in this respect.
One lone voice saying "actually isn't this what freedom of speech is all about?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_(UK)
I think he was genuinely astonished at how much his shares in Microsoft became worth, and realised that several generations of his family would be unbelievely wealthy on 1% of his net worth. So fair play to him.
Is Andrew Neil back from his extended holidays yet?
This is a ridiculous position. I am all for masks on things like public transport, they do something, but they won't prevent another lockdown. Its a total lie to position the argument as such.
As linked on the last thread, most spread is in setting where masks will never be, such as within households and friendship groups.
If they claim to be Centre, you can't really add them to either the left or the right tally.
https://twitter.com/miffythegamer/status/1415045218076856320?s=21
Not only did John Major not do it himself whilst in office, at a time when we were in far better financial shape with a great trajectory to absolute solvency, but the exact same arguments could be deployed for 0.9%, 1.1% or indeed 2% targets. The current 0.7% would be costing "millions of lives" over those higher levels by precisely the same logic and we should be ashamed of ourselves accordingly.
Fundamentally, without caveats or an aid strategy, it's a socialist argument.
The Guardian will go bonkers, but the Red Wall will cheer.
Those who think there is no chance of a Tory-led coalition in 2024 must have excellent distant vision. Perhaps there will even be another AV referendum as a sop. Well OK, scratch the last bit.
Of course, most of it is balls, which is why previous PMs haven't done any of this stuff. And the contradiction between spenders and scrimpers will come into play eventually. (Having chucked EU payments and Foreign Aid on the fire, I don't see any other easy cuts left.) But that can be postponed for a remarkably long time, especially with someone as fraudulent as Boris in office.
But, when it does go wrong... what then? Having very effectively squeezed all but minions and tawdry lickspittles out of the party, how can post-Johnson Conservatives regenerate?
He should be along soon, may be he can give us the benefit of his definition. Complete with a ducking-stool test probably.
Of course, the same tax advantage also pertains to political parties as far as IHT is concerned.
Put this in context for a second: Liberia's GDP is $3bn. The UK's GDP is $2.8 trillion. 0.5% of UK GDP is $14bn. If Liberia won our contest, it'd recieve $14bn/year for five years against a GDO of $3bn.
Obviously, if Nigeria (GDP $448bn) won, it would be rather different. But somehow I don't think that's likely.
(2) The money would be so extreme, you might find that governments were suddenly willing to make changes.
(3) So what? And we're not planning on leaving people in country after five years. Also, countries would be competing the be the recipient, which isn't really how colonialism happened (as far as I understand it).
Singapore didn’t ‘decide’ to go independent, it was made to by Malaysia.
Indeed it holds the distinction of being the only nation in the world to have been enforceably rendered independent.
The Conservative and Unionist Party of the future will pledge to restore Foreign Aid.
And rejoin the EU single market...
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."