I agree that he is not robbing the south to favour the north. It is clear that housing needs to be provided in the south, and that voters in Chesham and Amersham A) Never wanted HS2 to ruin their affluent million £ homes without having the benefit , namely a station, and Don't want to hand green belt land to new developers especially if that land is used for beyond the pale Council house tenants. As someone whose family benefited from the forward thinking of Ebenezer Howard (a Bank Clerk who incredibly somehow built Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City on what I assume to be green belt land), I can say we need to shoot this Nimbyism in the foot. Disregard those people in the south who don't want Council Houses to sully their homes.
So let us all condemn the LD local party who put aside their support for HS2 nationally and for adequate housing to be provided for all regardless of income.
On the North, I live here now and can say that the problem is not housing but jobs. The fact is that you can rent easily for £400 PCM (2 bed house) and actually easily pay just £50,000 for a 2 bed house. So home ownership is very possible on just a little bit more than the minimum wage, and for a couple easy peasy. Are homes mortgageable, definitely in some cases. Maybe not in the cheapest of areas (in my area you can buy for only £25,000 and rent that out for £250 PCM). But that for me was not cost effective because of letting agent fees. But the previous owner had a mortgage and I bought for £49,000 which was probably a couple of thousand too much. Are homes investments, not at this moment, meaning they won't go up like they do in the south. Still I bought a 2nd home for just £37,000 in quite a good area, letting agent says worth over £70,000. So money can be made.
Anyway Boris has support up here, regardless of what southerners say. You only have to look at Durham Council, who is now in the hands of a Coalition of parties and independents for I think the first time ever. Where Tories stood, they had a big chance of a Councillor. They didn't stand everywhere, in my Town Council they didn't stand in my area, independents won but Tories would have won if they stood. So stand by for a further hand over of power to Tories next time in the north, specifically in Durham and Yorkshire. In rural or semi rural areas, where Labour really should not have won anyway. If the South goes over to LD temporarily then OK, but for LD to hang on to that Nimbyism vote they will have to take a pro nimbyism policy nationally meaning no new houses or next to none and oppose HS2. I don't expect them to do so, because they that is against what they want to achieve. They want housing for the low waged, we all want that. How to achieve it, in places like Chesham and Amersham, that is the question.
I pulled up some data earlier today for Eek Jr who needs to do a report.
In 2019 - 20% of house sales in Darlington were new build properties. In South Cambridgeshire the figure is 12%
Add on the fact that immigrants are far more likely to head south rather than north (as that was where the jobs were) and you can see why house prices down south continue to increase faster than up North.
Mr. Battery, I oppose destruction and damage to property.
Mr. Thompson, the division, the argument we're having now is about whether aping BLM, which until recently organisations were just delighted to loudly and proudly endorse, is a sensible move. You can oppose racism and still think the kneeling nonsense is a daft distraction at best.
Are there some ridiculous people about who use weird and unnecessary language? Sure, and they should be ignored. It does not make it common place or justify some bizarre "they started it" excuse for the PM to further divide the country.
The Green party is currently tearing itself to pieces over this. As are portions of the Labour Party. In Scotland, there are also some considerable rumblings on the political scene due the issue relating to what you describe as "weird and unnecessary language".....
I do not believe this will disappear from the political scene any time soon.
Party political members a bit weird and obsessive? Perhaps this is not the appropriate website to say I am not at all surprised, but I am not at all surprised. In normal life, no-one calls mums birthing people.
What you call normal life is the social circle that you move in.
It is quite important to realise that such a circle is somewhat self selecting and self limiting.
Consider the effort that some people have put into er.... cancelling people such as JK Rowling.
The people in question exist, and passionately believe in their cause.
You can dislike JK Rowling for being a “TERF” while still using the word “mother”.
Like I said — hysterical bed wetting on the same level as “you can’t say baa baa blacksheep anymore”.
In what way is Rowling a ‘TERF’?
The word literally means ‘trans exclusionary radical feminist’. I’m not sure how Rowling fits the bill. She seems to espouse fairly mainstream sensible feminism that was perfectly normal until about 18 months ago.
Sorry. Not *months*. I mean ‘18 bleeding cycles by some human birth units’
Road pricing.... that's another thing that got the electorate absolutely steaming when it was talked about 15 years ago.
Talk of higher taxes on fuel / airplane travel, road pricing, id cards, those 3 things seemed to really piss a lot of people off when Labour was in power. Hence why the second two got ditched.
Maybe things have changed now among the electorate in regards to this. We will see.
Electric vehicles use gas, which generates a third of our electricity. And it is shifting over time. Very complex issue.
A more logical one would be a carbon applied to all energy sources according to the C02 equivalent emissions they cause. Complex to calculate, but simpler looking from the consumer side.
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Mr. Battery, I oppose destruction and damage to property.
Mr. Thompson, the division, the argument we're having now is about whether aping BLM, which until recently organisations were just delighted to loudly and proudly endorse, is a sensible move. You can oppose racism and still think the kneeling nonsense is a daft distraction at best.
Are there some ridiculous people about who use weird and unnecessary language? Sure, and they should be ignored. It does not make it common place or justify some bizarre "they started it" excuse for the PM to further divide the country.
The Green party is currently tearing itself to pieces over this. As are portions of the Labour Party. In Scotland, there are also some considerable rumblings on the political scene due the issue relating to what you describe as "weird and unnecessary language".....
I do not believe this will disappear from the political scene any time soon.
Party political members a bit weird and obsessive? Perhaps this is not the appropriate website to say I am not at all surprised, but I am not at all surprised. In normal life, no-one calls mums birthing people.
What you call normal life is the social circle that you move in.
It is quite important to realise that such a circle is somewhat self selecting and self limiting.
Consider the effort that some people have put into er.... cancelling people such as JK Rowling.
The people in question exist, and passionately believe in their cause.
You can dislike JK Rowling for being a “TERF” while still using the word “mother”.
Like I said — hysterical bed wetting on the same level as “you can’t say baa baa blacksheep anymore”.
It's not about hysterical bed wetting - I have no especial interest in this, either way.
But people are destroying (or attempting to destroy) peoples careers and social standing over this stuff. Pretending that it isn't happening seems weird to me.
I agree that he is not robbing the south to favour the north. It is clear that housing needs to be provided in the south, and that voters in Chesham and Amersham A) Never wanted HS2 to ruin their affluent million £ homes without having the benefit , namely a station, and Don't want to hand green belt land to new developers especially if that land is used for beyond the pale Council house tenants. As someone whose family benefited from the forward thinking of Ebenezer Howard (a Bank Clerk who incredibly somehow built Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City on what I assume to be green belt land), I can say we need to shoot this Nimbyism in the foot. Disregard those people in the south who don't want Council Houses to sully their homes.
So let us all condemn the LD local party who put aside their support for HS2 nationally and for adequate housing to be provided for all regardless of income.
On the North, I live here now and can say that the problem is not housing but jobs. The fact is that you can rent easily for £400 PCM (2 bed house) and actually easily pay just £50,000 for a 2 bed house. So home ownership is very possible on just a little bit more than the minimum wage, and for a couple easy peasy. Are homes mortgageable, definitely in some cases. Maybe not in the cheapest of areas (in my area you can buy for only £25,000 and rent that out for £250 PCM). But that for me was not cost effective because of letting agent fees. But the previous owner had a mortgage and I bought for £49,000 which was probably a couple of thousand too much. Are homes investments, not at this moment, meaning they won't go up like they do in the south. Still I bought a 2nd home for just £37,000 in quite a good area, letting agent says worth over £70,000. So money can be made.
Anyway Boris has support up here, regardless of what southerners say. You only have to look at Durham Council, who is now in the hands of a Coalition of parties and independents for I think the first time ever. Where Tories stood, they had a big chance of a Councillor. They didn't stand everywhere, in my Town Council they didn't stand in my area, independents won but Tories would have won if they stood. So stand by for a further hand over of power to Tories next time in the north, specifically in Durham and Yorkshire. In rural or semi rural areas, where Labour really should not have won anyway. If the South goes over to LD temporarily then OK, but for LD to hang on to that Nimbyism vote they will have to take a pro nimbyism policy nationally meaning no new houses or next to none and oppose HS2. I don't expect them to do so, because they that is against what they want to achieve. They want housing for the low waged, we all want that. How to achieve it, in places like Chesham and Amersham, that is the question.
The bitter historic irony in China’s truly appalling mistreatment of the Turkic Muslim Uighurs, is that China is doing to them what Muslims have done to Jews and Christians for many centuries, as authorized in the Koran. The Uighurs are made into an inherently second class people who are specially taxed, and thereby allowed to exist
China’s treatment of the Turkic Uighurs has yet to reach the cruelty of Turkish dealings with Armenians
We hear a great deal from some muslims in Britain about standing in solidarity with their brothers in Palestine.
Standing in solidarity with their Uighur brothers in China, rather less so. Or maybe I have missed it.
Even the Taliban seemed to have abandoned them now calling China a "friend".
There is a long history of various nations treating Palestinian "guest workers" with startling brutality. They very often complain about Israel at the same time....
Mr. Battery, I oppose destruction and damage to property.
Mr. Thompson, the division, the argument we're having now is about whether aping BLM, which until recently organisations were just delighted to loudly and proudly endorse, is a sensible move. You can oppose racism and still think the kneeling nonsense is a daft distraction at best.
Are there some ridiculous people about who use weird and unnecessary language? Sure, and they should be ignored. It does not make it common place or justify some bizarre "they started it" excuse for the PM to further divide the country.
The Green party is currently tearing itself to pieces over this. As are portions of the Labour Party. In Scotland, there are also some considerable rumblings on the political scene due the issue relating to what you describe as "weird and unnecessary language".....
I do not believe this will disappear from the political scene any time soon.
Party political members a bit weird and obsessive? Perhaps this is not the appropriate website to say I am not at all surprised, but I am not at all surprised. In normal life, no-one calls mums birthing people.
What you call normal life is the social circle that you move in.
It is quite important to realise that such a circle is somewhat self selecting and self limiting.
Consider the effort that some people have put into er.... cancelling people such as JK Rowling.
The people in question exist, and passionately believe in their cause.
You can dislike JK Rowling for being a “TERF” while still using the word “mother”.
Like I said — hysterical bed wetting on the same level as “you can’t say baa baa blacksheep anymore”.
In what way is Rowling a ‘TERF’?
The word literally means ‘trans exclusionary radical feminist’. I’m not sure how Rowling fits the bill. She seems to espouse fairly mainstream sensible feminism that was perfectly normal until about 18 months ago.
Sorry. Not *months*. I mean ‘18 bleeding cycles by some human birth units’
Hey I don’t know - I like JK Rowling. I’m just telling you that people can still hate JK Rowling while still saying “mother” and “period”.
A salt lake shines ‘like a mirror tossed into the desert’
This bit got to me. ...“I’m going to ask you something,” I said to Merhaba, “and you have to promise me you’ll do it.”
“What is it? Tell me first,” she said.
“I’m serious. Promise me first,” I said firmly.
“All right,” she replied quietly.
“If they arrest me, don’t lose yourself. Don’t make inquiries about me, don’t go looking for help, don’t spend money trying to get me out. This time isn’t like any time before. They are planning something dark. There is no notifying families or inquiring at police stations this time. So don’t trouble yourself with that. Keep our family affairs in order, take good care of our daughters, let life go on as if I were still here. I’m not afraid of prison. I am afraid of you and the girls struggling and hurting when I’m gone. So I want you to remember what I’m saying.”...
It’s a sobering and sometimes lyrical essay. Thanks for the link
The parallels with Nazi Germany grow eerier by the day. And here it is, happening in plain sight, again
The difference is that this time there is nothing we can do. We can’t fight China. It is the world’s dominant trading power and will soon be the biggest economic power, then comes Chinese military superiority. Meanwhile China (often via Russia) divides us and roils us with our own social media, along racial and political fault-lines
They are winning. I see very few signs of meaningful western resistance
Reminded me of the accounts of Stalin's Russia.
There's little we can do to stop it, but we can and should make life more difficult for the Xi regime. I'm more sanguine than you about Chinese hegemony; it's nowhere near as inevitable as you believe. We have no option but to deal with them, but that doesn't mean we have to be supplicants.
FWIW, the West has already started to deny them technology. Simply stopping deliveries of the new machinery from ASML, for example, has set back the development of their chip industry by around a decade.
I agree that he is not robbing the south to favour the north. It is clear that housing needs to be provided in the south, and that voters in Chesham and Amersham A) Never wanted HS2 to ruin their affluent million £ homes without having the benefit , namely a station, and Don't want to hand green belt land to new developers especially if that land is used for beyond the pale Council house tenants. As someone whose family benefited from the forward thinking of Ebenezer Howard (a Bank Clerk who incredibly somehow built Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City on what I assume to be green belt land), I can say we need to shoot this Nimbyism in the foot. Disregard those people in the south who don't want Council Houses to sully their homes.
So let us all condemn the LD local party who put aside their support for HS2 nationally and for adequate housing to be provided for all regardless of income.
On the North, I live here now and can say that the problem is not housing but jobs. The fact is that you can rent easily for £400 PCM (2 bed house) and actually easily pay just £50,000 for a 2 bed house. So home ownership is very possible on just a little bit more than the minimum wage, and for a couple easy peasy. Are homes mortgageable, definitely in some cases. Maybe not in the cheapest of areas (in my area you can buy for only £25,000 and rent that out for £250 PCM). But that for me was not cost effective because of letting agent fees. But the previous owner had a mortgage and I bought for £49,000 which was probably a couple of thousand too much. Are homes investments, not at this moment, meaning they won't go up like they do in the south. Still I bought a 2nd home for just £37,000 in quite a good area, letting agent says worth over £70,000. So money can be made.
Anyway Boris has support up here, regardless of what southerners say. You only have to look at Durham Council, who is now in the hands of a Coalition of parties and independents for I think the first time ever. Where Tories stood, they had a big chance of a Councillor. They didn't stand everywhere, in my Town Council they didn't stand in my area, independents won but Tories would have won if they stood. So stand by for a further hand over of power to Tories next time in the north, specifically in Durham and Yorkshire. In rural or semi rural areas, where Labour really should not have won anyway. If the South goes over to LD temporarily then OK, but for LD to hang on to that Nimbyism vote they will have to take a pro nimbyism policy nationally meaning no new houses or next to none and oppose HS2. I don't expect them to do so, because they that is against what they want to achieve. They want housing for the low waged, we all want that. How to achieve it, in places like Chesham and Amersham, that is the question.
Mr. Battery, I oppose destruction and damage to property.
Mr. Thompson, the division, the argument we're having now is about whether aping BLM, which until recently organisations were just delighted to loudly and proudly endorse, is a sensible move. You can oppose racism and still think the kneeling nonsense is a daft distraction at best.
Are there some ridiculous people about who use weird and unnecessary language? Sure, and they should be ignored. It does not make it common place or justify some bizarre "they started it" excuse for the PM to further divide the country.
The Green party is currently tearing itself to pieces over this. As are portions of the Labour Party. In Scotland, there are also some considerable rumblings on the political scene due the issue relating to what you describe as "weird and unnecessary language".....
I do not believe this will disappear from the political scene any time soon.
Party political members a bit weird and obsessive? Perhaps this is not the appropriate website to say I am not at all surprised, but I am not at all surprised. In normal life, no-one calls mums birthing people.
What you call normal life is the social circle that you move in.
It is quite important to realise that such a circle is somewhat self selecting and self limiting.
Consider the effort that some people have put into er.... cancelling people such as JK Rowling.
The people in question exist, and passionately believe in their cause.
You can dislike JK Rowling for being a “TERF” while still using the word “mother”.
Like I said — hysterical bed wetting on the same level as “you can’t say baa baa blacksheep anymore”.
It's not about hysterical bed wetting - I have no especial interest in this, either way.
But people are destroying (or attempting to destroy) peoples careers and social standing over this stuff. Pretending that it isn't happening seems weird to me.
It is hysterical bed wetting. It’s just people overreacting to what they don’t understand.
It’s like when people thought you couldn’t say “brainstorm” for a bit until everyone realised nobody gave a shit.
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Not heard the like myself, but "mother" is probably not so accurate when it is a lesbian couple, hence 2 mothers, for example.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Dominic Cummings agrees with you. Guess who the ‘Clown Prince of shit pundits’ is.
“When even the Clown Prince of shit pundits doesn't know what dictation he's supposed to be taking, you know your slogan, speech & execution are really really bad”
I (unusually) liked the Guido dig:
'Of course, there were also a few classic Borisisms that did little to add clarity: apparently “Levelling up is not a jam spreading operation”, and “the most important factor in levelling up, the yeast, the magic sauce, the ketchup of catch up… is leadership”. This was not the anticipated delineation of cake-ism in theory and practice.'
Maybe Boris was trying to link his levelling up speech to the National Food Strategy Report published today? If so, it looks like it's ended up as an Eton Mess.
His speech was appalling, and completely vacuous. It makes you wonder who's advising him at the moment.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
On topic, the current Tory poll lead does feel a bit like Roadrunner / running over cliff at the moment and not just because I inhabit Twitter too much.
The preconditions for a precipitous fall, or at least a return to parity, are in place (disappointment with the tail end of Covid after the vaccines success, Hancock and various examples of one rule for them, increasing back-bench restlessness etc) but the trigger event isn't happening yet.
The big trigger events to watch out for, both of which I think need to be in place, are:
- Significant and widely felt economic hardship, as CJRS unwinds and/or inflation ramps up - Labour actually finds a compelling message on policy and starts to look like an alternative government
We still feel some way off the second one but I do think economics will come back to bite this government. They have been living in a zero gravity, heavily government subsidised version of the economy up to now. When things finally go pop (if they do) it doesn't matter whether people blame Brexit or not, they will lame the government.
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Not heard the like myself, but "mother" is probably not so accurate when it is a lesbian couple, hence 2 mothers, for example.
A salt lake shines ‘like a mirror tossed into the desert’
This bit got to me. ...“I’m going to ask you something,” I said to Merhaba, “and you have to promise me you’ll do it.”
“What is it? Tell me first,” she said.
“I’m serious. Promise me first,” I said firmly.
“All right,” she replied quietly.
“If they arrest me, don’t lose yourself. Don’t make inquiries about me, don’t go looking for help, don’t spend money trying to get me out. This time isn’t like any time before. They are planning something dark. There is no notifying families or inquiring at police stations this time. So don’t trouble yourself with that. Keep our family affairs in order, take good care of our daughters, let life go on as if I were still here. I’m not afraid of prison. I am afraid of you and the girls struggling and hurting when I’m gone. So I want you to remember what I’m saying.”...
It’s a sobering and sometimes lyrical essay. Thanks for the link
The parallels with Nazi Germany grow eerier by the day. And here it is, happening in plain sight, again
The difference is that this time there is nothing we can do. We can’t fight China. It is the world’s dominant trading power and will soon be the biggest economic power, then comes Chinese military superiority. Meanwhile China (often via Russia) divides us and roils us with our own social media, along racial and political fault-lines
They are winning. I see very few signs of meaningful western resistance
The disease that they unleashed upon the world, negligently or not, has so far killed over 4m people worldwide officially and almost certainly many, many more. And yet we do nothing. It's cowardice, really.
Yes, I didn’t even mention Covid
I used to dismiss the coronavirus-as-bioweapon hypothesis as mad, paranoid nonsense. I’ve always thought it likely came from a lab, but I always presumed it was just a hideous accidental release of a naturally evolved bug
Now, I am not so sure. The Wuhan lab was doing gain-of-function research. Accepted fact. It was making viruses nastier. The lab has strong links with the Chinese military. We know the Chinese army has taken an interest in coronaviruses as a potential bio-weapon
Step back and look at what China is already doing to its own minorities, and it does not seem so impossible it might launch a bioweapon on the world. Or inadvertently leak one.
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Not heard the like myself, but "mother" is probably not so accurate when it is a lesbian couple, hence 2 mothers, for example.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
That has been my opinion since he became leader. I wasn't that keen on May, but Johnson has taken it to another level.
Last time they tried this there was nearly a revolution.
They did that here earlier this year - I used to be ambivalent between coke zero and pepsi max, now if the option is coke zero I'll have something else.
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
I've seen stories about that, but that really is way out there - on breast feeding, well that's what it is. If you don't have a breast then whatever you are doing, it's not breastfeeding is it. Males can't chestfeed either (and males also of course have a breast, at least in archaic language).
I do, from personal (well, more my wife's, obviously, but I was there) experience, have an anecdote about breastfeeding and daft rules. Our first born didn't take to the breast straight away (it took a very long - to us - 18 hours from birth to the first propoer feed on the breast) so we were advised to express colustrum into a syringe so he could be fed on breast milk. Easier said than done, midwife after midwife tried to explain the technique while we both tried with no success, explaining that they weren't permitted to actually touch my wife's breasts. Eventually one, watching us struggling, took a quick look around to check no one else was watching, asked permission and showed us how it was done - easy. After that, we knew what to do.
I don't know who came up with that bizarre rule, particularly when you consider what midwives are touching during the birthing process!
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Not heard the like myself, but "mother" is probably not so accurate when it is a lesbian couple, hence 2 mothers, for example.
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Not heard the like myself, but "mother" is probably not so accurate when it is a lesbian couple, hence 2 mothers, for example.
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Not heard the like myself, but "mother" is probably not so accurate when it is a lesbian couple, hence 2 mothers, for example.
That is just more woke crap, the person having the baby is the mother plain and simple. No need for all the pc crap.
@IanB2 that IoW report of routing trains from Ryde to Newport via Sandown is weird.
By my reckoning those trains would take 30-35 minutes to do the journey from Esplanade to Newport town centre (south) - via a circuitous route via a north facing junction at Sandown - compared to the 22-25 minutes by the number 9 bus, only beating it at rush hour.
I know the IoW steam railway is a problem but I'd have thought punching a new bridge at Wooton and extending to Newport (Barton) would be more feasible and then you could run a 2-car set every 30 minutes and you could do the same journey in 18-20 minutes at a 45 mph line speed. Stick in passing loops for the steam trains, track circuits and AWS.
I'd like to see the analysis behind why that option was rejected out of hand.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Dominic Cummings agrees with you. Guess who the ‘Clown Prince of shit pundits’ is.
“When even the Clown Prince of shit pundits doesn't know what dictation he's supposed to be taking, you know your slogan, speech & execution are really really bad”
I (unusually) liked the Guido dig:
'Of course, there were also a few classic Borisisms that did little to add clarity: apparently “Levelling up is not a jam spreading operation”, and “the most important factor in levelling up, the yeast, the magic sauce, the ketchup of catch up… is leadership”. This was not the anticipated delineation of cake-ism in theory and practice.'
Maybe Boris was trying to link his levelling up speech to the National Food Strategy Report published today? If so, it looks like it's ended up as an Eton Mess.
His speech was appalling, and completely vacuous. It makes you wonder who's advising him at the moment.
At least Eton Mess doesn't mix yeast, sauce and ketchup in the same recipe. More like indeed the aftermath of a Buller dinner. Very odd indeed. You'd think a supposedly professional journalist (I have no familiarity with his actual work in that realm) could do a better job or reject something so poor.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
That has been my opinion since he became leader. I wasn't that keen on May, but Johnson has taken it to another level.
And yet despite you being keener for Mrs Hostile Environment than you are for the clown, the country as a whole saw more people vote even on a lower turnout election for Brexit Bozo than Hostile May.
Makes me reassured for the future of our country that xenophobic authoritarians like you and May who would prefer Hostile Environment and abusing the Windrush Generation to Brexit are not representative of the nation.
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Not heard the like myself, but "mother" is probably not so accurate when it is a lesbian couple, hence 2 mothers, for example.
"Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust (BSUH) is the first in the country to use what it calls the 'additive use of gender-inclusive language', reports Bristol Live.
Its staff have been asked to use gender-neutral language alongside – not instead of – traditional terms to ensure that all groups are represented.
Some of the terms being adopted are:
'Breast/chestfeeding', in place of 'breastfeeding' 'Human milk' or 'breast/chestmilk' or 'milk from the feeding mother or parent', in place of 'breastmilk' 'Maternal and parental' or 'maternal/parental', in place of 'maternal' 'Woman or person', in place of 'woman' A policy document on the trust’s website explains that the approach involves 'using gender-neutral language alongside the language of womanhood, in order to ensure that everyone is represented and included"
So "alongside instead of..." so no disciplining for "breast feeding" and the first (only?) Hospital to do so.
It all has a whiff of "bendy banana banned by EU" about it.
One of my girlfriends best friends is a midwife and is one of the biggest corbynistas going. I bet you can guess what she calls female parents?
Mothers.
If she was in the hospital near me she would be on a disciplinary. You might want to get her to prepare herself, or should I say, themself.
Have you any direct evidence of that ? I note that even the article you posted included this qualification: The language changes do not apply when discussing or caring for individuals in a one-on-one capacity, the document says.
As Gallowgate says, the whole thing is daft, and any such disciplinary action (if what you claim is true) would likely not survive an employment tribunal anyway.
Every thread these days does seem to descend into culture war stuff. It is a bit like 2016-2019, every thread ended up with Brexit, Brexit, Brexit, Brexit.
I agree that he is not robbing the south to favour the north. It is clear that housing needs to be provided in the south, and that voters in Chesham and Amersham A) Never wanted HS2 to ruin their affluent million £ homes without having the benefit , namely a station, and Don't want to hand green belt land to new developers especially if that land is used for beyond the pale Council house tenants. As someone whose family benefited from the forward thinking of Ebenezer Howard (a Bank Clerk who incredibly somehow built Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City on what I assume to be green belt land), I can say we need to shoot this Nimbyism in the foot. Disregard those people in the south who don't want Council Houses to sully their homes.
So let us all condemn the LD local party who put aside their support for HS2 nationally and for adequate housing to be provided for all regardless of income.
On the North, I live here now and can say that the problem is not housing but jobs. The fact is that you can rent easily for £400 PCM (2 bed house) and actually easily pay just £50,000 for a 2 bed house. So home ownership is very possible on just a little bit more than the minimum wage, and for a couple easy peasy. Are homes mortgageable, definitely in some cases. Maybe not in the cheapest of areas (in my area you can buy for only £25,000 and rent that out for £250 PCM). But that for me was not cost effective because of letting agent fees. But the previous owner had a mortgage and I bought for £49,000 which was probably a couple of thousand too much. Are homes investments, not at this moment, meaning they won't go up like they do in the south. Still I bought a 2nd home for just £37,000 in quite a good area, letting agent says worth over £70,000. So money can be made.
Anyway Boris has support up here, regardless of what southerners say. You only have to look at Durham Council, who is now in the hands of a Coalition of parties and independents for I think the first time ever. Where Tories stood, they had a big chance of a Councillor. They didn't stand everywhere, in my Town Council they didn't stand in my area, independents won but Tories would have won if they stood. So stand by for a further hand over of power to Tories next time in the north, specifically in Durham and Yorkshire. In rural or semi rural areas, where Labour really should not have won anyway. If the South goes over to LD temporarily then OK, but for LD to hang on to that Nimbyism vote they will have to take a pro nimbyism policy nationally meaning no new houses or next to none and oppose HS2. I don't expect them to do so, because they that is against what they want to achieve. They want housing for the low waged, we all want that. How to achieve it, in places like Chesham and Amersham, that is the question.
I pulled up some data earlier today for Eek Jr who needs to do a report.
In 2019 - 20% of house sales in Darlington were new build properties. In South Cambridgeshire the figure is 12%
Add on the fact that immigrants are far more likely to head south rather than north (as that was where the jobs were) and you can see why house prices down south continue to increase faster than up North.
You need to check out Cambourne West to the West of Cambridge. That will even the stats out a bit.
One of my girlfriends best friends is a midwife and is one of the biggest corbynistas going. I bet you can guess what she calls female parents?
Mothers.
If she was in the hospital near me she would be on a disciplinary. You might want to get her to prepare herself, or should I say, themself.
Would you be happy to say which hospital it is where you think this is the case?
Brighton is the one that was in the news yet their literature still uses breastfeeding and mothers not chest feeding and birth people....it would be quite strange if it is a disciplinary offence to read their own literature.....
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Dominic Cummings agrees with you. Guess who the ‘Clown Prince of shit pundits’ is.
“When even the Clown Prince of shit pundits doesn't know what dictation he's supposed to be taking, you know your slogan, speech & execution are really really bad”
I (unusually) liked the Guido dig:
'Of course, there were also a few classic Borisisms that did little to add clarity: apparently “Levelling up is not a jam spreading operation”, and “the most important factor in levelling up, the yeast, the magic sauce, the ketchup of catch up… is leadership”. This was not the anticipated delineation of cake-ism in theory and practice.'
Maybe Boris was trying to link his levelling up speech to the National Food Strategy Report published today? If so, it looks like it's ended up as an Eton Mess.
His speech was appalling, and completely vacuous. It makes you wonder who's advising him at the moment.
At least Eton Mess doesn't mix yeast, sauce and ketchup in the same recipe. More like indeed the aftermath of a Buller dinner. Very odd indeed. You'd think a supposedly professional journalist (I have no familiarity with his actual work in that realm) could do a better job or reject something so poor.
To be fair, Boris must be fucking knackered right now. Like all leading politicians worldwide, but even more so
Like them, he is trying to rescue his country from an almighty global disaster. Unlike many of them, he is simultaneously trying to remake an economy AND he is a new father. Age 57
I wouldn’t want to be UK prime minister right now. It can’t be fun. You don’t even get to travel, plus everyone hates you because Brexit
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
I've seen stories about that, but that really is way out there - on breast feeding, well that's what it is. If you don't have a breast then whatever you are doing, it's not breastfeeding is it. Males can't chestfeed either (and males also of course have a breast, at least in archaic language).
I do, from personal (well, more my wife's, obviously, but I was there) experience, have an anecdote about breastfeeding and daft rules. Our first born didn't take to the breast straight away (it took a very long - to us - 18 hours from birth to the first propoer feed on the breast) so we were advised to express colustrum into a syringe so he could be fed on breast milk. Easier said than done, midwife after midwife tried to explain the technique while we both tried with no success, explaining that they weren't permitted to actually touch my wife's breasts. Eventually one, watching us struggling, took a quick look around to check no one else was watching, asked permission and showed us how it was done - easy. After that, we knew what to do.
I don't know who came up with that bizarre rule, particularly when you consider what midwives are touching during the birthing process!
Highly informative! But on a point of pedantic homology, males do have mammary glands, just smaller and simpler ones. Indeed they can get breast cancer - it is the neglect of lumps there because the owner believes it's impossible that can be an issue.
@IanB2 that IoW report of routing trains from Ryde to Newport via Sandown is weird.
By my reckoning those trains would take 30-35 minutes to do the journey from Esplanade to Newport town centre (south) - via a circuitous route via a north facing junction at Sandown - compared to the 22-25 minutes by the number 9 bus, only beating it at rush hour.
I know the IoW steam railway is a problem but I'd have thought punching a new bridge at Wooton and extending to Newport (Barton) would be more feasible and then you could run a 2-car set every 30 minutes and you could do the same journey in 18-20 minutes at a 45 mph line speed. Stick in passing loops for the steam trains, track circuits and AWS.
I'd like to see the analysis behind why that option was rejected out of hand.
I agree that he is not robbing the south to favour the north. It is clear that housing needs to be provided in the south, and that voters in Chesham and Amersham A) Never wanted HS2 to ruin their affluent million £ homes without having the benefit , namely a station, and Don't want to hand green belt land to new developers especially if that land is used for beyond the pale Council house tenants. As someone whose family benefited from the forward thinking of Ebenezer Howard (a Bank Clerk who incredibly somehow built Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City on what I assume to be green belt land), I can say we need to shoot this Nimbyism in the foot. Disregard those people in the south who don't want Council Houses to sully their homes.
So let us all condemn the LD local party who put aside their support for HS2 nationally and for adequate housing to be provided for all regardless of income.
On the North, I live here now and can say that the problem is not housing but jobs. The fact is that you can rent easily for £400 PCM (2 bed house) and actually easily pay just £50,000 for a 2 bed house. So home ownership is very possible on just a little bit more than the minimum wage, and for a couple easy peasy. Are homes mortgageable, definitely in some cases. Maybe not in the cheapest of areas (in my area you can buy for only £25,000 and rent that out for £250 PCM). But that for me was not cost effective because of letting agent fees. But the previous owner had a mortgage and I bought for £49,000 which was probably a couple of thousand too much. Are homes investments, not at this moment, meaning they won't go up like they do in the south. Still I bought a 2nd home for just £37,000 in quite a good area, letting agent says worth over £70,000. So money can be made.
Anyway Boris has support up here, regardless of what southerners say. You only have to look at Durham Council, who is now in the hands of a Coalition of parties and independents for I think the first time ever. Where Tories stood, they had a big chance of a Councillor. They didn't stand everywhere, in my Town Council they didn't stand in my area, independents won but Tories would have won if they stood. So stand by for a further hand over of power to Tories next time in the north, specifically in Durham and Yorkshire. In rural or semi rural areas, where Labour really should not have won anyway. If the South goes over to LD temporarily then OK, but for LD to hang on to that Nimbyism vote they will have to take a pro nimbyism policy nationally meaning no new houses or next to none and oppose HS2. I don't expect them to do so, because they that is against what they want to achieve. They want housing for the low waged, we all want that. How to achieve it, in places like Chesham and Amersham, that is the question.
I pulled up some data earlier today for Eek Jr who needs to do a report.
In 2019 - 20% of house sales in Darlington were new build properties. In South Cambridgeshire the figure is 12%
Add on the fact that immigrants are far more likely to head south rather than north (as that was where the jobs were) and you can see why house prices down south continue to increase faster than up North.
You need to check out Cambourne West to the West of Cambridge. That will even the stats out a bit.
They are included - remember I was using the 2019 figures as that was records immediately to hand - Having looked at the 2020 figures it's worse (but I'm assuming Covid impacted that too much to provide accurate figures).
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
I honestly don't see how the Tories hold on to Finchley and Golders Green next time. Unless they can make the Lib Dems and Labour fight it out the Lib Dems will walk it.
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Not heard the like myself, but "mother" is probably not so accurate when it is a lesbian couple, hence 2 mothers, for example.
Over-zealous virtue signalling management. Nothing to bed wet about
I hope you are right, but there are many hospitals following this.
"was told it's a disciplinary offence" any actual evidence of this - because the story you linked to says "Its staff have been asked to use gender-neutral language alongside – not instead of – traditional terms to ensure that all groups are represented."
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
I honestly don't see how the Tories hold on to Finchley and Golders Green next time. Unless they can make the Lib Dems and Labour fight it out the Lib Dems will walk it.
+1 - I don't see why Labour would bother fighting that sort of seat in London - if they don't already have it there are better seats to fight in the next election.
On topic, the current Tory poll lead does feel a bit like Roadrunner / running over cliff at the moment and not just because I inhabit Twitter too much.
The preconditions for a precipitous fall, or at least a return to parity, are in place (disappointment with the tail end of Covid after the vaccines success, Hancock and various examples of one rule for them, increasing back-bench restlessness etc) but the trigger event isn't happening yet.
The big trigger events to watch out for, both of which I think need to be in place, are:
- Significant and widely felt economic hardship, as CJRS unwinds and/or inflation ramps up - Labour actually finds a compelling message on policy and starts to look like an alternative government
We still feel some way off the second one but I do think economics will come back to bite this government. They have been living in a zero gravity, heavily government subsidised version of the economy up to now. When things finally go pop (if they do) it doesn't matter whether people blame Brexit or not, they will lame the government.
One other thing to watch for.
Whatever the challenges the government has had since summer 2019, it has had the advantage of two, fairly simple, big aims. First it was Brexit (get it done), then it was Covid (save the NHS from it). Those aims even had the British decency to queue up nicely and happen one after the other. Big challenges, sure. But simple and big enough to occupy the whole stage. Simple enough for someone with a second in classics and a mediocre work ethic to understand.
Now, we're emerging back into normal politics. Lots of issues on the agenda. Some of them contradictory. No single "we must do this one thing, no matter what" target. The PM has many talents, but I don't see that being the environment where he will thrive.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
I like and respect you hugely Max. Some principles, perhaps you can be one of the people who can put the Tories back into the mainstream, as a party I might vote one day vote for (again)
Not sure Johnson's "levelling up" speech was worth cancelling the England team reception for (the reason Number 19 ludicrously gave). Utterly vacuous shite.
The current Labour operation aren’t always great at the mot juste but ‘gibberish’ was pretty spot on.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Dominic Cummings agrees with you. Guess who the ‘Clown Prince of shit pundits’ is.
“When even the Clown Prince of shit pundits doesn't know what dictation he's supposed to be taking, you know your slogan, speech & execution are really really bad”
I (unusually) liked the Guido dig:
'Of course, there were also a few classic Borisisms that did little to add clarity: apparently “Levelling up is not a jam spreading operation”, and “the most important factor in levelling up, the yeast, the magic sauce, the ketchup of catch up… is leadership”. This was not the anticipated delineation of cake-ism in theory and practice.'
Maybe Boris was trying to link his levelling up speech to the National Food Strategy Report published today? If so, it looks like it's ended up as an Eton Mess.
His speech was appalling, and completely vacuous. It makes you wonder who's advising him at the moment.
At least Eton Mess doesn't mix yeast, sauce and ketchup in the same recipe. More like indeed the aftermath of a Buller dinner. Very odd indeed. You'd think a supposedly professional journalist (I have no familiarity with his actual work in that realm) could do a better job or reject something so poor.
To be fair, Boris must be fucking knackered right now. Like all leading politicians worldwide, but even more so
Like them, he is trying to rescue his country from an almighty global disaster. Unlike many of them, he is simultaneously trying to remake an economy AND he is a new father. Age 57
I wouldn’t want to be UK prime minister right now. It can’t be fun. You don’t even get to travel, plus everyone hates you because Brexit
Oh, quite, but all the more reason to delegate properly (even in the sense of making sure his script is OK, and not trying to wing it himself).
And the worry is having someone who is not 100% on the job, if you'll forgive that expression.
Mr Bolsonaro in Brazil was pretty incoherent in public of late - couldn't get out his words properly - has been carted off to hospital.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
And that's the point - Boris isn't going to lose Red Wall seats - he is going to lose seats that look like Chesham and Amersham.
So the next majority may be 40 seats but with a lot of long standing MPs gone.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
I honestly don't see how the Tories hold on to Finchley and Golders Green next time. Unless they can make the Lib Dems and Labour fight it out the Lib Dems will walk it.
+1 - I don't see why Labour would bother fighting that sort of seat in London - if they don't already have it there are better seats to fight in the next election.
Labour will paper candidate. Starmer and Davey are not idiots
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Not heard the like myself, but "mother" is probably not so accurate when it is a lesbian couple, hence 2 mothers, for example.
"Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust (BSUH) is the first in the country to use what it calls the 'additive use of gender-inclusive language', reports Bristol Live.
Its staff have been asked to use gender-neutral language alongside – not instead of – traditional terms to ensure that all groups are represented.
Some of the terms being adopted are:
'Breast/chestfeeding', in place of 'breastfeeding' 'Human milk' or 'breast/chestmilk' or 'milk from the feeding mother or parent', in place of 'breastmilk' 'Maternal and parental' or 'maternal/parental', in place of 'maternal' 'Woman or person', in place of 'woman' A policy document on the trust’s website explains that the approach involves 'using gender-neutral language alongside the language of womanhood, in order to ensure that everyone is represented and included"
So "alongside instead of..." so no disciplining for "breast feeding" and the first (only?) Hospital to do so.
It all has a whiff of "bendy banana banned by EU" about it.
It is all total bollocks though and presumably cost some money for this document to be put together that will not now go to other areas within the NHS Trust.
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
I've seen stories about that, but that really is way out there - on breast feeding, well that's what it is. If you don't have a breast then whatever you are doing, it's not breastfeeding is it. Males can't chestfeed either (and males also of course have a breast, at least in archaic language).
I do, from personal (well, more my wife's, obviously, but I was there) experience, have an anecdote about breastfeeding and daft rules. Our first born didn't take to the breast straight away (it took a very long - to us - 18 hours from birth to the first propoer feed on the breast) so we were advised to express colustrum into a syringe so he could be fed on breast milk. Easier said than done, midwife after midwife tried to explain the technique while we both tried with no success, explaining that they weren't permitted to actually touch my wife's breasts. Eventually one, watching us struggling, took a quick look around to check no one else was watching, asked permission and showed us how it was done - easy. After that, we knew what to do.
I don't know who came up with that bizarre rule, particularly when you consider what midwives are touching during the birthing process!
Highly informative! But on a point of pedantic homology, males do have mammary glands, just smaller and simpler ones. Indeed they can get breast cancer - it is the neglect of lumps there because the owner believes it's impossible that can be an issue.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
I honestly don't see how the Tories hold on to Finchley and Golders Green next time. Unless they can make the Lib Dems and Labour fight it out the Lib Dems will walk it.
+1 - I don't see why Labour would bother fighting that sort of seat in London - if they don't already have it there are better seats to fight in the next election.
Chipping Barnet which borders on it will probably fall to the red team. My parents live in Enfield Southgate which is demographically perfect for the Tories as a leafy suburban area with average property prices in the high six figure range and an oversized proportion of City workers, it's now solid Labour, actually impenetrably so despite the MP being a complete joker.
Good point @Commentator on there being potential disciplinary differences in the research/teaching divide. I am an International Relations/Security Studies academic so fall in the social sciences. The big challenge with Teaching Fellow positions as you note is that they can get stuck in the role; talented researchers who get no allocated time to conduct new research but need the salary and thus get in a vicious cycle in terms of career development. I also do not think the sector has given sufficient consideration to the impact of more PhDs coming through the system. I believe a PhD is a good thing to do regardless of if someone wants an academic career, but I am not sure at the moment there are sufficient new HE roles for PhDs coming through the system.
I agree that he is not robbing the south to favour the north. It is clear that housing needs to be provided in the south, and that voters in Chesham and Amersham A) Never wanted HS2 to ruin their affluent million £ homes without having the benefit , namely a station, and Don't want to hand green belt land to new developers especially if that land is used for beyond the pale Council house tenants. As someone whose family benefited from the forward thinking of Ebenezer Howard (a Bank Clerk who incredibly somehow built Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City on what I assume to be green belt land), I can say we need to shoot this Nimbyism in the foot. Disregard those people in the south who don't want Council Houses to sully their homes.
So let us all condemn the LD local party who put aside their support for HS2 nationally and for adequate housing to be provided for all regardless of income.
On the North, I live here now and can say that the problem is not housing but jobs. The fact is that you can rent easily for £400 PCM (2 bed house) and actually easily pay just £50,000 for a 2 bed house. So home ownership is very possible on just a little bit more than the minimum wage, and for a couple easy peasy. Are homes mortgageable, definitely in some cases. Maybe not in the cheapest of areas (in my area you can buy for only £25,000 and rent that out for £250 PCM). But that for me was not cost effective because of letting agent fees. But the previous owner had a mortgage and I bought for £49,000 which was probably a couple of thousand too much. Are homes investments, not at this moment, meaning they won't go up like they do in the south. Still I bought a 2nd home for just £37,000 in quite a good area, letting agent says worth over £70,000. So money can be made.
Anyway Boris has support up here, regardless of what southerners say. You only have to look at Durham Council, who is now in the hands of a Coalition of parties and independents for I think the first time ever. Where Tories stood, they had a big chance of a Councillor. They didn't stand everywhere, in my Town Council they didn't stand in my area, independents won but Tories would have won if they stood. So stand by for a further hand over of power to Tories next time in the north, specifically in Durham and Yorkshire. In rural or semi rural areas, where Labour really should not have won anyway. If the South goes over to LD temporarily then OK, but for LD to hang on to that Nimbyism vote they will have to take a pro nimbyism policy nationally meaning no new houses or next to none and oppose HS2. I don't expect them to do so, because they that is against what they want to achieve. They want housing for the low waged, we all want that. How to achieve it, in places like Chesham and Amersham, that is the question.
You are Boris Johnson's mother and I claim my £5
I think it is a little unfair to be so dismissive of someone's first post. He has written in some detail - you don't like the message - fair enough. But a little courtesy does no harm.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
I like and respect you hugely Max. Some principles, perhaps you can be one of the people who can put the Tories back into the mainstream, as a party I might vote one day vote for (again)
Unlikely given that I'm not in the party and tbh, I don't think I'll be tempted to join until the likes of HYFUD are made to feel unwelcome and move to some other party or go independent.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets....as if this is an easy adjustment most people can just make.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
And that's the point - Boris isn't going to lose Red Wall seats - he is going to lose seats that look like Chesham and Amersham.
So the next majority may be 40 seats but with a lot of long standing MPs gone.
How gone for ever are the Red Wall seats? Very much liked @Peterharridge's post (welcome). Does he/she/it have a view?
Just like any set of voters that we group together arbitrarily, they presumably are all independent thinkers and don't act in concert.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Dominic Cummings agrees with you. Guess who the ‘Clown Prince of shit pundits’ is.
“When even the Clown Prince of shit pundits doesn't know what dictation he's supposed to be taking, you know your slogan, speech & execution are really really bad”
I (unusually) liked the Guido dig:
'Of course, there were also a few classic Borisisms that did little to add clarity: apparently “Levelling up is not a jam spreading operation”, and “the most important factor in levelling up, the yeast, the magic sauce, the ketchup of catch up… is leadership”. This was not the anticipated delineation of cake-ism in theory and practice.'
Maybe Boris was trying to link his levelling up speech to the National Food Strategy Report published today? If so, it looks like it's ended up as an Eton Mess.
His speech was appalling, and completely vacuous. It makes you wonder who's advising him at the moment.
At least Eton Mess doesn't mix yeast, sauce and ketchup in the same recipe. More like indeed the aftermath of a Buller dinner. Very odd indeed. You'd think a supposedly professional journalist (I have no familiarity with his actual work in that realm) could do a better job or reject something so poor.
To be fair, Boris must be fucking knackered right now. Like all leading politicians worldwide, but even more so
Like them, he is trying to rescue his country from an almighty global disaster. Unlike many of them, he is simultaneously trying to remake an economy AND he is a new father. Age 57
I wouldn’t want to be UK prime minister right now. It can’t be fun. You don’t even get to travel, plus everyone hates you because Brexit
Oh, quite, but all the more reason to delegate properly (even in the sense of making sure his script is OK, and not trying to wing it himself).
And the worry is having someone who is not 100% on the job, if you'll forgive that expression.
Mr Bolsonaro in Brazil was pretty incoherent in public of late - couldn't get out his words properly - has been carted off to hospital.
Wouldn’t argue with any of that.
Has the West ever been so poorly led? Merkel going. Biden demented. Boris exhausted. The Italian guy er....
Only Macron looks vaguely sensible, but he is too petulant. And runs scared of Le Pen
Meanwhile Putin and Xi watch on, seemingly untouchable
Every thread these days does seem to descend into culture war stuff. It is a bit like 2016-2019, every thread ended up with Brexit, Brexit, Brexit, Brexit.
Maybe we need a people's vote to settle it - 52/48 anyone?
Unlike so many on the left it seems, I want a functioning Tory Party, just as I want a functioning Labour Party. I even think the Tory Party has done a few good things - and I respect hugely Thatcher despite my misgivings about her policies.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Dominic Cummings agrees with you. Guess who the ‘Clown Prince of shit pundits’ is.
“When even the Clown Prince of shit pundits doesn't know what dictation he's supposed to be taking, you know your slogan, speech & execution are really really bad”
I (unusually) liked the Guido dig:
'Of course, there were also a few classic Borisisms that did little to add clarity: apparently “Levelling up is not a jam spreading operation”, and “the most important factor in levelling up, the yeast, the magic sauce, the ketchup of catch up… is leadership”. This was not the anticipated delineation of cake-ism in theory and practice.'
Maybe Boris was trying to link his levelling up speech to the National Food Strategy Report published today? If so, it looks like it's ended up as an Eton Mess.
His speech was appalling, and completely vacuous. It makes you wonder who's advising him at the moment.
At least Eton Mess doesn't mix yeast, sauce and ketchup in the same recipe. More like indeed the aftermath of a Buller dinner. Very odd indeed. You'd think a supposedly professional journalist (I have no familiarity with his actual work in that realm) could do a better job or reject something so poor.
To be fair, Boris must be fucking knackered right now. Like all leading politicians worldwide, but even more so
Like them, he is trying to rescue his country from an almighty global disaster. Unlike many of them, he is simultaneously trying to remake an economy AND he is a new father. Age 57
I wouldn’t want to be UK prime minister right now. It can’t be fun. You don’t even get to travel, plus everyone hates you because Brexit
Oh, quite, but all the more reason to delegate properly (even in the sense of making sure his script is OK, and not trying to wing it himself).
And the worry is having someone who is not 100% on the job, if you'll forgive that expression.
Mr Bolsonaro in Brazil was pretty incoherent in public of late - couldn't get out his words properly - has been carted off to hospital.
Wouldn’t argue with any of that.
Has the West ever been so poorly led? Merkel going. Biden demented. Boris exhausted. The Italian guy er....
Only Macron looks vaguely sensible, but he is too petulant. And runs scared of Le Pen
Meanwhile Putin and Xi watch on, seemingly untouchable
Is even Macron that good? Any sort of sensible New Labour-esque type reforms to try and moderize France seem to get binned off. And then they end up in these battles over laws where you can't film police officers and the yellow vesters smashing stuff up every weekend over fuel duties for months on end.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
I honestly don't see how the Tories hold on to Finchley and Golders Green next time. Unless they can make the Lib Dems and Labour fight it out the Lib Dems will walk it.
+1 - I don't see why Labour would bother fighting that sort of seat in London - if they don't already have it there are better seats to fight in the next election.
Labour will paper candidate. Starmer and Davey are not idiots
They kind of are. In a GE they will not stand aside to help each other out. The membership won't put up with it. And if they do try it watch the voters respond.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
No you can't have that according to Dimblers...it has to be high quality one.
I don't disagree you can eat well and cheaply.
I just thought the meat angle really stood out. High quality meat is expensive, the processed crap is very cheap. You can get yourself a "South Fried Chicken" fillet for £1, but that is crap meat surrounded by all sorts of stuff that is bad for you.
Its was also the way he said this when asked, it was like it was a minimal adjust for most people.
Unlike so many on the left it seems, I want a functioning Tory Party, just as I want a functioning Labour Party. I even think the Tory Party has done a few good things - and I respect hugely Thatcher despite my misgivings about her policies.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
I honestly don't see how the Tories hold on to Finchley and Golders Green next time. Unless they can make the Lib Dems and Labour fight it out the Lib Dems will walk it.
+1 - I don't see why Labour would bother fighting that sort of seat in London - if they don't already have it there are better seats to fight in the next election.
Labour will paper candidate. Starmer and Davey are not idiots
Wasn't Finchley and GG a seat where Labour poured hefty resources into it in 2019, because of hatred of Luciana Berger? Anti-tactical voting, so to speak.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
And that's the point - Boris isn't going to lose Red Wall seats - he is going to lose seats that look like Chesham and Amersham.
So the next majority may be 40 seats but with a lot of long standing MPs gone.
How gone for ever are the Red Wall seats? Very much liked @Peterharridge's post (welcome). Does he/she/it have a view?
Just like any set of voters that we group together arbitrarily, they presumably are all independent thinkers and don't act in concert.
The teesside seats are safe Tory for the next election. I suspect @Peterharridge has better knowledge of the County Durham seats than I do.
Sunderland I suspect will have at least 1 Tory at the next election but I need to check the boundaries to be sure.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
And that's the point - Boris isn't going to lose Red Wall seats - he is going to lose seats that look like Chesham and Amersham.
So the next majority may be 40 seats but with a lot of long standing MPs gone.
How gone for ever are the Red Wall seats? Very much liked @Peterharridge's post (welcome). Does he/she/it have a view?
Just like any set of voters that we group together arbitrarily, they presumably are all independent thinkers and don't act in concert.
Many will stay where the demographics were leaning that way for quite some time. Likewise, the blue wall lacks the homogeneity those getting excited about it seem to think. North Kent for example continues to lean blue and is very different form some of the leafier suburbs elsewhere.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.
But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
Ah, but the reason why that has changed is nothing to do with the US ... and everything to with house price inflation.
If you are a lecturer in a leafy University town, you won't be able to afford to buy a house on a lecturer's salary.
So, the University has to promote you to a Professor quickly ... otherwise you will just leave and do something else.
Hence, you end up with Departments that are 100 per cent Professors.
In fact, in some leafy University towns, the new Professors still can't afford a house (though the older ones bought their houses 20 years ago and are sitting on massive gains)
This is misleading. There are 2 things that have changed in the past 20 years.
Firstly, UK universities have all embraced "personal chairs" (i.e. Professor as the highest rank/grade) rather than having a rationed number of named/endowed chairs. Many eminent scholars had ended their careers as Reader (the highest non-rationed rank) because the professor in the named chair for their field did not die before they retired. So, there are more "full professors" (i.e. rank of Professor) than before. I think this change was pretty much completed by the turn of the millennium, though I guess more people have become eligible for personal chairs (and it is likely the career stage is closer now to readerships in the "old" UK system).
Secondly, and separately, some UK universities have embraced American-style job titles. Hence, a lecturer or senior lecturer in old money is now Assistant Professor or Associate Professor. I've never met an academic who likes this change, but it is said to be something scientists wanted as they were upset when Americans thought they were "untenured" at conferences. The American-style titles are unhelpful, as assistant denies the fact that lecturers are researchers and course leaders in their own right; while Associate makes it sound like a deputy or affiliated staffer to a professor. But the Assistant and Associate Professors are paid at the same grade as under old titles: So not very relevant to house prices and salaries.
You are correct, but you haven't explained why the first change happened. Why did Universities suddenly appoint more personal chairs?
It happened because of house prices.
Let us take Oxford. A starting Lecturer salary might be 40 k. That means our Lecturer can borrow an additional 120 k. He has to find a house costing 180 k, or thereabouts
A three bedroom house in Jericho costs 695 k. Even a three bedroom house in Blackbird Leys -- where they hunt new Oxford University Lecturers with feral dogs -- costs 300 k. 😀
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Dominic Cummings agrees with you. Guess who the ‘Clown Prince of shit pundits’ is.
“When even the Clown Prince of shit pundits doesn't know what dictation he's supposed to be taking, you know your slogan, speech & execution are really really bad”
I (unusually) liked the Guido dig:
'Of course, there were also a few classic Borisisms that did little to add clarity: apparently “Levelling up is not a jam spreading operation”, and “the most important factor in levelling up, the yeast, the magic sauce, the ketchup of catch up… is leadership”. This was not the anticipated delineation of cake-ism in theory and practice.'
Maybe Boris was trying to link his levelling up speech to the National Food Strategy Report published today? If so, it looks like it's ended up as an Eton Mess.
His speech was appalling, and completely vacuous. It makes you wonder who's advising him at the moment.
At least Eton Mess doesn't mix yeast, sauce and ketchup in the same recipe. More like indeed the aftermath of a Buller dinner. Very odd indeed. You'd think a supposedly professional journalist (I have no familiarity with his actual work in that realm) could do a better job or reject something so poor.
To be fair, Boris must be fucking knackered right now. Like all leading politicians worldwide, but even more so
Like them, he is trying to rescue his country from an almighty global disaster. Unlike many of them, he is simultaneously trying to remake an economy AND he is a new father. Age 57
I wouldn’t want to be UK prime minister right now. It can’t be fun. You don’t even get to travel, plus everyone hates you because Brexit
Oh, quite, but all the more reason to delegate properly (even in the sense of making sure his script is OK, and not trying to wing it himself).
And the worry is having someone who is not 100% on the job, if you'll forgive that expression.
Mr Bolsonaro in Brazil was pretty incoherent in public of late - couldn't get out his words properly - has been carted off to hospital.
Wouldn’t argue with any of that.
Has the West ever been so poorly led? Merkel going. Biden demented. Boris exhausted. The Italian guy er....
Only Macron looks vaguely sensible, but he is too petulant. And runs scared of Le Pen
Meanwhile Putin and Xi watch on, seemingly untouchable
Is even Macron that good? Any sort of sensible New Labour-esque type reforms to try and moderize France seem to get binned off. And then they end up in these battles over laws where you can't film police officers and the yellow vesters smashing stuff up every weekend over fuel duties for months on end.
Not to mention his approach to immigrants being alienatted from the French state - which appears to be from the use-gasoline-to-put-out-fires playbook.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
No you can't have that according to Dimblers...it has to be high quality one.
I don't disagree you can eat well and very cheaply. I just thought the meat angle really stood out. High quality meat is expensive, the processed crap is very cheap. You can get yourself a "South Fried Chicken" fillet for £1, but that is crap meat surrounded by all sorts of stuff that is bad for you.
How can a whole chicken be that processed? It's just chicken with (possibly) added water.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".
You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.
Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
No you can't have that according to Dimblers...it has to be high quality one.
I don't disagree you can eat well and very cheaply. I just thought the meat angle really stood out. High quality meat is expensive, the processed crap is very cheap. You can get yourself a "South Fried Chicken" fillet for £1, but that is crap meat surrounded by all sorts of stuff that is bad for you.
How can a whole chicken be that processed? It's just chicken with (possibly) added water.
Well yes chicken is notoriously pumped with water (sent to Holland for this I believe).
But he was responding to the idea of can we eat meat with climate change etc etc etc, and he basically said cut out processed, cut out the crap stuff, we need to concentrate on eating high quality meat.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
And that's the point - Boris isn't going to lose Red Wall seats - he is going to lose seats that look like Chesham and Amersham.
So the next majority may be 40 seats but with a lot of long standing MPs gone.
How gone for ever are the Red Wall seats? Very much liked @Peterharridge's post (welcome). Does he/she/it have a view?
Just like any set of voters that we group together arbitrarily, they presumably are all independent thinkers and don't act in concert.
The teesside seats are safe Tory for the next election. I suspect @Peterharridge has better knowledge of the County Durham seats than I do.
Sunderland I suspect will have at least 1 Tory at the next election but I need to check the boundaries to be sure.
I'd so like Sunderland central to go blue in my lifetime. I still remember when its equivalent went red in 1964 - according to my mother because the tory MP Paul Williams was carrying on with another woman and noi better than he ought to be. Halcyon days........
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
And that's the point - Boris isn't going to lose Red Wall seats - he is going to lose seats that look like Chesham and Amersham.
So the next majority may be 40 seats but with a lot of long standing MPs gone.
How gone for ever are the Red Wall seats? Very much liked @Peterharridge's post (welcome). Does he/she/it have a view?
Just like any set of voters that we group together arbitrarily, they presumably are all independent thinkers and don't act in concert.
The teesside seats are safe Tory for the next election. I suspect @Peterharridge has better knowledge of the County Durham seats than I do.
Sunderland I suspect will have at least 1 Tory at the next election but I need to check the boundaries to be sure.
Thanks v much. Interesting to know. How many Red Wall seats are there AAMOF?
Unlike so many on the left it seems, I want a functioning Tory Party, just as I want a functioning Labour Party. I even think the Tory Party has done a few good things - and I respect hugely Thatcher despite my misgivings about her policies.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
A bit like those soup for the poor menus with about 1/2 lb beef for a giant copper, it sounds like. But a qwuick chewck shows £3 for a Tesco 1.2-1.5kg medium chicken - four portions there for a meat andf veg, plus some to extend with eg beans for a curry or risotto the next day, plus skin and skeleton and scraps for soup. Does that count as a few days for a family?
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
No you can't have that according to Dimblers...it has to be high quality one.
I don't disagree you can eat well and very cheaply. I just thought the meat angle really stood out. High quality meat is expensive, the processed crap is very cheap. You can get yourself a "South Fried Chicken" fillet for £1, but that is crap meat surrounded by all sorts of stuff that is bad for you.
How can a whole chicken be that processed? It's just chicken with (possibly) added water.
Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.
Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.
Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.
Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.
What would Oscar say in such a situation...
I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
But he has an 80-seat majority...
I honestly don't see how the Tories hold on to Finchley and Golders Green next time. Unless they can make the Lib Dems and Labour fight it out the Lib Dems will walk it.
+1 - I don't see why Labour would bother fighting that sort of seat in London - if they don't already have it there are better seats to fight in the next election.
Labour will paper candidate. Starmer and Davey are not idiots
Wasn't Finchley and GG a seat where Labour poured hefty resources into it in 2019, because of hatred of Luciana Berger? Anti-tactical voting, so to speak.
Racism was behind that, a real low point for the campaign I have to say.
Perhaps if they'd not bothered with that they might have held Kensingston
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
No you can't have that according to Dimblers...it has to be high quality one.
I don't disagree you can eat well and cheaply.
I just thought the meat angle really stood out. High quality meat is expensive, the processed crap is very cheap. You can get yourself a "South Fried Chicken" fillet for £1, but that is crap meat surrounded by all sorts of stuff that is bad for you.
Its was also the way he said this when asked, it was like it was a minimal adjust for most people.
Not sure how a fresh whole chicken is processed? And its not surrounded by anything other than whatever seasoning you use.
One of the best kitchen appliances we've bought is an Airfryer that doubles up as a Rotisserie. Can get a whole chicken, rub it with some seasoning, spike it onto the rotisserie spear and pop it in for an hour. An hour later the chicken is cooked to perfection, delicious. Both cheaper and healthier than crap food.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
So long as you have a very small family, and few is defined as "two", and you don't include breakfast, then sure you can
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".
You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.
Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Not heard the like myself, but "mother" is probably not so accurate when it is a lesbian couple, hence 2 mothers, for example.
The 'breastfeed' nonsense is absolutely stark raving bonkers even in its own stark raving bonkers terms. How on earth can a birthing person lactate without breasts? And, in the lexicon of Alice-in-Wonderland insanity of these weirdos, why on earth is the word 'breast' supposed to be identified with a gender in the first place, given that the whole basis of the original nonsense is supposed to be that gender bears no relation to reality?
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.
But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous
Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry
You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
No you can't have that according to Dimblers...it has to be high quality one.
I don't disagree you can eat well and cheaply.
I just thought the meat angle really stood out. High quality meat is expensive, the processed crap is very cheap. You can get yourself a "South Fried Chicken" fillet for £1, but that is crap meat surrounded by all sorts of stuff that is bad for you.
Its was also the way he said this when asked, it was like it was a minimal adjust for most people.
Not sure how a fresh whole chicken is processed? And its not surrounded by anything other than whatever seasoning you use.
One of the best kitchen appliances we've bought is an Airfryer that doubles up as a Rotisserie. Can get a whole chicken, rub it with some seasoning, spike it onto the rotisserie spear and pop it in for an hour. An hour later the chicken is cooked to perfection, delicious. Both cheaper and healthier than crap food.
Obviously Tesco's "fresh whole [Willow Farm] chicken" hasn't had the best life in the world but you know, needs must...
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
No you can't have that according to Dimblers...it has to be high quality one.
I don't disagree you can eat well and cheaply.
I just thought the meat angle really stood out. High quality meat is expensive, the processed crap is very cheap. You can get yourself a "South Fried Chicken" fillet for £1, but that is crap meat surrounded by all sorts of stuff that is bad for you.
Its was also the way he said this when asked, it was like it was a minimal adjust for most people.
Not sure how a fresh whole chicken is processed? And its not surrounded by anything other than whatever seasoning you use.
One of the best kitchen appliances we've bought is an Airfryer that doubles up as a Rotisserie. Can get a whole chicken, rub it with some seasoning, spike it onto the rotisserie spear and pop it in for an hour. An hour later the chicken is cooked to perfection, delicious. Both cheaper and healthier than crap food.
Its called "tumbling". They pump the chicken full of water and water-binding additives in what looks like a cement mixer. Or injected directly into it.
It was common for crap chicken from places like Brazil imported, sent to Holland to be processed and then back to the UK to be sold.
Mr. Above, the division began with BLM. The right may react to the culture war but it isn't the right that's started referring to mothers as 'birthing people', or have been tearing down statues.
Nobody refers to mothers as “birthing people” ffs.
What a ridiculous post. Pure reactionary “reds under the bed” nonsense.
I share your concern for exaggeration, but I have it on good authority from a midwife at a major teaching hospital near me that they are no longer allowed to call mothers "mothers", they must call them "persons". Breast feeding is now referred to "chest feeding". If I had not heard this from the source I heard it I would have thought it a lunatic story from the Daily Express. Sadly it is not.
Not heard the like myself, but "mother" is probably not so accurate when it is a lesbian couple, hence 2 mothers, for example.
The 'breastfeed' nonsense is absolutely stark raving bonkers even in its own stark raving bonkers terms. How on earth can a birthing person lactate without breasts? And, in the lexicon of Alice-in-Wonderland insanity of these weirdos, why on earth is the word 'breast' supposed to be identified with a gender in the first place, given that the whole basis of the original nonsense is supposed to be that gender bears no relation to reality?
As opposed to bottlefeeding?
But the existence of mammary glands and nipples is not, in itself, a sex-secific differential secondary sexual characteristic in hominines. (So the newspeak is being more zoologically correct than usual ...).
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".
You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.
Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
Yes that's true but on another level, when I am feeling up and happy with life, I might think nothing of creating some great culinary feast, perhaps I'll try pork belly or slow cooked shoulder of lamb, using those once every six months herbs, and preparing everything in neat little bowls before I cook it all, perhaps with a glass of fino sherry to hand and listening to some nice music. Me time in the kitchen.
That is very far from every day for a family.
When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.
And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".
You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.
Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
Oliver's 15 minute meals is an absolute massive con trick.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".
You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.
Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
Yes that's true but on another level, when I am feeling up and happy with life, I might think nothing of creating some great culinary feast, using those once every six months herbs, and preparing everything in neat little bowls before I cook it all, perhaps with a glass of fino sherry to hand and listening to some nice music. Me time in the kitchen.
When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.
And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
Yeah that's definitely true and I do it too, I think what we've managed to do in the last year is start batch cooking and freezing portions better than we used to so when we do have those days when we don't want to cook it's easy to raid something from a day when we were feeling extra creative.
Tories still defying gravity. I just find it mind blowing they are still on ~42% (as an average of the past 4-5 polls). Huge scandal of Hancock, COVID cases rising, all the divisive culture war stuff, and 44% in this poll.
The big thing in all these polls, Labour don't seem to be benefitting at all. I am guessing Stamer's approach of government are reckless, useless, waste of space, but I would basically do the same isn't helping Labour.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".
You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.
Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
Everyone is in the same position if they want to be. Cooking may be a psychological hurdle for some people but its entirely doable if you want to do it. Its even more doable if you need to do it.
If you want to be lazy then its entirely possible to do it without much 'skill'. Frozen prepared vegetables are available that can be popped into a microwave again for much cheaper than a takeaway.
Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
I don't see why chicken is an issue.
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.
But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous
Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry
You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.
I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
Comments
In 2019 - 20% of house sales in Darlington were new build properties.
In South Cambridgeshire the figure is 12%
Add on the fact that immigrants are far more likely to head south rather than north (as that was where the jobs were) and you can see why house prices down south continue to increase faster than up North.
The word literally means ‘trans exclusionary radical feminist’. I’m not sure how Rowling fits the bill. She seems to espouse fairly mainstream sensible feminism that was perfectly normal until about 18 months ago.
Sorry. Not *months*. I mean ‘18 bleeding cycles by some human birth units’
Coca-Cola Is Changing the Flavor of a Soda. Again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/business/coke-zero-change.html
Last time they tried this there was nearly a revolution.
A more logical one would be a carbon applied to all energy sources according to the C02 equivalent emissions they cause. Complex to calculate, but simpler looking from the consumer side.
Not doing a bunfight this PM.
But people are destroying (or attempting to destroy) peoples careers and social standing over this stuff. Pretending that it isn't happening seems weird to me.
There's little we can do to stop it, but we can and should make life more difficult for the Xi regime. I'm more sanguine than you about Chinese hegemony; it's nowhere near as inevitable as you believe.
We have no option but to deal with them, but that doesn't mean we have to be supplicants.
FWIW, the West has already started to deny them technology. Simply stopping deliveries of the new machinery from ASML, for example, has set back the development of their chip industry by around a decade.
It’s like when people thought you couldn’t say “brainstorm” for a bit until everyone realised nobody gave a shit.
Mothers.
His speech was appalling, and completely vacuous. It makes you wonder who's advising him at the moment.
The preconditions for a precipitous fall, or at least a return to parity, are in place (disappointment with the tail end of Covid after the vaccines success, Hancock and various examples of one rule for them, increasing back-bench restlessness etc) but the trigger event isn't happening yet.
The big trigger events to watch out for, both of which I think need to be in place, are:
- Significant and widely felt economic hardship, as CJRS unwinds and/or inflation ramps up
- Labour actually finds a compelling message on policy and starts to look like an alternative government
We still feel some way off the second one but I do think economics will come back to bite this government. They have been living in a zero gravity, heavily government subsidised version of the economy up to now. When things finally go pop (if they do) it doesn't matter whether people blame Brexit or not, they will lame the government.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/parenting/hospital-tells-staff-use-terms-19809496
I used to dismiss the coronavirus-as-bioweapon hypothesis as mad, paranoid nonsense. I’ve always thought it likely came from a lab, but I always presumed it was just a hideous accidental release of a naturally evolved bug
Now, I am not so sure. The Wuhan lab was doing gain-of-function research. Accepted fact. It was making viruses nastier. The lab has strong links with the Chinese military. We know the Chinese army has taken an interest in coronaviruses as a potential bio-weapon
‘EXCLUSIVE: Chinese military scientists discussed the weaponisation of SARS coronaviruses five years before the COVID-19 pandemic https://theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/chinese-military-scientists-discussed-weaponising-sars/news-story/850ae2d2e2681549cb9d21162c52d4c0… @SharriMarkson’
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/china/story/china-investigated-weaponising-coronavirus-2015-media-reports-1800608-2021-05-10
Step back and look at what China is already doing to its own minorities, and it does not seem so impossible it might launch a bioweapon on the world. Or inadvertently leak one.
Over-zealous virtue signalling management. Nothing to bed wet about
I do, from personal (well, more my wife's, obviously, but I was there) experience, have an anecdote about breastfeeding and daft rules. Our first born didn't take to the breast straight away (it took a very long - to us - 18 hours from birth to the first propoer feed on the breast) so we were advised to express colustrum into a syringe so he could be fed on breast milk. Easier said than done, midwife after midwife tried to explain the technique while we both tried with no success, explaining that they weren't permitted to actually touch my wife's breasts. Eventually one, watching us struggling, took a quick look around to check no one else was watching, asked permission and showed us how it was done - easy. After that, we knew what to do.
I don't know who came up with that bizarre rule, particularly when you consider what midwives are touching during the birthing process!
Whoever wrote that must be worried.....or not.
By my reckoning those trains would take 30-35 minutes to do the journey from Esplanade to Newport town centre (south) - via a circuitous route via a north facing junction at Sandown - compared to the 22-25 minutes by the number 9 bus, only beating it at rush hour.
I know the IoW steam railway is a problem but I'd have thought punching a new bridge at Wooton and extending to Newport (Barton) would be more feasible and then you could run a 2-car set every 30 minutes and you could do the same journey in 18-20 minutes at a 45 mph line speed. Stick in passing loops for the steam trains, track circuits and AWS.
I'd like to see the analysis behind why that option was rejected out of hand.
Makes me reassured for the future of our country that xenophobic authoritarians like you and May who would prefer Hostile Environment and abusing the Windrush Generation to Brexit are not representative of the nation.
"Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust (BSUH) is the first in the country to use what it calls the 'additive use of gender-inclusive language', reports Bristol Live.
Its staff have been asked to use gender-neutral language alongside – not instead of – traditional terms to ensure that all groups are represented.
Some of the terms being adopted are:
'Breast/chestfeeding', in place of 'breastfeeding'
'Human milk' or 'breast/chestmilk' or 'milk from the feeding mother or parent', in place of 'breastmilk'
'Maternal and parental' or 'maternal/parental', in place of 'maternal'
'Woman or person', in place of 'woman'
A policy document on the trust’s website explains that the approach involves 'using gender-neutral language alongside the language of womanhood, in order to ensure that everyone is represented and included"
So "alongside instead of..." so no disciplining for "breast feeding" and the first (only?) Hospital to do so.
It all has a whiff of "bendy banana banned by EU" about it.
I note that even the article you posted included this qualification:
The language changes do not apply when discussing or caring for individuals in a one-on-one capacity, the document says.
As Gallowgate says, the whole thing is daft, and any such disciplinary action (if what you claim is true) would likely not survive an employment tribunal anyway.
https://static1.cambourneparishcouncil.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/18905_taylor-wimpeybovis-homes-exhibition-boards-v4.pdf
Brighton is the one that was in the news yet their literature still uses breastfeeding and mothers not chest feeding and birth people....it would be quite strange if it is a disciplinary offence to read their own literature.....
https://www.bsuh.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/09/Breastfeeding-in-the-first-few-days.pdf
Like them, he is trying to rescue his country from an almighty global disaster. Unlike many of them, he is simultaneously trying to remake an economy AND he is a new father. Age 57
I wouldn’t want to be UK prime minister right now. It can’t be fun. You don’t even get to travel, plus everyone hates you because Brexit
I'm not sure if Homo sapiens males can lactate outside serious illnesses and other traumas, but some species of mammal do - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation
"Its staff have been asked to use gender-neutral language alongside – not instead of – traditional terms to ensure that all groups are represented."
Whatever the challenges the government has had since summer 2019, it has had the advantage of two, fairly simple, big aims. First it was Brexit (get it done), then it was Covid (save the NHS from it). Those aims even had the British decency to queue up nicely and happen one after the other. Big challenges, sure. But simple and big enough to occupy the whole stage. Simple enough for someone with a second in classics and a mediocre work ethic to understand.
Now, we're emerging back into normal politics. Lots of issues on the agenda. Some of them contradictory. No single "we must do this one thing, no matter what" target. The PM has many talents, but I don't see that being the environment where he will thrive.
And the worry is having someone who is not 100% on the job, if you'll forgive that expression.
Mr Bolsonaro in Brazil was pretty incoherent in public of late - couldn't get out his words properly - has been carted off to hospital.
So the next majority may be 40 seats but with a lot of long standing MPs gone.
https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-is-it-true-that-male-seahorses-give-birth-92843
This highlights the crux of the problem.
I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.
Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.
I don't know how you square that circle.
Just like any set of voters that we group together arbitrarily, they presumably are all independent thinkers and don't act in concert.
Has the West ever been so poorly led? Merkel going. Biden demented. Boris exhausted. The Italian guy er....
Only Macron looks vaguely sensible, but he is too petulant. And runs scared of Le Pen
Meanwhile Putin and Xi watch on, seemingly untouchable
I've just cut up my Labour membership card
I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.
Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
I don't disagree you can eat well and cheaply.
I just thought the meat angle really stood out. High quality meat is expensive, the processed crap is very cheap. You can get yourself a "South Fried Chicken" fillet for £1, but that is crap meat surrounded by all sorts of stuff that is bad for you.
Its was also the way he said this when asked, it was like it was a minimal adjust for most people.
Sunderland I suspect will have at least 1 Tory at the next election but I need to check the boundaries to be sure.
But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
It happened because of house prices.
Let us take Oxford. A starting Lecturer salary might be 40 k. That means our Lecturer can borrow an additional 120 k. He has to find a house costing 180 k, or thereabouts
A three bedroom house in Jericho costs 695 k. Even a three bedroom house in Blackbird Leys -- where they hunt new Oxford University Lecturers with feral dogs -- costs 300 k. 😀
You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.
Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
But he was responding to the idea of can we eat meat with climate change etc etc etc, and he basically said cut out processed, cut out the crap stuff, we need to concentrate on eating high quality meat.
...
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/shop/fresh-food/fresh-meat-and-poultry/fresh-chicken?shelf=Whole Chicken & Crowns&viewAll=shelf&sortBy=priceAscending
Perhaps if they'd not bothered with that they might have held Kensingston
One of the best kitchen appliances we've bought is an Airfryer that doubles up as a Rotisserie. Can get a whole chicken, rub it with some seasoning, spike it onto the rotisserie spear and pop it in for an hour. An hour later the chicken is cooked to perfection, delicious. Both cheaper and healthier than crap food.
Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry
You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
It was common for crap chicken from places like Brazil imported, sent to Holland to be processed and then back to the UK to be sold.
But the existence of mammary glands and nipples is not, in itself, a sex-secific differential secondary sexual characteristic in hominines. (So the newspeak is being more zoologically correct than usual ...).
That is very far from every day for a family.
When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.
And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
The tides they be a changing
Westminster Voting Intention:
CON: 44% (-1)
LAB: 31% (-1)
LDM: 12% (+4)
GRN: 4% (-2)
REF: 1% (-1)
Via
@Kantar_UKI
, 7-12 July
Changes w/ 7 June
Tories still defying gravity. I just find it mind blowing they are still on ~42% (as an average of the past 4-5 polls). Huge scandal of Hancock, COVID cases rising, all the divisive culture war stuff, and 44% in this poll.
The big thing in all these polls, Labour don't seem to be benefitting at all. I am guessing Stamer's approach of government are reckless, useless, waste of space, but I would basically do the same isn't helping Labour.
If you want to be lazy then its entirely possible to do it without much 'skill'. Frozen prepared vegetables are available that can be popped into a microwave again for much cheaper than a takeaway.
I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.