On fruit and vegetable picking, I think the debate is largely moot because within 10-15 this will all be done by autonomous driverless vehicles controlled by AI using UK satellites or 5G.
We're arguing about not having enough ploughs and oxen in the 1890s just as tractors start to arrive on the scene.
You are not picking soft fruit that way within that time frame.
A recent study shows Oxford/ AstraZeneca’s vaccine gives powerful protection and generates robust long-term immune system responses that may last a lifetime! As well as generating virus-busting antibodies, the vaccine also creates “training camps” in the body for for search-and-destroy T-cells (CD8+ T-cells) which can kill even new variants! What does this mean? It means your immune system can continue making these vital cells long after antibodies have waned- and possibly for the rest of your life! Researchers showed adenovirus vectors can target specific cells- known as stromal cells in tissues such as the lung - generating antigen 'depots' in these long-lived cells."
And there was me thinking that the NHS App had been a complete disaster and didn't work. Now the criticism is that it apparently works too well. Is it really surprising that an App that does work is pinging like crazy given the number of cases there are in the community right now?
I wish the critics convinced that everything the government does is wrong and useless would make their mind up about which horse they were riding for at least 48 hours at a time. It's confusing when they career about from one extreme to the other like this.
I think the criticism is the lack of joined up policy. It is great that track and trace actually works at last (it was a complete dogs dinner last year when I had to try and use it in September), but the fact that it works on its own is not a cause for celebration - it is that it needs to then be joined by a sensible policy. Making all people isolate for 10 days that have been in an area deemed to be pingable is ridiculous, particularly if they have been vaccinated so highly unlikely to be contagious. The policy needs changing now. It is overly cautious and needs immediate change.
For sure. The pandemic - when our hospitals’ intensive care units filled with people fighting for their lives on ventilators - has turned into a pingdemic, with countless people who aren’t going to get ill and aren’t going to end up in hospital being directed to hide themselves away because, even if you are vaccinated, walking briefly past an infected person supposedly presents a massive risk.
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
This should be a new thread header, tories doing terribly, just 10-12% ahead in the polls. Labour certs for nect GE with huge landslide now they are on 30%.
Currently we have LOTO on his Here to Hear tour listening to former Labour voters as to why they aren't current Labour voters. Increasing clown show by the government may well move the Clown off to pasture, but I don't see that means a Labour win. More likely a new Tory PM, another government reboot.
People absolutely can be persuaded to vote against the government. But they need to be persuaded to vote FOR the opposition. There's no sign at all that this is happening yet.
If this site existed in 2002 would there be header after header about how terrible Blair is and how well IDS is doing?
In my view SKS is doing even worse than IDS. In 2002 Blair was still loved and we were only 5 years into the Labour Government.
We are now 11+ years into a Tory Government, Boris is hated by many (especially on this site) yet Labour lanquish in the low 30s and SKS feels irrelevant. And as for the shadow cabinet!!!!
I just don't see how Labour can recover under SKS despite all the positive thread headers he gets on this site.
Was there a pandemic going on at that time? Was Blair on the TV every five minutes doing a party political broadcast? No? Thought not. Comparing today's opinion polls with previous times is pointless. I don't want a Labour government, but I think when more normal service resumes the Tories may well lose their lead and their complacency may well let Labour in with LD support.
So: 356k new jobs in June vacancies up to 775k, above pre Covid levels growth forecast between 5 and 7.5% for the year Sharp reduction of those on furlough without the forecast wave of unemployment. The highest vaccine rate of any large or medium sized country in the world. Public debt undershooting forecasts too.
It's a disaster right enough.
Either that or the hysterics are moving to a new level.
I have a private bet standing that the Uk will not enter a new lockdown, as defined by pubs and restaurants closing inside again. What are my chances do you think?
I agree actually. Once all adults are double vaxxed (soon) there is simply no moral justification for it. So yes, I would be on your side of the wager.
Al adults will not be vaxxed soon. The number will top out below 90%, I believe.
Tsk, Scotland under performing again.
Scotland, like Wales, has less of the groups who are more anti-vax. If you look at localised vaccination rates, they are actually quite uniform when you are comparing similar groups.
The flip side of diversity.....
On the other hand, plenty of the 'groups' from NI (whoi presumably don't get counted in the 'diversity' stats)? That signal should appear in Scotland, too. But the level in NI isn't perhaps big enough to register anyway.
Well, are Spides diverse from the rest of us? I rather hope so....
Actually, as a complete surprise, NI has a larger number of er... hard core? Christians of the type associated with anti-vax for various spurious reasons.
Even the more er... colourful? denizens of Scotland who express an affinity for various facets of the joy joy that is the NI cultural continuum are not, in contrast, especially religious.
Scotland has secularised much more, basically.
Spide? *looks up on net*..
TSE was talking only the other day tabout the reasons why Glasgow - of all places - could not be considered a really leftie city.
But the difference between NI and W/S is not huge, and a small percentage of that difference ...
Even so, the Free Kirks seem to be absent from this statement (which has the main Presbyterians, Piskies, RCs and others)
So no idea what the FCS, FCS(C) etc actually think.
What is the membership of the more er... sporty religious groups these days in Scotland? IIRC it is a fairly small proportion of the population.
Sorry, only just finished lunch break now.
In Glasgow? Hordes of colourful types if you count Sevco Rangers fans, fewer if you count the politically/culturally Orange (overlap as they might, as TSE noted the other day), fewer still in terms of the actual free presbyterian kirks and the like (I am speaking in descriptive terms, hence the lower case).
What really complicates things is that I have now managed to fish out a formal statement of the Free Church of Scotland - I know we have a Popular Judean Liberation Front situation here but this will do for now as I have no reason to believe the FCS are inclined to be any different on works of necessity or mercy than the other and historically related [edit] FCs in Scotland.
I've found an official statement from the Kirk anent a statement from the Moderator of the FCS (specifically!) which refers to "Expressing his thankfulness for the COVID-19 vaccine program and the public's adherence to difficult lockdown restrictions [...]". Whicvh doesn't sound at all anti-vaxxy. (Thank heaven, as one might say.)
So things look more complex even. Is it possible the NI presbyterian kirks and their local Scottish congregations are more anti-vaccine? Or am I misunderstanding you?
This seems to lump 'Other Presbyterians' together which is just what we do not need now I've raised the issue of heterogeneity within even the more traditional FCs, but I do notice that the Pentecostals are now a significant element. However, percentage attendance is quite low even in the Glasgow area. And the cities are the ones which will make the difference. Doesn't matter if Eriskay is wall to wall RC, or Lewis solid FC - they aren't densely enough populated.
Time to go back to Charles I's splendid wheeze to make the Anglican Book of Common Prayer + episcopacy compulsory for all Scots. To be enforced by of excommunication and exile to Darien. What could possibly go wrong?
Your chronology is a wee bittockie out. And on a pedantic PB-style quibble, it was James VI who reintroduced bishops (as did, later, Charles II and - I think - also, but unsuccessfully, James VII.
But, yes, what could go wrong?
Certainly the Scottish Episcopal Church should be merged with the Church of England and the Church of Ireland (at least in NI) and ideally the Church of Wales to create one Anglican Church across the British Isles
The SEC was always separate from Henry VIII's Catholic Church. Separate Apostolic Succession right back to the Apostles.
And NI is not British but Irish. So can't call it the 'British Isles'. Could call it 'The Apostolic Churtch of the Isles of a bit of Ireland and Britain'.
The SEC is actually a continuation of the Church of Scotland as James VI intended it to be and only emerged in 1582 (Henry VIII died in 1547) when the Church of Scotland rejected episcopal government
So: 356k new jobs in June vacancies up to 775k, above pre Covid levels growth forecast between 5 and 7.5% for the year Sharp reduction of those on furlough without the forecast wave of unemployment. The highest vaccine rate of any large or medium sized country in the world. Public debt undershooting forecasts too.
It's a disaster right enough.
Either that or the hysterics are moving to a new level.
That is all great news, but no reason to be complacent
On fruit and vegetable picking, I think the debate is largely moot because within 10-15 this will all be done by autonomous driverless vehicles controlled by AI using UK satellites or 5G.
We're arguing about not having enough ploughs and oxen in the 1890s just as tractors start to arrive on the scene.
Fingers crossed the cyber defences will hold up in a war. Empty bellies time otherwise.
The sequel to the attack on Estonia in 2007 could be interesting from a popcorn-eater's POV.
I have a private bet standing that the Uk will not enter a new lockdown, as defined by pubs and restaurants closing inside again. What are my chances do you think?
I agree actually. Once all adults are double vaxxed (soon) there is simply no moral justification for it. So yes, I would be on your side of the wager.
Al adults will not be vaxxed soon. The number will top out below 90%, I believe.
Tsk, Scotland under performing again.
Scotland, like Wales, has less of the groups who are more anti-vax. If you look at localised vaccination rates, they are actually quite uniform when you are comparing similar groups.
The flip side of diversity.....
On the other hand, plenty of the 'groups' from NI (whoi presumably don't get counted in the 'diversity' stats)? That signal should appear in Scotland, too. But the level in NI isn't perhaps big enough to register anyway.
Well, are Spides diverse from the rest of us? I rather hope so....
Actually, as a complete surprise, NI has a larger number of er... hard core? Christians of the type associated with anti-vax for various spurious reasons.
Even the more er... colourful? denizens of Scotland who express an affinity for various facets of the joy joy that is the NI cultural continuum are not, in contrast, especially religious.
Scotland has secularised much more, basically.
Spide? *looks up on net*..
TSE was talking only the other day tabout the reasons why Glasgow - of all places - could not be considered a really leftie city.
But the difference between NI and W/S is not huge, and a small percentage of that difference ...
Even so, the Free Kirks seem to be absent from this statement (which has the main Presbyterians, Piskies, RCs and others)
So no idea what the FCS, FCS(C) etc actually think.
What is the membership of the more er... sporty religious groups these days in Scotland? IIRC it is a fairly small proportion of the population.
Sorry, only just finished lunch break now.
In Glasgow? Hordes of colourful types if you count Sevco Rangers fans, fewer if you count the politically/culturally Orange (overlap as they might, as TSE noted the other day), fewer still in terms of the actual free presbyterian kirks and the like (I am speaking in descriptive terms, hence the lower case).
What really complicates things is that I have now managed to fish out a formal statement of the Free Church of Scotland - I know we have a Popular Judean Liberation Front situation here but this will do for now as I have no reason to believe the FCS are inclined to be any different on works of necessity or mercy than the other and historically related [edit] FCs in Scotland.
I've found an official statement from the Kirk anent a statement from the Moderator of the FCS (specifically!) which refers to "Expressing his thankfulness for the COVID-19 vaccine program and the public's adherence to difficult lockdown restrictions [...]". Whicvh doesn't sound at all anti-vaxxy. (Thank heaven, as one might say.)
So things look more complex even. Is it possible the NI presbyterian kirks and their local Scottish congregations are more anti-vaccine? Or am I misunderstanding you?
This seems to lump 'Other Presbyterians' together which is just what we do not need now I've raised the issue of heterogeneity within even the more traditional FCs, but I do notice that the Pentecostals are now a significant element. However, percentage attendance is quite low even in the Glasgow area. And the cities are the ones which will make the difference. Doesn't matter if Eriskay is wall to wall RC, or Lewis solid FC - they aren't densely enough populated.
Time to go back to Charles I's splendid wheeze to make the Anglican Book of Common Prayer + episcopacy compulsory for all Scots. To be enforced by of excommunication and exile to Darien. What could possibly go wrong?
Your chronology is a wee bittockie out. And on a pedantic PB-style quibble, it was James VI who reintroduced bishops (as did, later, Charles II and - I think - also, but unsuccessfully, James VII.
But, yes, what could go wrong?
Certainly the Scottish Episcopal Church should be merged with the Church of England and the Church of Ireland (at least in NI) and ideally the Church of Wales to create one Anglican Church across the British Isles
The SEC was always separate from Henry VIII's Catholic Church. Separate Apostolic Succession right back to the Apostles.
And NI is not British but Irish. So can't call it the 'British Isles'. Could call it 'The Apostolic Churtch of the Isles of a bit of Ireland and Britain'.
The SEC is actually a continuation of the Church of Scotland as James VI intended it to be and only emerged in 1582 (Henry VIII died in 1547) when the Church of Scotland rejected episcopal government
Irrelevant. The Kirk in Scotland was never part of the Church of England.
A recent study shows Oxford/ AstraZeneca’s vaccine gives powerful protection and generates robust long-term immune system responses that may last a lifetime! As well as generating virus-busting antibodies, the vaccine also creates “training camps” in the body for for search-and-destroy T-cells (CD8+ T-cells) which can kill even new variants! What does this mean? It means your immune system can continue making these vital cells long after antibodies have waned- and possibly for the rest of your life! Researchers showed adenovirus vectors can target specific cells- known as stromal cells in tissues such as the lung - generating antigen 'depots' in these long-lived cells."
There are quite a lot of posts from around June 14th that have aged abysmally when it comes to calling peak Covid and what the cases/hospital numbers can or cannot possibly do.
All spoken with the confidence of Vince Cable predicting the next recession.
Indeed. I tried to snag someone on here into a bet that there would be no significant rise in hospitalizations in June but alas couldn't agree terms. Looking back I was too timid predicting a 4x growth in hospitalizations from the trough...
Indeed. It's a terrible weakness not to accept uncertainty. If there's one thing the much-derided models show is that, from here, it could go either way. Far too many posters can't accept that, perhaps because it's more comfortable to fantasize a future and assume it to be certain.
I remember itching to challenge certain people to a bet last autumn, but in the end I realized that I didn't want to wager on humans dying.
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
And yet they lead the polls by a large amount. I know.
My take on the big picture numbers is that three moves have happened since December 2019.
1 Most of the residual BXP vote has moved into the Conservative column (see Hartlepool). So C +2 say
2 A chunk of the Conservative 2019 vote has moved elsewhere, Lib or Lab (see Batley and Spen and Chesham and Amersham). C-4 Lab +4 say.
3 A chunk of the Labour 2019 vote has peeled off to explicit lefty parties (Hartlepool and Batley) or Greens (elsewhere) possibly because they're pining for Jez. Lab -4, Green +4.
The first of those effects looks pretty set in stone now. The second is the one that moves over time, according to perceived government competence.
The third is the interesting one. What's driving it, and can Labour do anything about it?
Somewhat disappointingly from my point of view as a Unionist you also need to have a movement from Scottish Labour to the SNP worth something like -2 across the UK as well. SLAB are not in a good place.
Er, that would imply -20 percentage points from Slab to the SNP would it not? Rather difficult if they are not much above that, but I can't remember what the latest stat was and can;t find it.
The latest one I saw had them down at 9%. Sarwar is not cutting through the way I expected. Maybe -1 rather than -2.
The graphic we should all be looking has nothing to do with Covid. It's Fraser Nelson's cheat sheet of the UK's gilt maturity profile
Holy f8ck. Its far more weighted to the front end than I realised and has a stack of maturity rollovers in coming few years.
If the DMO is refinancing those in a rising interest rate environment, URGH.
Only because Fraser Nelson has sort of misrepresented the maturity profile and you have misunderstood it.
The QE gilts are theoretically needing to be rolled over but the QE gilts are owned by the Bank of England. So it's a case of rolling over debts that are already owed to the UK. The Treasury doesn't pay any interest on these debts so realistically the BoE can just roll them over indefinitely with the Treasury never paying interest on these.
If you look at the gilts that matter, the ones we actually pay interest on, they have a mean fifteen year, median eleven year, maturity.
The Bank may want or need to use the open market to refinance at some juncture, as you well know.
Yes - selling the bonds on the open market (and then reducing the BoE balance sheet by, in effect, “destroying” the cash received) is the way the BoE reverses Quantitative Easing. My understanding is that the Treasury does pay interest, it has just been using accounting trickery to bank them once paid. The ongoing interest is still outstanding.
If the bonds were actually owned by the Treasury then the SNP argument in 2014 that they were an asset to be divided post independence would actually have merit...
Indeed the Treasury pays the Bank, the Bank refunds the money. Technically the Bank pays a rate on the reserves to the private sector and the Bank refunds the profit it makes to the Treasury so it doesn't officially wipe out all of the interest.
But do you think this any real chance of the QE ever actually being reversed? I think the idea it can be is very much a polite fiction by this point.
I have a private bet standing that the Uk will not enter a new lockdown, as defined by pubs and restaurants closing inside again. What are my chances do you think?
I agree actually. Once all adults are double vaxxed (soon) there is simply no moral justification for it. So yes, I would be on your side of the wager.
Al adults will not be vaxxed soon. The number will top out below 90%, I believe.
Tsk, Scotland under performing again.
Scotland, like Wales, has less of the groups who are more anti-vax. If you look at localised vaccination rates, they are actually quite uniform when you are comparing similar groups.
The flip side of diversity.....
On the other hand, plenty of the 'groups' from NI (whoi presumably don't get counted in the 'diversity' stats)? That signal should appear in Scotland, too. But the level in NI isn't perhaps big enough to register anyway.
Well, are Spides diverse from the rest of us? I rather hope so....
Actually, as a complete surprise, NI has a larger number of er... hard core? Christians of the type associated with anti-vax for various spurious reasons.
Even the more er... colourful? denizens of Scotland who express an affinity for various facets of the joy joy that is the NI cultural continuum are not, in contrast, especially religious.
Scotland has secularised much more, basically.
Spide? *looks up on net*..
TSE was talking only the other day tabout the reasons why Glasgow - of all places - could not be considered a really leftie city.
But the difference between NI and W/S is not huge, and a small percentage of that difference ...
Even so, the Free Kirks seem to be absent from this statement (which has the main Presbyterians, Piskies, RCs and others)
So no idea what the FCS, FCS(C) etc actually think.
What is the membership of the more er... sporty religious groups these days in Scotland? IIRC it is a fairly small proportion of the population.
Sorry, only just finished lunch break now.
In Glasgow? Hordes of colourful types if you count Sevco Rangers fans, fewer if you count the politically/culturally Orange (overlap as they might, as TSE noted the other day), fewer still in terms of the actual free presbyterian kirks and the like (I am speaking in descriptive terms, hence the lower case).
What really complicates things is that I have now managed to fish out a formal statement of the Free Church of Scotland - I know we have a Popular Judean Liberation Front situation here but this will do for now as I have no reason to believe the FCS are inclined to be any different on works of necessity or mercy than the other and historically related [edit] FCs in Scotland.
I've found an official statement from the Kirk anent a statement from the Moderator of the FCS (specifically!) which refers to "Expressing his thankfulness for the COVID-19 vaccine program and the public's adherence to difficult lockdown restrictions [...]". Whicvh doesn't sound at all anti-vaxxy. (Thank heaven, as one might say.)
So things look more complex even. Is it possible the NI presbyterian kirks and their local Scottish congregations are more anti-vaccine? Or am I misunderstanding you?
This seems to lump 'Other Presbyterians' together which is just what we do not need now I've raised the issue of heterogeneity within even the more traditional FCs, but I do notice that the Pentecostals are now a significant element. However, percentage attendance is quite low even in the Glasgow area. And the cities are the ones which will make the difference. Doesn't matter if Eriskay is wall to wall RC, or Lewis solid FC - they aren't densely enough populated.
Time to go back to Charles I's splendid wheeze to make the Anglican Book of Common Prayer + episcopacy compulsory for all Scots. To be enforced by of excommunication and exile to Darien. What could possibly go wrong?
Your chronology is a wee bittockie out. And on a pedantic PB-style quibble, it was James VI who reintroduced bishops (as did, later, Charles II and - I think - also, but unsuccessfully, James VII.
But, yes, what could go wrong?
Certainly the Scottish Episcopal Church should be merged with the Church of England and the Church of Ireland (at least in NI) and ideally the Church of Wales to create one Anglican Church across the British Isles
The SEC was always separate from Henry VIII's Catholic Church. Separate Apostolic Succession right back to the Apostles.
And NI is not British but Irish. So can't call it the 'British Isles'. Could call it 'The Apostolic Churtch of the Isles of a bit of Ireland and Britain'.
The SEC is actually a continuation of the Church of Scotland as James VI intended it to be and only emerged in 1582 (Henry VIII died in 1547) when the Church of Scotland rejected episcopal government
Irrelevant. The Kirk in Scotland was never part of the Church of England.
It was part of the Catholic Church under Papal and Vatican authority however until 1560 when it broke away.
The SEC effectively became the Scottish version of the Church of England in 1582 when the Church of Scotland refused to accept bishops' authority
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
This should be a new thread header, tories doing terribly, just 10-12% ahead in the polls. Labour certs for nect GE with huge landslide now they are on 30%.
Currently we have LOTO on his Here to Hear tour listening to former Labour voters as to why they aren't current Labour voters. Increasing clown show by the government may well move the Clown off to pasture, but I don't see that means a Labour win. More likely a new Tory PM, another government reboot.
People absolutely can be persuaded to vote against the government. But they need to be persuaded to vote FOR the opposition. There's no sign at all that this is happening yet.
If this site existed in 2002 would there be header after header about how terrible Blair is and how well IDS is doing?
In my view SKS is doing even worse than IDS. In 2002 Blair was still loved and we were only 5 years into the Labour Government.
We are now 11+ years into a Tory Government, Boris is hated by many (especially on this site) yet Labour lanquish in the low 30s and SKS feels irrelevant. And as for the shadow cabinet!!!!
I just don't see how Labour can recover under SKS despite all the positive thread headers he gets on this site.
Was there a pandemic going on at that time? Was Blair on the TV every five minutes doing a party political broadcast? No? Thought not. Comparing today's opinion polls with previous times is pointless. I don't want a Labour government, but I think when more normal service resumes the Tories may well lose their lead and their complacency may well let Labour in with LD support.
I would have thought the fact that according to numerous thread headers Boris has completely messed up the pandemic, is a complete clown, gets trounced every week at PMQs and SKS is the new messiah, Labour should be miles ahead now.
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
The difference between this happening on GB News and something similar happening on Sky News or the BBC is that GB News' whole USP is a sort of freedom of expression, think the unthinkable, say the unsayable thing.
It does rather look as if that approach applies to Dan Wootton having a right-wing rant on whatever (which Sky/BBC wouldn't have either), but not to Guto Harri taking the knee.
So it undercuts their USP and has a very strong pong of double-standards.
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
And yet they lead the polls by a large amount. I know.
My take on the big picture numbers is that three moves have happened since December 2019.
1 Most of the residual BXP vote has moved into the Conservative column (see Hartlepool). So C +2 say
2 A chunk of the Conservative 2019 vote has moved elsewhere, Lib or Lab (see Batley and Spen and Chesham and Amersham). C-4 Lab +4 say.
3 A chunk of the Labour 2019 vote has peeled off to explicit lefty parties (Hartlepool and Batley) or Greens (elsewhere) possibly because they're pining for Jez. Lab -4, Green +4.
The first of those effects looks pretty set in stone now. The second is the one that moves over time, according to perceived government competence.
The third is the interesting one. What's driving it, and can Labour do anything about it?
Somewhat disappointingly from my point of view as a Unionist you also need to have a movement from Scottish Labour to the SNP worth something like -2 across the UK as well. SLAB are not in a good place.
Er, that would imply -20 percentage points from Slab to the SNP would it not? Rather difficult if they are not much above that, but I can't remember what the latest stat was and can;t find it.
The latest one I saw had them down at 9%. Sarwar is not cutting through the way I expected. Maybe -1 rather than -2.
Would be difficult to get more votes out of Labour than -1 point UK wide ...
Thanks - that is what I remembered but I just couldn't believe just now, without checking, that they were that low, down amongst the clover.
So: 356k new jobs in June vacancies up to 775k, above pre Covid levels growth forecast between 5 and 7.5% for the year Sharp reduction of those on furlough without the forecast wave of unemployment. The highest vaccine rate of any large or medium sized country in the world. Public debt undershooting forecasts too.
It's a disaster right enough.
Either that or the hysterics are moving to a new level.
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
Though GB News was supposed to be a "Free Speech" station.
I guess Free Speech only goes so far.
You obviously didn't understand my post.
I did, did you?
GB News claimed to be "free speech" not like the BBC and Sky. Hence why Dan Wooton can go on diatribes and so on and so forth.
In that context Guto Hari has done absolutely nothing wrong. There is no "impartiality" rule that has been broken by Guto that wouldn't apply to Dan Wooton and others too.
So: 356k new jobs in June vacancies up to 775k, above pre Covid levels growth forecast between 5 and 7.5% for the year Sharp reduction of those on furlough without the forecast wave of unemployment. The highest vaccine rate of any large or medium sized country in the world. Public debt undershooting forecasts too.
It's a disaster right enough.
Either that or the hysterics are moving to a new level.
That is all great news, but no reason to be complacent
No I completely agree. But the daily forecasts of Boris and his government simply collapsing under the strain of their alleged incompetence really has to address the fact that the economic outlook is surprisingly excellent (I forgot to add the large increase in wages), the vaccine program is a stunning success even if it has tailed off a bit and the government is getting its way, right or wrong, in the Commons without obvious difficulty. Forecasts of their collapse because Boris had a poor PMQs seem a tad hopeful.
The graphic we should all be looking has nothing to do with Covid. It's Fraser Nelson's cheat sheet of the UK's gilt maturity profile
Holy f8ck. Its far more weighted to the front end than I realised and has a stack of maturity rollovers in coming few years.
If the DMO is refinancing those in a rising interest rate environment, URGH.
Only because Fraser Nelson has sort of misrepresented the maturity profile and you have misunderstood it.
The QE gilts are theoretically needing to be rolled over but the QE gilts are owned by the Bank of England. So it's a case of rolling over debts that are already owed to the UK. The Treasury doesn't pay any interest on these debts so realistically the BoE can just roll them over indefinitely with the Treasury never paying interest on these.
If you look at the gilts that matter, the ones we actually pay interest on, they have a mean fifteen year, median eleven year, maturity.
The Bank may want or need to use the open market to refinance at some juncture, as you well know.
Indeed but the Bank is never realistically going to unwind QE.
Its one of those things that is theoretically possible, like the UK repaying its debts, but practically speaking its never going to happen.
If we get to the situation where the economy is growing strongly, the public finances are in decent shape, but inflation is high, then unwinding QE might be seen as an attractive alternative to increasing base rates too far.
So: 356k new jobs in June vacancies up to 775k, above pre Covid levels growth forecast between 5 and 7.5% for the year Sharp reduction of those on furlough without the forecast wave of unemployment. The highest vaccine rate of any large or medium sized country in the world. Public debt undershooting forecasts too.
It's a disaster right enough.
Either that or the hysterics are moving to a new level.
That is all great news, but no reason to be complacent
No I completely agree. But the daily forecasts of Boris and his government simply collapsing under the strain of their alleged incompetence really has to address the fact that the economic outlook is surprisingly excellent (I forgot to add the large increase in wages), the vaccine program is a stunning success even if it has tailed off a bit and the government is getting its way, right or wrong, in the Commons without obvious difficulty. Forecasts of their collapse because Boris had a poor PMQs seem a tad hopeful.
Only downside I see at the moment is that a litre of Unleaded is now £1.319 in my local station, that's the highest I've ever paid for Unleaded.
The graphic we should all be looking has nothing to do with Covid. It's Fraser Nelson's cheat sheet of the UK's gilt maturity profile
Holy f8ck. Its far more weighted to the front end than I realised and has a stack of maturity rollovers in coming few years.
If the DMO is refinancing those in a rising interest rate environment, URGH.
Only because Fraser Nelson has sort of misrepresented the maturity profile and you have misunderstood it.
The QE gilts are theoretically needing to be rolled over but the QE gilts are owned by the Bank of England. So it's a case of rolling over debts that are already owed to the UK. The Treasury doesn't pay any interest on these debts so realistically the BoE can just roll them over indefinitely with the Treasury never paying interest on these.
If you look at the gilts that matter, the ones we actually pay interest on, they have a mean fifteen year, median eleven year, maturity.
The Bank may want or need to use the open market to refinance at some juncture, as you well know.
Yes - selling the bonds on the open market (and then reducing the BoE balance sheet by, in effect, “destroying” the cash received) is the way the BoE reverses Quantitative Easing. My understanding is that the Treasury does pay interest, it has just been using accounting trickery to bank them once paid. The ongoing interest is still outstanding.
If the bonds were actually owned by the Treasury then the SNP argument in 2014 that they were an asset to be divided post independence would actually have merit...
The forever BoE refinancing of QE gilts is fine when inflation is on its back, it seems to me, but inflationary pressures are rising.
Does the bank just sit there and watch it increase? Or does it start to taper its enormous QE position? (thereby royally screwing the Johnson government).
I have a private bet standing that the Uk will not enter a new lockdown, as defined by pubs and restaurants closing inside again. What are my chances do you think?
I agree actually. Once all adults are double vaxxed (soon) there is simply no moral justification for it. So yes, I would be on your side of the wager.
Al adults will not be vaxxed soon. The number will top out below 90%, I believe.
Tsk, Scotland under performing again.
Scotland, like Wales, has less of the groups who are more anti-vax. If you look at localised vaccination rates, they are actually quite uniform when you are comparing similar groups.
The flip side of diversity.....
On the other hand, plenty of the 'groups' from NI (whoi presumably don't get counted in the 'diversity' stats)? That signal should appear in Scotland, too. But the level in NI isn't perhaps big enough to register anyway.
Well, are Spides diverse from the rest of us? I rather hope so....
Actually, as a complete surprise, NI has a larger number of er... hard core? Christians of the type associated with anti-vax for various spurious reasons.
Even the more er... colourful? denizens of Scotland who express an affinity for various facets of the joy joy that is the NI cultural continuum are not, in contrast, especially religious.
Scotland has secularised much more, basically.
Spide? *looks up on net*..
TSE was talking only the other day tabout the reasons why Glasgow - of all places - could not be considered a really leftie city.
But the difference between NI and W/S is not huge, and a small percentage of that difference ...
Even so, the Free Kirks seem to be absent from this statement (which has the main Presbyterians, Piskies, RCs and others)
So no idea what the FCS, FCS(C) etc actually think.
What is the membership of the more er... sporty religious groups these days in Scotland? IIRC it is a fairly small proportion of the population.
Sorry, only just finished lunch break now.
In Glasgow? Hordes of colourful types if you count Sevco Rangers fans, fewer if you count the politically/culturally Orange (overlap as they might, as TSE noted the other day), fewer still in terms of the actual free presbyterian kirks and the like (I am speaking in descriptive terms, hence the lower case).
What really complicates things is that I have now managed to fish out a formal statement of the Free Church of Scotland - I know we have a Popular Judean Liberation Front situation here but this will do for now as I have no reason to believe the FCS are inclined to be any different on works of necessity or mercy than the other and historically related [edit] FCs in Scotland.
I've found an official statement from the Kirk anent a statement from the Moderator of the FCS (specifically!) which refers to "Expressing his thankfulness for the COVID-19 vaccine program and the public's adherence to difficult lockdown restrictions [...]". Whicvh doesn't sound at all anti-vaxxy. (Thank heaven, as one might say.)
So things look more complex even. Is it possible the NI presbyterian kirks and their local Scottish congregations are more anti-vaccine? Or am I misunderstanding you?
This seems to lump 'Other Presbyterians' together which is just what we do not need now I've raised the issue of heterogeneity within even the more traditional FCs, but I do notice that the Pentecostals are now a significant element. However, percentage attendance is quite low even in the Glasgow area. And the cities are the ones which will make the difference. Doesn't matter if Eriskay is wall to wall RC, or Lewis solid FC - they aren't densely enough populated.
Time to go back to Charles I's splendid wheeze to make the Anglican Book of Common Prayer + episcopacy compulsory for all Scots. To be enforced by of excommunication and exile to Darien. What could possibly go wrong?
Your chronology is a wee bittockie out. And on a pedantic PB-style quibble, it was James VI who reintroduced bishops (as did, later, Charles II and - I think - also, but unsuccessfully, James VII.
But, yes, what could go wrong?
Certainly the Scottish Episcopal Church should be merged with the Church of England and the Church of Ireland (at least in NI) and ideally the Church of Wales to create one Anglican Church across the British Isles
The SEC was always separate from Henry VIII's Catholic Church. Separate Apostolic Succession right back to the Apostles.
And NI is not British but Irish. So can't call it the 'British Isles'. Could call it 'The Apostolic Churtch of the Isles of a bit of Ireland and Britain'.
The SEC is actually a continuation of the Church of Scotland as James VI intended it to be and only emerged in 1582 (Henry VIII died in 1547) when the Church of Scotland rejected episcopal government
Irrelevant. The Kirk in Scotland was never part of the Church of England.
It was part of the Catholic Church under Papal and Vatican authority however until 1560 when it broke away.
The SEC effectively became the Scottish version of the Church of England in 1582 when the Church of Scotland refused to accept bishops' authority
So, doesn't mean you can send your tanks to park on the front lawn of the unfortunate Bishop Strange in Arpafeelie.
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
Though GB News was supposed to be a "Free Speech" station.
I guess Free Speech only goes so far.
You obviously didn't understand my post.
I did, did you?
GB News claimed to be "free speech" not like the BBC and Sky. Hence why Dan Wooton can go on diatribes and so on and so forth.
In that context Guto Hari has done absolutely nothing wrong. There is no "impartiality" rule that has been broken by Guto that wouldn't apply to Dan Wooton and others too.
This is nothing other than Cancel Culture.
Except it seems that Guto Hari upset all remaining viewers as his views didn't match theirs.
It is however GB News and were it not for this bit of news no one would be watching it. It will be dead within 9 months...
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
Though GB News was supposed to be a "Free Speech" station.
I guess Free Speech only goes so far.
You obviously didn't understand my post.
I did, did you?
GB News claimed to be "free speech" not like the BBC and Sky. Hence why Dan Wooton can go on diatribes and so on and so forth.
In that context Guto Hari has done absolutely nothing wrong. There is no "impartiality" rule that has been broken by Guto that wouldn't apply to Dan Wooton and others too.
This is nothing other than Cancel Culture.
Except it seems that Guto Hari upset all remaining viewers as his views didn't match theirs.
It is however GB News and were it not for this bit of news no one would be watching it. It will be dead within 9 months...
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
And yet they lead the polls by a large amount. I know.
My take on the big picture numbers is that three moves have happened since December 2019.
1 Most of the residual BXP vote has moved into the Conservative column (see Hartlepool). So C +2 say
2 A chunk of the Conservative 2019 vote has moved elsewhere, Lib or Lab (see Batley and Spen and Chesham and Amersham). C-4 Lab +4 say.
3 A chunk of the Labour 2019 vote has peeled off to explicit lefty parties (Hartlepool and Batley) or Greens (elsewhere) possibly because they're pining for Jez. Lab -4, Green +4.
The first of those effects looks pretty set in stone now. The second is the one that moves over time, according to perceived government competence.
The third is the interesting one. What's driving it, and can Labour do anything about it?
Somewhat disappointingly from my point of view as a Unionist you also need to have a movement from Scottish Labour to the SNP worth something like -2 across the UK as well. SLAB are not in a good place.
Er, that would imply -20 percentage points from Slab to the SNP would it not? Rather difficult if they are not much above that, but I can't remember what the latest stat was and can;t find it.
The latest one I saw had them down at 9%. Sarwar is not cutting through the way I expected. Maybe -1 rather than -2.
Would be difficult to get more votes out of Labour than -1 point UK wide ...
Thanks - that is what I remembered but I just couldn't believe just now, without checking, that they were that low, down amongst the clover.
I think in fairness that was a subsample so I wouldn't take it too seriously on its own but Sarwar is simply not being heard.
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
This should be a new thread header, tories doing terribly, just 10-12% ahead in the polls. Labour certs for nect GE with huge landslide now they are on 30%.
Currently we have LOTO on his Here to Hear tour listening to former Labour voters as to why they aren't current Labour voters. Increasing clown show by the government may well move the Clown off to pasture, but I don't see that means a Labour win. More likely a new Tory PM, another government reboot.
People absolutely can be persuaded to vote against the government. But they need to be persuaded to vote FOR the opposition. There's no sign at all that this is happening yet.
If this site existed in 2002 would there be header after header about how terrible Blair is and how well IDS is doing?
In my view SKS is doing even worse than IDS. In 2002 Blair was still loved and we were only 5 years into the Labour Government.
We are now 11+ years into a Tory Government, Boris is hated by many (especially on this site) yet Labour lanquish in the low 30s and SKS feels irrelevant. And as for the shadow cabinet!!!!
I just don't see how Labour can recover under SKS despite all the positive thread headers he gets on this site.
Maybe it is because you are not exactly neutral. I don't want a Labour government but I want a strong opposition. I think any Labour leader would struggle while Johnson is able to give a party political broadcast on a regular basis because of the current crisis, plus there are still major legacy issues for Starmer regarding Corbyn. However innocuous Starmer looks there is still the risk the Corbyn faction could come back, and he needs to neutralise that concern. He still has plenty of time, and Tories who underestimate a man who has had a successful career outside of politics (rather than writing silly polemics for newspapers) do so at their peril.
And there was me thinking that the NHS App had been a complete disaster and didn't work. Now the criticism is that it apparently works too well. Is it really surprising that an App that does work is pinging like crazy given the number of cases there are in the community right now?
I wish the critics convinced that everything the government does is wrong and useless would make their mind up about which horse they were riding for at least 48 hours at a time. It's confusing when they career about from one extreme to the other like this.
I think the criticism is the lack of joined up policy. It is great that track and trace actually works at last (it was a complete dogs dinner last year when I had to try and use it in September), but the fact that it works on its own is not a cause for celebration - it is that it needs to then be joined by a sensible policy. Making all people isolate for 10 days that have been in an area deemed to be pingable is ridiculous, particularly if they have been vaccinated so highly unlikely to be contagious. The policy needs changing now. It is overly cautious and needs immediate change.
For sure. The pandemic - when our hospitals’ intensive care units filled with people fighting for their lives on ventilators - has turned into a pingdemic, with countless people who aren’t going to get ill and aren’t going to end up in hospital being directed to hide themselves away because, even if you are vaccinated, walking briefly past an infected person supposedly presents a massive risk.
Time to get things into proportion.
Time to get things accurate, first. An awful lot of people are going to get ill and many of them will end up in intensive care (and for much longer periods than is the case for non-Covid patients). That's already baked in to the case numbers, and the case numbers are still increasing.
And, no, the app doesn't ping you because you've walked briefly past an infected person.
Once you get things accurate, then you can consider getting them into proportion.
The graphic we should all be looking has nothing to do with Covid. It's Fraser Nelson's cheat sheet of the UK's gilt maturity profile
Holy f8ck. Its far more weighted to the front end than I realised and has a stack of maturity rollovers in coming few years.
If the DMO is refinancing those in a rising interest rate environment, URGH.
Only because Fraser Nelson has sort of misrepresented the maturity profile and you have misunderstood it.
The QE gilts are theoretically needing to be rolled over but the QE gilts are owned by the Bank of England. So it's a case of rolling over debts that are already owed to the UK. The Treasury doesn't pay any interest on these debts so realistically the BoE can just roll them over indefinitely with the Treasury never paying interest on these.
If you look at the gilts that matter, the ones we actually pay interest on, they have a mean fifteen year, median eleven year, maturity.
The Bank may want or need to use the open market to refinance at some juncture, as you well know.
Yes - selling the bonds on the open market (and then reducing the BoE balance sheet by, in effect, “destroying” the cash received) is the way the BoE reverses Quantitative Easing. My understanding is that the Treasury does pay interest, it has just been using accounting trickery to bank them once paid. The ongoing interest is still outstanding.
If the bonds were actually owned by the Treasury then the SNP argument in 2014 that they were an asset to be divided post independence would actually have merit...
Indeed the Treasury pays the Bank, the Bank refunds the money. Technically the Bank pays a rate on the reserves to the private sector and the Bank refunds the profit it makes to the Treasury so it doesn't officially wipe out all of the interest.
But do you think this any real chance of the QE ever actually being reversed? I think the idea it can be is very much a polite fiction by this point.
I don’t see why not - it’s a serious alternative to raising interest rates.
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
Though GB News was supposed to be a "Free Speech" station.
I guess Free Speech only goes so far.
You obviously didn't understand my post.
I did, did you?
GB News claimed to be "free speech" not like the BBC and Sky. Hence why Dan Wooton can go on diatribes and so on and so forth.
In that context Guto Hari has done absolutely nothing wrong. There is no "impartiality" rule that has been broken by Guto that wouldn't apply to Dan Wooton and others too.
This is nothing other than Cancel Culture.
It's something more than that. It's Cancel Culture. And it's effing hilarious to boot!
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
This should be a new thread header, tories doing terribly, just 10-12% ahead in the polls. Labour certs for nect GE with huge landslide now they are on 30%.
Currently we have LOTO on his Here to Hear tour listening to former Labour voters as to why they aren't current Labour voters. Increasing clown show by the government may well move the Clown off to pasture, but I don't see that means a Labour win. More likely a new Tory PM, another government reboot.
People absolutely can be persuaded to vote against the government. But they need to be persuaded to vote FOR the opposition. There's no sign at all that this is happening yet.
The point is that polls are lagging indicators. So given the utterly abject mess they are making of it, it is hard to see the Tories coming anywhere close to their current rating. PB has a pretty good track record of sceptically understanding opinion polls and there is growing evidence that the Tories are facing unexpected challenges.
Do you think the rest of Europe is better placed to deal with Delta?
These tory MPs are Johnson's enablers. Johnson sits at their pleasure.
Do they really think tory voters will simply blame Johnson if they let him bankrupt Britain? Do think really think they will simply forgive and forget if there's a new leader?
Think again, children.
I have thought for a while that Starmer's odds on becoming next PM are too long because the shit could truly hit the fan economically pretty quickly for the Tories.
I'm fairly confident in that scenario the Tories would ditch Johnson and give the job to someone like Truss in an attempt to distance themselves from their previous mistakes.
Starmer might well be too long to be PM after the next GE, but Johnson has to survive to contest the next GE if Starmer is to have any chance of being next PM.
If Boris goes and it is Truss and austerity 2 then say bye bye Red Wall and Starmer into No 10
For balance, perhaps you should try and find some downsides?
So: 356k new jobs in June vacancies up to 775k, above pre Covid levels growth forecast between 5 and 7.5% for the year Sharp reduction of those on furlough without the forecast wave of unemployment. The highest vaccine rate of any large or medium sized country in the world. Public debt undershooting forecasts too.
It's a disaster right enough.
Either that or the hysterics are moving to a new level.
That is all great news, but no reason to be complacent
No I completely agree. But the daily forecasts of Boris and his government simply collapsing under the strain of their alleged incompetence really has to address the fact that the economic outlook is surprisingly excellent (I forgot to add the large increase in wages), the vaccine program is a stunning success even if it has tailed off a bit and the government is getting its way, right or wrong, in the Commons without obvious difficulty. Forecasts of their collapse because Boris had a poor PMQs seem a tad hopeful.
Only downside I see at the moment is that a litre of Unleaded is now £1.319 in my local station, that's the highest I've ever paid for Unleaded.
Inflation is definitely going to running up the list of issues for the government by the end of the year. Rapid wage increases, higher fuel costs, continuing disruption of supply lines for things like microchips because of Covid, big increase in demand, lots of new investment, all the warning signs are there and the Bank are either being complacent about it or thinking worse things could happen to a heavily indebted economy.
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
And yet they lead the polls by a large amount. I know.
My take on the big picture numbers is that three moves have happened since December 2019.
1 Most of the residual BXP vote has moved into the Conservative column (see Hartlepool). So C +2 say
2 A chunk of the Conservative 2019 vote has moved elsewhere, Lib or Lab (see Batley and Spen and Chesham and Amersham). C-4 Lab +4 say.
3 A chunk of the Labour 2019 vote has peeled off to explicit lefty parties (Hartlepool and Batley) or Greens (elsewhere) possibly because they're pining for Jez. Lab -4, Green +4.
The first of those effects looks pretty set in stone now. The second is the one that moves over time, according to perceived government competence.
The third is the interesting one. What's driving it, and can Labour do anything about it?
Somewhat disappointingly from my point of view as a Unionist you also need to have a movement from Scottish Labour to the SNP worth something like -2 across the UK as well. SLAB are not in a good place.
Er, that would imply -20 percentage points from Slab to the SNP would it not? Rather difficult if they are not much above that, but I can't remember what the latest stat was and can;t find it.
The latest one I saw had them down at 9%. Sarwar is not cutting through the way I expected. Maybe -1 rather than -2.
Would be difficult to get more votes out of Labour than -1 point UK wide ...
Thanks - that is what I remembered but I just couldn't believe just now, without checking, that they were that low, down amongst the clover.
I think in fairness that was a subsample so I wouldn't take it too seriously on its own but Sarwar is simply not being heard.
Do not underestimate the determination of the quiet man
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
This should be a new thread header, tories doing terribly, just 10-12% ahead in the polls. Labour certs for nect GE with huge landslide now they are on 30%.
Currently we have LOTO on his Here to Hear tour listening to former Labour voters as to why they aren't current Labour voters. Increasing clown show by the government may well move the Clown off to pasture, but I don't see that means a Labour win. More likely a new Tory PM, another government reboot.
People absolutely can be persuaded to vote against the government. But they need to be persuaded to vote FOR the opposition. There's no sign at all that this is happening yet.
If this site existed in 2002 would there be header after header about how terrible Blair is and how well IDS is doing?
In my view SKS is doing even worse than IDS. In 2002 Blair was still loved and we were only 5 years into the Labour Government.
We are now 11+ years into a Tory Government, Boris is hated by many (especially on this site) yet Labour lanquish in the low 30s and SKS feels irrelevant. And as for the shadow cabinet!!!!
I just don't see how Labour can recover under SKS despite all the positive thread headers he gets on this site.
Was there a pandemic going on at that time? Was Blair on the TV every five minutes doing a party political broadcast? No? Thought not. Comparing today's opinion polls with previous times is pointless. I don't want a Labour government, but I think when more normal service resumes the Tories may well lose their lead and their complacency may well let Labour in with LD support.
I would have thought the fact that according to numerous thread headers Boris has completely messed up the pandemic, is a complete clown, gets trounced every week at PMQs and SKS is the new messiah, Labour should be miles ahead now.
See my earlier response to your other comment. Labour must love fanbois like you, because ultimately it will be the complacency that causes Johnson's downfall. Sadly when it happens it will probably mean the Conservatives are out for decades.
The A1(M) has now been closed for 21 hours while they work out what happened but rumour has it the driver was asleep.
What is going on with these questions to read the article? They used to be Have you heard of Company X? Can see the point. My first of ten here was What is the life expectancy in the Federated States of Micronesia? Who wants, let alone needs, to know if I know that?
It is an issue and its more serious than Covid to be frank for the long-term and I'm very keen to see the deficit eliminated un the next few years so our debt to GDP can come back down.
But we shouldn't misrepresent the issue. Realistically QE is not going to be reversed any time soon - what will happen is like after 2012 that no further QE will be issued for a while, but the QE that has already been issued will rest on the books as opposed to being reversed or having any further QE.
Has any of that debt been sold on the open market or does it sit on the BoE books?
Is there any plan to sell that debt on the open market
The answer to both questions is No and that's important because in reality all the Treasury has done is print a lot of money without people understanding the fact.
I have a private bet standing that the Uk will not enter a new lockdown, as defined by pubs and restaurants closing inside again. What are my chances do you think?
I agree actually. Once all adults are double vaxxed (soon) there is simply no moral justification for it. So yes, I would be on your side of the wager.
Al adults will not be vaxxed soon. The number will top out below 90%, I believe.
Tsk, Scotland under performing again.
Scotland, like Wales, has less of the groups who are more anti-vax. If you look at localised vaccination rates, they are actually quite uniform when you are comparing similar groups.
The flip side of diversity.....
On the other hand, plenty of the 'groups' from NI (whoi presumably don't get counted in the 'diversity' stats)? That signal should appear in Scotland, too. But the level in NI isn't perhaps big enough to register anyway.
Well, are Spides diverse from the rest of us? I rather hope so....
Actually, as a complete surprise, NI has a larger number of er... hard core? Christians of the type associated with anti-vax for various spurious reasons.
Even the more er... colourful? denizens of Scotland who express an affinity for various facets of the joy joy that is the NI cultural continuum are not, in contrast, especially religious.
Scotland has secularised much more, basically.
Spide? *looks up on net*..
TSE was talking only the other day tabout the reasons why Glasgow - of all places - could not be considered a really leftie city.
But the difference between NI and W/S is not huge, and a small percentage of that difference ...
Even so, the Free Kirks seem to be absent from this statement (which has the main Presbyterians, Piskies, RCs and others)
So no idea what the FCS, FCS(C) etc actually think.
What is the membership of the more er... sporty religious groups these days in Scotland? IIRC it is a fairly small proportion of the population.
Sorry, only just finished lunch break now.
In Glasgow? Hordes of colourful types if you count Sevco Rangers fans, fewer if you count the politically/culturally Orange (overlap as they might, as TSE noted the other day), fewer still in terms of the actual free presbyterian kirks and the like (I am speaking in descriptive terms, hence the lower case).
What really complicates things is that I have now managed to fish out a formal statement of the Free Church of Scotland - I know we have a Popular Judean Liberation Front situation here but this will do for now as I have no reason to believe the FCS are inclined to be any different on works of necessity or mercy than the other and historically related [edit] FCs in Scotland.
I've found an official statement from the Kirk anent a statement from the Moderator of the FCS (specifically!) which refers to "Expressing his thankfulness for the COVID-19 vaccine program and the public's adherence to difficult lockdown restrictions [...]". Whicvh doesn't sound at all anti-vaxxy. (Thank heaven, as one might say.)
So things look more complex even. Is it possible the NI presbyterian kirks and their local Scottish congregations are more anti-vaccine? Or am I misunderstanding you?
This seems to lump 'Other Presbyterians' together which is just what we do not need now I've raised the issue of heterogeneity within even the more traditional FCs, but I do notice that the Pentecostals are now a significant element. However, percentage attendance is quite low even in the Glasgow area. And the cities are the ones which will make the difference. Doesn't matter if Eriskay is wall to wall RC, or Lewis solid FC - they aren't densely enough populated.
Time to go back to Charles I's splendid wheeze to make the Anglican Book of Common Prayer + episcopacy compulsory for all Scots. To be enforced by of excommunication and exile to Darien. What could possibly go wrong?
Your chronology is a wee bittockie out. And on a pedantic PB-style quibble, it was James VI who reintroduced bishops (as did, later, Charles II and - I think - also, but unsuccessfully, James VII.
But, yes, what could go wrong?
Certainly the Scottish Episcopal Church should be merged with the Church of England and the Church of Ireland (at least in NI) and ideally the Church of Wales to create one Anglican Church across the British Isles
The SEC was always separate from Henry VIII's Catholic Church. Separate Apostolic Succession right back to the Apostles.
And NI is not British but Irish. So can't call it the 'British Isles'. Could call it 'The Apostolic Churtch of the Isles of a bit of Ireland and Britain'.
The SEC is actually a continuation of the Church of Scotland as James VI intended it to be and only emerged in 1582 (Henry VIII died in 1547) when the Church of Scotland rejected episcopal government
Irrelevant. The Kirk in Scotland was never part of the Church of England.
It was part of the Catholic Church under Papal and Vatican authority however until 1560 when it broke away.
The SEC effectively became the Scottish version of the Church of England in 1582 when the Church of Scotland refused to accept bishops' authority
So, doesn't mean you can send your tanks to park on the front lawn of the unfortunate Bishop Strange in Arpafeelie.
The Church of England, Church of Ireland (in Northern Ireland), the SEC and the Church in Wales all worship in a similar way, have bishops etc.
They also all are churches in countries where the Queen is Head of State. You could also add the Anglican Church of Canada, the Anglican Church in New Zealand and the Anglican Church of Australia to it too for that matter and call it The Church of the Commonwealth while keeping the wider Anglican communion too
So: 356k new jobs in June vacancies up to 775k, above pre Covid levels growth forecast between 5 and 7.5% for the year Sharp reduction of those on furlough without the forecast wave of unemployment. The highest vaccine rate of any large or medium sized country in the world. Public debt undershooting forecasts too.
It's a disaster right enough.
Either that or the hysterics are moving to a new level.
That is all great news, but no reason to be complacent
No I completely agree. But the daily forecasts of Boris and his government simply collapsing under the strain of their alleged incompetence really has to address the fact that the economic outlook is surprisingly excellent (I forgot to add the large increase in wages), the vaccine program is a stunning success even if it has tailed off a bit and the government is getting its way, right or wrong, in the Commons without obvious difficulty. Forecasts of their collapse because Boris had a poor PMQs seem a tad hopeful.
Only downside I see at the moment is that a litre of Unleaded is now £1.319 in my local station, that's the highest I've ever paid for Unleaded.
Has any of that debt been sold on the open market or does it sit on the BoE books?
Is there any plan to sell that debt on the open market
The answer to both questions is No and that's important because in reality all the Treasury has done is print a lot of money without people understanding the fact.
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
This should be a new thread header, tories doing terribly, just 10-12% ahead in the polls. Labour certs for nect GE with huge landslide now they are on 30%.
Currently we have LOTO on his Here to Hear tour listening to former Labour voters as to why they aren't current Labour voters. Increasing clown show by the government may well move the Clown off to pasture, but I don't see that means a Labour win. More likely a new Tory PM, another government reboot.
People absolutely can be persuaded to vote against the government. But they need to be persuaded to vote FOR the opposition. There's no sign at all that this is happening yet.
If this site existed in 2002 would there be header after header about how terrible Blair is and how well IDS is doing?
In my view SKS is doing even worse than IDS. In 2002 Blair was still loved and we were only 5 years into the Labour Government.
We are now 11+ years into a Tory Government, Boris is hated by many (especially on this site) yet Labour lanquish in the low 30s and SKS feels irrelevant. And as for the shadow cabinet!!!!
I just don't see how Labour can recover under SKS despite all the positive thread headers he gets on this site.
Maybe it is because you are not exactly neutral. I don't want a Labour government but I want a strong opposition. I think any Labour leader would struggle while Johnson is able to give a party political broadcast on a regular basis because of the current crisis, plus there are still major legacy issues for Starmer regarding Corbyn. However innocuous Starmer looks there is still the risk the Corbyn faction could come back, and he needs to neutralise that concern. He still has plenty of time, and Tories who underestimate a man who has had a successful career outside of politics (rather than writing silly polemics for newspapers) do so at their peril.
Slightly unfair. It is polemic to describe PM and government appearance as 'party political' as the PM and government are under a duty as well as having a right to address us on the issues. The press conferences have not been notable for attacks on other parties, or other nations of the union.
It simply is the case that the PM whoever he is will be heard across the media in whatever form they choose to present themselves. The media would love it if they did more of it. Given that they are not going to tell us that they are rubbish and ignorant I don't think the lines they have taken have been especially adversarial.
The LOTO has a hard job matching it but it can be done. Ask Mr A Blair.
So: 356k new jobs in June vacancies up to 775k, above pre Covid levels growth forecast between 5 and 7.5% for the year Sharp reduction of those on furlough without the forecast wave of unemployment. The highest vaccine rate of any large or medium sized country in the world. Public debt undershooting forecasts too.
It's a disaster right enough.
Either that or the hysterics are moving to a new level.
That is all great news, but no reason to be complacent
No I completely agree. But the daily forecasts of Boris and his government simply collapsing under the strain of their alleged incompetence really has to address the fact that the economic outlook is surprisingly excellent (I forgot to add the large increase in wages), the vaccine program is a stunning success even if it has tailed off a bit and the government is getting its way, right or wrong, in the Commons without obvious difficulty. Forecasts of their collapse because Boris had a poor PMQs seem a tad hopeful.
Only downside I see at the moment is that a litre of Unleaded is now £1.319 in my local station, that's the highest I've ever paid for Unleaded.
4% CPI inflation is forecast for year end
That would be a very good level of inflation in the circumstances in my eyes.
I'd be concerned it could be higher. USA is already above 5% and there's little reason the UK couldn't be.
I have a private bet standing that the Uk will not enter a new lockdown, as defined by pubs and restaurants closing inside again. What are my chances do you think?
I agree actually. Once all adults are double vaxxed (soon) there is simply no moral justification for it. So yes, I would be on your side of the wager.
Al adults will not be vaxxed soon. The number will top out below 90%, I believe.
Tsk, Scotland under performing again.
Scotland, like Wales, has less of the groups who are more anti-vax. If you look at localised vaccination rates, they are actually quite uniform when you are comparing similar groups.
The flip side of diversity.....
On the other hand, plenty of the 'groups' from NI (whoi presumably don't get counted in the 'diversity' stats)? That signal should appear in Scotland, too. But the level in NI isn't perhaps big enough to register anyway.
Well, are Spides diverse from the rest of us? I rather hope so....
Actually, as a complete surprise, NI has a larger number of er... hard core? Christians of the type associated with anti-vax for various spurious reasons.
Even the more er... colourful? denizens of Scotland who express an affinity for various facets of the joy joy that is the NI cultural continuum are not, in contrast, especially religious.
Scotland has secularised much more, basically.
Spide? *looks up on net*..
TSE was talking only the other day tabout the reasons why Glasgow - of all places - could not be considered a really leftie city.
But the difference between NI and W/S is not huge, and a small percentage of that difference ...
Even so, the Free Kirks seem to be absent from this statement (which has the main Presbyterians, Piskies, RCs and others)
So no idea what the FCS, FCS(C) etc actually think.
What is the membership of the more er... sporty religious groups these days in Scotland? IIRC it is a fairly small proportion of the population.
Sorry, only just finished lunch break now.
In Glasgow? Hordes of colourful types if you count Sevco Rangers fans, fewer if you count the politically/culturally Orange (overlap as they might, as TSE noted the other day), fewer still in terms of the actual free presbyterian kirks and the like (I am speaking in descriptive terms, hence the lower case).
What really complicates things is that I have now managed to fish out a formal statement of the Free Church of Scotland - I know we have a Popular Judean Liberation Front situation here but this will do for now as I have no reason to believe the FCS are inclined to be any different on works of necessity or mercy than the other and historically related [edit] FCs in Scotland.
I've found an official statement from the Kirk anent a statement from the Moderator of the FCS (specifically!) which refers to "Expressing his thankfulness for the COVID-19 vaccine program and the public's adherence to difficult lockdown restrictions [...]". Whicvh doesn't sound at all anti-vaxxy. (Thank heaven, as one might say.)
So things look more complex even. Is it possible the NI presbyterian kirks and their local Scottish congregations are more anti-vaccine? Or am I misunderstanding you?
This seems to lump 'Other Presbyterians' together which is just what we do not need now I've raised the issue of heterogeneity within even the more traditional FCs, but I do notice that the Pentecostals are now a significant element. However, percentage attendance is quite low even in the Glasgow area. And the cities are the ones which will make the difference. Doesn't matter if Eriskay is wall to wall RC, or Lewis solid FC - they aren't densely enough populated.
Time to go back to Charles I's splendid wheeze to make the Anglican Book of Common Prayer + episcopacy compulsory for all Scots. To be enforced by of excommunication and exile to Darien. What could possibly go wrong?
Your chronology is a wee bittockie out. And on a pedantic PB-style quibble, it was James VI who reintroduced bishops (as did, later, Charles II and - I think - also, but unsuccessfully, James VII.
But, yes, what could go wrong?
Certainly the Scottish Episcopal Church should be merged with the Church of England and the Church of Ireland (at least in NI) and ideally the Church of Wales to create one Anglican Church across the British Isles
The SEC was always separate from Henry VIII's Catholic Church. Separate Apostolic Succession right back to the Apostles.
And NI is not British but Irish. So can't call it the 'British Isles'. Could call it 'The Apostolic Churtch of the Isles of a bit of Ireland and Britain'.
The SEC is actually a continuation of the Church of Scotland as James VI intended it to be and only emerged in 1582 (Henry VIII died in 1547) when the Church of Scotland rejected episcopal government
Irrelevant. The Kirk in Scotland was never part of the Church of England.
It was part of the Catholic Church under Papal and Vatican authority however until 1560 when it broke away.
The SEC effectively became the Scottish version of the Church of England in 1582 when the Church of Scotland refused to accept bishops' authority
So, doesn't mean you can send your tanks to park on the front lawn of the unfortunate Bishop Strange in Arpafeelie.
The Church of England, Church of Ireland (in Northern Ireland), the SEC and the Church in Wales all worship in a similar way, have bishops etc.
They also all are churches in countries where the Queen is Head of State. You could also add the Anglican Church of Canada, the Anglican Church in New Zealand and the Anglican Church of Australia to it too for that matter
Like rugby union the Church of Ireland (and the RCs I think) operates across the island of Ireland, so its loyalty to the crown is a trifle ambiguous. Time the rest of the island to follow suit.
Of all words conveying the mark of death 'relaunch' is right at the top. This from the Guardian on GB News:
The channel is currently in crisis, with other staff considering leaving amid management upheaval, collapsing ratings and plans for a relaunch.
For a decent idea it has been astonishingly terrible.
It was a terrible idea.
But I thought it would be competently executed and sit in its niche generating clickbait Twitter storms and drive the conversation.
It turns out to have been badly executed.
I thought I'd check it out on the day it launched to see what the fuss was all about. It had awful picture and sound quality. Not checked it again since.
If you can't get the basics right like having HD sound and pictures then why bother launching at all?
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
And yet they lead the polls by a large amount. I know.
My take on the big picture numbers is that three moves have happened since December 2019.
1 Most of the residual BXP vote has moved into the Conservative column (see Hartlepool). So C +2 say
2 A chunk of the Conservative 2019 vote has moved elsewhere, Lib or Lab (see Batley and Spen and Chesham and Amersham). C-4 Lab +4 say.
3 A chunk of the Labour 2019 vote has peeled off to explicit lefty parties (Hartlepool and Batley) or Greens (elsewhere) possibly because they're pining for Jez. Lab -4, Green +4.
The first of those effects looks pretty set in stone now. The second is the one that moves over time, according to perceived government competence.
The third is the interesting one. What's driving it, and can Labour do anything about it?
Somewhat disappointingly from my point of view as a Unionist you also need to have a movement from Scottish Labour to the SNP worth something like -2 across the UK as well. SLAB are not in a good place.
Er, that would imply -20 percentage points from Slab to the SNP would it not? Rather difficult if they are not much above that, but I can't remember what the latest stat was and can;t find it.
The latest one I saw had them down at 9%. Sarwar is not cutting through the way I expected. Maybe -1 rather than -2.
Would be difficult to get more votes out of Labour than -1 point UK wide ...
Thanks - that is what I remembered but I just couldn't believe just now, without checking, that they were that low, down amongst the clover.
I think in fairness that was a subsample so I wouldn't take it too seriously on its own but Sarwar is simply not being heard.
Do not underestimate the determination of the quiet man
Haw! "I’m in charge, I’m the boss.” He's not even i/c a separate accounting unit.
Thge context of the story is interesting - he was slapped down trying to persuade London to lift the suspension of the Aberdeen 9 back in (the Aberdeen cooncillors who went full fat Unionist and hopped into bed with the Tories and Indepedents (not that kind) and were suspenced years ago).
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
This should be a new thread header, tories doing terribly, just 10-12% ahead in the polls. Labour certs for nect GE with huge landslide now they are on 30%.
Currently we have LOTO on his Here to Hear tour listening to former Labour voters as to why they aren't current Labour voters. Increasing clown show by the government may well move the Clown off to pasture, but I don't see that means a Labour win. More likely a new Tory PM, another government reboot.
People absolutely can be persuaded to vote against the government. But they need to be persuaded to vote FOR the opposition. There's no sign at all that this is happening yet.
If this site existed in 2002 would there be header after header about how terrible Blair is and how well IDS is doing?
In my view SKS is doing even worse than IDS. In 2002 Blair was still loved and we were only 5 years into the Labour Government.
We are now 11+ years into a Tory Government, Boris is hated by many (especially on this site) yet Labour lanquish in the low 30s and SKS feels irrelevant. And as for the shadow cabinet!!!!
I just don't see how Labour can recover under SKS despite all the positive thread headers he gets on this site.
Maybe it is because you are not exactly neutral. I don't want a Labour government but I want a strong opposition. I think any Labour leader would struggle while Johnson is able to give a party political broadcast on a regular basis because of the current crisis, plus there are still major legacy issues for Starmer regarding Corbyn. However innocuous Starmer looks there is still the risk the Corbyn faction could come back, and he needs to neutralise that concern. He still has plenty of time, and Tories who underestimate a man who has had a successful career outside of politics (rather than writing silly polemics for newspapers) do so at their peril.
Slightly unfair. It is polemic to describe PM and government appearance as 'party political' as the PM and government are under a duty as well as having a right to address us on the issues. The press conferences have not been notable for attacks on other parties, or other nations of the union.
It simply is the case that the PM whoever he is will be heard across the media in whatever form they choose to present themselves. The media would love it if they did more of it. Given that they are not going to tell us that they are rubbish and ignorant I don't think the lines they have taken have been especially adversarial.
The LOTO has a hard job matching it but it can be done. Ask Mr A Blair.
I don't disagree with any of that, but my point is that a reason for the government's apparent popularity might be explained by this to some extent. Drakeford is hardly a figure of charisma is he? And yet he has polled outstandingly well since he has been on telly a lot.
Only a theory of mine. It could be that a large proportion of people would love to vote Labour, but they cannot resist the allure of a fat bloke with silly hair who blusters and stammers in a manner how one might imagine Bertie Wooster and Billy Bunter's love child!
Reading the UK headlines today, it seems like the government is descending into an absolute shambles.
Ministers suggesting that France is going "Red" despite having a fraction of the out of control numbers in Britain, which is still theoretically planning to abandon all restrictions. Could anything infuriate a very large number of Tory voters more? Its almost as if Johnson wants to screw things up for his own party... Lib Dems gaining Guildford looks nailed on.
More to the point, Labour gaining Uxbridge and South Ruislip...
Seriously though, it really does seem like the Tories have lost the will to live, every day more spectacularly stupid decisions, from Covid to Sleaze and the corrosive acid of the Hard Brexit desolving more and more of the economy and indeed the very fabric of the Union.
Anyone quoting odds on whether Johnson will hold his own seat? If this tsumani gets going then 1997 could end up looking like a walk in the park...
And yet they lead the polls by a large amount. I know.
My take on the big picture numbers is that three moves have happened since December 2019.
1 Most of the residual BXP vote has moved into the Conservative column (see Hartlepool). So C +2 say
2 A chunk of the Conservative 2019 vote has moved elsewhere, Lib or Lab (see Batley and Spen and Chesham and Amersham). C-4 Lab +4 say.
3 A chunk of the Labour 2019 vote has peeled off to explicit lefty parties (Hartlepool and Batley) or Greens (elsewhere) possibly because they're pining for Jez. Lab -4, Green +4.
The first of those effects looks pretty set in stone now. The second is the one that moves over time, according to perceived government competence.
The third is the interesting one. What's driving it, and can Labour do anything about it?
The other question on the third is does it persist when it matters - i.e. in a GE how many ex-Labour voters are really going to vote Green in a constituency that Labour have a chance of winning? I'm not saying it won't be many, it might be a lot, but the answer influences whether Labour can (could they be persuaded to vote Labour tactically?) or indeed need to (will they revert to Labour in a GE?) do anything about it.
Yes, you're right. The drift from Labour to Green is real, and is largely, but not exclusively, (young) Corbynites unhappy with Labour's direction of travel.
At the next GE, where there is a chance to depose a Tory MP by voting Labour, most of these new Greens will take it. They despise Tories much more than they despise moderate Labour. Elsewhere, the Green vote will hold up.
Of all words conveying the mark of death 'relaunch' is right at the top. This from the Guardian on GB News:
The channel is currently in crisis, with other staff considering leaving amid management upheaval, collapsing ratings and plans for a relaunch.
For a decent idea it has been astonishingly terrible.
It was a terrible idea.
But I thought it would be competently executed and sit in its niche generating clickbait Twitter storms and drive the conversation.
It turns out to have been badly executed.
A thoughtful conversation from a centre right and slightly contrarian perspective, as informed and well briefed as Andrew Neil, and as prepared to the critical of rubbish wherever it comes from is a decent idea. Like the BBC at its best but asking different hard questions, and making fewer groupthink assumptions. Maybe GB News had different ideas.
I have a private bet standing that the Uk will not enter a new lockdown, as defined by pubs and restaurants closing inside again. What are my chances do you think?
I agree actually. Once all adults are double vaxxed (soon) there is simply no moral justification for it. So yes, I would be on your side of the wager.
Al adults will not be vaxxed soon. The number will top out below 90%, I believe.
Tsk, Scotland under performing again.
Scotland, like Wales, has less of the groups who are more anti-vax. If you look at localised vaccination rates, they are actually quite uniform when you are comparing similar groups.
The flip side of diversity.....
On the other hand, plenty of the 'groups' from NI (whoi presumably don't get counted in the 'diversity' stats)? That signal should appear in Scotland, too. But the level in NI isn't perhaps big enough to register anyway.
Well, are Spides diverse from the rest of us? I rather hope so....
Actually, as a complete surprise, NI has a larger number of er... hard core? Christians of the type associated with anti-vax for various spurious reasons.
Even the more er... colourful? denizens of Scotland who express an affinity for various facets of the joy joy that is the NI cultural continuum are not, in contrast, especially religious.
Scotland has secularised much more, basically.
Spide? *looks up on net*..
TSE was talking only the other day tabout the reasons why Glasgow - of all places - could not be considered a really leftie city.
But the difference between NI and W/S is not huge, and a small percentage of that difference ...
Even so, the Free Kirks seem to be absent from this statement (which has the main Presbyterians, Piskies, RCs and others)
So no idea what the FCS, FCS(C) etc actually think.
What is the membership of the more er... sporty religious groups these days in Scotland? IIRC it is a fairly small proportion of the population.
Sorry, only just finished lunch break now.
In Glasgow? Hordes of colourful types if you count Sevco Rangers fans, fewer if you count the politically/culturally Orange (overlap as they might, as TSE noted the other day), fewer still in terms of the actual free presbyterian kirks and the like (I am speaking in descriptive terms, hence the lower case).
What really complicates things is that I have now managed to fish out a formal statement of the Free Church of Scotland - I know we have a Popular Judean Liberation Front situation here but this will do for now as I have no reason to believe the FCS are inclined to be any different on works of necessity or mercy than the other and historically related [edit] FCs in Scotland.
I've found an official statement from the Kirk anent a statement from the Moderator of the FCS (specifically!) which refers to "Expressing his thankfulness for the COVID-19 vaccine program and the public's adherence to difficult lockdown restrictions [...]". Whicvh doesn't sound at all anti-vaxxy. (Thank heaven, as one might say.)
So things look more complex even. Is it possible the NI presbyterian kirks and their local Scottish congregations are more anti-vaccine? Or am I misunderstanding you?
This seems to lump 'Other Presbyterians' together which is just what we do not need now I've raised the issue of heterogeneity within even the more traditional FCs, but I do notice that the Pentecostals are now a significant element. However, percentage attendance is quite low even in the Glasgow area. And the cities are the ones which will make the difference. Doesn't matter if Eriskay is wall to wall RC, or Lewis solid FC - they aren't densely enough populated.
Time to go back to Charles I's splendid wheeze to make the Anglican Book of Common Prayer + episcopacy compulsory for all Scots. To be enforced by of excommunication and exile to Darien. What could possibly go wrong?
Your chronology is a wee bittockie out. And on a pedantic PB-style quibble, it was James VI who reintroduced bishops (as did, later, Charles II and - I think - also, but unsuccessfully, James VII.
But, yes, what could go wrong?
Certainly the Scottish Episcopal Church should be merged with the Church of England and the Church of Ireland (at least in NI) and ideally the Church of Wales to create one Anglican Church across the British Isles
The SEC was always separate from Henry VIII's Catholic Church. Separate Apostolic Succession right back to the Apostles.
And NI is not British but Irish. So can't call it the 'British Isles'. Could call it 'The Apostolic Churtch of the Isles of a bit of Ireland and Britain'.
The SEC is actually a continuation of the Church of Scotland as James VI intended it to be and only emerged in 1582 (Henry VIII died in 1547) when the Church of Scotland rejected episcopal government
Irrelevant. The Kirk in Scotland was never part of the Church of England.
It was part of the Catholic Church under Papal and Vatican authority however until 1560 when it broke away.
The SEC effectively became the Scottish version of the Church of England in 1582 when the Church of Scotland refused to accept bishops' authority
So, doesn't mean you can send your tanks to park on the front lawn of the unfortunate Bishop Strange in Arpafeelie.
The Church of England, Church of Ireland (in Northern Ireland), the SEC and the Church in Wales all worship in a similar way, have bishops etc.
They also all are churches in countries where the Queen is Head of State. You could also add the Anglican Church of Canada, the Anglican Church in New Zealand and the Anglican Church of Australia to it too for that matter
Like rugby union the Church of Ireland (and the RCs I think) operates across the island of Ireland, so its loyalty to the crown is a trifle ambiguous. Time the rest of the island to follow suit.
Which is why I only included the Church of Ireland in Northern Ireland which represents 14% of the population in the province.
The Church of Ireland in Ireland is tiny representing just 2% of the population in the republic but could remain in the wider Anglican communion even if it did not join with the larger Northern branch and merge with the C of E.
The RC church operates across the world as one body anyway all under the Pope and the Vatican, never mind just Ireland
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
Though GB News was supposed to be a "Free Speech" station.
I guess Free Speech only goes so far.
You obviously didn't understand my post.
I did, did you?
GB News claimed to be "free speech" not like the BBC and Sky. Hence why Dan Wooton can go on diatribes and so on and so forth.
In that context Guto Hari has done absolutely nothing wrong. There is no "impartiality" rule that has been broken by Guto that wouldn't apply to Dan Wooton and others too.
This is nothing other than Cancel Culture.
Except it seems that Guto Hari upset all remaining viewers as his views didn't match theirs.
It is however GB News and were it not for this bit of news no one would be watching it. It will be dead within 9 months...
I'd be interested to know how far investors in GB News were driven by ideology, and how far by commercial potential.
There are plenty of TV services which continue despite the finances not making sense, simply because there are people who WANT it to continue. If that's the case, it could last indefinitely.
But if there is a business plan, then it's pretty damned obvious it's now out of the window, and I'd not be surprised if plugs were pulled pretty swiftly and brutally.
Not sure a relaunch is realistic. They'd need a star-studded line up to make it sufficiently eye-catching for people to try giving it a second chance. And who is going to leap aboard that sinking ship now? On the contrary, their more capable presenters, producers and other staff are SURELY making discrete and not so discrete enquiries elsewhere now - they'd be fools not to.
So: 356k new jobs in June vacancies up to 775k, above pre Covid levels growth forecast between 5 and 7.5% for the year Sharp reduction of those on furlough without the forecast wave of unemployment. The highest vaccine rate of any large or medium sized country in the world. Public debt undershooting forecasts too.
It's a disaster right enough.
Either that or the hysterics are moving to a new level.
That is all great news, but no reason to be complacent
No I completely agree. But the daily forecasts of Boris and his government simply collapsing under the strain of their alleged incompetence really has to address the fact that the economic outlook is surprisingly excellent (I forgot to add the large increase in wages), the vaccine program is a stunning success even if it has tailed off a bit and the government is getting its way, right or wrong, in the Commons without obvious difficulty. Forecasts of their collapse because Boris had a poor PMQs seem a tad hopeful.
Only downside I see at the moment is that a litre of Unleaded is now £1.319 in my local station, that's the highest I've ever paid for Unleaded.
4% CPI inflation is forecast for year end
That would be a very good level of inflation in the circumstances in my eyes.
I'd be concerned it could be higher. USA is already above 5% and there's little reason the UK couldn't be.
The US dropped stimulus money directly to individuals, which is more likely to lead to retail inflation than the approach the UK took.
The biggest risk is that, so many people now having discovered that working isn’t all it is made out to be, wage rates will need to permanently increase leading to a step change in pricing for many goods and services. Good for the employees, of course.
Similar to what happened after the Black Death in the 14th century, excepting that many are leaving the labour market now through choice rather than death.
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
The difference between this happening on GB News and something similar happening on Sky News or the BBC is that GB News' whole USP is a sort of freedom of expression, think the unthinkable, say the unsayable thing.
It does rather look as if that approach applies to Dan Wootton having a right-wing rant on whatever (which Sky/BBC wouldn't have either), but not to Guto Harri taking the knee.
So it undercuts their USP and has a very strong pong of double-standards.
I don't there would have been any problem with Guto Harri ranting about The Knee, although it's not my cup of tea and neither is Dan Wotton. I've seen very fruity debates on GB News.
It's the fact he "performed" it on air which goes beyond speech (arguing for a point of view) into action.
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
Though GB News was supposed to be a "Free Speech" station.
I guess Free Speech only goes so far.
You obviously didn't understand my post.
I did, did you?
GB News claimed to be "free speech" not like the BBC and Sky. Hence why Dan Wooton can go on diatribes and so on and so forth.
In that context Guto Hari has done absolutely nothing wrong. There is no "impartiality" rule that has been broken by Guto that wouldn't apply to Dan Wooton and others too.
This is nothing other than Cancel Culture.
His speech hasn't been affected. He could have argued vociferously for The Knee. When it crosses over to actually doing it that goes beyond speech into action, and might well be at odds with the editorial standards he's required to uphold in his employment contract.
The two things are entirely consistent.
What this is about is people wanting to either have a go at GB News and/or defend The Knee.
Of all words conveying the mark of death 'relaunch' is right at the top. This from the Guardian on GB News:
The channel is currently in crisis, with other staff considering leaving amid management upheaval, collapsing ratings and plans for a relaunch.
For a decent idea it has been astonishingly terrible.
It was a terrible idea.
But I thought it would be competently executed and sit in its niche generating clickbait Twitter storms and drive the conversation.
It turns out to have been badly executed.
A thoughtful conversation from a centre right and slightly contrarian perspective, as informed and well briefed as Andrew Neil, and as prepared to the critical of rubbish wherever it comes from is a decent idea. Like the BBC at its best but asking different hard questions, and making fewer groupthink assumptions. Maybe GB News had different ideas.
Firstly, as the Guto Harri business indicates, the real motivation was not genuinely to be free-speech, presenter-led, and iconoclastic. It was simply to have a right wing agenda, The free speech stuff was, I think it's fairly clear now, Ofcom-compliance driven marketing puff. But the problem is that the marketing puff does need to align with reality to some degree, or your viewers (and even your presenters) get confused.
Secondly, they seem to have got some really fundamental basics wrong in terms of production values, story selection and so on. So, regardless of whether one has sympathy for the aims of the service, it's bloody hard work watching the damned thing. Ultimately, they seem to have forgotten that people don't watch telly as a political statement but because they enjoy it.
Thirdly, although Andrew Neil is a combative interviewer, and has plenty of general business skills, I think he's grossly overestimated his abilities as a TV executive (and his ability to gain new skills at quite an advanced age). I know the term "TV executive" conjures up a sort of ludicrous non-job from the world of W12 or Episodes. But managing the production, oragnising the scheduling, tightening formats, troubleshooting and so on actually requires a particular skill set.
On fruit and vegetable picking, I think the debate is largely moot because within 10-15 this will all be done by autonomous driverless vehicles controlled by AI using UK satellites or 5G.
We're arguing about not having enough ploughs and oxen in the 1890s just as tractors start to arrive on the scene.
You are not picking soft fruit that way within that time frame.
I wouldn't be so sure about that - the technology is moving very fast.
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
The difference between this happening on GB News and something similar happening on Sky News or the BBC is that GB News' whole USP is a sort of freedom of expression, think the unthinkable, say the unsayable thing.
It does rather look as if that approach applies to Dan Wootton having a right-wing rant on whatever (which Sky/BBC wouldn't have either), but not to Guto Harri taking the knee.
So it undercuts their USP and has a very strong pong of double-standards.
I don't there would have been any problem with Guto Harri ranting about The Knee, although it's not my cup of tea and neither is Dan Wotton. I've seen very fruity debates on GB News.
It's the fact he "performed" it on air which goes beyond speech (arguing for a point of view) into action.
Are you honestly trying to distinguish between freedom of expression via speech and via physical movement?!?
Well, I see your point. I mean, I disagree with old Corbyn on the worker control over the means of production, but defend to the last his right to say it. However, if that old Marxist ever - EVER - tries to express that view in the form of interpretative dance, I will not be held responsible for my actions.
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
The difference between this happening on GB News and something similar happening on Sky News or the BBC is that GB News' whole USP is a sort of freedom of expression, think the unthinkable, say the unsayable thing.
It does rather look as if that approach applies to Dan Wootton having a right-wing rant on whatever (which Sky/BBC wouldn't have either), but not to Guto Harri taking the knee.
So it undercuts their USP and has a very strong pong of double-standards.
I don't there would have been any problem with Guto Harri ranting about The Knee, although it's not my cup of tea and neither is Dan Wotton. I've seen very fruity debates on GB News.
It's the fact he "performed" it on air which goes beyond speech (arguing for a point of view) into action.
Are you honestly trying to distinguish between freedom of expression via speech and via physical movement?!?
Well, I see your point. I mean, I disagree with old Corbyn on the worker control over the means of production, but defend to the last his right to say it. However, if that old Marxist ever - EVER - tries to express that view in the form of interpretative dance, I will not be held responsible for my actions.
Yes. If Gutto Harri had simply argued why he thought everyone should do it then there wouldn't been a problem. The issue is that he actually did it on air.
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
The difference between this happening on GB News and something similar happening on Sky News or the BBC is that GB News' whole USP is a sort of freedom of expression, think the unthinkable, say the unsayable thing.
It does rather look as if that approach applies to Dan Wootton having a right-wing rant on whatever (which Sky/BBC wouldn't have either), but not to Guto Harri taking the knee.
So it undercuts their USP and has a very strong pong of double-standards.
I don't there would have been any problem with Guto Harri ranting about The Knee, although it's not my cup of tea and neither is Dan Wotton. I've seen very fruity debates on GB News.
It's the fact he "performed" it on air which goes beyond speech (arguing for a point of view) into action.
Are you honestly trying to distinguish between freedom of expression via speech and via physical movement?!?
Well, I see your point. I mean, I disagree with old Corbyn on the worker control over the means of production, but defend to the last his right to say it. However, if that old Marxist ever - EVER - tries to express that view in the form of interpretative dance, I will not be held responsible for my actions.
Yes. If Gutto Harri had simply argued why he thought everyone should do it then there wouldn't been a problem. The issue is that he actually did it on air.
This is an entirely obvious point.
It isn't an obvious point. It's a ludicrous point. It's a distinction without a difference.
GB news suspension of Gutto Harri isn't about "cancel culture", but it might be a disciplinary issue.
There would certainly be criticism if a BBC or Sky newsreader did the same and it would probably be at odds with impartiality clauses within their employment contract.
The difference between this happening on GB News and something similar happening on Sky News or the BBC is that GB News' whole USP is a sort of freedom of expression, think the unthinkable, say the unsayable thing.
It does rather look as if that approach applies to Dan Wootton having a right-wing rant on whatever (which Sky/BBC wouldn't have either), but not to Guto Harri taking the knee.
So it undercuts their USP and has a very strong pong of double-standards.
I don't there would have been any problem with Guto Harri ranting about The Knee, although it's not my cup of tea and neither is Dan Wotton. I've seen very fruity debates on GB News.
It's the fact he "performed" it on air which goes beyond speech (arguing for a point of view) into action.
Are you honestly trying to distinguish between freedom of expression via speech and via physical movement?!?
Well, I see your point. I mean, I disagree with old Corbyn on the worker control over the means of production, but defend to the last his right to say it. However, if that old Marxist ever - EVER - tries to express that view in the form of interpretative dance, I will not be held responsible for my actions.
Yes. If Gutto Harri had simply argued why he thought everyone should do it then there wouldn't been a problem. The issue is that he actually did it on air.
This is an entirely obvious point.
It isn't an obvious point. It's a ludicrous point. It's a distinction without a difference.
Nonsense. It's a perfectly standard point and there's a very obvious difference.
You can defend and argue for all sorts of controversial views on air, but you don't actually get up and act them out because then you're not making an argument, you are the argument.
The fact you and others keeping hyperventilating to the contrary doesn't make it true.
The graphic we should all be looking has nothing to do with Covid. It's Fraser Nelson's cheat sheet of the UK's gilt maturity profile
Holy f8ck. Its far more weighted to the front end than I realised and has a stack of maturity rollovers in coming few years.
If the DMO is refinancing those in a rising interest rate environment, URGH.
Only because Fraser Nelson has sort of misrepresented the maturity profile and you have misunderstood it.
The QE gilts are theoretically needing to be rolled over but the QE gilts are owned by the Bank of England. So it's a case of rolling over debts that are already owed to the UK. The Treasury doesn't pay any interest on these debts so realistically the BoE can just roll them over indefinitely with the Treasury never paying interest on these.
If you look at the gilts that matter, the ones we actually pay interest on, they have a mean fifteen year, median eleven year, maturity.
The Bank may want or need to use the open market to refinance at some juncture, as you well know.
Yes - selling the bonds on the open market (and then reducing the BoE balance sheet by, in effect, “destroying” the cash received) is the way the BoE reverses Quantitative Easing. My understanding is that the Treasury does pay interest, it has just been using accounting trickery to bank them once paid. The ongoing interest is still outstanding.
If the bonds were actually owned by the Treasury then the SNP argument in 2014 that they were an asset to be divided post independence would actually have merit...
The Bank of England returns to the Government any interest it recieves on QE debt, so it has no impact on the deficit.
As I posed in a think piece (back in the old days when I was a fund manager): if you don't pay interst on it, and you will never be asked to repay the principle, is it really debt?
The graphic we should all be looking has nothing to do with Covid. It's Fraser Nelson's cheat sheet of the UK's gilt maturity profile
Holy f8ck. Its far more weighted to the front end than I realised and has a stack of maturity rollovers in coming few years.
If the DMO is refinancing those in a rising interest rate environment, URGH.
Only because Fraser Nelson has sort of misrepresented the maturity profile and you have misunderstood it.
The QE gilts are theoretically needing to be rolled over but the QE gilts are owned by the Bank of England. So it's a case of rolling over debts that are already owed to the UK. The Treasury doesn't pay any interest on these debts so realistically the BoE can just roll them over indefinitely with the Treasury never paying interest on these.
If you look at the gilts that matter, the ones we actually pay interest on, they have a mean fifteen year, median eleven year, maturity.
Indeed, that's matching what I was saying. The UK's gilts that the UK owns aren't really subject to any interest and are rather moot to the discussion. Nobody will officially admit it, because that's printing money, but its true.
The real gilts outstanding have an 11 to 15 year maturity depending upon if you look at median or mean.
AIUI it is the case that the B0fE debt management operation is truly exceptional.
It was one of the things - esp length of maturity - that meant we could spread our actions to recover from the GFC over several years, unlike most of the rest of Europe.
Comments
Time to get things into proportion.
356k new jobs in June
vacancies up to 775k, above pre Covid levels
growth forecast between 5 and 7.5% for the year
Sharp reduction of those on furlough without the forecast wave of unemployment.
The highest vaccine rate of any large or medium sized country in the world.
Public debt undershooting forecasts too.
It's a disaster right enough.
Either that or the hysterics are moving to a new level.
The sequel to the attack on Estonia in 2007 could be interesting from a popcorn-eater's POV.
--AS
But do you think this any real chance of the QE ever actually being reversed? I think the idea it can be is very much a polite fiction by this point.
The SEC effectively became the Scottish version of the Church of England in 1582 when the Church of Scotland refused to accept bishops' authority
11,297 positives, up from 6,926 a week ago. Weekly rate of increase now down to less than 2-fold (from 6-fold a few days ago).
It does rather look as if that approach applies to Dan Wootton having a right-wing rant on whatever (which Sky/BBC wouldn't have either), but not to Guto Harri taking the knee.
So it undercuts their USP and has a very strong pong of double-standards.
Thanks - that is what I remembered but I just couldn't believe just now, without checking, that they were that low, down amongst the clover.
GB News claimed to be "free speech" not like the BBC and Sky. Hence why Dan Wooton can go on diatribes and so on and so forth.
In that context Guto Hari has done absolutely nothing wrong. There is no "impartiality" rule that has been broken by Guto that wouldn't apply to Dan Wooton and others too.
This is nothing other than Cancel Culture.
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/19448455.a1-m-crash-near-durham---three-deaths-confirmed/
The A1(M) has now been closed for 21 hours while they work out what happened but rumour has it the driver was asleep.
Does the bank just sit there and watch it increase? Or does it start to taper its enormous QE position? (thereby royally screwing the Johnson government).
https://twitter.com/BishopStrange/status/1408906243519954946
It is however GB News and were it not for this bit of news no one would be watching it. It will be dead within 9 months...
Sco: 2047 / 5 (3216 /6)
Wal: 1083 / 2 (655 / 1)
NI: 1380 / 0 (605 / 0)
Drop in Scots positives more than cancelled out by rise in Welsh and NIrish.
Scots deaths down to a more sensible level after yesterday - expect a less alarming overall number.
The channel is currently in crisis, with other staff considering leaving amid management upheaval, collapsing ratings and plans for a relaunch.
For a decent idea it has been astonishingly terrible.
And, no, the app doesn't ping you because you've walked briefly past an infected person.
Once you get things accurate, then you can consider getting them into proportion.
It's Cancel Culture. And it's effing hilarious to boot!
They used to be Have you heard of Company X? Can see the point.
My first of ten here was What is the life expectancy in the Federated States of Micronesia?
Who wants, let alone needs, to know if I know that?
It is an issue and its more serious than Covid to be frank for the long-term and I'm very keen to see the deficit eliminated un the next few years so our debt to GDP can come back down.
But we shouldn't misrepresent the issue. Realistically QE is not going to be reversed any time soon - what will happen is like after 2012 that no further QE will be issued for a while, but the QE that has already been issued will rest on the books as opposed to being reversed or having any further QE.
Is there any plan to sell that debt on the open market
The answer to both questions is No and that's important because in reality all the Treasury has done is print a lot of money without people understanding the fact.
They also all are churches in countries where the Queen is Head of State. You could also add the Anglican Church of Canada, the Anglican Church in New Zealand and the Anglican Church of Australia to it too for that matter and call it The Church of the Commonwealth while keeping the wider Anglican communion too
It is a polite face-saving fiction.
It simply is the case that the PM whoever he is will be heard across the media in whatever form they choose to present themselves. The media would love it if they did more of it. Given that they are not going to tell us that they are rubbish and ignorant I don't think the lines they have taken have been especially adversarial.
The LOTO has a hard job matching it but it can be done. Ask Mr A Blair.
I'd be concerned it could be higher. USA is already above 5% and there's little reason the UK couldn't be.
But I thought it would be competently executed and sit in its niche generating clickbait Twitter storms and drive the conversation.
It turns out to have been badly executed.
If you can't get the basics right like having HD sound and pictures then why bother launching at all?
Thge context of the story is interesting - he was slapped down trying to persuade London to lift the suspension of the Aberdeen 9 back in (the Aberdeen cooncillors who went full fat Unionist and hopped into bed with the Tories and Indepedents (not that kind) and were suspenced years ago).
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/politics/scottish-politics/3317392/weak-and-pathetic-anas-sarwar-blasted-by-ex-council-boss-over-aberdeen-nine-saga/
How many people are working from home there, I wonder?
Only a theory of mine. It could be that a large proportion of people would love to vote Labour, but they cannot resist the allure of a fat bloke with silly hair who blusters and stammers in a manner how one might imagine Bertie Wooster and Billy Bunter's love child!
At the next GE, where there is a chance to depose a Tory MP by voting Labour, most of these new Greens will take it. They despise Tories much more than they despise moderate Labour. Elsewhere, the Green vote will hold up.
The Church of Ireland in Ireland is tiny representing just 2% of the population in the republic but could remain in the wider Anglican communion even if it did not join with the larger Northern branch and merge with the C of E.
The RC church operates across the world as one body anyway all under the Pope and the Vatican, never mind just Ireland
There are plenty of TV services which continue despite the finances not making sense, simply because there are people who WANT it to continue. If that's the case, it could last indefinitely.
But if there is a business plan, then it's pretty damned obvious it's now out of the window, and I'd not be surprised if plugs were pulled pretty swiftly and brutally.
Not sure a relaunch is realistic. They'd need a star-studded line up to make it sufficiently eye-catching for people to try giving it a second chance. And who is going to leap aboard that sinking ship now? On the contrary, their more capable presenters, producers and other staff are SURELY making discrete and not so discrete enquiries elsewhere now - they'd be fools not to.
The biggest risk is that, so many people now having discovered that working isn’t all it is made out to be, wage rates will need to permanently increase leading to a step change in pricing for many goods and services. Good for the employees, of course.
Similar to what happened after the Black Death in the 14th century, excepting that many are leaving the labour market now through choice rather than death.
It's the fact he "performed" it on air which goes beyond speech (arguing for a point of view) into action.
Very close between Norris and Hamilton. May check the younger Briton's odds.
The two things are entirely consistent.
What this is about is people wanting to either have a go at GB News and/or defend The Knee.
Secondly, they seem to have got some really fundamental basics wrong in terms of production values, story selection and so on. So, regardless of whether one has sympathy for the aims of the service, it's bloody hard work watching the damned thing. Ultimately, they seem to have forgotten that people don't watch telly as a political statement but because they enjoy it.
Thirdly, although Andrew Neil is a combative interviewer, and has plenty of general business skills, I think he's grossly overestimated his abilities as a TV executive (and his ability to gain new skills at quite an advanced age). I know the term "TV executive" conjures up a sort of ludicrous non-job from the world of W12 or Episodes. But managing the production, oragnising the scheduling, tightening formats, troubleshooting and so on actually requires a particular skill set.
Well, I see your point. I mean, I disagree with old Corbyn on the worker control over the means of production, but defend to the last his right to say it. However, if that old Marxist ever - EVER - tries to express that view in the form of interpretative dance, I will not be held responsible for my actions.
This is an entirely obvious point.
You can defend and argue for all sorts of controversial views on air, but you don't actually get up and act them out because then you're not making an argument, you are the argument.
The fact you and others keeping hyperventilating to the contrary doesn't make it true.
As I posed in a think piece (back in the old days when I was a fund manager): if you don't pay interst on it, and you will never be asked to repay the principle, is it really debt?
It was one of the things - esp length of maturity - that meant we could spread our actions to recover from the GFC over several years, unlike most of the rest of Europe.