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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Douglas Carswell is my 100/1 tip for next Speaker of the House
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Douglas Carswell is my 100/1 tip for next Speaker of the House of Commons
Back in June 2009 when John Bercow was elected Speaker of the House of Commons he said he would serve for nine years, so if he honours his promise we are around 18 months from the election of a new Speaker.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38709399
Just a hint mate, drugs, prozzies and fiddling your expenses might have had something to do with it.
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BritishScottish tennis player is in big trouble in the Australian Open.That's a great story. The shape of things to come!
...Poor Theresa
Trump and Brexit show that Democracy is clearly failing...I used to believe once that democracy would provide the best outcomes by and large (even Thatcher 3 times)...but now with Trump and Brexit, the collective will of the people leads to this load of old bollocks......
Churchill, the advocate of global institutions, would think likewise.......
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Democracy is powerful. It allows the people to make good decisions, bad decisions and decisions that muck everything up because they don't understand the consequences.
The problem with Trump and Brexit is that there isn't a consensus for either of the disruptions. There's no collective will for them.
Oh, my coat?
One of life's little ironies is that we routinely genuflect to Greek, and particularly Athenian, democracy, without examining the history of the Athenian state.
Its democracy ended up making a series of utterly boneheaded decisions that ultimately ended at Aegospotami. Democracy doesn't, in any way, guarantee good outcomes.
I sometimes wonder what the world would look like if they hadn't lucked into finding that new silver seam at Laurium. It's a real historical deux ex machina.
Particularly as it's outcome has got 'Neville Chamberlain' written all over it
He went about business ditching confidences whenever his immediate interests changed. You can't do international diplomacy that way.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38707722
Steve Jobs was said to have a RDF - a reality distortion field. I'm starting to wonder if Trump has a variant on this, at least to some gullible people.
Trump is very much the Emperor's new clothes. That is why he is so prickly over the size of the crowds. He knows the Truth and believes that he can overcome it with bombastic demagogary.
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-21/merkel-said-to-scour-trump-archive-for-clues-on-how-to-read-him
It's really not a cool look for a British Prime Minister. It reminds me of Blair at his most obsequious
There’s no evidence that anyone on Trump’s side took any pictures. Agree about the RDF, though. Scary thing is that Steve Jobs was very successful.
I doubt May will be so besotted by POTUS
Theresa May has sealed a major diplomatic coup by becoming the first European leader to secure a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House....
...May, who unlike Trump is known for measuring her every word, has said she will hold very “frank” discussions with the president and has been openly critical of some of his more outspoken remarks, notably about women.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/21/theresa-may-to-travel-to-us-for-donald-trump-visit-next-week-reports
She has to be as good as her word on this. On this occasion, I expect she will be.
Anyway, Heathrow beckons. Manilla here we come!
Merkel in first = 'May humiliated, Britain sidelined'
May in first = 'May is bitch in heat, Merkel wise to wait'
Things that are personality flaws can serve leaders very well. Stalin's paranoia and suspicion, or Nixon's social insecurity and resentment both helped them get to the top.
What will Trump want from May. Disband wind farms ?
The rest of the press only analyse stories through their Brexit good/bad prism.....
Unfortunately, he misunderstood the underpinnings of the 'special relationship' and adopted a posture that can only be described as supine. That said, I still think he had a decent domestic record, it's a pity for him that his foreign policy errors were so enormous as to partially erase his accomplishments.
We can enjoy a discussion about the nuances of the post-meeting statements next weekend!
Firstly, ISTR that when Bush replaced Clinton, the media over here had kittens over how it would be impossible for Blair to have as close a relationship with Bush as he had had with Clinton. Yet if anything, the relationship was closer.
Secondly, there have been reports that Blair was more in favour of action against Iraq than Bush was, and pre-dating 9/11. I can't remember if the Chilcot inquiry backed that view or not.
John Major too. Though he was not a bad guy.
If Twitter is any guide, the Trump Presidency is over.....just ask Prime Ministers Miliband and Salmond.....
One of the more interesting things will be to see how Twitter develops in the next 4 years
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/21/theresa-may-to-travel-to-us-for-donald-trump-visit-next-week-reports
'Bitches in heat' too, were they?
Though IIRC neither were actually the first foreign leaders to meet either - hence the qualification 'European'...
On the subject of foreign visits that do not lead to a meeting of minds:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38707997
warm in the way of someone who tries to sell you a time share
Even to a man with small hands.
Surely a factor in the early invite.
The system is what it is - if Trump worked it better than Clinton, whose fault is that?
In WW1, it was antagonising the USA by torpedoing their ships. They had won the war on the Eastern front, and it was only American resources that ultimately defeated them in 1918, albeit aided by the enemy within after the first setbacks of mid 1918.
In WW2, their leader's sole error was invading Russia in 1941 before the British Empire had been fully defeated, thus creating a war on 2 fronts, which he had previously said he wouldn't do, having previously proceeded towards his aims "one by one".
Is Merkel's the admission of so many unintegratable aliens who can never become German citizens, or the miscalculation in dealing with Cameron that led to Brexit? Probably the former, as the EU hasn't yet lost the UK. Peter Hitchens' latest comments in his blog on the Mail on Sunday website suggest that despite the Brexit vote, the UK will remain part of the EU in all but name; after all, the vote was only advisory and parliament is sovereign.
But because May is a Tory it's all fair.
Frankly, I expected better of you.
Imagine the OUTRAGE if Trump wrote something like that?
I am sure DJT will ask if its true on Friday
May getting to see Donald first is probably a good sign for the UK.
From the little I've seen (don't watch the Commons much), Hoyle seems an even-handed and sound fellow. Better than the incumbent.
My point is that the people after all did not vote him in. The system did.
I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned on here yet, but a Trident test in June apparently failed:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38708823
Now, my first reaction to this was: 'good'.
Why?
It was a test. You learn things from successful tests: you may find a rocket motor was burning a little hot, or a guidance computer was slightly out of spec on a few parameters. Things can go slightly wrong, or non-optimally, and the test can still succeed as a whole.
You learn much more from a failed test. Something is wrong. Is it a problem with the hardware, software, an operational issue, a storage problem, etc, etc. Hopefully you have enough telemetry to work out what went wrong and look for areas where similar issues might occur.
As an aside, you need to be worried if you perform tests and you only ever get 'perfect' results, especially in a system where you can only perform small numbers of tests. It's far too easy to gain overconfidence in a system, as was shown with the Shuttle.
It'd be interesting to know how heavily instrumented these tests are; are they fully stock missile systems, selected at random, or are they altered?