It appears now that Lord Falconer needs to apologise for his remarks about coivd being a bonanza for lawyers. Are we really in such a puritanical straightjacket that even causing offence to lawyers is deemed unacceptable? Cannot a person now say any "off the cuff " remark without later having to say sorry for it? We do live in a strange society today
It was perfectly innocuous in context from the looks of it, but politically its the sort of thing that opponents would leap on, so he took the easy way and just apologised.
The Tories are very lucky that the pandemic crisis is overshadowing the fiasco that Brexit is turning into for many businesses, within NI and across the UK.
That's not the full picture - look at RP's post above about the drop in exports to the EU. Are we really saying that the drop in demand on the continent due to the pandemic has nothing to do with this? Covid may be masking Brexit issues but Brexit opponents are also using Covid issues to slate Brexit - it goes both ways.
It's a narrative, promoted by the Tory press and their friends on PB, that is working and will resonate with voters.
Few have pushed this question so hard; "is Johnson up to it?"
Johnson has face unremitting criticism for years. Whole industries have been created to attack Boris. And the weapons in their armoury are immense. But he won't be beaten by a leader or party less able and less convincing.
The criticism bounces off Johnson.
Kinnock fell into the sea and his credibility was shot. Johnson gets caught, stranded on a zip wire waving two plastic Union Flags and his stock goes through the roof.
In what way was it Boris's fault that the zip wire broke? He just took it in good part, didn't get stroppy and throw a Diana Ross, just waved his flegs and waited for normality to resume.
Kinnock on the hand was just a clumsy clown.
Cynics wonder if Boris got stuck or arranged to be stuck, wondering why there was no extended H&S investigation.
It appears now that Lord Falconer needs to apologise for his remarks about coivd being a bonanza for lawyers. Are we really in such a puritanical straightjacket that even causing offence to lawyers is deemed unacceptable? Cannot a person now say any "off the cuff " remark without later having to say sorry for it? We do live in a strange society today
It was perfectly innocuous in context from the looks of it, but politically its the sort of thing that opponents would leap on, so he took the easy way and just apologised.
The truth is that fake news is generally another persons beliefs.
Consider the Cameron story about the pigs head. Despite it being exposed as horse manure, and classic fakery - "No, I haven't seen the video or spoken to someone who was there. But I know someone (can't name them) who knows someone (can't name them either)..." ... it still gets repeated. By people who *want* it to be true.
Just on the Cameron story, the Call Me Dave biography credits it to an MP who named another person as the possessor of a photograph, but that person did not respond to approaches.
Tbh I doubt the electorate would have given a damn about Cameron's student high jinks, any more than they worry about Boris's.
The pig thing was fabrication by Brexit zealots, to humiliate and undermine Remain's leading light. When you see who was behind its dissemination there can't be any doubt about that at all.
The Tories are very lucky that the pandemic crisis is overshadowing the fiasco that Brexit is turning into for many businesses, within NI and across the UK.
That's not the full picture - look at RP's post above about the drop in exports to the EU. Are we really saying that the drop in demand on the continent due to the pandemic has nothing to do with this? Covid may be masking Brexit issues but Brexit opponents are also using Covid issues to slate Brexit - it goes both ways.
Presumably a comparison between Jan '21 exports and those of Dec '20 (or Nov or Oct) might be useful. Anyone got something like that?
The truth is that fake news is generally another persons beliefs.
Consider the Cameron story about the pigs head. Despite it being exposed as horse manure, and classic fakery - "No, I haven't seen the video or spoken to someone who was there. But I know someone (can't name them) who knows someone (can't name them either)..." ... it still gets repeated. By people who *want* it to be true.
Just on the Cameron story, the Call Me Dave biography credits it to an MP who named another person as the possessor of a photograph, but that person did not respond to approaches.
Tbh I doubt the electorate would have given a damn about Cameron's student high jinks, any more than they worry about Boris's.
The pig thing was fabrication by Brexit zealots, to humiliate and undermine Remain's leading light. When you see who was behind its dissemination there can't be any doubt about that at all.
Yes, that and the Panama papers revelation about DCs fathers investments were unfortunately timed. Ironic that the panama papers were pushed but the Guardian originally.
It's worth pointing out for all those in the "Labour should be 10 points ahead" brigade that almost all incumbent Governments of whatever political stripe have done well out of Covid and their individual responses.
The CDU/CSU are miles ahead in Germany as are the Socialists in Portugal and the Social Democrats in Denmark. Jacinda Ardern won a landslide victory and one or two other local contests have favoured incumbents such as Queensland.
The one example of an opposition being well ahead is Kosovo.
According to FT the socialist coalition is on the rocks because of the virus.
Part of the reason why politics has come to an impasse is that I don’t think people see the potential for change. I know I’m a broken record on this, but as a Millennial I know that we’ve been screwed by low interest rates and QE. Gen Z faces the same fate. But Labour has nothing to say on this subject. So I’m inclined to support the party that is least threatening to my inheritance.
This is another point of course. The baby boomers who have locked up a great deal of wealth are now, crudely, getting on and many of them will be passing away in the next decade.
So that wealth will cascade down. Or alternatively, will be released to the government in the form of IHT/reversion.
And those people who inherit it will therefore have different priorities.
Of course, that also makes assumptions. It doesn’t include care home costs, for starters. Moreover, those in the north/midlands will leave less than those in London - an ex-council semi in Cannock is worth a tenth of a similar house in Kew.
But that is where generational shift may come in.
This is a very interesting point.
For this to help Labour, rather than the Tories (assuming the latter create an environment more beneficial to inheritors), IMO, the next generation would have to be inheriting less than their parents. Not less than Southerners....
My Mum's family in Wales didn't inherit anything from their parents. My cousins have started inheriting houses and estates worth 10-20x their annual salaries - even if they would be worth more than double that in Dorset. I don't think this will help Labour anytime soon...
If the wealth accumulated by the boomer generation simply passes down by inheritance, then we return to a position that was always the society norm before some date between 1930 and 1950, of relative wealth (and hence to a significant extent status) determined overwhelmingly by birth and only marginally by merit and personal achievement. With the meritocratic years after WW2 - when governments and societies had the incentive of spreading economic benefits more widely to stave off the threat of communism - becoming the aberration.
Aside from IHT (for which the above is a very good argument), the missing bit of the analysis is the growing gap in pension provision, which many people from the younger slices of the boomer generation downwards are looking to bridge by spending the accumulated gains from their property. Of which yd's mention of care costs is only part, if an important one. Paradoxically the world in which the elderly spend down their wealth, rather than passing it on, is probably the better one.
My experience is that the next generation of inheritors will be far less divided by class, and far more divided by a) the property experiences of their parents and b) their number of siblings. My Mum's family grew up in one of the poorest council estates in North Wales.
I have friends who are basically drifting, never been interested in education, or starting a business, or qualifying for a trade, who will inherit £1m+ houses. I have other friends who are highly educated working in the charity/cultural sector who will likely never be able to buy more than a 2 bed flat because they have several siblings.
Yep, a return to the idle rich of the (pre-) 1920s.
Taking a very long view, over time the attitudes and mores of the two groups diverges and turns inexorably into class, surely?
Not really - assuming you don’t need to live in said house (not clear), £1m of capital provides about £35k per year without cutting into the real value of the capital itself. A very nice supplement to income and/or the ability to have a reasonable standard of living without working but hardly “idle rich”
Well considering minimum wage is c. 18k per year...
It's a narrative, promoted by the Tory press and their friends on PB, that is working and will resonate with voters.
Few have pushed this question so hard; "is Johnson up to it?"
Why would that question need to asked of a Prime Minister leading the world out of a pandemic? Especially one enjoying a well-deserved lead in the polls.
Because in the grand scheme of things he hasn't done a very good job, except credit where it is due, vaccine provision, compared to the EU.
If the end is a triumph, only the people who would never have voted for him anyway are going to obsess about the beginning.
Don't be ridiculous. 110,000 fatalities is not a triumph. If people died unnecessarily due to incompetence it must be called out.
I'm reading Obama's new interesting, introspective autobiography (A Promised Land). He reflects at one point that although he dislikes the intense partisanship which the Republicans showed on every Bill, he had to admit that, looking at recent years, both Democrats and Republicans had done best when they relentlessly attacked the President from the other side, rather than attempt bipartisanship - partly because it validated whatever grievances individuals came to feel, and partly because it was media-friendly - "X condemns Y" is much more interesting for clickbait than "X in discussions on Y".
Which is depressing but rings true. A former (centrist) colleague who was an MP in Yorkshire confirms my own experience from phone canvassing, that most people are currently only interested in vaccinations and when they can have a holiday, and are largely unaware of or forgiving of Government failings, while the minority who she meets when helping out at the food bank are getting more and more desperate, but also largely unaware of Opposition criticism.
You may be right. My own view is the Government will nonetheless be punished for the economic grief to come. It is largely ignored at the moment, but I spend sleepless nights wondering how this "V" shaped recovery occurs so easily after Sunak turns the furlough taps off. I suspect there will be a short lived spending spree when life returns to (a sort of) normal. A new Mercedes and a Caribbean Cruise might not feel like such a good idea after the redundancy notices appear.
It's a narrative, promoted by the Tory press and their friends on PB, that is working and will resonate with voters.
Few have pushed this question so hard; "is Johnson up to it?"
Johnson has face unremitting criticism for years. Whole industries have been created to attack Boris. And the weapons in their armoury are immense. But he won't be beaten by a leader or party less able and less convincing.
The criticism bounces off Johnson.
Kinnock fell into the sea and his credibility was shot. Johnson gets caught, stranded on a zip wire waving two plastic Union Flags and his stock goes through the roof.
In what way was it Boris's fault that the zip wire broke? He just took it in good part, didn't get stroppy and throw a Diana Ross, just waved his flegs and waited for normality to resume.
Kinnock on the hand was just a clumsy clown.
I suspect you are being obtuse and humouring Mr "Thicky" Pete.
My point is that Johnson is Teflon coated. However ludicrous the scrape (and the zip wire was pretty damn ludicrous) Johnson gets away with it. From Darius Guppy through the Petronella Wyatt scandal to locking himself in a freezer during GE19. However dumb it appears, and any other politician would die at the feet of any one such of these events, "Boris will be Boris". Surely there come a point where the chaos and incompetence becomes tiresome.
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See? The sly power of freighted language.
My point is that Johnson is Teflon coated. However ludicrous the scrape (and the zip wire was pretty damn ludicrous) Johnson gets away with it. From Darius Guppy through the Petronella Wyatt scandal to locking himself in a freezer during GE19. However dumb it appears, and any other politician would die at the feet of any one such of these events, "Boris will be Boris". Surely there come a point where the chaos and incompetence becomes tiresome.