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On the day that a Times poll has the Tories 13% ahead it will be Mail that will get the most attenti

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  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Good news I guess.

    All that talk about him dying off seems to have abated.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    Pulpstar said:

    30,876 jabs done in Wales yesterday which is above average - wonder what the other nations will bring.

    England's a pretty low week for 1st does, but I think we're supposed to be toward the end of the reduced period we were forewarned about?
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    kle4 said:

    Floater said:

    https://twitter.com/DarrenEuronews/status/1367793802275065858

    We don't want them but you cant have them either

    Without even a need, given the storage, surely that action would be a moral outrage?
    It's france - do what we say, don't look at what we do...
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    OT. I've been asked to judge various art courses at Manchester Metropolitan University over the years so when i hear the name I take an interest. It seems to have been something of a hotbed for future radical Labour MPs. Laura Pidcock was a student as was Rebecca Long-Bailey.

    This morning on radio 4 I heard of another. Jack Renshaw. Poster boy for the British fascists and currently serving 20 years for planning to kill a Labour MP.

    I wondered whether there was a connection......
  • GIN1138 said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I can't see the Mail's campaign against Boris and Carrie going anywhere. When it comes to stories like this Boris is like Blair - Teflon.

    Well Boris Johnson has been sacked twice for being liar.
    Never by the electorate though... ;)
    The voters of Clywd South say hello.
    But, Boris -- dumbo though he is -- would at least have got the name of the constituency right.

    You can't even do that.

    It is Clwyd South.
    Like the Welsh can critique anyone else’s spelling.

    The Welsh language was involved by someone crap at scrabble.
    Ah, British racism -- it is not subtle, it is not funny & it is not original. That is even a recycled joke from Jimmy Carr.

    Now you have told us the joke about the funny Welshman, can we hear the one you stole from Jimmy Carr about the miserable Scotsman ?

    Ffwcia bant nol dros Glawdd Offa.
    As if I'd steal a joke from someone who went to Caius, pfft.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,273
    Pulpstar said:

    30,876 jabs done in Wales yesterday which is above average - wonder what the other nations will bring.

    That would imply about 600,000 UK wide, which would be brilliant. Have the bumper times arrived?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    Pulpstar said:

    kle4 said:

    Floater said:

    https://twitter.com/DarrenEuronews/status/1367793802275065858

    We don't want them but you cant have them either

    Without even a need, given the storage, surely that action would be a moral outrage?
    They're acting outrageously. India OTOH has been magnificent with their serum institute.
    My Indian colleagues/friends tell me that the cooperation between the UK and India on vaccines - the sharing of the AZN, the COVAX stuff etc - has been noted by quite a few there.
  • Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,676

    malcolmg said:

    If asked if their tax should double to pay for it those numbers would be sub 30K pronto. People are always happy to be generous until they have to pay for it.
    Apart from his predilection for Sindy, Malc is invariably the voice of reason.

    BTW, Malc, has Eck got anything left after the Sturgeon masterclass in obfuscation?
    I am hoping he has some more for sure, or maybe someone overseas will publish the evidence. Hard to see how the other inquiry can let her off given he has Aberdein's evidence as well as all the rest of the stuff. If he let's her off we know it really is a whitewash of epic proportions. Mind you she may still brass it out even so. The other one is packed with SNP stooges and Wightman who is standing on list in H&I as independent and will want to pick up some SNP list votes and so will be a complete whitewash.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    30,876 jabs done in Wales yesterday which is above average - wonder what the other nations will bring.

    That would imply about 600,000 UK wide, which would be brilliant. Have the bumper times arrived?
    The big supply was supposed to arrive on Wednesday so big numbers from Thursday onwards makes a bit of sense. If we do anything like 500k first doses and 100k second it would be amazing.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,273

    Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
    BaZILLIONS
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 2,704

    GIN1138 said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I can't see the Mail's campaign against Boris and Carrie going anywhere. When it comes to stories like this Boris is like Blair - Teflon.

    Well Boris Johnson has been sacked twice for being liar.
    Never by the electorate though... ;)
    The voters of Clywd South say hello.
    But, Boris -- dumbo though he is -- would at least have got the name of the constituency right.

    You can't even do that.

    It is Clwyd South.
    Like the Welsh can critique anyone else’s spelling.

    The Welsh language was involved by someone crap at scrabble.
    Ah, British racism -- it is not subtle, it is not funny & it is not original. That is even a recycled joke from Jimmy Carr.

    Now you have told us the joke about the funny Welshman, can we hear the one you stole from Jimmy Carr about the miserable Scotsman ?

    Ffwcia bant nol dros Glawdd Offa.
    As if I'd steal a joke from someone who went to Caius, pfft.
    Have you trans-Pennines learned how to pronounce t'definite article yet?
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    30,876 jabs done in Wales yesterday which is above average - wonder what the other nations will bring.

    That would imply about 600,000 UK wide, which would be brilliant. Have the bumper times arrived?
    The big supply was supposed to arrive on Wednesday so big numbers from Thursday onwards makes a bit of sense. If we do anything like 500k first doses and 100k second it would be amazing.
    One thing about Wales it's currently on a 46 day gap between vaccines

    England 66 days
    N Ireland, Scotland 59 days each
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,273

    Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
    More seriously I reckon he could earn £10m from them. Worldwide. He is the first British Prime Minister since Thatcher with a global profile - recognisable around the world. And he has an incredible, once-in-a-century insider story to tell. Brexit and the Plague. AND he is an excellent and entertaining writer. Ker-CHING
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    edited March 2021

    Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
    Trillions is obviously a tiny exaggeration. But I'd be surprised if direct book revenues were not in the 8 digits, and total book and speaking gigs nearing or getting into the 9 digits.
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556

    GIN1138 said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I can't see the Mail's campaign against Boris and Carrie going anywhere. When it comes to stories like this Boris is like Blair - Teflon.

    Well Boris Johnson has been sacked twice for being liar.
    Never by the electorate though... ;)
    The voters of Clywd South say hello.
    But, Boris -- dumbo though he is -- would at least have got the name of the constituency right.

    You can't even do that.

    It is Clwyd South.
    Like the Welsh can critique anyone else’s spelling.

    The Welsh language was involved by someone crap at scrabble.
    Ah, British racism -- it is not subtle, it is not funny & it is not original. That is even a recycled joke from Jimmy Carr.

    Now you have told us the joke about the funny Welshman, can we hear the one you stole from Jimmy Carr about the miserable Scotsman ?

    Ffwcia bant nol dros Glawdd Offa.
    As if I'd steal a joke from someone who went to Caius, pfft.
    Strange - you'd expect Caius humour to become more popular during lockdown...
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,676

    malcolmg said:

    kjh said:

    kjh said:



    However on the point you thought I was making about prices - they do seem somewhat high, but I suspect we are talking about different things when we say refurbishing. However I suspect there are also some decorators who charge a lot more for the same service to the gullible rich.

    I think the point is that -- in a building like No 10 -- you will need to use heritage craftspeople, not trustatrader.

    If you need to replace a door, or some flooring, or a toilet cistern, then it will have to be constructed bespoke because the building & its interior is listed.

    The bespoke door or flooring will need to be made by a craftsman. The cistern may have to be sourced from a specialist dealer or made bespoke.

    That is how historic, listed buildings work.😉

    I have no idea whether the DM story is true, whether the sum is 200k, but your analogy was always ridiculous.
    I agree with the point you are making but we are talking about order of magnitude here. It is gross. And we are talking about decoration and furnishings. Now going back to my house (no please don't) my stairs and porch are solid oak and handmade. So how do you account for that difference? None of the stuff you mention even if by craftsman should cost this unless you are paying through the nose.
    Your stairs and porch are bespoke solid oak, sure.

    But if you replace something in Downing Street -- say a door -- then it will have to be exactly the same as the original.

    In practice, this will need to be a bespoke door made by a craftsperson in the same style as the original and with the same original material (if it can even be still sourced).

    The rates charged by heritage craftspeople are very different from the rates charged by builders. It is a completely different scale, and it probably is an order of magnitude.

    (As the building is listed, then any changes will need listed building consent, and so this will be insisted upon -- it is not Boris' and PNN's choice).
    Why would you change a door , they are renting the place and rent free at that.
    Well, things do wear out, you know. Things do need replacing every now and then. Particularly in an older property.

    The only point I am trying to make is it is not reasonable to compare the maintenance & up-keep of the fabric of 10 Downing Street to a family home.

    It is a heritage property and it will be more costly.
    Still the landlord should do the upgrading and select the materials and the cost of them , not the tenants. £30K a year is extremely generous to say the least.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184
    Foxy said:

    kle4 said:

    Perhaps NHS pay rises should match the triple lock increase.

    Or perhaps pensions should go up as much as the NHS pay increases.

    In terms of pay and covid, isnt it careworkers outside the NHS who society has most undervalued?
    Absolutely. Often talked about, never addressed.
    Angela Rayner often tweets about it. She started as a careworker of course.

    But care workers, are, I think, not generally directly paid by the state.
    Arguably, they are therefore paid the market rate for care workers. (This may or may not be true of NHS workers.)
    It might be that you or I or anyone else think that they should be paid more highly - but that is not what the market thinks. Possibly this goes back to the infinite labour pool issue we were discussing yesterday.

    Off topic, Channel 4 is on mute in the background, following the end of the cricket. It's moved on to 'Steph's packed lunch'. An Absurdly cheery young woman (not, I think, the eponymous Steph) is pointing at me. She appears to be sat next to Alan Johnson*. The caption underneath her reads 'how often do you wash your towels?'. No wonder this managed to achieve ratings of zero.

    *I have absolutely nothing against Alan Johnson. But it is jarring seeing him in this see of banality.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,461

    algarkirk said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    I see the hashtag #toryscum is trending. I wonder if the angry of Islington will ever realise that most people even they think something is wrong don't live in a perpetual state of outrage and hatred all the time, and this is actually putting the average person off.

    To win Labour have two big jobs, neither close to being done yet: They have to explain convincingly what they are for when we have a Heseltine + Brexit+ populist style government spending money like water.

    And they have to convince millions of people currently inclined to vote Tory that they don't believe that they are 'scum', 'vermin' etc but that they are bright centrists who vote both with their hearts and heads.

    The Labour membership have lost so many Rochdale Pioneers (see yesterday's brilliant analysis) that the remaining ones are unable to get the point that you cannot get people to vote for you by calling them scum. This alone renders them unfit to govern.

    This is hard, but the first problem - What is Labour for? - is harder.
    They do have to answer that question. My nutshell answer would be - to build a society far more equal than the one we have today.

    But the Cons have to answer the same question. They have done the one and only serious thing they were elected to do - deliver Leave - and are now devoid of any purpose other than staying in power. You could see this with that hotchpotch of a budget. Ok, all looks good for them right now, the vaccine delivering us early from the pandemic, but I predict this will change and well before the election. Difficult choices lie ahead and the government will not be able to flunk them all. Plenty of people will get pissed off and this will include some of those who voted for them last time.

    So, although I share the concerns about the current polls, and about Starmer not cutting through, Labour should imo not be panicking at this point.
    The key word is 'equal'. A sort of language SKS is fairly keen on. The trouble is that it has at least two meanings not compatible with each other: Does Labour want greater equality of opportunity or does it want greater equality of outcomes.
    For myself I will queue up early and often to vote for the first, but I am just as keen to vote against the second.

    And you can't have both.

    Equality is like (non state) pensions: You can either have defined benefits or defined contributions. You can't have both.


    Labour obviously wants equality of opportunity - and the Tories do as well (they claim). Labour has never argued for equality of outcomes - not even under Corbyn. But what it does want is less inequality of outcomes; in other words, a society where, for example and hypothetically, those with higher incomes earn less as a multiple than those with lower incomes. So instead of Directors earning a multiple of, say, 500 times the minimum wage, they may only earn 100 times the minimum wage. To simplify, reducing our gross inequalities in income and wealth to a more civilised level does not for one moment imply equality of outcome.
    So greater equality of outcome is always more civilized? What's the limit - in either direction?
    That's a debate worth having. But even you, oh bluest of the blue, must acknowledge that some of the current disparities are obscene, grotesque. People paid millions for, I don't know, playing football, messing around with hedge funds, or getting rich through activities that have no social benefit. Is the gap between Bezos's income and Amazon's delivery and warehouse workers justifiable in any civilised world? Meanwhile care workers struggle to get by on a pittance.
  • GIN1138 said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I can't see the Mail's campaign against Boris and Carrie going anywhere. When it comes to stories like this Boris is like Blair - Teflon.

    Well Boris Johnson has been sacked twice for being liar.
    Never by the electorate though... ;)
    The voters of Clywd South say hello.
    But, Boris -- dumbo though he is -- would at least have got the name of the constituency right.

    You can't even do that.

    It is Clwyd South.
    Like the Welsh can critique anyone else’s spelling.

    The Welsh language was involved by someone crap at scrabble.
    Ah, British racism -- it is not subtle, it is not funny & it is not original. That is even a recycled joke from Jimmy Carr.

    Now you have told us the joke about the funny Welshman, can we hear the one you stole from Jimmy Carr about the miserable Scotsman ?

    Ffwcia bant nol dros Glawdd Offa.
    As if I'd steal a joke from someone who went to Caius, pfft.
    Have you trans-Pennines learned how to pronounce t'definite article yet?
    T'No.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,923

    GIN1138 said:

    GIN1138 said:

    I can't see the Mail's campaign against Boris and Carrie going anywhere. When it comes to stories like this Boris is like Blair - Teflon.

    Well Boris Johnson has been sacked twice for being liar.
    Never by the electorate though... ;)
    The voters of Clywd South say hello.
    But, Boris -- dumbo though he is -- would at least have got the name of the constituency right.

    You can't even do that.

    It is Clwyd South.
    Like the Welsh can critique anyone else’s spelling.

    The Welsh language was involved by someone crap at scrabble.
    Ah, British racism -- it is not subtle, it is not funny & it is not original. That is even a recycled joke from Jimmy Carr.

    Now you have told us the joke about the funny Welshman, can we hear the one you stole from Jimmy Carr about the miserable Scotsman ?

    Ffwcia bant nol dros Glawdd Offa.
    As if I'd steal a joke from someone who went to Caius, pfft.
    Have you trans-Pennines learned how to pronounce t'definite article yet?
    T'No.
    Why do you Northerners talk so foony? :lol:
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,273
    Given how much Boris is inevitably going to make from his memoirs - £10m+++ - he could ask for a small advance on that - £200,000 - as a modest deposit: and pay for the renovations himself
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    edited March 2021
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
    More seriously I reckon he could earn £10m from them. Worldwide. He is the first British Prime Minister since Thatcher with a global profile - recognisable around the world. And he has an incredible, once-in-a-century insider story to tell. Brexit and the Plague. AND he is an excellent and entertaining writer. Ker-CHING
    I think that is correct.

    For a start, I don't expect his memoirs to be true.

    They will be hugely entertaining and crafted to sustain & build the Boris mythology.

    And then there will be the Netflix miniseries ....

    Global Celeb-dom. Serial shagging. Probably another couple of broken marriages and many more young mistresses.

    So, why the hell does he want to lead the Tories into the next election?

    There is so much more waiting for him.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,923
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
    BaZILLIONS
    "Chickenfeed!" :)
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,676

    MattW said:

    Charles said:

    kjh said:

    RobD said:

    kjh said:

    I can't grasp how it is possible to spend £200k on a decoration unless you have more money than sense. I spent a similar amount between 2012 and 2014 but that got me a huge oak porch, a large extension to the garage, new heating to 17 room house, a massive patio, a concrete raised pond demolished and filled in, new natural style pond dug, new oak staircase, walls demolished and new walls built with several beams, 4 bathrooms bought and fitted and a kitchen and utility room, etc, etc.

    Oh and decorated.

    A couple of years ago we bought a terrace house in Southwold. Gutted, new kitchen, bathroom, electrics and heating for about £20k.

    Oh and decorated.

    Admit it, you just made this comment for the humblebrag about your £200k refurb. ;)
    Nope. I suspect there are several on here who can outbrag me. I know I am lucky to be able to afford it, but how else do you make the point that £200k on a flat is ridiculous.

    I am also retired. It is the consequence of two well paid older individuals who aren't gullible and waste money on overpriced stuff.
    As a rule of thumb for a complete refurbishment London is about £150-£200 psf for a flat.

    I don’t know how large their flat is but if it is being totally redone I’m not surprised by the price.
    I would say the same, but that includes rewiring and plumbing etc.

    How big is the bloody flat anyway.
    PB Decor Service, at your Service

    It's 4 bedroom. The Daily Mail has an article about the last 3 makeovers. 64k for the Camerons for a bathroom, kitchen area, and new floor and ceiling. Dualit toaster and Britannia Range Cooker.

    And 127k over several years for the Blairs. But then Cherie probably made more money than Boris, and did not have umpteen former husbands.

    Here's the old plan, which you can access on the site mentioned I assume. It is some of this:



    I will refrain from adding the Hello photos, unless you ask nicely.

    Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9316209/The-modern-makeovers-Number-11-Downing-Street.html
    You say its 4 bedroom but that floor plan shows - between No 10 and No 11 - a total of 18 bedrooms. How much of that do they have to refurbish?
    Not that much, the issue is that Mrs May followed David Cameron's & Margaret Thatcher's lead that the taxpayer shouldn't lavish Number 10 but Ms Symonds really doesn't like Mrs May's John Lewis nightmare choice of decor.
    If she doesn't like it she should pay for the changes herself. I can understand making changes/redecorating because of wear and tear but it should be within a fixed budget and on a fixed timescale - every so many years. And both those should be decided by someone other than the PM and his current sleeping partner.
    There's an annual £30k maintenance budget for the PM and their spouse to use on the upkeep for Downing Street.

    Clearly that's not enough for Boris Johnson and his inamorata.
    What’s the plural of inamorata?
    Or is it already a plural.
    Google tells me the plural of inamorata is inamoratas.
    Bidey-ins for we North British.
    I've never heard of the term Bidey-in before.

    Is it a benign term or does it have a judgmental/disapproving tone that might get me slapped if I used towards a Scot?
    There certainly used to be a curtain twitching element to it but it's pretty harmless nowadays, can be used in an ironic, post modern way without getting a slap.

    We may be almost at the point when the last Church of Scotland minister has been strangled by the last copy of the Sunday Post.
    Similar to "fancy bit" or "fancy piece" who was similar , wife was still around and so did not live in. Used to be shocking but young ones would probably not even know it
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    edited March 2021
    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    If asked if their tax should double to pay for it those numbers would be sub 30K pronto. People are always happy to be generous until they have to pay for it.
    Apart from his predilection for Sindy, Malc is invariably the voice of reason.

    BTW, Malc, has Eck got anything left after the Sturgeon masterclass in obfuscation?
    I am hoping he has some more for sure, or maybe someone overseas will publish the evidence. Hard to see how the other inquiry can let her off given he has Aberdein's evidence as well as all the rest of the stuff. If he let's her off we know it really is a whitewash of epic proportions. Mind you she may still brass it out even so. The other one is packed with SNP stooges and Wightman who is standing on list in H&I as independent and will want to pick up some SNP list votes and so will be a complete whitewash.
    I thought Nicola's humiliation of Ruth Davidson in the Scottish parliament yesterday was as effective as I've seen. Up there with Geoffrey Howe's cricket bat.

    If there were transfer fees for politicians Labour should break the bank for her
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,753
    Cookie said:


    *I have absolutely nothing against Alan Johnson. But it is jarring seeing him in this see of banality.

    Governed by the bishop of bland presumably.

  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Iain Dale in ConHome:

    The EU has no interest in Northern Ireland’s future prosperity. It just sees it as a mechanism to exert its power. It is a constitutional outrage that British companies are not free to trade without restriction to all parts of the sovereign United Kingdom. The checks that are now being demanded by the EU are so disproportionate as to be totally unreasonable. The British government bent over backwards to make a compromise to meet EU concerns that the Single Market could be compromised, but its goodwill has been exploited at every turn.

    At some point this has to stop, and the unilateral extension of the grace period is the inevitable consequence of EU inflexibility. It is not, as the Irish government unhelpfully says, a breach of international law. What it is, is a sign that Britain’s patience with the EU on this issue is about to expire.


    https://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2021/03/iain-dale-the-eu-has-no-interest-in-northern-irelands-future-prosperity-it-just-sees-it-as-a-mechanism-to-exert-its-power.html

    Bollox. It is the compromise arrangement that we insisted on. It is the trade deal that we negotiated. It is the operational model we signed. The EU had no interest at all in interjecting itself into the internal matters of a post-EU UK, where anyone with a brain can see that a GB-NI border is bonkers.

    So, we are back to the unsolvable issue of the intra-Irish border. It must be open and unimpeded, but has to provide the hard border between the EU and UK demanded by our government. They proposed that we stay in the customs union and aligned to EU standards until a technology solution could be found. No, WE LEAVE NOW we demanded. Which means the only other place for the border is the Irish Sea.

    Why do you think the Boris Burrows all lead to the Isle of Man? We have to put the customs post for the Boris Border somewhere, and the IoM fancies running duty free stores.
    Funny how the UK is at fault for following a democratic mandate while the EU is praised for its inflexibility.

    It’s movement of people not goods that matters for the Irish border. It could have been solved with a bit of creative thinking
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,923
    Leon said:

    Given how much Boris is inevitably going to make from his memoirs - £10m+++ - he could ask for a small advance on that - £200,000 - as a modest deposit: and pay for the renovations himself

    He could... but he won't!
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184

    algarkirk said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    I see the hashtag #toryscum is trending. I wonder if the angry of Islington will ever realise that most people even they think something is wrong don't live in a perpetual state of outrage and hatred all the time, and this is actually putting the average person off.

    To win Labour have two big jobs, neither close to being done yet: They have to explain convincingly what they are for when we have a Heseltine + Brexit+ populist style government spending money like water.

    And they have to convince millions of people currently inclined to vote Tory that they don't believe that they are 'scum', 'vermin' etc but that they are bright centrists who vote both with their hearts and heads.

    The Labour membership have lost so many Rochdale Pioneers (see yesterday's brilliant analysis) that the remaining ones are unable to get the point that you cannot get people to vote for you by calling them scum. This alone renders them unfit to govern.

    This is hard, but the first problem - What is Labour for? - is harder.
    They do have to answer that question. My nutshell answer would be - to build a society far more equal than the one we have today.

    But the Cons have to answer the same question. They have done the one and only serious thing they were elected to do - deliver Leave - and are now devoid of any purpose other than staying in power. You could see this with that hotchpotch of a budget. Ok, all looks good for them right now, the vaccine delivering us early from the pandemic, but I predict this will change and well before the election. Difficult choices lie ahead and the government will not be able to flunk them all. Plenty of people will get pissed off and this will include some of those who voted for them last time.

    So, although I share the concerns about the current polls, and about Starmer not cutting through, Labour should imo not be panicking at this point.
    The key word is 'equal'. A sort of language SKS is fairly keen on. The trouble is that it has at least two meanings not compatible with each other: Does Labour want greater equality of opportunity or does it want greater equality of outcomes.
    For myself I will queue up early and often to vote for the first, but I am just as keen to vote against the second.

    And you can't have both.

    Equality is like (non state) pensions: You can either have defined benefits or defined contributions. You can't have both.


    Labour obviously wants equality of opportunity - and the Tories do as well (they claim). Labour has never argued for equality of outcomes - not even under Corbyn. But what it does want is less inequality of outcomes; in other words, a society where, for example and hypothetically, those with higher incomes earn less as a multiple than those with lower incomes. So instead of Directors earning a multiple of, say, 500 times the minimum wage, they may only earn 100 times the minimum wage. To simplify, reducing our gross inequalities in income and wealth to a more civilised level does not for one moment imply equality of outcome.
    So greater equality of outcome is always more civilized? What's the limit - in either direction?
    That's a debate worth having. But even you, oh bluest of the blue, must acknowledge that some of the current disparities are obscene, grotesque. People paid millions for, I don't know, playing football, messing around with hedge funds, or getting rich through activities that have no social benefit. Is the gap between Bezos's income and Amazon's delivery and warehouse workers justifiable in any civilised world? Meanwhile care workers struggle to get by on a pittance.
    The disparity between the bottom and the top of the income pile has stretched massively since the mid 90s - indeed, since the introduction of the minimum wage. And indeed has stretched as the minimum wage has increased.
    I don't believe that the disparity is caused by the introduction of the minimum wage - I just present it as an illustration that it is very difficult to use the policy levers we have to achieve a more equal society.

    Inequality has increased everywhere in the west over the same period. Why? I would suggest globalisation, but that is the sort of snappy answer that misses any number of nuances to what should be an essay question.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,273

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
    More seriously I reckon he could earn £10m from them. Worldwide. He is the first British Prime Minister since Thatcher with a global profile - recognisable around the world. And he has an incredible, once-in-a-century insider story to tell. Brexit and the Plague. AND he is an excellent and entertaining writer. Ker-CHING
    I think that is correct.

    For a start, I don't expect his memoirs to be true.

    They will be hugely entertaining and crafted to sustain & build the Boris mythology.

    And then there will be the Netflix miniseries ....

    Global Celeb-dom. Serial shagging. Probably another couple of broken marriages and many more young mistresses.

    So, why the hell does he want to lead the Tories into the next election?

    There is so much more waiting for him.
    Something in that. However he is clearly a man who gets easily bored. Being Prime Minister is a tough job, but it is also highly exciting - full of drama and adrenaline (Thatcher talks of the compulsive quality of the job, in HER memoirs). That might keep him in Number 10 for quite a while. Fear of the relative tedium that comes after

    After he got ill, I thought he'd go this year. Now I am far from sure. He's got his mojo back, he looks better, he's high in the polls, he's relatively popular. The faithful still love him. He's redeemed himself with the vaccines.

    He might now last until the next election. Win that, then finally retire to his memoir and his mistresses and his newly minted fortune.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    I see the panic has doed down a little on here after that awful poll for Labour yesterday sent the spinners into a frenzied panic attack on all things Tory and Boris. Meanwhile a local election in Scotland saw the Tory vote up 10%, Labour up 2% and the SNP up 5.5%. Happy days. Not quite sure how it happened but it produced a Labour gain from the SNP as an added bonus.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    edited March 2021
    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    BoZo gave £40 grand a year to Dominic cummings. Let's give it to the NHS instead...
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    I guess the phrase is 'despite Brexit'. Spain has been making warm noises about fostering good bilateral relations this week.

    "A crate of bitter oranges from the gardens of the Real Alcázar of Seville, Europe’s oldest functioning royal residence, will be made into marmalade and sent to Buckingham Palace as a gift to Queen Elizabeth II."
    El Pais.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    edited March 2021
    Scott_xP said:
    ''We all know the hell Britons have ...er....been going through in the past year."
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Scott_xP said:

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    BoZo gave £40 grand a year to Dominic cummings. Let's give it to the NHS instead...

    Not sure we should fire all the NHS staff at christmas.
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    edited March 2021

    algarkirk said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    I see the hashtag #toryscum is trending. I wonder if the angry of Islington will ever realise that most people even they think something is wrong don't live in a perpetual state of outrage and hatred all the time, and this is actually putting the average person off.

    To win Labour have two big jobs, neither close to being done yet: They have to explain convincingly what they are for when we have a Heseltine + Brexit+ populist style government spending money like water.

    And they have to convince millions of people currently inclined to vote Tory that they don't believe that they are 'scum', 'vermin' etc but that they are bright centrists who vote both with their hearts and heads.

    The Labour membership have lost so many Rochdale Pioneers (see yesterday's brilliant analysis) that the remaining ones are unable to get the point that you cannot get people to vote for you by calling them scum. This alone renders them unfit to govern.

    This is hard, but the first problem - What is Labour for? - is harder.
    They do have to answer that question. My nutshell answer would be - to build a society far more equal than the one we have today.

    But the Cons have to answer the same question. They have done the one and only serious thing they were elected to do - deliver Leave - and are now devoid of any purpose other than staying in power. You could see this with that hotchpotch of a budget. Ok, all looks good for them right now, the vaccine delivering us early from the pandemic, but I predict this will change and well before the election. Difficult choices lie ahead and the government will not be able to flunk them all. Plenty of people will get pissed off and this will include some of those who voted for them last time.

    So, although I share the concerns about the current polls, and about Starmer not cutting through, Labour should imo not be panicking at this point.
    The key word is 'equal'. A sort of language SKS is fairly keen on. The trouble is that it has at least two meanings not compatible with each other: Does Labour want greater equality of opportunity or does it want greater equality of outcomes.
    For myself I will queue up early and often to vote for the first, but I am just as keen to vote against the second.

    And you can't have both.

    Equality is like (non state) pensions: You can either have defined benefits or defined contributions. You can't have both.


    Labour obviously wants equality of opportunity - and the Tories do as well (they claim). Labour has never argued for equality of outcomes - not even under Corbyn. But what it does want is less inequality of outcomes; in other words, a society where, for example and hypothetically, those with higher incomes earn less as a multiple than those with lower incomes. So instead of Directors earning a multiple of, say, 500 times the minimum wage, they may only earn 100 times the minimum wage. To simplify, reducing our gross inequalities in income and wealth to a more civilised level does not for one moment imply equality of outcome.
    So greater equality of outcome is always more civilized? What's the limit - in either direction?
    That's a debate worth having. But even you, oh bluest of the blue, must acknowledge that some of the current disparities are obscene, grotesque. People paid millions for, I don't know, playing football, messing around with hedge funds, or getting rich through activities that have no social benefit. Is the gap between Bezos's income and Amazon's delivery and warehouse workers justifiable in any civilised world? Meanwhile care workers struggle to get by on a pittance.
    I'm afraid I genuinely don't - it's none of my business what money other people make or how much they've accumulated, no matter what 'social benefit' (defined by whom, exactly?) they may or may not confer. Care workers and footballers are paid at the rate that society (!), not sociologists, has collectively determined they are worth.

    The problem the left has faced recently is that they've been telling people that we live in 'obscene' societies, whereas in fact so-called late-stage capitalism is surprisingly good at providing most people with a job, a home, and a comfortable lifestyle overall. That's why the electorate keeps running a mile from crude redistribution and levelling-down - what a minority terms 'grotesque', they consider not bad at all.
  • BromBrom Posts: 3,760
    Labour's response to the budget appears to be 48 hours too late and the public have already made their minds up. With everything leaked you wonder why Starmer couldn't have responded like this on Wednesday.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    Spoke too soon - the panic continues - Scott'nPaste is on the case.
  • IanB2 said:

    Late 50s and today the NHS site allowed me to book the AZN for Sunday!

    Hurrah.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Foxy said:

    Iain Dale in ConHome:

    The EU has no interest in Northern Ireland’s future prosperity. It just sees it as a mechanism to exert its power. It is a constitutional outrage that British companies are not free to trade without restriction to all parts of the sovereign United Kingdom. The checks that are now being demanded by the EU are so disproportionate as to be totally unreasonable. The British government bent over backwards to make a compromise to meet EU concerns that the Single Market could be compromised, but its goodwill has been exploited at every turn.

    At some point this has to stop, and the unilateral extension of the grace period is the inevitable consequence of EU inflexibility. It is not, as the Irish government unhelpfully says, a breach of international law. What it is, is a sign that Britain’s patience with the EU on this issue is about to expire.


    https://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2021/03/iain-dale-the-eu-has-no-interest-in-northern-irelands-future-prosperity-it-just-sees-it-as-a-mechanism-to-exert-its-power.html

    Bollox. It is the compromise arrangement that we insisted on. It is the trade deal that we negotiated. It is the operational model we signed. The EU had no interest at all in interjecting itself into the internal matters of a post-EU UK, where anyone with a brain can see that a GB-NI border is bonkers.

    So, we are back to the unsolvable issue of the intra-Irish border. It must be open and unimpeded, but has to provide the hard border between the EU and UK demanded by our government. They proposed that we stay in the customs union and aligned to EU standards until a technology solution could be found. No, WE LEAVE NOW we demanded. Which means the only other place for the border is the Irish Sea.

    Why do you think the Boris Burrows all lead to the Isle of Man? We have to put the customs post for the Boris Border somewhere, and the IoM fancies running duty free stores.
    No. Just don't have a hard border anywhere, problem solved. Fudge is the spirit of the GFA.
    Fudge cannot be law.

    It is Brexit that created that border, and the Brexiteers who decided to put it in the Irish Sea.

    That is what we agreed to in the "oven ready deal".
    A border in the Irish Sea breaches the Good Friday Agreement as much as one on the island of Ireland.

    There was a transitory thrill of Schadenfreude at seeing the DUP get shafted by Johnson, but we all have to deal with the consequences now.

    With hindsight, the 2016 referendum should have been in England alone on English independence from the UK and the EU. That's the movement that's taken us to this point - an England not willing to bind itself to commitments to its neighbours in Europe, or the islands of Britain and Ireland.

    My preference would be for an England comfortable with playing a collaborative role in European and British Unions - but those English politicians not signed up to that should have the courage to take their convictions to their logical conclusion - and work for a transition to English independence.

    It's irresponsible to allow an English Nationalist delusion to cause damage to others.
    The fundamental problem is that the GFA was designed in a world where the UK and Ireland were both in the EU

    The UK’s proposal was to take the objective of the GFA and design a new structure for a new world

    The EU said the GFA must not change despite a core assumption not being valid any longer.

    And people wonder why it is under strain?
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    Cookie said:

    algarkirk said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    I see the hashtag #toryscum is trending. I wonder if the angry of Islington will ever realise that most people even they think something is wrong don't live in a perpetual state of outrage and hatred all the time, and this is actually putting the average person off.

    To win Labour have two big jobs, neither close to being done yet: They have to explain convincingly what they are for when we have a Heseltine + Brexit+ populist style government spending money like water.

    And they have to convince millions of people currently inclined to vote Tory that they don't believe that they are 'scum', 'vermin' etc but that they are bright centrists who vote both with their hearts and heads.

    The Labour membership have lost so many Rochdale Pioneers (see yesterday's brilliant analysis) that the remaining ones are unable to get the point that you cannot get people to vote for you by calling them scum. This alone renders them unfit to govern.

    This is hard, but the first problem - What is Labour for? - is harder.
    They do have to answer that question. My nutshell answer would be - to build a society far more equal than the one we have today.

    But the Cons have to answer the same question. They have done the one and only serious thing they were elected to do - deliver Leave - and are now devoid of any purpose other than staying in power. You could see this with that hotchpotch of a budget. Ok, all looks good for them right now, the vaccine delivering us early from the pandemic, but I predict this will change and well before the election. Difficult choices lie ahead and the government will not be able to flunk them all. Plenty of people will get pissed off and this will include some of those who voted for them last time.

    So, although I share the concerns about the current polls, and about Starmer not cutting through, Labour should imo not be panicking at this point.
    The key word is 'equal'. A sort of language SKS is fairly keen on. The trouble is that it has at least two meanings not compatible with each other: Does Labour want greater equality of opportunity or does it want greater equality of outcomes.
    For myself I will queue up early and often to vote for the first, but I am just as keen to vote against the second.

    And you can't have both.

    Equality is like (non state) pensions: You can either have defined benefits or defined contributions. You can't have both.


    Labour obviously wants equality of opportunity - and the Tories do as well (they claim). Labour has never argued for equality of outcomes - not even under Corbyn. But what it does want is less inequality of outcomes; in other words, a society where, for example and hypothetically, those with higher incomes earn less as a multiple than those with lower incomes. So instead of Directors earning a multiple of, say, 500 times the minimum wage, they may only earn 100 times the minimum wage. To simplify, reducing our gross inequalities in income and wealth to a more civilised level does not for one moment imply equality of outcome.
    So greater equality of outcome is always more civilized? What's the limit - in either direction?
    That's a debate worth having. But even you, oh bluest of the blue, must acknowledge that some of the current disparities are obscene, grotesque. People paid millions for, I don't know, playing football, messing around with hedge funds, or getting rich through activities that have no social benefit. Is the gap between Bezos's income and Amazon's delivery and warehouse workers justifiable in any civilised world? Meanwhile care workers struggle to get by on a pittance.
    The disparity between the bottom and the top of the income pile has stretched massively since the mid 90s - indeed, since the introduction of the minimum wage. And indeed has stretched as the minimum wage has increased.
    I don't believe that the disparity is caused by the introduction of the minimum wage - I just present it as an illustration that it is very difficult to use the policy levers we have to achieve a more equal society.

    Inequality has increased everywhere in the west over the same period. Why? I would suggest globalisation, but that is the sort of snappy answer that misses any number of nuances to what should be an essay question.
    Virtually all of the increase in "obscene" wealth has come in Tech, which is a business where you can become very very rich extremely quickly whilst employing very few people. That doesn't just go for the likes of Bezos but also the tech geeks in their 20s and 30s who come out with the latest efficiency tool or FinTech product which investors pile into and value in the billions. That also exacerbates the problem because what those products often enable firms to do is cut staff and get rid of whole swathes of job types. Think of what happened in car factory employment with the introduction of robots and the same is now happening in the office space, only it is starting to creep up into manager / senior manager levels.

    Plus the pandemic has been a huge gift for many of these start-ups - I spoke with the CEO / founder of one company who said that the pandemic had been a Godsend and all the other digital start up CEOs he spoke to thought the same: it had made them realise they could work well with 40% fewer staff (who were people they were in two minds to keep pre-pandemic) and they realised they didn't need as much office space.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094
    Brom said:

    Labour's response to the budget appears to be 48 hours too late and the public have already made their minds up. With everything leaked you wonder why Starmer couldn't have responded like this on Wednesday.

    A nurses strike after the last year would get massive public support. The government isn’t going to be able to take that.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,458
    Scott_xP said:

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    BoZo gave £40 grand a year to Dominic cummings. Let's give it to the NHS instead...

    If inflation is about 1% then what is the problem with a 1% pay rise?

    Obviously inflation varies massively according to individual circumstances, but I get the impression most would prefer 3% pay rise and 4% inflation than 1% pay rise and 1% inflation.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
    More seriously I reckon he could earn £10m from them. Worldwide. He is the first British Prime Minister since Thatcher with a global profile - recognisable around the world. And he has an incredible, once-in-a-century insider story to tell. Brexit and the Plague. AND he is an excellent and entertaining writer. Ker-CHING
    Are you sure? His Churchill book was pants.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Scott_xP said:
    What mask? Does he think ex-Labour voters mistook Johnson for a socialist?
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960
    Scott_xP said:

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    BoZo gave £40 grand a year to Dominic cummings. Let's give it to the NHS instead...

    I can see no reason whatsoever to present an annual salary increase as a like-for-like comparison with a weekly one, even ignoring the absolute vs percentage issue. Just dishonesty for the sake of dishonesty - the point still stands if you divide Cummings' increase by 50, or show the full yearly increase for nurses of £182.

    "Nurses get £182 per year while Cummings has to make do on less than 8p a minute" would be just as honest. This is why people implicitly don't trust politicians anymore.
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556
    felix said:

    I see the panic has doed down a little on here after that awful poll for Labour yesterday sent the spinners into a frenzied panic attack on all things Tory and Boris. Meanwhile a local election in Scotland saw the Tory vote up 10%, Labour up 2% and the SNP up 5.5%. Happy days. Not quite sure how it happened but it produced a Labour gain from the SNP as an added bonus.

    Nah, they're still panicking. The glorious Sir Keir Starmer 13 points down against Boris.... oh, that's gotta sting! :smiley:
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    IanB2 said:

    A nurses strike after the last year would get massive public support. The government isn’t going to be able to take that.

    https://twitter.com/lucrezianews/status/1367823011412344835
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Foxy said:

    Iain Dale in ConHome:

    The EU has no interest in Northern Ireland’s future prosperity. It just sees it as a mechanism to exert its power. It is a constitutional outrage that British companies are not free to trade without restriction to all parts of the sovereign United Kingdom. The checks that are now being demanded by the EU are so disproportionate as to be totally unreasonable. The British government bent over backwards to make a compromise to meet EU concerns that the Single Market could be compromised, but its goodwill has been exploited at every turn.

    At some point this has to stop, and the unilateral extension of the grace period is the inevitable consequence of EU inflexibility. It is not, as the Irish government unhelpfully says, a breach of international law. What it is, is a sign that Britain’s patience with the EU on this issue is about to expire.


    https://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2021/03/iain-dale-the-eu-has-no-interest-in-northern-irelands-future-prosperity-it-just-sees-it-as-a-mechanism-to-exert-its-power.html

    Bollox. It is the compromise arrangement that we insisted on. It is the trade deal that we negotiated. It is the operational model we signed. The EU had no interest at all in interjecting itself into the internal matters of a post-EU UK, where anyone with a brain can see that a GB-NI border is bonkers.

    So, we are back to the unsolvable issue of the intra-Irish border. It must be open and unimpeded, but has to provide the hard border between the EU and UK demanded by our government. They proposed that we stay in the customs union and aligned to EU standards until a technology solution could be found. No, WE LEAVE NOW we demanded. Which means the only other place for the border is the Irish Sea.

    Why do you think the Boris Burrows all lead to the Isle of Man? We have to put the customs post for the Boris Border somewhere, and the IoM fancies running duty free stores.
    No. Just don't have a hard border anywhere, problem solved. Fudge is the spirit of the GFA.
    Fudge cannot be law.

    It is Brexit that created that border, and the Brexiteers who decided to put it in the Irish Sea.

    That is what we agreed to in the "oven ready deal".

    Fudge absolutely can be law. That's how the GFA works.

    The Protocol is terrible but much less worse than what came before it in the backstop. If the EU wants to operate to the letter of the Protocol with no goodwill then I think we should do the same, starting with invoking Article 16.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,458
    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
    More seriously I reckon he could earn £10m from them. Worldwide. He is the first British Prime Minister since Thatcher with a global profile - recognisable around the world. And he has an incredible, once-in-a-century insider story to tell. Brexit and the Plague. AND he is an excellent and entertaining writer. Ker-CHING
    Are you sure? His Churchill book was pants.
    The book is irrelevant. He will make his money in the US, quite possibly with a presidential run, or at least the tease of it. It will be far more than £10m.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    I'm really interested to see the immune response studies into the 10-12 week gap for Pfizer over the next few weeks vs the recommended 3-4 week gap. Hopefully we'll get some data on it soon. It could genuinely change how the whole world approaches vaccination if two vaccines are proven to work better with a longer gap between doses, not only does the JiT dosing policy allow for double the number of people being immunised, the longer gap should provide better long term immunity lasting into the winter for younger cohorts and relieving pressure on manufacturing for variant busting updates.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    Pulpstar said:

    Scott_xP said:

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    BoZo gave £40 grand a year to Dominic cummings. Let's give it to the NHS instead...

    Not sure we should fire all the NHS staff at christmas.
    I thought the nurses did it because they were saints.

    Didn't realise they were dirty rotten pay hoes like the rest of us.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094
    It can’t be lag, because we know most areas of London are calling up the 50s and some the 40s already. It must be a mix of missing people and refusals.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    IanB2 said:

    It can’t be lag, because we know most areas of London are calling up the 50s and some the 40s already. It must be a mix of missing people and refusals.
    The Gloucester blip is almost certainly a statistical SNAFU, London will be because of refusals and so forth.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    IanB2 said:

    Late 50s and today the NHS site allowed me to book the AZN for Sunday!

    Sunday appointments are good.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,458
    IanB2 said:

    It can’t be lag, because we know most areas of London are calling up the 50s and some the 40s already. It must be a mix of missing people and refusals.
    The London data is very difficult as an estimated 700k have left town during the pandemic. Presumably they are still on GP lists, which would have been less accurate than most of the rest of the country in the first place due to the high turnover of people coming and going. Numbers from London might not be very reflective of whats actually happening.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited March 2021
    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
    More seriously I reckon he could earn £10m from them. Worldwide. He is the first British Prime Minister since Thatcher with a global profile - recognisable around the world. And he has an incredible, once-in-a-century insider story to tell. Brexit and the Plague. AND he is an excellent and entertaining writer. Ker-CHING
    Are you sure? His Churchill book was pants.
    He has the occasionally witty turn of phrase, but the idea he is an “excellent and entertaining writer” is for the birds.

    Nevertheless, in the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king - he is certainly more interesting to read than any premier since...Churchill?

    Who was coincidentally also a some-time journalist.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,753
    "Scots Tory leader Douglas Ross 'deeply regrets' comments about gypsy travellers"

    https://tinyurl.com/rkx58ees

    I deeply regret that my comment about tougher enforcement on Gypsy Travellers being my number 1 priority if I was pm has been interpreted as meaning that tougher enforcement on Gypsy Travellers would be my number 1 priority if I was pm.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    IanB2 said:

    Brom said:

    Labour's response to the budget appears to be 48 hours too late and the public have already made their minds up. With everything leaked you wonder why Starmer couldn't have responded like this on Wednesday.

    A nurses strike after the last year would get massive public support. The government isn’t going to be able to take that.
    I actually wonder if that's the case. A lot of people face uncertainty over their jobs and the prospect of potential wage cuts via fewer hours or unemployment. Getting a pay rise whilst having a protected job and also a protected pension may seem a very good deal to those who work in the private sector

  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    Scott_xP said:

    IanB2 said:

    A nurses strike after the last year would get massive public support. The government isn’t going to be able to take that.

    https://twitter.com/lucrezianews/status/1367823011412344835
    Nothing says 'we care' like going on strike while the country tries to recover from a pandemic.
  • https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    This is more like it. The question is, is it too late?
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,753
    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
    More seriously I reckon he could earn £10m from them. Worldwide. He is the first British Prime Minister since Thatcher with a global profile - recognisable around the world. And he has an incredible, once-in-a-century insider story to tell. Brexit and the Plague. AND he is an excellent and entertaining writer. Ker-CHING
    Are you sure? His Churchill book was pants.
    Not as pants as his impersonation.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094
    Pulpstar said:

    IanB2 said:

    Late 50s and today the NHS site allowed me to book the AZN for Sunday!

    Sunday appointments are good.
    I took the first slot there was.

    The way the system seems to work is, firstly they open the site ‘on the quiet’ to an age group, and take bookings from those who go looking for them (I am guessing that is quite a few). Next they put out a general call for everyone in an age band - I am guessing the 50-59s will be called on Monday, maybe at the weekend. Finally they start contacting people individually.

    A sensible approach that minimises the number of people who need to be contacted one at a time.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,095
    edited March 2021
    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    kinabalu said:

    algarkirk said:

    I see the hashtag #toryscum is trending. I wonder if the angry of Islington will ever realise that most people even they think something is wrong don't live in a perpetual state of outrage and hatred all the time, and this is actually putting the average person off.

    To win Labour have two big jobs, neither close to being done yet: They have to explain convincingly what they are for when we have a Heseltine + Brexit+ populist style government spending money like water.

    And they have to convince millions of people currently inclined to vote Tory that they don't believe that they are 'scum', 'vermin' etc but that they are bright centrists who vote both with their hearts and heads.

    The Labour membership have lost so many Rochdale Pioneers (see yesterday's brilliant analysis) that the remaining ones are unable to get the point that you cannot get people to vote for you by calling them scum. This alone renders them unfit to govern.

    This is hard, but the first problem - What is Labour for? - is harder.
    They do have to answer that question. My nutshell answer would be - to build a society far more equal than the one we have today.

    But the Cons have to answer the same question. They have done the one and only serious thing they were elected to do - deliver Leave - and are now devoid of any purpose other than staying in power. You could see this with that hotchpotch of a budget. Ok, all looks good for them right now, the vaccine delivering us early from the pandemic, but I predict this will change and well before the election. Difficult choices lie ahead and the government will not be able to flunk them all. Plenty of people will get pissed off and this will include some of those who voted for them last time.

    So, although I share the concerns about the current polls, and about Starmer not cutting through, Labour should imo not be panicking at this point.
    The key word is 'equal'. A sort of language SKS is fairly keen on. The trouble is that it has at least two meanings not compatible with each other: Does Labour want greater equality of opportunity or does it want greater equality of outcomes.
    For myself I will queue up early and often to vote for the first, but I am just as keen to vote against the second.

    And you can't have both.

    Equality is like (non state) pensions: You can either have defined benefits or defined contributions. You can't have both.
    The key word is "more". More equal not equal. A significant reduction in inequality. Perfect equality (of opportunity or outcome) is not a real world possibility. Nobody sane is arguing for that. It's a strawman. The goal is a significant reduction in inequality without the need for totalitarianism or the recasting of human nature. It's not some utopian pipedream.

    And no, opportunity and outcome are not separate concepts that can be silo'd. They are inextricably linked to the extent that far from being incompatible it makes no sense to talk about either in isolation. Opportunities lead to outcomes. Outcomes lead to opportunities.

    For example, if we have great inequality of outcome, this feeds through as night follows day to great inequality of opportunity - since affluent parents create superior life chances for their offspring. Who make use of these to achieve superior outcomes. Which allows them to create superior opportunities for their offspring. Etc.

    Labour should be about disrupting this cycle. Not completely breaking it, mind, please refer back to para 1, but acting against the grain of it. The goal being, as I say, a significant reduction in inequality. A degree of uncoupling of the link between birth circumstances (class, race, gender) and life prospects. A "more" equal society.

    You say you'd queue round the block to vote for equal opportunities? Almost everyone says that - because it sounds good and the opposite sounds bad - but few on the centre or right of politics really mean it. It's a platitude. I know this because when it comes to actual policies that will make a serious dent in class privilege a reason is always found why they can't or shouldn't be attempted. All we ever hear are "bring back grammar schools" or the maximum trite of "let's make state schools so good that nobody will want to go private".

    I'd be delighted for you to prove me wrong by advancing ideas other than those.
    I think "more" is a humpty-dumpty word, devoid of content. If SKS was arguing for something completely different, he would still use the same language, and no one would be able to get a clue about what he meant.

    Ditto "fair".

    Of course you can have both sorts of pensions. What a strange thing to say.

    I was saying yesterday that SKS needs to create his own narrative a bit more, in addition to reacting to others. But he need a language (to borrow a phrase) "understanded of the people".
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    Scott_xP said:

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    BoZo gave £40 grand a year to Dominic cummings. Let's give it to the NHS instead...

    A big improvement. Traditionally budgets that are instantly popular end up being an open goal for the opposition. This one might be an exception because he's printing more money than anyone knows what to do with
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960

    IanB2 said:

    It can’t be lag, because we know most areas of London are calling up the 50s and some the 40s already. It must be a mix of missing people and refusals.
    The London data is very difficult as an estimated 700k have left town during the pandemic. Presumably they are still on GP lists, which would have been less accurate than most of the rest of the country in the first place due to the high turnover of people coming and going. Numbers from London might not be very reflective of whats actually happening.
    Indeed, although my suspicion is that much of the 700k exiles (net, I guess: there may have been some coming the other way) are not over the age of 65: mostly they'll be working age people who've gone to parents or other relatives, or second/first homes in the countryside, due to no longer having to commute daily.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818
    edited March 2021
    Scott_xP said:

    IanB2 said:

    A nurses strike after the last year would get massive public support. The government isn’t going to be able to take that.

    https://twitter.com/lucrezianews/status/1367823011412344835
    How far away are we from the point where Boris realises he has lionised a section of society that will never vote tory, whilst at the same time tearing core supporter small businesses to shreds?

    Still about three months away, I think.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853
    edited March 2021
    Pulpstar said:

    Scott_xP said:

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    BoZo gave £40 grand a year to Dominic cummings. Let's give it to the NHS instead...

    Not sure we should fire all the NHS staff at christmas.
    We can't afford a vast amount, obviously. There are many not on the public payroll who have had a large negative pay rise this year.

    Clearly though, it hasn't been much fun working in some (but not all) parts of the NHS this year.

    Would giving out a 'Covid bonus' to those on the front line be better politically and financially?
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    This is more like it. The question is, is it too late?

    He needs one of these a day.
    All the time hammering home the critique which does have legs (despite current polling):

    Boris and his mates have their snouts in the trough, the rest of us have austerity.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,095
    felix said:

    I see the panic has doed down a little on here after that awful poll for Labour yesterday sent the spinners into a frenzied panic attack on all things Tory and Boris. Meanwhile a local election in Scotland saw the Tory vote up 10%, Labour up 2% and the SNP up 5.5%. Happy days. Not quite sure how it happened but it produced a Labour gain from the SNP as an added bonus.

    https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1367789126171426816
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    kinabalu said:

    Iain Dale in ConHome:

    The EU has no interest in Northern Ireland’s future prosperity. It just sees it as a mechanism to exert its power. It is a constitutional outrage that British companies are not free to trade without restriction to all parts of the sovereign United Kingdom. The checks that are now being demanded by the EU are so disproportionate as to be totally unreasonable. The British government bent over backwards to make a compromise to meet EU concerns that the Single Market could be compromised, but its goodwill has been exploited at every turn.

    At some point this has to stop, and the unilateral extension of the grace period is the inevitable consequence of EU inflexibility. It is not, as the Irish government unhelpfully says, a breach of international law. What it is, is a sign that Britain’s patience with the EU on this issue is about to expire.


    https://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2021/03/iain-dale-the-eu-has-no-interest-in-northern-irelands-future-prosperity-it-just-sees-it-as-a-mechanism-to-exert-its-power.html

    Bollox. It is the compromise arrangement that we insisted on. It is the trade deal that we negotiated. It is the operational model we signed. The EU had no interest at all in interjecting itself into the internal matters of a post-EU UK, where anyone with a brain can see that a GB-NI border is bonkers.

    So, we are back to the unsolvable issue of the intra-Irish border. It must be open and unimpeded, but has to provide the hard border between the EU and UK demanded by our government. They proposed that we stay in the customs union and aligned to EU standards until a technology solution could be found. No, WE LEAVE NOW we demanded. Which means the only other place for the border is the Irish Sea.

    Why do you think the Boris Burrows all lead to the Isle of Man? We have to put the customs post for the Boris Border somewhere, and the IoM fancies running duty free stores.
    No. Just don't have a hard border anywhere, problem solved. Fudge is the spirit of the GFA.
    Protecting the integrity of the SM was the EU's one and only true red line. That violates it.
    That's their problem. Ours is protecting the integrity of the UK.

    We should do whatever it takes, upto and including A16, to do our priority.
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Even if it is 200k why doesn't Boris pay for it himself ?

    After he leaves politics he'll be able to 'earn' that much by giving a speech or two.

    Boris Johnson is not a man of sound personal finances.

    Remember back in 2008 when Ken Livingstone challenged Boris Johnson to publish his tax returns hoping to find tax dodges only to find that Johnson was on PAYE for everything and paying way more tax than he should than if he went limited liability.

    Remember Johnson has two ex wives and countless kids to support.

    I suspect every future bit of income is already spoken for.
    He will make TRILLIONS for his memoirs tho. That is his pension, and it is huge.

    Imagine the stories. He was the politician who delivered the Brexit referendum and as prime minister delivered the final version of Brexit. AND he has been PM during Covid. World shaking things. Add in the rest of his extremely colourful life, journalism, the Spectator, London mayor, scandals, womanising, gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary.... and of course he is a very gifted writer, unlike 90% of political memoirists.

    He will get many millions for these memoirs, in the UK, USA and elsewhere. I imagine they will do two or three volumes, given the amount of material

    He is destined to be extremely comfortable.
    How much are you willing to stake on Boris Johnson on making trillions for his memoirs?
    More seriously I reckon he could earn £10m from them. Worldwide. He is the first British Prime Minister since Thatcher with a global profile - recognisable around the world. And he has an incredible, once-in-a-century insider story to tell. Brexit and the Plague. AND he is an excellent and entertaining writer. Ker-CHING
    I think that is correct.

    For a start, I don't expect his memoirs to be true.

    They will be hugely entertaining and crafted to sustain & build the Boris mythology.

    And then there will be the Netflix miniseries ....

    Global Celeb-dom. Serial shagging. Probably another couple of broken marriages and many more young mistresses.

    So, why the hell does he want to lead the Tories into the next election?

    There is so much more waiting for him.
    Something in that. However he is clearly a man who gets easily bored. Being Prime Minister is a tough job, but it is also highly exciting - full of drama and adrenaline (Thatcher talks of the compulsive quality of the job, in HER memoirs). That might keep him in Number 10 for quite a while. Fear of the relative tedium that comes after

    After he got ill, I thought he'd go this year. Now I am far from sure. He's got his mojo back, he looks better, he's high in the polls, he's relatively popular. The faithful still love him. He's redeemed himself with the vaccines.

    He might now last until the next election. Win that, then finally retire to his memoir and his mistresses and his newly minted fortune.
    For the memoirs, Boris hardly needs to bother writing them himself, as they don't need to be true.

    He just needs a ghost writer with a lively, highly-eroticised imagination.

    If only we knew where SeanT was, ....
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    This is more like it. The question is, is it too late?

    Yes - Cummings left Downing Street months ago.

    Good old Sir Keir, always red-hot with the breaking news... :lol:
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    MaxPB said:

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    This is more like it. The question is, is it too late?

    Lol is it? Dominic Cummings got sacked. That attack makes no sense and speaks to the twittersphere to get likes and makes no impact in the real world.
    Agree the Dominic Cummings reference looks odd. It feels a bit focus-grouped.

    He should have gone with Dido Harding, even though most people don’t know who she is.

    His audience on Twitter is not the blue wall, but opinion-makers.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1367809830044467206

    This is more like it. The question is, is it too late?

    Yes - Cummings left Downing Street months ago.

    Good old Sir Keir, always red-hot with the breaking news... :lol:
    No different from other misquotes we've seen this week
  • Fysics_TeacherFysics_Teacher Posts: 6,060
    Roger said:

    OT. I've been asked to judge various art courses at Manchester Metropolitan University over the years so when i hear the name I take an interest. It seems to have been something of a hotbed for future radical Labour MPs. Laura Pidcock was a student as was Rebecca Long-Bailey.

    This morning on radio 4 I heard of another. Jack Renshaw. Poster boy for the British fascists and currently serving 20 years for planning to kill a Labour MP.

    I wondered whether there was a connection......

    The path from Labour to fascism is hardly unprecedented.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094
    edited March 2021

    IanB2 said:

    It can’t be lag, because we know most areas of London are calling up the 50s and some the 40s already. It must be a mix of missing people and refusals.
    The London data is very difficult as an estimated 700k have left town during the pandemic. Presumably they are still on GP lists, which would have been less accurate than most of the rest of the country in the first place due to the high turnover of people coming and going. Numbers from London might not be very reflective of whats actually happening.
    I also wonder how they are doing the sums.

    I know several Londoners down here doing a SeanT for the lockdown, who were initially offered appointments in London, but managed to get them rebooked down here.

    It’s possible that once they are done, they are added to the London stats and so the figures are correct.

    It’s also possible that the stats in that map are worked out by dividing the number of vaccinations given in a particular area by the number of people registered on the list in that same area. Which would overestimate the proportion ‘done’ in the rural areas that people have fled to during the pandemic, and understate the proportion for the cities they have deserted.
  • kingbongokingbongo Posts: 393
    Charles said:

    Foxy said:

    Iain Dale in ConHome:

    The EU has no interest in Northern Ireland’s future prosperity. It just sees it as a mechanism to exert its power. It is a constitutional outrage that British companies are not free to trade without restriction to all parts of the sovereign United Kingdom. The checks that are now being demanded by the EU are so disproportionate as to be totally unreasonable. The British government bent over backwards to make a compromise to meet EU concerns that the Single Market could be compromised, but its goodwill has been exploited at every turn.

    At some point this has to stop, and the unilateral extension of the grace period is the inevitable consequence of EU inflexibility. It is not, as the Irish government unhelpfully says, a breach of international law. What it is, is a sign that Britain’s patience with the EU on this issue is about to expire.


    https://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2021/03/iain-dale-the-eu-has-no-interest-in-northern-irelands-future-prosperity-it-just-sees-it-as-a-mechanism-to-exert-its-power.html

    Bollox. It is the compromise arrangement that we insisted on. It is the trade deal that we negotiated. It is the operational model we signed. The EU had no interest at all in interjecting itself into the internal matters of a post-EU UK, where anyone with a brain can see that a GB-NI border is bonkers.

    So, we are back to the unsolvable issue of the intra-Irish border. It must be open and unimpeded, but has to provide the hard border between the EU and UK demanded by our government. They proposed that we stay in the customs union and aligned to EU standards until a technology solution could be found. No, WE LEAVE NOW we demanded. Which means the only other place for the border is the Irish Sea.

    Why do you think the Boris Burrows all lead to the Isle of Man? We have to put the customs post for the Boris Border somewhere, and the IoM fancies running duty free stores.
    No. Just don't have a hard border anywhere, problem solved. Fudge is the spirit of the GFA.
    Fudge cannot be law.

    It is Brexit that created that border, and the Brexiteers who decided to put it in the Irish Sea.

    That is what we agreed to in the "oven ready deal".
    A border in the Irish Sea breaches the Good Friday Agreement as much as one on the island of Ireland.

    There was a transitory thrill of Schadenfreude at seeing the DUP get shafted by Johnson, but we all have to deal with the consequences now.

    With hindsight, the 2016 referendum should have been in England alone on English independence from the UK and the EU. That's the movement that's taken us to this point - an England not willing to bind itself to commitments to its neighbours in Europe, or the islands of Britain and Ireland.

    My preference would be for an England comfortable with playing a collaborative role in European and British Unions - but those English politicians not signed up to that should have the courage to take their convictions to their logical conclusion - and work for a transition to English independence.

    It's irresponsible to allow an English Nationalist delusion to cause damage to others.
    The fundamental problem is that the GFA was designed in a world where the UK and Ireland were both in the EU

    The UK’s proposal was to take the objective of the GFA and design a new structure for a new world

    The EU said the GFA must not change despite a core assumption not being valid any longer.

    And people wonder why it is under strain?
    The big problem I have noticed is the idea that there can be no border at the border because the IRA wouldn't like it . All the talk is the danger of a return to republican violence - the EU still seem blithely unaware that the IRA and its chums are not the only nutters in NI - the threat of so-called loyalist violence is real.

    Simply braying 'Boris signed up to it suck it up, you won' is a silly refrain from some on this board that takes us no further in solving the very real problem of a border inside the UK. The solution can be mutually agreed but I still don't see why protecting the EU single market is principally the job of the UK - if the EU really thinks the risks are that high put the checks at the Irish ports and the ferries to France. Joint action on anything genuinely damaging to the integrity of the SM could be undertaken even a new jointly staffed Trade Protection Force with polo shirts, cagoules and maybe some Toyata Hiluxes could be formed.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,676
    Selebian said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    Two genuinely stupid moves by Johnson yesterday and both can easily be linked. The first is this story about the No 10 refit which is just crass and stupid. It says Johnson is worried - well he bloody well should be. And if the story is true then he should be ashamed.

    The second story - which for me is linked - is the idiotic decision to give NHS staff a pay rise below inflation. It just looks callous and makes a mockery of all the claims about how important they are and how much they are valued.

    Yes things are tough and yes we can't keep splashing taxpayers money around all over the place without regard for the debt but a 1% pay rise is £340 million. So go for 5% and make it meaningful. As the study by the London Economics consultancy shows the Government will get most of that back anyway in increased taxes.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/18/government-pay-rise-cost-nhs-england-staff-report

    As OGH says. Very poor optics across the board yesterday for Johnson.

    Agree 100%. I can live without a pay rise for next year - it would be nice but times are tough and I’m aware others are ahead in the queue - but after the year they’ve had NHS medical staff definitely deserve one. Especially nursing staff.

    I actually think this ridiculously low one for a small number is worse than none at all. It looks tokenistic.
    Personally, I have no problem with 1%, and a blanket payrise for all NHS staff is poorly targeted.

    An extra 2 weeks paid holiday for all those who worked in covid units, to be taken later in the year for recovery would be my suggestion.

    As would be investment in training, so redeployed staff are not punished for not acquiring the skills that they should have been developing. My registrar has been on covid ICU for 3 months so has missed a large chunk of her Specialist Training. She is at risk of missing career progression as a result.
    Paid holiday is a great idea. Give them all £1,000 tax free to spend on it too.

    But the next couple of years are also going to see the NHS under extreme stress as they deal with the vast backlog of treatment deferred. The staff are going to be under the cosh into the mid-distance.

    And politically, unlike the NHS there are going to be so many people in the private sector who have lost their jobs, taken pay cuts, lost pensions. They might also rightly claim they have made a huge sacrifice in these times of Covid.
    A nurse with 10 years service already gets 10 weeks holiday
    One problem with 10 or so weeks holiday is that, as posted elsewhere, you can't afford to do much with all of it. Staff rotas are a bugger, too.
    Back in the day I used to get 7 weeks, plus Time in Lieu for nights and Sundays. I did know one or two people who tried to save them up for a major trip, but that was frowned upon.
    This is certainly a huge problem in many private companies. A lot of the staff people I work with who get 25 days a year plus public but who also have to do additional time for operations and get it in lieu will get to the end of the year and find they still have 3 or 4 weeks worth of holiday that they just can't take. Most companies have a 'use it or lose it' policy as they can't afford to have staff build up huge amounts of holiday time and as a result giving people extra holiday time as a reward is pretty pointless.
    It isn't true that nurses with 10 years service get 10 weeks annual leave.

    "The following entitlements are taken from section 13 of the Afc handbook. This entitlement is for a full- time worker. Part-time staff receive a pro rata amount of annual leave and public holiday days.

    on appointment: 27 days leave and eight general public holiday days
    after five years service: 29 days leave + eight days general public holiday days
    after 10 years service: 33 days leave + eight days general public holiday days."

    From the RCN handbook.

    So 6.6 weeks based on a WTE reduced pro rata for part time.
    How is 41 days 6.6 weeks? It is 8.2 surely.

    Public holidays count.
    Not 10 weeks though.

    The statutory minimum is 28 days, at least pre Brexit, so only 13 days more than the legal minimum. Obviously Nurses work more Bank Holidays than most professions, so get more lieu days.

    After 32 years service, I get 32 days plus 8 BH, so not very different.
    If they are getting lieu days for bank holidays then its getting pretty close to ten weeks. Work four of them, get 45 days = 9 weeks. Much of the workforce doesnt get additional days off for working bank holidays.
    No, work 4 bank holidays then 4 days are lost and then switched to other days (I think). So still 41 days. You get to take the BH quota on other days instead, you don't get double.

    I get 38, BH included and did from day one (university) so arguably more generous over a career than for a nurse. In a previous 'new' university it was 35 + 8BH = 43, also from day one (hmmm, why did I leave!). Professional private sector seems to be 25 standard plus BH, but often with ability to buy more. That was case for my wife, she bought a week to match me and still got paid more than me net. She could have bought two weeks (maximum) and still got paid more than me!

    There are of course plenty of people with worse holiday than nurses. Plenty with worse pay too, but their package is by no means extraordinary for the skill/qualification level.
    I get 30 + 10

  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094
    Endillion said:

    IanB2 said:

    It can’t be lag, because we know most areas of London are calling up the 50s and some the 40s already. It must be a mix of missing people and refusals.
    The London data is very difficult as an estimated 700k have left town during the pandemic. Presumably they are still on GP lists, which would have been less accurate than most of the rest of the country in the first place due to the high turnover of people coming and going. Numbers from London might not be very reflective of whats actually happening.
    Indeed, although my suspicion is that much of the 700k exiles (net, I guess: there may have been some coming the other way) are not over the age of 65: mostly they'll be working age people who've gone to parents or other relatives, or second/first homes in the countryside, due to no longer having to commute daily.
    There are a fair few people of retirement age down here who shared SeanT’s inability to stay at home.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,458
    edited March 2021
    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    It can’t be lag, because we know most areas of London are calling up the 50s and some the 40s already. It must be a mix of missing people and refusals.
    The London data is very difficult as an estimated 700k have left town during the pandemic. Presumably they are still on GP lists, which would have been less accurate than most of the rest of the country in the first place due to the high turnover of people coming and going. Numbers from London might not be very reflective of whats actually happening.
    I also wonder how they are doing the sums.

    I know several Londoners down here doing a SeanT for the lockdown, who were initially offered appointments in London, but managed to get them rebooked down here.

    It’s possible that once they are done, they are added to the London stats and so the figures are correct.

    It’s also possible that the stats in that map are worked out by dividing the number of vaccinations given in a particular area by the number of people registered on the list in that same area. Which would overestimate the proportion ‘done’ in the rural areas that people have fled to during the pandemic, and understate the proportion for the cities they have deserted.
    They probably havent given it that much thought, some groups were showing over 100% vaccinated on yesterdays thread. I think thats fair enough, whilst users of this site will like to micro analyse the data its obviously more important that they just get on with delivering as many as they get per day than the exact order of who gets them.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,676
    It was hardly heart surgery , it was a procedure.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    It can’t be lag, because we know most areas of London are calling up the 50s and some the 40s already. It must be a mix of missing people and refusals.
    The London data is very difficult as an estimated 700k have left town during the pandemic. Presumably they are still on GP lists, which would have been less accurate than most of the rest of the country in the first place due to the high turnover of people coming and going. Numbers from London might not be very reflective of whats actually happening.
    I also wonder how they are doing the sums.

    I know several Londoners down here doing a SeanT for the lockdown, who were initially offered appointments in London, but managed to get them rebooked down here.

    It’s possible that once they are done, they are added to the London stats and so the figures are correct.

    It’s also possible that the stats in that map are worked out by dividing the number of vaccinations given in a particular area by the number of people registered on the list in that same area. Which would overestimate the proportion ‘done’ in the rural areas that people have fled to during the pandemic, and understate the proportion for the cities they have deserted.
    They probably havent given it that much thought, some groups were showing over 100% vaccinated on yesterdays thread. I think thats fair enough, whilst users of this site will like to micro analyse the data its obviously more important that they just get on with delivering as many as they get per day than the exact order of who gets them.
    Which points to the second of my possible approaches, and does mean that the lagging London story may well be mostly fake news.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Hmm, so one of our guys has a theory on why there isn't a funding/tax shortfall in the budget. The actuarial savings from 150k old people dying with a massive proportion in social care is huge but it's hidden in the detail. It could be around £8-10bn per year saved which is about the same as the predicted shortfall. It makes sense that the government won't advertise it though.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,095
    edited March 2021
    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    kjh said:

    kjh said:



    However on the point you thought I was making about prices - they do seem somewhat high, but I suspect we are talking about different things when we say refurbishing. However I suspect there are also some decorators who charge a lot more for the same service to the gullible rich.

    I think the point is that -- in a building like No 10 -- you will need to use heritage craftspeople, not trustatrader.

    If you need to replace a door, or some flooring, or a toilet cistern, then it will have to be constructed bespoke because the building & its interior is listed.

    The bespoke door or flooring will need to be made by a craftsman. The cistern may have to be sourced from a specialist dealer or made bespoke.

    That is how historic, listed buildings work.😉

    I have no idea whether the DM story is true, whether the sum is 200k, but your analogy was always ridiculous.
    I agree with the point you are making but we are talking about order of magnitude here. It is gross. And we are talking about decoration and furnishings. Now going back to my house (no please don't) my stairs and porch are solid oak and handmade. So how do you account for that difference? None of the stuff you mention even if by craftsman should cost this unless you are paying through the nose.
    Your stairs and porch are bespoke solid oak, sure.

    But if you replace something in Downing Street -- say a door -- then it will have to be exactly the same as the original.

    In practice, this will need to be a bespoke door made by a craftsperson in the same style as the original and with the same original material (if it can even be still sourced).

    The rates charged by heritage craftspeople are very different from the rates charged by builders. It is a completely different scale, and it probably is an order of magnitude.

    (As the building is listed, then any changes will need listed building consent, and so this will be insisted upon -- it is not Boris' and PNN's choice).
    Why would you change a door , they are renting the place and rent free at that.
    Well, things do wear out, you know. Things do need replacing every now and then. Particularly in an older property.

    The only point I am trying to make is it is not reasonable to compare the maintenance & up-keep of the fabric of 10 Downing Street to a family home.

    It is a heritage property and it will be more costly.
    Still the landlord should do the upgrading and select the materials and the cost of them , not the tenants. £30K a year is extremely generous to say the least.
    That would depend on the agreement, and where category lines are drawn.

    My dog tenants quite often do floors coverings and redecoration when they move in. It makes the relationship far smoother, and makes a somewhat lower rent attractive to both sides.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653
    Those who await the daily covid stats may be interested to know that according to my wife (who is volunteering at school to help with the LFTs from next week) the thousands upon thousands of negative LTF results from schoolchildren will NOT feed through to the the national stats. However, if a child tests positive he/she has to follow up with a PCR test which DOES feed through to test and trace and the national stats.

    So, from Monday expect both the number of new infections and the positivity rate to rise sharply.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    MaxPB said:

    Hmm, so one of our guys has a theory on why there isn't a funding/tax shortfall in the budget. The actuarial savings from 150k old people dying with a massive proportion in social care is huge but it's hidden in the detail. It could be around £8-10bn per year saved which is about the same as the predicted shortfall. It makes sense that the government won't advertise it though.

    It's £1.5bn apparently. I think that was posted on here during the budget.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    It can’t be lag, because we know most areas of London are calling up the 50s and some the 40s already. It must be a mix of missing people and refusals.
    The London data is very difficult as an estimated 700k have left town during the pandemic. Presumably they are still on GP lists, which would have been less accurate than most of the rest of the country in the first place due to the high turnover of people coming and going. Numbers from London might not be very reflective of whats actually happening.
    I also wonder how they are doing the sums.

    I know several Londoners down here doing a SeanT for the lockdown, who were initially offered appointments in London, but managed to get them rebooked down here.

    It’s possible that once they are done, they are added to the London stats and so the figures are correct.

    It’s also possible that the stats in that map are worked out by dividing the number of vaccinations given in a particular area by the number of people registered on the list in that same area. Which would overestimate the proportion ‘done’ in the rural areas that people have fled to during the pandemic, and understate the proportion for the cities they have deserted.
    We should have some 100%+ areas if that's the case ?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    tlg86 said:

    MaxPB said:

    Hmm, so one of our guys has a theory on why there isn't a funding/tax shortfall in the budget. The actuarial savings from 150k old people dying with a massive proportion in social care is huge but it's hidden in the detail. It could be around £8-10bn per year saved which is about the same as the predicted shortfall. It makes sense that the government won't advertise it though.

    It's £1.5bn apparently. I think that was posted on here during the budget.
    That's just pension savings iirc. There's also NHS and social care savings that aren't so visible.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,458
    tlg86 said:

    MaxPB said:

    Hmm, so one of our guys has a theory on why there isn't a funding/tax shortfall in the budget. The actuarial savings from 150k old people dying with a massive proportion in social care is huge but it's hidden in the detail. It could be around £8-10bn per year saved which is about the same as the predicted shortfall. It makes sense that the government won't advertise it though.

    It's £1.5bn apparently. I think that was posted on here during the budget.
    That is just state pension costs, not including related NHS and care costs.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    MaxPB said:

    tlg86 said:

    MaxPB said:

    Hmm, so one of our guys has a theory on why there isn't a funding/tax shortfall in the budget. The actuarial savings from 150k old people dying with a massive proportion in social care is huge but it's hidden in the detail. It could be around £8-10bn per year saved which is about the same as the predicted shortfall. It makes sense that the government won't advertise it though.

    It's £1.5bn apparently. I think that was posted on here during the budget.
    That's just pension savings iirc. There's also NHS and social care savings that aren't so visible.
    Ah right, interesting thought.
This discussion has been closed.