For as long as the Senedd does not even have a register of lobbyists, then I am not going to listen sympathetically to high-minded lectures about corruption from Labour party supporters.
As there is so much interest in possible corruption in Wales, lemme tell you a story of two airports.
The first is a failing airport in Scotland. Prestwick was bought by the Scottish Government for £1. Whether it was a good commercial decision or not, I cannot tell -- but it was not costly. It was a cheap valuation.
The second is a failing airport in Wales. Rhoose was bought by the Welsh Government for £ 52 million pounds. The airport has never made money -- even before the pandemic.
£1 versus £52 million pounds. Who made the valuations for these failing airports?
Shall we say, someone not unconnected with Welsh Labour made a huge amount of money on the transaction.
That kinda puts a 15 per cent share in a document shredding company in Wrecsam that got a contract with NHS Wales for £150k over 3 years into perspective.
Surely this shouldn't be a competition as to who is more corrupt. It doesn't make it alright to be a little corrupt because someone else is more corrupt.
In fact there doesn't even have to be corruption for there to be an issue. There is no evidence Matt Hancock is corrupt. No doubt Matt Hancock isn't corrupt at all, but it is immensely stupid not to realize that the person in charge of the NHS should not hold a 15% stake in an NHS approved supplier. That is a potential conflict in Interest and should be avoided.
1. There is no evidence that there is any corruption in the Great Wrecsam paper shredding story. It has generated hundreds of posts on pb.com.
2. By contrast, a massive fraud like the purchase of a failing airport by the Welsh Government for 52 million pounds (at the same time the Scottish Government bought a failing airport for £1) received hardly any notice. I'll warrant no pb-er even was aware of this dodgy business before I mentioned it. I'll also warrant that few pb-ers knew that the Labour controlled Senedd is the only Parliament without a register of lobbyists.
There are big crooks, little crooks and people who aren't crooks.
Why do the big crooks get no attention? And the people who aren't crooks (I am not even convinced that Hancock has done anything wrong, it is the Welsh NHS that gave the contract) get hundreds of posts?
It looks as though the people criticising Hancock aren't really interested in corruption.
Because if they were, they'd be going after much bigger targets.
And if Labour were interested in fighting corruption, instead of scoring petty points, there would actually be a register of lobbyists in the Senedd (like in Westminster and Holyrood). They STILLL have not committed to this.
Have the Tories and Plaid added the lobbyists register to their manifestos? Very disappointing if not.
A good question. I think the issue has caught all the Welsh parties unaware by suddenly coming to attention again.. So, I believe no party has made a manifesto commitment.
All the politicians are saying things like " We need to look at this again ... it is something we need to consider when the time is ripe ... we need to ensure that openness is at the heart of everything we do," without any formal commitment.
So, basically, BS.
In practice, it only matters what Labour/Plaid Cymru think (as they will be the next Government).
I doubt if Llafur will willingly do this, there is too much money to be made as things are.
I think the last time it came up, Llafur said they needed to see how things were working in Holyrood before coming to any decision.
The classic "we should do this, but the moment is not right" argument.
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. The choice is yet more Johnson chicanery or PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. The choice is yet more Johnson chicanery or PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
Just a shame the outcome you describe is a better one for the country. Instead we have an opposition keeping the government in office simply to protect its being the only opposition
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. It's yet more Johnson chicanery or it's PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
That's true, but I think you could go even further in two ways. Not only are the young Guardistas Labour's new base, they also provide its most enthusiastic activists. Many of them would have been horrified by Labour pivoting behind Brexit, and not a few would have jumped to the LDs.
The other point I'd make is that many in the second part of Labour's base, blacks and Muslims, would also have been horrified, as leaving the EU was seen as anti-immigrant (though few black and Muslim immigrants have come from the EU). They don't have an obvious party to go to, but they could have abstained in droves.
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. The choice is yet more Johnson chicanery or PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
Just a shame the outcome you describe is a better one for the country. Instead we have an opposition keeping the government in office simply to protect its being the only opposition
Well party interest tends to comes first in all of them. Look at the Cons choosing "winner" Boris Johnson and inflicting him on us. And take your lot, the LDs. They could have put Corbyn in as caretaker PM to deliver Ref2 and probably stop Brexit - supposedly their number one priority - but no, they preferred to pivot to extreme Remain (Revoke without Ref2) and have a crack at a GE and shoot for the stars (of supplanting Labour). Supplanting Labour being their real priority. Way way above reversing Brexit. Just as partisan as anyone.
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. The choice is yet more Johnson chicanery or PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
Just a shame the outcome you describe is a better one for the country. Instead we have an opposition keeping the government in office simply to protect its being the only opposition
In fairness the Lib Dems keep themselves in existence simply to do ... what, exactly?
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. It's yet more Johnson chicanery or it's PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
That's true, but I think you could go even further in two ways. Not only are the young Guardistas Labour's new base, they also provide its most enthusiastic activists. Many of them would have been horrified by Labour pivoting behind Brexit, and not a few would have jumped to the LDs.
The other point I'd make is that many in the second part of Labour's base, blacks and Muslims, would also have been horrified, as leaving the EU was seen as anti-immigrant (though few black and Muslim immigrants have come from the EU). They don't have an obvious party to go to, but they could have abstained in droves.
Yes - "British" is a more inclusive identity than "English".
For as long as the Senedd does not even have a register of lobbyists, then I am not going to listen sympathetically to high-minded lectures about corruption from Labour party supporters.
As there is so much interest in possible corruption in Wales, lemme tell you a story of two airports.
The first is a failing airport in Scotland. Prestwick was bought by the Scottish Government for £1. Whether it was a good commercial decision or not, I cannot tell -- but it was not costly. It was a cheap valuation.
The second is a failing airport in Wales. Rhoose was bought by the Welsh Government for £ 52 million pounds. The airport has never made money -- even before the pandemic.
£1 versus £52 million pounds. Who made the valuations for these failing airports?
Shall we say, someone not unconnected with Welsh Labour made a huge amount of money on the transaction.
That kinda puts a 15 per cent share in a document shredding company in Wrecsam that got a contract with NHS Wales for £150k over 3 years into perspective.
I said on here the other day that in my 15 years working in the construction industry I had never come across any corruption, and that I had only heard rumours of a few things. Well funnily enough the things I was aware of all happened in Wales. Now some might say that working in Bristol that's not that unlikely, but I have worked in across England notably not in Yorks / NE and in all home nations. The things I heard about were not easy to ignore (house extensions / last minute flights for a family to go and see the rugby in New Zealand / dodgy contracts). I have done anti bribery training every year and have always wondered why I was taking up my time!!!!
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. It's yet more Johnson chicanery or it's PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
That's true, but I think you could go even further in two ways. Not only are the young Guardistas Labour's new base, they also provide its most enthusiastic activists. Many of them would have been horrified by Labour pivoting behind Brexit, and not a few would have jumped to the LDs.
The other point I'd make is that many in the second part of Labour's base, blacks and Muslims, would also have been horrified, as leaving the EU was seen as anti-immigrant (though few black and Muslim immigrants have come from the EU). They don't have an obvious party to go to, but they could have abstained in droves.
Yes - "British" is a more inclusive identity than "English".
Britishness was basically invented to replace and suppress English and Scottish nationalism.
For as long as the Senedd does not even have a register of lobbyists, then I am not going to listen sympathetically to high-minded lectures about corruption from Labour party supporters.
As there is so much interest in possible corruption in Wales, lemme tell you a story of two airports.
The first is a failing airport in Scotland. Prestwick was bought by the Scottish Government for £1. Whether it was a good commercial decision or not, I cannot tell -- but it was not costly. It was a cheap valuation.
The second is a failing airport in Wales. Rhoose was bought by the Welsh Government for £ 52 million pounds. The airport has never made money -- even before the pandemic.
£1 versus £52 million pounds. Who made the valuations for these failing airports?
Shall we say, someone not unconnected with Welsh Labour made a huge amount of money on the transaction.
That kinda puts a 15 per cent share in a document shredding company in Wrecsam that got a contract with NHS Wales for £150k over 3 years into perspective.
Surely this shouldn't be a competition as to who is more corrupt. It doesn't make it alright to be a little corrupt because someone else is more corrupt.
In fact there doesn't even have to be corruption for there to be an issue. There is no evidence Matt Hancock is corrupt. No doubt Matt Hancock isn't corrupt at all, but it is immensely stupid not to realize that the person in charge of the NHS should not hold a 15% stake in an NHS approved supplier. That is a potential conflict in Interest and should be avoided.
1. There is no evidence that there is any corruption in the Great Wrecsam paper shredding story. It has generated hundreds of posts on pb.com.
2. By contrast, a massive fraud like the purchase of a failing airport by the Welsh Government for 52 million pounds (at the same time the Scottish Government bought a failing airport for £1) received hardly any notice. I'll warrant no pb-er even was aware of this dodgy business before I mentioned it. I'll also warrant that few pb-ers knew that the Labour controlled Senedd is the only Parliament without a register of lobbyists.
There are big crooks, little crooks and people who aren't crooks.
Why do the big crooks get no attention? And the people who aren't crooks (I am not even convinced that Hancock has done anything wrong, it is the Welsh NHS that gave the contract) get hundreds of posts?
It looks as though the people criticising Hancock aren't really interested in corruption.
Because if they were, they'd be going after much bigger targets.
And if Labour were interested in fighting corruption, instead of scoring petty points, there would actually be a register of lobbyists in the Senedd (like in Westminster and Holyrood). They STILLL have not committed to this.
Have the Tories and Plaid added the lobbyists register to their manifestos? Very disappointing if not.
A good question. I think the issue has caught all the Welsh parties unaware by suddenly coming to attention again.. So, I believe no party has made a manifesto commitment.
All the politicians are saying things like " We need to look at this again ... it is something we need to consider when the time is ripe ... we need to ensure that openness is at the heart of everything we do," without any formal commitment.
So, basically, BS.
In practice, it only matters what Labour/Plaid Cymru think (as they will be the next Government).
I doubt if Llafur will willingly do this, there is too much money to be made as things are.
I think the last time it came up, Llafur said they needed to see how things were working in Holyrood before coming to any decision.
The classic "we should do this, but the moment is not right" argument.
You can still get 16/1 on Pedro Acosta to win the Moto3 championship which are absurd odds considering how dominant he has been over the first three races. You're basically betting that he won't injure himself in way that keeps him out for 2-3 races.
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. It's yet more Johnson chicanery or it's PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
That's true, but I think you could go even further in two ways. Not only are the young Guardistas Labour's new base, they also provide its most enthusiastic activists. Many of them would have been horrified by Labour pivoting behind Brexit, and not a few would have jumped to the LDs.
The other point I'd make is that many in the second part of Labour's base, blacks and Muslims, would also have been horrified, as leaving the EU was seen as anti-immigrant (though few black and Muslim immigrants have come from the EU). They don't have an obvious party to go to, but they could have abstained in droves.
Yes - "British" is a more inclusive identity than "English".
Britishness was basically invented to replace and suppress English and Scottish nationalism.
It really doesn't matter what the origin of it was, 300 years together and the fact is that despite richnesses of local culture and heritage, largely across Britain we think alike, act alike, and share similar aspirations, despite a minority desperately trying to tell themselves and anyone who will listen that this isn't the case.
1 - Up to 2 weeks for contracted COVID to become symptomatic. 2 - 15 days for a vaccine dose to give some protection. 3 - 18-20% of population are in extremely clinically vulnerable adults + over 70s cohorts. 4 - 48% of population in clinically vulnerable adults + over 50s cohorts. 5 - 70% of adults vaccinated gives a measure of herd immunity.
(Just running a sliderule over the Belgian un-lockdown.)
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. It's yet more Johnson chicanery or it's PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
That's true, but I think you could go even further in two ways. Not only are the young Guardistas Labour's new base, they also provide its most enthusiastic activists. Many of them would have been horrified by Labour pivoting behind Brexit, and not a few would have jumped to the LDs.
The other point I'd make is that many in the second part of Labour's base, blacks and Muslims, would also have been horrified, as leaving the EU was seen as anti-immigrant (though few black and Muslim immigrants have come from the EU). They don't have an obvious party to go to, but they could have abstained in droves.
Yes - "British" is a more inclusive identity than "English".
Britishness was basically invented to replace and suppress English and Scottish nationalism.
Stopped working for the latter for a while now, and it's wearing off for the former at an alarming rate. Tbf to Labour, not something I'm often accused of, they're in a tough place. Britishness was another thing they took for granted, like the North, Wales, Scotland etc. They've left it a helluva late to develop a coherent, convincing version of Britishness (Cool Britannia obviously being a load of shallow bollocks) with which, excuse the stereotypes, both remainy, metropolitan types and northern WC patriots would feel comfortable.
For as long as the Senedd does not even have a register of lobbyists, then I am not going to listen sympathetically to high-minded lectures about corruption from Labour party supporters.
As there is so much interest in possible corruption in Wales, lemme tell you a story of two airports.
The first is a failing airport in Scotland. Prestwick was bought by the Scottish Government for £1. Whether it was a good commercial decision or not, I cannot tell -- but it was not costly. It was a cheap valuation.
The second is a failing airport in Wales. Rhoose was bought by the Welsh Government for £ 52 million pounds. The airport has never made money -- even before the pandemic.
£1 versus £52 million pounds. Who made the valuations for these failing airports?
Shall we say, someone not unconnected with Welsh Labour made a huge amount of money on the transaction.
That kinda puts a 15 per cent share in a document shredding company in Wrecsam that got a contract with NHS Wales for £150k over 3 years into perspective.
Underwriting the losses of Prestwick airport has cost the Scottish taxpayer something up to £30m so far, and that is for the period pre-Covid. Hate to think what the accounts are going to show for last year.
Not that that excuses or explains what happened in Wales though.
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. The choice is yet more Johnson chicanery or PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
Just a shame the outcome you describe is a better one for the country. Instead we have an opposition keeping the government in office simply to protect its being the only opposition
In fairness the Lib Dems keep themselves in existence simply to do ... what, exactly?
Make a select few feel better about themselves, presumably. It's very easy to affect moral superiority when you are not actually responsible for anything. The Coalition was trickier and they have never quite recovered.
You can still get 16/1 on Pedro Acosta to win the Moto3 championship which are absurd odds considering how dominant he has been over the first three races. You're basically betting that he won't injure himself in way that keeps him out for 2-3 races.
Went to stick a quid on but there's no betfair market. Only something called "Moto GP".
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. It's yet more Johnson chicanery or it's PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
That's true, but I think you could go even further in two ways. Not only are the young Guardistas Labour's new base, they also provide its most enthusiastic activists. Many of them would have been horrified by Labour pivoting behind Brexit, and not a few would have jumped to the LDs.
The other point I'd make is that many in the second part of Labour's base, blacks and Muslims, would also have been horrified, as leaving the EU was seen as anti-immigrant (though few black and Muslim immigrants have come from the EU). They don't have an obvious party to go to, but they could have abstained in droves.
Yes - "British" is a more inclusive identity than "English".
Britishness was basically invented to replace and suppress English and Scottish nationalism.
It really doesn't matter what the origin of it was, 300 years together and the fact is that despite richnesses of local culture and heritage, largely across Britain we think alike, act alike, and share similar aspirations, despite a minority desperately trying to tell themselves and anyone who will listen that this isn't the case.
I was thinking more from the ethnic minority point of view. They are less likely to identify as primarily English (as opposed to British) than the white population. I suppose this could change over time if the UK were to break up.
1 - Up to 2 weeks for contracted COVID to become symptomatic. 2 - 15 days for a vaccine dose to give some protection. 3 - 18-20% of population are in extremely clinically vulnerable adults + over 70s cohorts. 4 - 48% of population in clinically vulnerable adults + over 50s cohorts. 5 - 70% of adults vaccinated gives a measure of herd immunity.
(Just running a sliderule over the Belgian un-lockdown.)
annoyingly we don't know the answer to 5 as i know.
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. It's yet more Johnson chicanery or it's PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
That's true, but I think you could go even further in two ways. Not only are the young Guardistas Labour's new base, they also provide its most enthusiastic activists. Many of them would have been horrified by Labour pivoting behind Brexit, and not a few would have jumped to the LDs.
The other point I'd make is that many in the second part of Labour's base, blacks and Muslims, would also have been horrified, as leaving the EU was seen as anti-immigrant (though few black and Muslim immigrants have come from the EU). They don't have an obvious party to go to, but they could have abstained in droves.
Yes - "British" is a more inclusive identity than "English".
Britishness was basically invented to replace and suppress English and Scottish nationalism.
It really doesn't matter what the origin of it was, 300 years together and the fact is that despite richnesses of local culture and heritage, largely across Britain we think alike, act alike, and share similar aspirations, despite a minority desperately trying to tell themselves and anyone who will listen that this isn't the case.
I think it does matter what its origin was - identities formed from below tend to be much stronger than those imposed from above. Now that many of the causes of the Union (Tudor childlessness, French expansionism, the Empire and so on) have gone and there is an alternative to which many Scots are attracted (the EU), we've seen how difficult it is to make a non-economic case for it.
And now the dog has scoffed half a fairy cake with raisins in behind our backs - off to the vet now!
A couple of months ago I would have said 'why?', but we acquired a puppy and can't believe what is poisonous to dogs. How they get past being puppies I don't know as ours goes for everything; the more deadly the better. Ours chews stones. If we shook him I'm sure he would rattle.
You can still get 16/1 on Pedro Acosta to win the Moto3 championship which are absurd odds considering how dominant he has been over the first three races. You're basically betting that he won't injure himself in way that keeps him out for 2-3 races.
Went to stick a quid on but there's no betfair market. Only something called "Moto GP".
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. The choice is yet more Johnson chicanery or PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
Just a shame the outcome you describe is a better one for the country. Instead we have an opposition keeping the government in office simply to protect its being the only opposition
In fairness the Lib Dems keep themselves in existence simply to do ... what, exactly?
Make a select few feel better about themselves, presumably. It's very easy to affect moral superiority when you are not actually responsible for anything. The Coalition was trickier and they have never quite recovered.
It is charming how many of them seem to think they'd come off any better from a coalition with Labour!
" a comparative study by Italy’s medicines regulator found fewer fatalities per 100,000 doses from the Astra jab than both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The tide is again turning, this time back in AstraZeneca’s favour."
Allegations that politicians and advisers at the centre of power today may be using public positions – intentionally or unintentionally – to benefit their private interests are surfacing and being trawled over in the media. “Johnson may have made a big mistake here with this big inquiry,” said one Tory MP. “Something this big and wide is the last thing any government needs.”
The dangers for government are becoming clearer by the day. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, who met Cameron and Greensill for a drink during which they lobbied him over a potential contract, came under scrutiny over his shareholding in a family firm approved to bid for NHS contracts. He insists he has broken no rules.
Two of Johnson’s most senior advisers – his deputy chief of staff Simone Finn, and Francis Maude, who has been conducting an unremunerated review of civil service reform for the prime minister – are facing questions over whether their private financial interests are advanced by their public roles.
Cameron’s defenders say he has no interest in taking revenge for the Greensill leaks. But he may not need to. There is already a sense that if those who leaked against him were doing so from inside government, the tactic has misfired. “If they thought it would stop with Cameron then they were plain stupid. This could now end up exploding on their own government,” said a senior figure who has straddled the Cameron, Theresa May and Johnson premierships in Whitehall.
There are now no fewer than seven disparate inquiries into Greensill and wider lobbying issues. Lobbying rules now look certain to be tightened. Suddenly, as a result of the Greensill-Cameron affair and the fallout from it, the political mood in Westminster has changed. The Tories are reeling while Labour – which had seemed to lack a line of attack since the turn of the year as Conservative fortunes rebounded thanks to the successful vaccine roll-out – has an issue to focus on that it knows could damage Johnson, his government and his party.
It would be interesting to know who this person is who straddled the Cameron, May and Johnson government and of course Labour will try to make political capital out of it
However, they may face their own problems over corruption in the coming months, not least when details of the issues in Liverpool are made public
Well, if there’s a minister involved, there’s only one that served all of them, and he also notably fell out with all of them.
There must be more than one, I guess you mean Gove, but think Javid and Truss were cabinet ministers for all three, Hancock, Leadsom and Patel ministers for all three, probably others as well.
I took the quote to mean a senior civil servant, speaking off the record.
I really think civil servants are going to face serious questions over the Greensill affair, and will no doubt be under the spotlight in the 8 enquiries
Both them and the cabinet are a bunch of crooks. Should be a shedload of them in the jail by now. People who vote for these scumbags again are easily pleased.
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. The choice is yet more Johnson chicanery or PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
Just a shame the outcome you describe is a better one for the country. Instead we have an opposition keeping the government in office simply to protect its being the only opposition
In fairness the Lib Dems keep themselves in existence simply to do ... what, exactly?
Make a select few feel better about themselves, presumably. It's very easy to affect moral superiority when you are not actually responsible for anything. The Coalition was trickier and they have never quite recovered.
It is charming how many of them seem to think they'd come off any better from a coalition with Labour!
Yep, governing is hard and involves difficult sub-optimal choices and compromises. Its not really for the pure of heart. Which must be a great relief to Boris, I suppose.
Afternoon. Just about to take a family member to a vaccination centre for their second jab. Maybe the total for second doses will reach 10 million today.
You can still get 16/1 on Pedro Acosta to win the Moto3 championship which are absurd odds considering how dominant he has been over the first three races. You're basically betting that he won't injure himself in way that keeps him out for 2-3 races.
Went to stick a quid on but there's no betfair market. Only something called "Moto GP".
Had to visit tip today to empty shed as we are going to be moving in a couple of months
Tip was back to pre covid set up - no restrictions.
I drove past a funfair ........
Slightly bemused that is ok but the plod decided my son's bar could not open
Oh - and I see the story about our Russian "tourist" friends visit to the Check republic is all over the news.
The Russians really are a bloody menace.
Labour should thank their lucky stars they ditched Corbyn..... (Plenty of other reasons I know)
What has the non-Corbyn government and opposition said about the Czech explosion or are we waiting for all the facts to be established?
The facts seem to be that those Russian tourists who allegedly spread a biological weapon over a door handle in this country to kill a critic of Mr Putin were in the Czech republic at the same time as there was a fatal explosion. They seem to be remarkably unlucky. Thank goodness they assured us on TV that they did not work for the GRU or we wouldn't know what to think.
For as long as the Senedd does not even have a register of lobbyists, then I am not going to listen sympathetically to high-minded lectures about corruption from Labour party supporters.
As there is so much interest in possible corruption in Wales, lemme tell you a story of two airports.
The first is a failing airport in Scotland. Prestwick was bought by the Scottish Government for £1. Whether it was a good commercial decision or not, I cannot tell -- but it was not costly. It was a cheap valuation.
The second is a failing airport in Wales. Rhoose was bought by the Welsh Government for £ 52 million pounds. The airport has never made money -- even before the pandemic.
£1 versus £52 million pounds. Who made the valuations for these failing airports?
Shall we say, someone not unconnected with Welsh Labour made a huge amount of money on the transaction.
That kinda puts a 15 per cent share in a document shredding company in Wrecsam that got a contract with NHS Wales for £150k over 3 years into perspective.
Underwriting the losses of Prestwick airport has cost the Scottish taxpayer something up to £30m so far, and that is for the period pre-Covid. Hate to think what the accounts are going to show for last year.
Not that that excuses or explains what happened in Wales though.
peanuts for the jobs it saved , less than one Tory bung and shedloads of jobs supported for years, .
Had to visit tip today to empty shed as we are going to be moving in a couple of months
Tip was back to pre covid set up - no restrictions.
I drove past a funfair ........
Slightly bemused that is ok but the plod decided my son's bar could not open
Oh - and I see the story about our Russian "tourist" friends visit to the Check republic is all over the news.
The Russians really are a bloody menace.
Labour should thank their lucky stars they ditched Corbyn..... (Plenty of other reasons I know)
What has the non-Corbyn government and opposition said about the Czech explosion or are we waiting for all the facts to be established?
I'm confident the government already knows the facts, as it's likely the UK and Czech governments have been sharing infomation about this case given the suspects are the same. Once you have identified a Russian intelligence officer you are going to ask "where else have they been?"
" a comparative study by Italy’s medicines regulator found fewer fatalities per 100,000 doses from the Astra jab than both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The tide is again turning, this time back in AstraZeneca’s favour."
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. The choice is yet more Johnson chicanery or PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
Just a shame the outcome you describe is a better one for the country. Instead we have an opposition keeping the government in office simply to protect its being the only opposition
In fairness the Lib Dems keep themselves in existence simply to do ... what, exactly?
To fulfil their historic destiny of being the first mainstream party brave enough to advance the frontiers of policy (soft drugs being the next), and offering dissatisfied Tories someone at least halfway credible to vote for.
For as long as the Senedd does not even have a register of lobbyists, then I am not going to listen sympathetically to high-minded lectures about corruption from Labour party supporters.
As there is so much interest in possible corruption in Wales, lemme tell you a story of two airports.
The first is a failing airport in Scotland. Prestwick was bought by the Scottish Government for £1. Whether it was a good commercial decision or not, I cannot tell -- but it was not costly. It was a cheap valuation.
The second is a failing airport in Wales. Rhoose was bought by the Welsh Government for £ 52 million pounds. The airport has never made money -- even before the pandemic.
£1 versus £52 million pounds. Who made the valuations for these failing airports?
Shall we say, someone not unconnected with Welsh Labour made a huge amount of money on the transaction.
That kinda puts a 15 per cent share in a document shredding company in Wrecsam that got a contract with NHS Wales for £150k over 3 years into perspective.
Underwriting the losses of Prestwick airport has cost the Scottish taxpayer something up to £30m so far, and that is for the period pre-Covid. Hate to think what the accounts are going to show for last year.
Not that that excuses or explains what happened in Wales though.
Of course, the Welsh Govt is underwriting many tens of millions of pounds losses in Rhoose, as well.
But, the extraordinary fact is that the Welsh Govt paid 52 million pounds for the privilege of doing so.
Rhoose airport did not have an access road.
So there is also the ongoing costs of building an access road to the airport, so that people can actually use this valuable asset .
(The land had to be bought from local Councillors, winkety-wink). That was another £26 million.
1 - Up to 2 weeks for contracted COVID to become symptomatic. 2 - 15 days for a vaccine dose to give some protection. 3 - 18-20% of population are in extremely clinically vulnerable adults + over 70s cohorts. 4 - 48% of population in clinically vulnerable adults + over 50s cohorts. 5 - 70% of adults vaccinated gives a measure of herd immunity.
(Just running a sliderule over the Belgian un-lockdown.)
1 is not so long. For 2, 12-14 days seems to be the range. For 5 the new variants have pushed this nearer to 80%
1 - Up to 2 weeks for contracted COVID to become symptomatic. 2 - 15 days for a vaccine dose to give some protection. 3 - 18-20% of population are in extremely clinically vulnerable adults + over 70s cohorts. 4 - 48% of population in clinically vulnerable adults + over 50s cohorts. 5 - 70% of adults vaccinated gives a measure of herd immunity.
(Just running a sliderule over the Belgian un-lockdown.)
1 is not so long. For 2, 12-14 days seems to be the range. For 5 the new variants have pushed this nearer to 80%
1 - Up to 2 weeks for contracted COVID to become symptomatic. 2 - 15 days for a vaccine dose to give some protection. 3 - 18-20% of population are in extremely clinically vulnerable adults + over 70s cohorts. 4 - 48% of population in clinically vulnerable adults + over 50s cohorts. 5 - 70% of adults vaccinated gives a measure of herd immunity.
(Just running a sliderule over the Belgian un-lockdown.)
annoyingly we don't know the answer to 5 as i know.
It depends on what you mean by "a measure of herd immunity". Given that the vaccines *do* retard transmission as well as infection - numbers such as 60% have been mentioned.... then at 70% of of adults you would definitely see a reduction in R.
You probably wouldn't see full herd immunity - COVID dies out with no restrictions.
Had to visit tip today to empty shed as we are going to be moving in a couple of months
Tip was back to pre covid set up - no restrictions.
I drove past a funfair ........
Slightly bemused that is ok but the plod decided my son's bar could not open
Oh - and I see the story about our Russian "tourist" friends visit to the Check republic is all over the news.
The Russians really are a bloody menace.
Labour should thank their lucky stars they ditched Corbyn..... (Plenty of other reasons I know)
What has the non-Corbyn government and opposition said about the Czech explosion or are we waiting for all the facts to be established?
I'm confident the government already knows the facts, as it's likely the UK and Czech governments have been sharing infomation about this case given the suspects are the same. Once you have identified a Russian intelligence officer you are going to ask "where else have they been?"
In the Good Olde Days of the Cold War, the huge clearcuts of KGB from embassies in various countries weren't because they'd just been found. It was more that the government in question had decided to "send a message" so they told their intelligence agencies/diplomatic civil servants to send x percent of the known Russian agents home....
For as long as the Senedd does not even have a register of lobbyists, then I am not going to listen sympathetically to high-minded lectures about corruption from Labour party supporters.
As there is so much interest in possible corruption in Wales, lemme tell you a story of two airports.
The first is a failing airport in Scotland. Prestwick was bought by the Scottish Government for £1. Whether it was a good commercial decision or not, I cannot tell -- but it was not costly. It was a cheap valuation.
The second is a failing airport in Wales. Rhoose was bought by the Welsh Government for £ 52 million pounds. The airport has never made money -- even before the pandemic.
£1 versus £52 million pounds. Who made the valuations for these failing airports?
Shall we say, someone not unconnected with Welsh Labour made a huge amount of money on the transaction.
That kinda puts a 15 per cent share in a document shredding company in Wrecsam that got a contract with NHS Wales for £150k over 3 years into perspective.
Underwriting the losses of Prestwick airport has cost the Scottish taxpayer something up to £30m so far, and that is for the period pre-Covid. Hate to think what the accounts are going to show for last year.
Not that that excuses or explains what happened in Wales though.
Of course, the Welsh Govt is underwriting many tens of millions of pounds losses in Rhoose, as well.
But, the extraordinary fact is that the Welsh Govt paid 52 million pounds for the privilege of doing so.
Rhoose airport did not have an access road.
So there is also the ongoing costs of building an access road to the airport, so that people can actually use this valuable asset .
(The land had to be bought from local Councillors, winkety-wink). That was another £26 million.
The Welsh government came very close to tipping £350m+ into the doomed Circuit of Wales project and only didn't do it because the insurer refused to underwrite the risk. It would have been an interesting circuit though; like Assen and Valencia combined.
For as long as the Senedd does not even have a register of lobbyists, then I am not going to listen sympathetically to high-minded lectures about corruption from Labour party supporters.
As there is so much interest in possible corruption in Wales, lemme tell you a story of two airports.
The first is a failing airport in Scotland. Prestwick was bought by the Scottish Government for £1. Whether it was a good commercial decision or not, I cannot tell -- but it was not costly. It was a cheap valuation.
The second is a failing airport in Wales. Rhoose was bought by the Welsh Government for £ 52 million pounds. The airport has never made money -- even before the pandemic.
£1 versus £52 million pounds. Who made the valuations for these failing airports?
Shall we say, someone not unconnected with Welsh Labour made a huge amount of money on the transaction.
That kinda puts a 15 per cent share in a document shredding company in Wrecsam that got a contract with NHS Wales for £150k over 3 years into perspective.
Underwriting the losses of Prestwick airport has cost the Scottish taxpayer something up to £30m so far, and that is for the period pre-Covid. Hate to think what the accounts are going to show for last year.
Not that that excuses or explains what happened in Wales though.
Of course, the Welsh Govt is underwriting many tens of millions of pounds losses in Rhoose, as well.
But, the extraordinary fact is that the Welsh Govt paid 52 million pounds for the privilege of doing so.
Rhoose airport did not have an access road.
So there is also the ongoing costs of building an access road to the airport, so that people can actually use this valuable asset .
(The land had to be bought from local Councillors, winkety-wink). That was another £26 million.
The Welsh government came very close to tipping £350m+ into the doomed Circuit of Wales project and only didn't do it because the insurer refused to underwrite the risk. It would have been an interesting circuit though; like Assen and Valencia combined.
The Circuit of Wales was pushed by two very avaricious people, Lord Kinnock and Michael Carrick.
I am sure both did well out of the money they received from the Welsh Government; the residents of Ebbw Vale -- which has levels of shitty deprivation exceptional even by the standards of the Valleys -- not so much.
Carrick even got his gardening bills paid by the Welsh Government for his Cambridgeshire mansion
1 - Up to 2 weeks for contracted COVID to become symptomatic. 2 - 15 days for a vaccine dose to give some protection. 3 - 18-20% of population are in extremely clinically vulnerable adults + over 70s cohorts. 4 - 48% of population in clinically vulnerable adults + over 50s cohorts. 5 - 70% of adults vaccinated gives a measure of herd immunity.
(Just running a sliderule over the Belgian un-lockdown.)
annoyingly we don't know the answer to 5 as i know.
It depends on what you mean by "a measure of herd immunity". Given that the vaccines *do* retard transmission as well as infection - numbers such as 60% have been mentioned.... then at 70% of of adults you would definitely see a reduction in R.
You probably wouldn't see full herd immunity - COVID dies out with no restrictions.
Do you really think the UK won't? The real-life US data is from Pfizer and Moderna on infections of those fully vaccinated is astonishing - 58k in 77M, i.e. 99.9% + protection against infection - not even symptomatic disease.
If the UK can replicate its vaccination rates among everyone 12+, I'd have thought full herd immunity should be achievable. What am I missing?
Had to visit tip today to empty shed as we are going to be moving in a couple of months
Tip was back to pre covid set up - no restrictions.
I drove past a funfair ........
Slightly bemused that is ok but the plod decided my son's bar could not open
Oh - and I see the story about our Russian "tourist" friends visit to the Check republic is all over the news.
The Russians really are a bloody menace.
Labour should thank their lucky stars they ditched Corbyn..... (Plenty of other reasons I know)
What has the non-Corbyn government and opposition said about the Czech explosion or are we waiting for all the facts to be established?
I'm confident the government already knows the facts, as it's likely the UK and Czech governments have been sharing infomation about this case given the suspects are the same. Once you have identified a Russian intelligence officer you are going to ask "where else have they been?"
In the Good Olde Days of the Cold War, the huge clearcuts of KGB from embassies in various countries weren't because they'd just been found. It was more that the government in question had decided to "send a message" so they told their intelligence agencies/diplomatic civil servants to send x percent of the known Russian agents home....
Yes but those are intelligence officers with diplomatic cover, we know who they really are and they know we know, that's a bit different from finding officers acting illegally without cover. Since the Salisbury suspects were identified there has likely been a big effort across Europe to determine their movements and find other identities that they have used.
London was absolutely buzzing last night. Happy to be out again but can't wait until May and June unlockdown now. Life is still missing something without proper indoor socialising and late night bars/clubs.
Camden, last night, was like a city just liberated from the Nazis. An occupation ending. A close analogy, perhaps
But I agree (and I also have a sore head). This isn't over until we can just walk IN to bars and restaurants. Enough of this lockdowning, already. Let us live
Had to visit tip today to empty shed as we are going to be moving in a couple of months
Tip was back to pre covid set up - no restrictions.
I drove past a funfair ........
Slightly bemused that is ok but the plod decided my son's bar could not open
Oh - and I see the story about our Russian "tourist" friends visit to the Check republic is all over the news.
The Russians really are a bloody menace.
Labour should thank their lucky stars they ditched Corbyn..... (Plenty of other reasons I know)
What has the non-Corbyn government and opposition said about the Czech explosion or are we waiting for all the facts to be established?
I'm confident the government already knows the facts, as it's likely the UK and Czech governments have been sharing infomation about this case given the suspects are the same. Once you have identified a Russian intelligence officer you are going to ask "where else have they been?"
In the Good Olde Days of the Cold War, the huge clearcuts of KGB from embassies in various countries weren't because they'd just been found. It was more that the government in question had decided to "send a message" so they told their intelligence agencies/diplomatic civil servants to send x percent of the known Russian agents home....
Yes but those are intelligence officers with diplomatic cover, we know who they really are and they know we know, that's a bit different from finding officers acting illegally without cover. Since the Salisbury suspects were identified there has likely been a big effort across Europe to determine their movements and find other identities that they have used.
The "illegal" networks would get rolled up at the same time.
From the histories, the professionals were usually upset that they lost the chance to track everything the KGB guys were doing.
I am more than half convinced that the Bin Ladin operation was "cashing in" - that his location had been known and monitored for a while. And that it was (partly) a political move to end the thing.
1 - Up to 2 weeks for contracted COVID to become symptomatic. 2 - 15 days for a vaccine dose to give some protection. 3 - 18-20% of population are in extremely clinically vulnerable adults + over 70s cohorts. 4 - 48% of population in clinically vulnerable adults + over 50s cohorts. 5 - 70% of adults vaccinated gives a measure of herd immunity.
(Just running a sliderule over the Belgian un-lockdown.)
annoyingly we don't know the answer to 5 as i know.
It depends on what you mean by "a measure of herd immunity". Given that the vaccines *do* retard transmission as well as infection - numbers such as 60% have been mentioned.... then at 70% of of adults you would definitely see a reduction in R.
You probably wouldn't see full herd immunity - COVID dies out with no restrictions.
Do you really think the UK won't? The real-life US data is from Pfizer and Moderna on infections of those fully vaccinated is astonishing - 58k in 77M, i.e. 99.9% + protection against infection - not even symptomatic disease.
If the UK can replicate its vaccination rates among everyone 12+, I'd have thought full herd immunity should be achievable. What am I missing?
I thought that wasn't a long term study, but a statement of how many people with the full vaccination got COVID in time X - without balancing it against how many would have been expected to get COVID. No placebo arm etc...
Also on that Labour chat y'day I guess what I'm wondering is if Labour's pathway is to go anti-union pro-English but keep everything else that's left of centre. There's a good tradition of this. Although Corbyn came over as appearing to hate Britain, some of the other anti-Europeans had a kind of anti-federalist, pro-English worker, ethic about them. I'm thinking people like Eric Heffer. Len McCluskey is another.
It's that which I think Labour need to tap into. Someone mentioned that they need their Remain supporters but I'm not sure that's true. What Labour need back are the Red Wall voters. So they need to go Blue Labour. English workers in the north and east.
The Remainers will either stick with Labour or, in despair, vote LibDem or Green. Both of which are fine for Labour. It doesn't matter if they put yellow or green MPs into Parliament as long as Labour regain their old core. A coalition of Lab-LibDem-SNP-Green is probably Labour's best hope for route to power.
What you are really saying is that Labour should go full behind hard Brexit, particularly in terms of a tougher line on immigration and forget Remainers to win back the Red Wall (they will still need Scottish and Welsh MPs support and the Union to win power).
However that risks a repeat of the 2019 European elections results and them falling to third behind the LDs if their Remain vote goes LD while the Brexit party vote then is now voting for Boris and the Tories and likely to remain doing so
Yes, this mirrors the GE dilemma Labour had with Brexit. They could have gone the other way and pivoted behind Brexit rather than against it. This would have limited the damage in the Red Wall. Maybe even protected it entirely. So why didn't they do it?
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. The choice is yet more Johnson chicanery or PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
Yet millions of trad Labour voters won't tolerate your wanky Wokery, so there's that, too
Allegations that politicians and advisers at the centre of power today may be using public positions – intentionally or unintentionally – to benefit their private interests are surfacing and being trawled over in the media. “Johnson may have made a big mistake here with this big inquiry,” said one Tory MP. “Something this big and wide is the last thing any government needs.”
The dangers for government are becoming clearer by the day. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, who met Cameron and Greensill for a drink during which they lobbied him over a potential contract, came under scrutiny over his shareholding in a family firm approved to bid for NHS contracts. He insists he has broken no rules.
Two of Johnson’s most senior advisers – his deputy chief of staff Simone Finn, and Francis Maude, who has been conducting an unremunerated review of civil service reform for the prime minister – are facing questions over whether their private financial interests are advanced by their public roles.
Cameron’s defenders say he has no interest in taking revenge for the Greensill leaks. But he may not need to. There is already a sense that if those who leaked against him were doing so from inside government, the tactic has misfired. “If they thought it would stop with Cameron then they were plain stupid. This could now end up exploding on their own government,” said a senior figure who has straddled the Cameron, Theresa May and Johnson premierships in Whitehall.
There are now no fewer than seven disparate inquiries into Greensill and wider lobbying issues. Lobbying rules now look certain to be tightened. Suddenly, as a result of the Greensill-Cameron affair and the fallout from it, the political mood in Westminster has changed. The Tories are reeling while Labour – which had seemed to lack a line of attack since the turn of the year as Conservative fortunes rebounded thanks to the successful vaccine roll-out – has an issue to focus on that it knows could damage Johnson, his government and his party.
Interesting that the Matt Hancock story is still being quoted without the minor detail that the contract was with the Welsh NHS over which he has no control.
Also the phrasing he “insists” he has broken no rules implying there is reasonable doubt
Andrew Marr sighting Carwyn Jones as being in breach of government rules to Rachel Reeves and her answer this is only about the conservatives
And she says there are different rules in Wales
Marr is really having a go at the hypocrisy of Reeves and Labour and she is not coming over well at all
BigG. from what I have seen or heard Carwyn's association, because it is with Gupta might be a bit whiffy, but it smells nothing like the rest of the news relating directly or indirectly to Gupta and his business associates.
That was not the impression Marr painted this morning and to be honest I was surprised how aggressive he was to both Rachel Reeves and Ed Davey in their own party involvement in lobbying and Ed Davey personally involved
Many have said on here that this is a threat to the conservatives but if Marr's information and comments are to be believed this is more than just the conservatives
Marr was very aggressive with Davey. But Davey dealt with it well.
Davey has a lobbying contract with a renewables company. He believes in the cause. He doesn't lobby government. His interest is openly declared in members' interests. He needs the money to support his disabled son when Davey dies.
But Marr had successfully deflected Davey from criticising the government.
Allegations that politicians and advisers at the centre of power today may be using public positions – intentionally or unintentionally – to benefit their private interests are surfacing and being trawled over in the media. “Johnson may have made a big mistake here with this big inquiry,” said one Tory MP. “Something this big and wide is the last thing any government needs.”
The dangers for government are becoming clearer by the day. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, who met Cameron and Greensill for a drink during which they lobbied him over a potential contract, came under scrutiny over his shareholding in a family firm approved to bid for NHS contracts. He insists he has broken no rules.
Two of Johnson’s most senior advisers – his deputy chief of staff Simone Finn, and Francis Maude, who has been conducting an unremunerated review of civil service reform for the prime minister – are facing questions over whether their private financial interests are advanced by their public roles.
Cameron’s defenders say he has no interest in taking revenge for the Greensill leaks. But he may not need to. There is already a sense that if those who leaked against him were doing so from inside government, the tactic has misfired. “If they thought it would stop with Cameron then they were plain stupid. This could now end up exploding on their own government,” said a senior figure who has straddled the Cameron, Theresa May and Johnson premierships in Whitehall.
There are now no fewer than seven disparate inquiries into Greensill and wider lobbying issues. Lobbying rules now look certain to be tightened. Suddenly, as a result of the Greensill-Cameron affair and the fallout from it, the political mood in Westminster has changed. The Tories are reeling while Labour – which had seemed to lack a line of attack since the turn of the year as Conservative fortunes rebounded thanks to the successful vaccine roll-out – has an issue to focus on that it knows could damage Johnson, his government and his party.
Not really sure that the 'campaign against sleazee'is being very astute.
The Welsh/English contract dustinction is an open goal - what impact would a public apology from Angela Rayner for rumour-mongering have, for example?
Andrew Marr sighting Carwyn Jones as being in breach of government rules to Rachel Reeves and her answer this is only about the conservatives
And she says there are different rules in Wales
Marr is really having a go at the hypocrisy of Reeves and Labour and she is not coming over well at all
BigG. from what I have seen or heard Carwyn's association, because it is with Gupta might be a bit whiffy, but it smells nothing like the rest of the news relating directly or indirectly to Gupta and his business associates.
That was not the impression Marr painted this morning and to be honest I was surprised how aggressive he was to both Rachel Reeves and Ed Davey in their own party involvement in lobbying and Ed Davey personally involved
Many have said on here that this is a threat to the conservatives but if Marr's information and comments are to be believed this is more than just the conservatives
Marr was very aggressive with Davey. But Davey dealt with it well.
Davey has a lobbying contract with a renewables company. He believes in the cause. He doesn't lobby government. His interest is openly declared in members' interests. He needs the money to support his disabled son when Davey dies.
But Marr had successfully deflected Davey from criticising the government.
Context: Davey lost both his parents by the time he was 11.
It's said that the way to keep spiders away is to scatter conkers about. We've had very few since putting a couple outside our front door. Need replacing in autumn, of course.
My Nan used to swear by this. When it came to nature she knew her stuff, she could even make an intoxicating drink from dandelions.
Hence your nom de plume? One can of course ferment almost anything,particularly vegetable. Some commentator on the TV the other day was talking bewailing the lack of cowslips to make cowslip wine.
When I started going to Lancashire I discover3ed that some of my prospective relations drank a (non-alcoholic) brew called dandelion and burdock.
You can make dandelion wine just as you can make elderflower wine.
But you should be aware that another name for the dandelion is pissabed. It is a potent diuretic.
That is presumably why the blossom not the leaves go into the wine :-) .
Comments
All the politicians are saying things like " We need to look at this again ... it is something we need to consider when the time is ripe ... we need to ensure that openness is at the heart of everything we do," without any formal commitment.
So, basically, BS.
In practice, it only matters what Labour/Plaid Cymru think (as they will be the next Government).
I doubt if Llafur will willingly do this, there is too much money to be made as things are.
I think the last time it came up, Llafur said they needed to see how things were working in Holyrood before coming to any decision.
The classic "we should do this, but the moment is not right" argument.
They didn't do it because it carried enormous downside risk. To wit, leaving the educated, liberal, pro-EU lane exclusively to the LDs, who sweep up votes in both leafy and urban Remainia and supplant - or start the process of supplanting - Labour as the main anti-Tory party of England.
This nightmare prospect had to be taken out of the equation. That's why Labour went with Ref2 and (effectively) Remain as their Brexit policy. It wasn't in an attempt to win the GE - which was unwinnable - it was to make a poor but clear 2nd place, well ahead of the LDs, the worst realistic scenario. It was a prime example of that very thing which banks forgot how to do in the years before the crash - Risk Management. And it was successful. It worked a dream. The LDs were kept in their box and Labour will duly go into the next GE as the only alternative to more of the current nonsense. The choice is yet more Johnson chicanery or PM Keir Starmer. A two horse race. Bingo.
This is why @Cocky_cockney's "Blue Labour" - Up the Workers plus Flag of St George - whilst an interesting idea, is not a viable future for the party. It's essentially the same pivot with the same (unacceptably high) downside risk. It might win the Red Wall back but at the potentially ruinous price of losing swathes of London and elsewhere as large numbers of their new base (metro modern left, liberal remainers, urban renters, under 40s, etc) wave goodbye.
Me, for example, and to end on a personal note - I wouldn't vote for a Labour Party drenched in English Nationalism in a million years. I'd vote LD or Green or Women's Equality Party. Or find a suitable independent. Or whatever. But I'd be gone - and so would lots of others.
The other point I'd make is that many in the second part of Labour's base, blacks and Muslims, would also have been horrified, as leaving the EU was seen as anti-immigrant (though few black and Muslim immigrants have come from the EU). They don't have an obvious party to go to, but they could have abstained in droves.
QTWTAIN
Good luck with your bet. You’re going to need it - Ladbrokes have boosted your odds because it’s a bad value bet.
Tip was back to pre covid set up - no restrictions.
I drove past a funfair ........
Slightly bemused that is ok but the plod decided my son's bar could not open
Oh - and I see the story about our Russian "tourist" friends visit to the Check republic is all over the news.
The Russians really are a bloody menace.
Labour should thank their lucky stars they ditched Corbyn..... (Plenty of other reasons I know)
Pretty awful from all parties then.
Are these reasonable rules of thumb?
1 - Up to 2 weeks for contracted COVID to become symptomatic.
2 - 15 days for a vaccine dose to give some protection.
3 - 18-20% of population are in extremely clinically vulnerable adults + over 70s cohorts.
4 - 48% of population in clinically vulnerable adults + over 50s cohorts.
5 - 70% of adults vaccinated gives a measure of herd immunity.
(Just running a sliderule over the Belgian un-lockdown.)
Tbf to Labour, not something I'm often accused of, they're in a tough place. Britishness was another thing they took for granted, like the North, Wales, Scotland etc. They've left it a helluva late to develop a coherent, convincing version of Britishness (Cool Britannia obviously being a load of shallow bollocks) with which, excuse the stereotypes, both remainy, metropolitan types and northern WC patriots would feel comfortable.
Not that that excuses or explains what happened in Wales though.
Telegraph.
But, the extraordinary fact is that the Welsh Govt paid 52 million pounds for the privilege of doing so.
Rhoose airport did not have an access road.
So there is also the ongoing costs of building an access road to the airport, so that people can actually use this valuable asset .
(The land had to be bought from local Councillors, winkety-wink). That was another £26 million.
https://tinyurl.com/53u44kzm
It depends on what you mean by "a measure of herd immunity". Given that the vaccines *do* retard transmission as well as infection - numbers such as 60% have been mentioned.... then at 70% of of adults you would definitely see a reduction in R.
You probably wouldn't see full herd immunity - COVID dies out with no restrictions.
He understood what today's celebrity royals do not – the importance of public duty.
Tim Black"
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/04/16/prince-philip-farewell-to-the-stiff-upper-lip/
I am sure both did well out of the money they received from the Welsh Government; the residents of Ebbw Vale -- which has levels of shitty deprivation exceptional even by the standards of the Valleys -- not so much.
Carrick even got his gardening bills paid by the Welsh Government for his Cambridgeshire mansion
https://tinyurl.com/hr2cfvww
The 'Circuit of Wales' bill was quite a modest one for the Welsh Government -- only £ 9 million.
As Drakeford tritely observed at the end of the sorry saga, "Lessons will be learned".
Hope you're all having a good day. Cheers. 🍻
If the UK can replicate its vaccination rates among everyone 12+, I'd have thought full herd immunity should be achievable. What am I missing?
But I agree (and I also have a sore head). This isn't over until we can just walk IN to bars and restaurants. Enough of this lockdowning, already. Let us live
From the histories, the professionals were usually upset that they lost the chance to track everything the KGB guys were doing.
I am more than half convinced that the Bin Ladin operation was "cashing in" - that his location had been known and monitored for a while. And that it was (partly) a political move to end the thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HLy27bK-wU
The Welsh/English contract dustinction is an open goal - what impact would a public apology from Angela Rayner for rumour-mongering have, for example?
But frozen Yorkshires from Aldi are surprisingly good (cough).
I seem to have a typoo problem today.