What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
Every one who has put their name to that STW statement is a traitor.
Don't be ridiculous. We aren't at war with anyone so how can this be relevant. There was a lot of people before ww2 who counselled and called for us to stay out of it. It is called democracy and not living in a big brother dictatorship.
Lots of people seem very sure that we aren’t at war. Sounds like a game of semantics to me. Certainly feels to me a lot like we are.
Whether that means it’s the right or wrong time to have a Tory leadership question is an entirely separate question. For what it’s worth I don’t see how BJ stepping down and a new leader stepping up would change much.
It would not change anything but the only way for it to work is that the conservative mps agree a coronation candidate or Boris resigns but stays in post until his successor is elected
Either are fine by me
Johnson is doing well enough to fight the next election now especially if Labour undeperforms in the local elections. The Conservative Party could do without fairweather supporters like you.
You are HYUFD and I claim my 5p.
PB tories are working hard today attempting to spin and pulling a hell of a lot of wool over many peoples eyes, conflating the eating of cake with misleading parliament.
Well, TBF they must be feeling a bit sheepish for having wished a criminal PM on us.
For low earning (post 2012) graduates, they’ll rack up £2.2k interest (9%) on a £50k student loan over the six months from September.
They’re being diddled.
As so often, everybody misunderstands the actual situation with student loans. For 90%+ of students this factoid irrelevant, they were never paying them back over the course of their lifetime. Student loans are for all intents and purposes a capped graduate tax.
The people being diddled as the government (and in return all of us) as the debt gets written off.
What interest did you pay?
The point is that the whole loan/interest thing is a painfully thin bit of obfuscation for the fact that this is a graduate tax in a hat. Most students today will never pay off the loan (and those that do have probably been foolish when you do the lifetime cost calculation). So the "interest rate" is irrelevant, since the total loan amount is greater than the sum of the lifetime total of minimum payments.
IT sounds a complete dogs dinner.
Why not just have a graduate tax if they are trying to have one in all but name.
Because you will be adding a new tax band, 9% on everybody tax bill for their entire lifetime over £27k. The PR for that would make NI rise look minor and also its a terrible message to successful people and I am pretty sure lead to brain drain.
Also those of us that had a loan and paid it off. Are we to pay again ?!
Right, I am not paying again after I wrote a £30k cheque already....I would be 100% off if they government turned around and said now I need to start paying 9% extra.
I'd hand my degree back to Cardiff.
Agreed. Though on the other hand I’d back my old Uni’s admin office to be as efficient as it was when I was there, and the SLC to be as efficient as it was when I paid the loan off, and therefore that I wouldn’t ever be contacted about the tax.
For low earning (post 2012) graduates, they’ll rack up £2.2k interest (9%) on a £50k student loan over the six months from September.
They’re being diddled.
As so often, everybody misunderstands the actual situation with student loans. For 90%+ of students this factoid irrelevant, they were never paying them back over the course of their lifetime. Student loans are for all intents and purposes a capped graduate tax.
The people being diddled as the government (and in return all of us) as the debt gets written off.
What interest did you pay?
The point is that the whole loan/interest thing is a painfully thin bit of obfuscation for the fact that this is a graduate tax in a hat. Most students today will never pay off the loan (and those that do have probably been foolish when you do the lifetime cost calculation). So the "interest rate" is irrelevant, since the total loan amount is greater than the sum of the lifetime total of minimum payments.
IT sounds a complete dogs dinner.
Why not just have a graduate tax if they are trying to have one in all but name.
It is a dogs dinner. The original 1990/91 scheme was a loan. The 1998 scheme off the back of the Dearing report basically provided the mechanism to convert it into a graduate tax, and that was consolidated in 2004.
I presume that this was done because it was politically easier to be seen to be "tweaking" the existing system, rather than introducing a graduate tax.
The marginal real tax rate for a middling, student loan laden professional (with or without 8 small starving children and high maintenance spouses to feed) is:
20% IT 13.25% NI 9% Loan
= 42.25%
While the working pensioner's marginal rate is 20%.
The entire thing is a scam designed to keep the headline rate for lazy journalists at 20% (now promised to go down to 19%, gosh!) while punishing aspirational people from less well off backgrounds who stay in their country and work, and who had to max out their loans to survive.
This scandal is simultaneously outrageous and boring. It’s OMG and Yawn
I can see Boris surviving, quite easily, out of voter apathy
Is anyone out there really boiling with anger? I doubt it. It’s like a car crash filmed in such ultra-slow-motion you lose interest
As I say downthread, it's more a "fuck that, I'm not getting off my arse for that clown" come election time, rather than "MAKE WAY, I'M VOTING FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, THE LAST BASTION OF RIGHTOUSNESS, TO SMITE THESE WRONGDOERS".
The Tories will be hoping that, come the 2024 election, partygate will be a dim and boring memory. This might well work. Unfortunately for them, by 2024 there’s a high chance the economy will be in the toilet, so they will get binned for THAT, instead
The Tories can bring up the pandemic without bringing up partygate.
No one will ‘bring up the pandemic’. It is so ghastly and bleak we will erase it from the collective memory ASAFP
What utter, complete, rubbish.
You are becoming the Dennis Healey of pb.com: whatever you say, we can be sure that the diametric opposite is true.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The guy is a moron. France is faced with the same choice we were in 2019. Macron might be shit but the alternative is a disaster.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
As I said down thread, student fees / loans / debt, the key problems which are never addressed, the rip off of accommodation means everybody racks up these massive loans (not just the mega piss heads when most of us were at uni). And 50% of kids going to uni full time.
Ultimately we all pay for this as vast amount of this debt is going to be written off.
As I said down thread, student fees / loans / debt, the key problems which are never addressed, the rip off of accommodation means everybody racks up these massive loans (not just the mega piss heads when most of us were at uni). And 50% of kids going to uni full time.
Ultimately we all pay for this as vast amount of this debt is going to be written off.
And I suspect Labour's calculation was that voters would have forgotten who to blame as the first write-offs filter through in ~2034.
For low earning (post 2012) graduates, they’ll rack up £2.2k interest (9%) on a £50k student loan over the six months from September.
They’re being diddled.
Many of them would have been better off doing an apprenticeship with no debt, if their degree did not lead them to a higher paid job
Friends of mine in the 50's went straight into banking etc at 16 and did very well.
There's no way I could have got a teaching qualification without being a graduate. Luckily I went to University in the late 70s when they paid you to go.
I don't think that, from about WWI onward one could be a teacher with some formal qualification. One of my aunts, though was a 'pupil teacher' in a school in 1911. My father, and his brother and sister did two year courses before WWII, although my aunt did a one year top up in the early 50's. And finally my wife did a two year course at the end of the 50's in a specific Teacher Training College.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
This scandal is simultaneously outrageous and boring. It’s OMG and Yawn
I can see Boris surviving, quite easily, out of voter apathy
Is anyone out there really boiling with anger? I doubt it. It’s like a car crash filmed in such ultra-slow-motion you lose interest
As I say downthread, it's more a "fuck that, I'm not getting off my arse for that clown" come election time, rather than "MAKE WAY, I'M VOTING FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, THE LAST BASTION OF RIGHTOUSNESS, TO SMITE THESE WRONGDOERS".
The Tories will be hoping that, come the 2024 election, partygate will be a dim and boring memory. This might well work. Unfortunately for them, by 2024 there’s a high chance the economy will be in the toilet, so they will get binned for THAT, instead
The Tories can bring up the pandemic without bringing up partygate.
No one will ‘bring up the pandemic’. It is so ghastly and bleak we will erase it from the collective memory ASAFP
What utter, complete, rubbish.
He does actually make an interesting suggestion, that is worth considering. A couple of years agp he was discussing on PB with some of us the apparent absence from collective memory of the Spanish [sic] Flu of 1917-20-ish. Lots of books about the Great War, for instance, both history, memoirs and fiction; precious few about the flu unless one was a science and medical history nerd like me. There are/were various suggestions as to the reasons, one possibility being that it was sort of blurred into the huge, but comparable, death toll from the war itself (and ofr course it interacted with the war anyway, being generated and spread by the mass movements, from the US initially).
Another is that it was seen as simply a worse than usual winter flu year from the individual point of view and there was not a lot that could be done - I suppose it blurred into the wider death toll from poverty and disease pre-antobiotics and modern vaccines. This to some extent may explain the also rather thin collective memory of the bad flu epidemic in, was it 1968?, which we were also discussing a year or two back. There's at least one interestiong historical article in a medical or history of medicine journal available out there on the internet.
Edit: but that is on a timescale of decades, however.
Can we now read it as a fact that the Mail consider the replacement of Chamberlain with Churchill in WWII to be a stupid mistake?
If not, why not? I understand there was a bloody war on at the time, and one somewhat closer to home and with a large number of British troops already in action.
Surely the difference is that Chamberlain was failing in WWII while Zelenskyy and all concerned seem to be saying that Boris is doing a very good job with respect to Ukraine.
Quite a difference there. If Chamberlain was winning WWII and was doing an excellent job with the war, would he have been defeated?
I still think Boris should go because for me as a point of principle lawmakers can't be lawbreakers but that's a really dodgy comparison.
One huge mistake I think the Cameron government made when reforming (i.e. increasing) uni fees is that some subjects genuinely cost a lot of money to put on in particular science and medicine, while also being some of the most crucial to our economy (especially going forward). Them saying to unis you charge up to a cap there will be a market has totally failed, every uni just charges basically the max.
What has happened is a lot of management in unis have been enriched by this change.
What I think we actually wanted is the government to subsidise some courses to ensure they continue to teach them e.g. I believe significant number of unis don't offer / stopped Chemistry because it costs about £15k a year to run, while ensuring unis don't also just rip off the kids charging a lot of money for things that are effectively 30 chairs and a talking head.
There is no incentive to think about costs, you just charge the max for every course at every uni and incentive never to run ones that cost a lot of money.
Having established that Johnson is more of a "conviction" politician than we had thought, I think the punters will indeed be tempted to give the Tories a fairly clear shot across the bows in May. As for the rubbish about "there is a war on", frankly I´d far rather have Ben Wallace looking after the shop (and I suspect he is the only member of the cabinet who can turn things around for the Conservatives anyway).
Although Johnson does get some kudos for the UK position with regard to Ukraine, the general view over here is that he is a pretty fly and untrustworthy cove, and it is Britain as a whole that has been committed to fight, so I don´t think that there would be too many concerns if he went. Indeed, a new UK leader may be able to get far better responses from the EU NATO members, which Johnson has singularly failed to do.
The pressure in the Baltic is still quite severe, with several hundred new refugees arriving every day. However there is some pride here that Estonia has managed to supply nearly four times more weapons to Ukraine than either France or Germany. More than half of Estonian households have also donated to Ukrainian causes.
As the Russian tanks disappear into the Ukrainian steppe, there is a sense that for the time being the direct military threat to the Baltic is reducing fast. If Finland (and possibly Sweden) does join NATO, then the overall security position in the Baltic will improve substantially.
As for Russia itself: the support of large numbers of Russians not only for the attack on Ukraine, but for the brutal and despicible way the war has been conducted is duly noted, and even Russian speakers here are shocked. Indeed the power of the Russian media here has fallen sharply, not only because access has been restricted, but the contrast between the free media reporting and the Russian media is so extreme as to be grotesque. Russia is going into a very dark place indeed. The civilised world should not tolerate the barbarian Putin for one second more than it has to.
The latest attack by Russian forces against the Donbas is better coordinated and led than last time, but the Russian losses on the Northern front will be difficult to replace. The Estonians do view the current situation as an emergency, which is why so much kit has been sent to Ukraine. We must hope that the Ukrainians can continue to hold on.
The cold winter has clung on, but spring is finally on its way, and we hope that a comprehensive defeat in Ukraine might turn Russia away from the road to catastrophe. Nevertheless, for as long as the Mafiosi are in charge in the Kremlin, there remains a high risk of their casual contempt for human life leading to an all out nuclear war. As in the Cold War, we must remember that the best way to preserve peace is to ensure our deterents are credible and that the challenge to the global order by Putin in the name of the neofascist rubbish of Dugin, must be comprehensively beaten. This is our final warning.
Yes NATO’s greatest strength is it’s deterrent value. Get the Finns and Swedes through the door asap. As for Ireland, their studied “neutrality” looks evermore unprincipled and self serving as the years go by.
Hopefully the same lesson is being learned in the Pacific as well. Aukus / Jaukus a good start but doesn’t go far enough for me.
As for Russia, not at all clear we will have a moment of reckoning whereby the mass of Russian public opinion has that crucial moment of introspection over the nation’s actions. It’s going to be a puss filled boil on the side of Europe’s face for a good long while sadly.
Ireland does not really matter. If Ireland joined Nato it would contribute about three soldiers, not be a buffer between us and Russia, but allow America to move bases out of Britain and the continent to Ireland.
This scandal is simultaneously outrageous and boring. It’s OMG and Yawn
I can see Boris surviving, quite easily, out of voter apathy
Is anyone out there really boiling with anger? I doubt it. It’s like a car crash filmed in such ultra-slow-motion you lose interest
As I say downthread, it's more a "fuck that, I'm not getting off my arse for that clown" come election time, rather than "MAKE WAY, I'M VOTING FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, THE LAST BASTION OF RIGHTOUSNESS, TO SMITE THESE WRONGDOERS".
The Tories will be hoping that, come the 2024 election, partygate will be a dim and boring memory. This might well work. Unfortunately for them, by 2024 there’s a high chance the economy will be in the toilet, so they will get binned for THAT, instead
The Tories can bring up the pandemic without bringing up partygate.
No one will ‘bring up the pandemic’. It is so ghastly and bleak we will erase it from the collective memory ASAFP
What utter, complete, rubbish.
Edit: but that is on a timescale of decades, however.
Well surely that's the point? There is no way that the covid pandemic is going to erased from collective memory two years from now. It's visceral, raw. It's nonsense to think otherwise. Or, actually, it's more about Leon's own projected desire to move on from it. Which is fair enough but not the same thing.
And by the way, I suspect that the Spanish flu was subsequently treated that way because of two even more traumatic events which wiped over it. I know I know, deaths exceeded, but for sheer bloody trauma both world wars were unparalleled.
One huge mistake I think the Cameron government made when reforming (i.e. increasing) uni fees is that some subjects genuinely cost a lot of money to put on in particular science and medicine, while also being some of the most crucial to our economy (especially going forward). Them saying to unis you charge up to a cap there will be a market has totally failed, every uni just charges basically the max.
What has happened is a lot of management in unis have been enriched by this change.
What I think we actually wanted is the government to subsidise some courses to ensure they continue to teach them e.g. I believe significant number of unis don't offer / stopped Chemistry because it costs about £15k a year to run, while ensuring unis don't also just rip off the kids charging a lot of money for things that are effectively 30 chairs and a talking head.
There is no incentive to think about costs, you just charge the max for every course at every uni and incentive never to run ones that cost a lot of money.
A change I would like to see is make university exams open to all, for a fee related to exam costs only, similar to A Levels and GCSEs.
Then lets see how much cheaper and faster other suppliers can teach the same content. I bet plenty of 3 year degrees can be taught in 6 months full time.
One huge mistake I think the Cameron government made when reforming (i.e. increasing) uni fees is that some subjects genuinely cost a lot of money to put on in particular science and medicine, while also being some of the most crucial to our economy (especially going forward). Them saying to unis you charge up to a cap there will be a market has totally failed, every uni just charges basically the max.
What has happened is a lot of management in unis have been enriched by this change.
What I think we actually wanted is the government to subsidise some courses to ensure they continue to teach them e.g. I believe significant number of unis don't offer / stopped Chemistry because it costs about £15k a year to run, while ensuring unis don't also just rip off the kids charging a lot of money for things that are effectively 30 chairs and a talking head.
There is no incentive to think about costs, you just charge the max for every course at every uni and incentive never to run ones that cost a lot of money.
True, though the other thing it has done is allow former b-tier institutions to create centres of excellence. It's not just Cambridge and Hull any more. The University of Dunny-on-the-Wold can hire a top class researcher in computing or textiles or art history.
Can we now read it as a fact that the Mail consider the replacement of Chamberlain with Churchill in WWII to be a stupid mistake?
If not, why not? I understand there was a bloody war on at the time, and one somewhat closer to home and with a large number of British troops already in action.
Surely the difference is that Chamberlain was failing in WWII while Zelenskyy and all concerned seem to be saying that Boris is doing a very good job with respect to Ukraine.
Quite a difference there. If Chamberlain was winning WWII and was doing an excellent job with the war, would he have been defeated?
I still think Boris should go because for me as a point of principle lawmakers can't be lawbreakers but that's a really dodgy comparison.
There are a host of tories who would be better concerning Ukraine, Wallace, tugendhat, ellwood, Hunt even. Not sure whether Raab knows where Ukraine is though.
Also the effect of increasing ability student loans, all it has done is increase the amount charged for student accommodation. £150-200 a week for room in towns where a mortgage on a whole house is that is just criminal, and this is often done under the guise of well you get an ensuite now or have better communal facilities e.g. a nice room with big telly, sky, pool table....the cost of that is peanuts compared to the increase they charge.
The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
...
Article VIII
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.
Genocide Convention 1948
...
Let's not forget that the French effectively armed and trained the guilty party in Rwanda 1994.
This scandal is simultaneously outrageous and boring. It’s OMG and Yawn
I can see Boris surviving, quite easily, out of voter apathy
Is anyone out there really boiling with anger? I doubt it. It’s like a car crash filmed in such ultra-slow-motion you lose interest
As I say downthread, it's more a "fuck that, I'm not getting off my arse for that clown" come election time, rather than "MAKE WAY, I'M VOTING FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, THE LAST BASTION OF RIGHTOUSNESS, TO SMITE THESE WRONGDOERS".
The Tories will be hoping that, come the 2024 election, partygate will be a dim and boring memory. This might well work. Unfortunately for them, by 2024 there’s a high chance the economy will be in the toilet, so they will get binned for THAT, instead
The Tories can bring up the pandemic without bringing up partygate.
No one will ‘bring up the pandemic’. It is so ghastly and bleak we will erase it from the collective memory ASAFP
What utter, complete, rubbish.
You are becoming the Dennis Healey of pb.com: whatever you say, we can be sure that the diametric opposite is true.
You certainly have a tendency to get very agitated when people disagree with you. Perhaps you are an Oracle? Imbued with foresight that the rest of us can't access?
Perhaps you should take your own advice and debate issues sensibly.
Can we now read it as a fact that the Mail consider the replacement of Chamberlain with Churchill in WWII to be a stupid mistake?
If not, why not? I understand there was a bloody war on at the time, and one somewhat closer to home and with a large number of British troops already in action.
Surely the difference is that Chamberlain was failing in WWII while Zelenskyy and all concerned seem to be saying that Boris is doing a very good job with respect to Ukraine.
Quite a difference there. If Chamberlain was winning WWII and was doing an excellent job with the war, would he have been defeated?
I still think Boris should go because for me as a point of principle lawmakers can't be lawbreakers but that's a really dodgy comparison.
There are a host of tories who would be better concerning Ukraine, Wallace, tugendhat, ellwood, Hunt even. Not sure whether Raab knows where Ukraine is though.
I think Zelenskyy thinks Boris is doing well because they are both entertaining
Can we now read it as a fact that the Mail consider the replacement of Chamberlain with Churchill in WWII to be a stupid mistake?
If not, why not? I understand there was a bloody war on at the time, and one somewhat closer to home and with a large number of British troops already in action.
Surely the difference is that Chamberlain was failing in WWII while Zelenskyy and all concerned seem to be saying that Boris is doing a very good job with respect to Ukraine.
Quite a difference there. If Chamberlain was winning WWII and was doing an excellent job with the war, would he have been defeated?
I still think Boris should go because for me as a point of principle lawmakers can't be lawbreakers but that's a really dodgy comparison.
There are a host of tories who would be better concerning Ukraine, Wallace, tugendhat, ellwood, Hunt even. Not sure whether Raab knows where Ukraine is though.
A revivified Chamberlain might be an improvement..
This scandal is simultaneously outrageous and boring. It’s OMG and Yawn
I can see Boris surviving, quite easily, out of voter apathy
Is anyone out there really boiling with anger? I doubt it. It’s like a car crash filmed in such ultra-slow-motion you lose interest
As I say downthread, it's more a "fuck that, I'm not getting off my arse for that clown" come election time, rather than "MAKE WAY, I'M VOTING FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, THE LAST BASTION OF RIGHTOUSNESS, TO SMITE THESE WRONGDOERS".
The Tories will be hoping that, come the 2024 election, partygate will be a dim and boring memory. This might well work. Unfortunately for them, by 2024 there’s a high chance the economy will be in the toilet, so they will get binned for THAT, instead
The Tories can bring up the pandemic without bringing up partygate.
No one will ‘bring up the pandemic’. It is so ghastly and bleak we will erase it from the collective memory ASAFP
What utter, complete, rubbish.
You are becoming the Dennis Healey of pb.com: whatever you say, we can be sure that the diametric opposite is true.
You certainly have a tendency to get very agitated when people disagree with you. Perhaps you are an Oracle? Imbued with foresight that the rest of us can't access?
Perhaps you should take your own advice and debate issues sensibly.
Can we now read it as a fact that the Mail consider the replacement of Chamberlain with Churchill in WWII to be a stupid mistake?
If not, why not? I understand there was a bloody war on at the time, and one somewhat closer to home and with a large number of British troops already in action.
Surely the difference is that Chamberlain was failing in WWII while Zelenskyy and all concerned seem to be saying that Boris is doing a very good job with respect to Ukraine.
Quite a difference there. If Chamberlain was winning WWII and was doing an excellent job with the war, would he have been defeated?
I still think Boris should go because for me as a point of principle lawmakers can't be lawbreakers but that's a really dodgy comparison.
There are a host of tories who would be better concerning Ukraine, Wallace, tugendhat, ellwood, Hunt even. Not sure whether Raab knows where Ukraine is though.
That seems to be your bias showing, Zelenskyy doesn't seem to agree.
Putin does seem to have moved the agenda on and Ukraine saying over the weekend that the UK is Ukraine's best ally in this conflict seems to have secured Johnson for the time being at least.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
I'm reading a rather odd book..... sort of stream of consciousness sometimes...... "Days without End' by Sebastian Barry, which includes descriptions of what might well be considered genocide by the European settlers on the original inhabitants of what we now call the USA.
Leon, I think you have a lot of great qualities and you clearly write well albeit with a degree of hyperbole. You're often amusing, interesting and naughty in equal measures.
But as a bell-weather for this nation? Having your finger on the country's pulse? No no no.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Leon, I think you have a lot of great qualities and you clearly write well albeit with a degree of hyperbole. You're often amusing, interesting and naughty in equal measures.
But as a bell-weather for this nation? Having your finger on the country's pulse? No no no.
Bell-wether on a point of PB pedantry ... leader of the sheep flock ...
Can we now read it as a fact that the Mail consider the replacement of Chamberlain with Churchill in WWII to be a stupid mistake?
If not, why not? I understand there was a bloody war on at the time, and one somewhat closer to home and with a large number of British troops already in action.
Surely the difference is that Chamberlain was failing in WWII while Zelenskyy and all concerned seem to be saying that Boris is doing a very good job with respect to Ukraine.
Quite a difference there. If Chamberlain was winning WWII and was doing an excellent job with the war, would he have been defeated?
I still think Boris should go because for me as a point of principle lawmakers can't be lawbreakers but that's a really dodgy comparison.
There are a host of tories who would be better concerning Ukraine, Wallace, tugendhat, ellwood, Hunt even. Not sure whether Raab knows where Ukraine is though.
You are projecting here. Ellwood for example has been gung ho about NATO bombing Russian territory. Sometimes the sensible thing to do is admit when a politician you don’t like handles something well.
This scandal is simultaneously outrageous and boring. It’s OMG and Yawn
I can see Boris surviving, quite easily, out of voter apathy
Is anyone out there really boiling with anger? I doubt it. It’s like a car crash filmed in such ultra-slow-motion you lose interest
As I say downthread, it's more a "fuck that, I'm not getting off my arse for that clown" come election time, rather than "MAKE WAY, I'M VOTING FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, THE LAST BASTION OF RIGHTOUSNESS, TO SMITE THESE WRONGDOERS".
The Tories will be hoping that, come the 2024 election, partygate will be a dim and boring memory. This might well work. Unfortunately for them, by 2024 there’s a high chance the economy will be in the toilet, so they will get binned for THAT, instead
The Tories can bring up the pandemic without bringing up partygate.
No one will ‘bring up the pandemic’. It is so ghastly and bleak we will erase it from the collective memory ASAFP
What utter, complete, rubbish.
Edit: but that is on a timescale of decades, however.
Well surely that's the point? There is no way that the covid pandemic is going to erased from collective memory two years from now. It's visceral, raw. It's nonsense to think otherwise. Or, actually, it's more about Leon's own projected desire to move on from it. Which is fair enough but not the same thing.
And by the way, I suspect that the Spanish flu was subsequently treated that way because of two even more traumatic events which wiped over it. I know I know, deaths exceeded, but for sheer bloody trauma both world wars were unparalleled.
Wrong, nothing more dull than ancient medical history (I speak as a professional historian of ancient medicine). 9 years ago I had really serious, odds-slightly-against-survival, surgery. It seemed a big deal at the time, a doctor asked me a couple of weeks ago what the scars were and it took me a moment or two to remember.
Sweden now applying for nato membership. Finland could follow suit. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine counterproductive. President Putin wants to reduce size of alliance but will likely do opposite .. https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1514180138212155398
In the logic of STW this is exactly the sort of thing which causes Russia to invade large countries and murder babies in their cots. Expect mass demos outside the aggressive Swede's embassy
Also the effect of increasing ability student loans, all it has done is increase the amount charged for student accommodation. £150-200 a week for room in towns where a mortgage on a whole house is that is just criminal, and this is often done under the guise of well you get an ensuite now or have better communal facilities e.g. a nice room with big telly, sky, pool table....the cost of that is peanuts compared to the increase they charge.
Many of these being built by financial institutions and pension funds as they have a long term income stream that is decent and pretty much guaranteed.
It is shabby what all govts from 1997 to the current day have done with respect to further education and the younger generation.
One huge mistake I think the Cameron government made when reforming (i.e. increasing) uni fees is that some subjects genuinely cost a lot of money to put on in particular science and medicine, while also being some of the most crucial to our economy (especially going forward). Them saying to unis you charge up to a cap there will be a market has totally failed, every uni just charges basically the max.
What has happened is a lot of management in unis have been enriched by this change.
What I think we actually wanted is the government to subsidise some courses to ensure they continue to teach them e.g. I believe significant number of unis don't offer / stopped Chemistry because it costs about £15k a year to run, while ensuring unis don't also just rip off the kids charging a lot of money for things that are effectively 30 chairs and a talking head.
There is no incentive to think about costs, you just charge the max for every course at every uni and incentive never to run ones that cost a lot of money.
A change I would like to see is make university exams open to all, for a fee related to exam costs only, similar to A Levels and GCSEs.
Then lets see how much cheaper and faster other suppliers can teach the same content. I bet plenty of 3 year degrees can be taught in 6 months full time.
Compare and contrast the University of Buckingham.
in 1850 or so my 3x Gt Grandfather obtained an MD from St Andrews University by simply turning up at the exam room, paying the fee and passing the exam. He was living in London at the time, didn't have to do any study in Scotland.
@Parody_PM · 26m Grant Shapps is right, you have to judge me in the round. So don’t forget the thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths, illegally proroguing Parliament, the highest taxes since the 1950s, the empty shelves, my disastrous Brexit deal, PPE cronyism, £37bn wasted on test and trace
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry t
I thought you were a nurse?
If you have rampant inflation and a cost of living squeeze the like of which we haven't seen for 30 years or more, don't expect full employment to continue as the norm for ever and a day.
But I don't think anyway that people will go to the ballot box thinking, 'it has cost me £50 to get here and my family haven't got enough to eat each month let alone take a holiday or any of the former things we enjoyed ... but it's okay because I've got my job.'
Back in the day inflation was the litmus paper for everything else. It was what Margaret Thatcher based her entire economic policy around: getting down the PSBR to reduce inflation. We may have moved on from that but only because until now we have taken low inflation as a given.
High inflation is a curse on everyone: the whole population is affected by it.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
The Government are screwing that up by raising taxes though.
Also the effect of increasing ability student loans, all it has done is increase the amount charged for student accommodation. £150-200 a week for room in towns where a mortgage on a whole house is that is just criminal, and this is often done under the guise of well you get an ensuite now or have better communal facilities e.g. a nice room with big telly, sky, pool table....the cost of that is peanuts compared to the increase they charge.
Many of these being built by financial institutions and pension funds as they have a long term income stream that is decent and pretty much guaranteed.
It is shabby what all govts from 1997 to the current day have done with respect to further education and the younger generation.
It has certainly encouraged the building of student accomoodation, Im sure most University Cities are now full of new student flats
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
As I said down thread, student fees / loans / debt, the key problems which are never addressed, the rip off of accommodation means everybody racks up these massive loans (not just the mega piss heads when most of us were at uni). And 50% of kids going to uni full time.
Ultimately we all pay for this as vast amount of this debt is going to be written off.
The write offs are effectively part of the design, though- it's part of the mechanism to make it work like a tax without being a tax. As long as people at the upper end of the graduate income scale pay more and those at the lower end pay less, it all comes out in the wash.
But yes, the expansion of university teaching without thinking much about accommodation causes lots of problems. In a rational free market world, lots more student flats would get built and their rents wouldn't go through the roof.
But we don't build enough of anything, anywhere.
I'm sure there are problems in Britain that don't spiral back to "build more houses and flats at fairly attractive highish density even if that rules out multiple parking spaces per dwelling", but I don't know what they are.
One huge mistake I think the Cameron government made when reforming (i.e. increasing) uni fees is that some subjects genuinely cost a lot of money to put on in particular science and medicine, while also being some of the most crucial to our economy (especially going forward). Them saying to unis you charge up to a cap there will be a market has totally failed, every uni just charges basically the max.
What has happened is a lot of management in unis have been enriched by this change.
What I think we actually wanted is the government to subsidise some courses to ensure they continue to teach them e.g. I believe significant number of unis don't offer / stopped Chemistry because it costs about £15k a year to run, while ensuring unis don't also just rip off the kids charging a lot of money for things that are effectively 30 chairs and a talking head.
There is no incentive to think about costs, you just charge the max for every course at every uni and incentive never to run ones that cost a lot of money.
A change I would like to see is make university exams open to all, for a fee related to exam costs only, similar to A Levels and GCSEs.
Then lets see how much cheaper and faster other suppliers can teach the same content. I bet plenty of 3 year degrees can be taught in 6 months full time.
Compare and contrast the University of Buckingham.
in 1850 or so my 3x Gt Grandfather obtained an MD from St Andrews University by simply turning up at the exam room, paying the fee and passing the exam. He was living in London at the time, didn't have to do any study in Scotland.
That is how it should be. If you know enough, you pass.
This is one free market idea that never seems to be pushed by the right. Perhaps because they dont want some oiks who happen to be bright or work hard, but don't have the connections to get into Oxbridge to outperform them in exams.
This scandal is simultaneously outrageous and boring. It’s OMG and Yawn
I can see Boris surviving, quite easily, out of voter apathy
Is anyone out there really boiling with anger? I doubt it. It’s like a car crash filmed in such ultra-slow-motion you lose interest
As I say downthread, it's more a "fuck that, I'm not getting off my arse for that clown" come election time, rather than "MAKE WAY, I'M VOTING FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, THE LAST BASTION OF RIGHTOUSNESS, TO SMITE THESE WRONGDOERS".
The Tories will be hoping that, come the 2024 election, partygate will be a dim and boring memory. This might well work. Unfortunately for them, by 2024 there’s a high chance the economy will be in the toilet, so they will get binned for THAT, instead
The Tories can bring up the pandemic without bringing up partygate.
No one will ‘bring up the pandemic’. It is so ghastly and bleak we will erase it from the collective memory ASAFP
What utter, complete, rubbish.
Edit: but that is on a timescale of decades, however.
Well surely that's the point? There is no way that the covid pandemic is going to erased from collective memory two years from now. It's visceral, raw. It's nonsense to think otherwise. Or, actually, it's more about Leon's own projected desire to move on from it. Which is fair enough but not the same thing.
And by the way, I suspect that the Spanish flu was subsequently treated that way because of two even more traumatic events which wiped over it. I know I know, deaths exceeded, but for sheer bloody trauma both world wars were unparalleled.
Wrong, nothing more dull than ancient medical history (I speak as a professional historian of ancient medicine). 9 years ago I had really serious, odds-slightly-against-survival, surgery. It seemed a big deal at the time, a doctor asked me a couple of weeks ago what the scars were and it took me a moment or two to remember.
Childbirth is said to be very painful yet women keep having babies.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
Point of PB pedantry, Armenian was/is very much a separate language.
As are Ukrainian and Russian so how Macron defines Ukrainians and Russians as brothers and therefore is reluctant to call it genocide is odd to be generous.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
.
Erm, I don't believe that's exactly right.
A squeeze on supply pushes up prices: basic economics of supply and demand. Take energy as an example, the rise in raw prices is nothing to do with a boom.
Likewise, supply problems partly as a result of Brexit mean that the supply squeeze pushes up prices.
Even schoolgirl economics taught me that too many people chasing too few goods = inflation.
The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
...
Article VIII
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.
Genocide Convention 1948
...
Let's not forget that the French effectively armed and trained the guilty party in Rwanda 1994.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
.
Erm, I don't believe that's exactly right.
A squeeze on supply pushes up prices: basic economics of supply and demand. Take energy as an example, the rise in raw prices is nothing to do with a boom.
Likewise, supply problems partly as a result of Brexit mean that the supply squeeze pushes up prices.
Even schoolgirl economics taught me that too many people chasing too few goods = inflation.
Lol that you are still using Brexit as the stick for causing global inflation. Troll.
@Parody_PM · 26m Grant Shapps is right, you have to judge me in the round. So don’t forget the thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths, illegally proroguing Parliament, the highest taxes since the 1950s, the empty shelves, my disastrous Brexit deal, PPE cronyism, £37bn wasted on test and trace
Well said and the list could go on and on and on and on!
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
.
Erm, I don't believe that's exactly right.
A squeeze on supply pushes up prices: basic economics of supply and demand. Take energy as an example, the rise in raw prices is nothing to do with a boom.
Likewise, supply problems partly as a result of Brexit mean that the supply squeeze pushes up prices.
Even schoolgirl economics taught me that too many people chasing too few goods = inflation.
America has over 8% inflation because ... Brexit.
You're cream crackers 24/7 aren't you?
Yes too many people chasing goods = inflation and the too many people is because the world economy is overheating not because of supply problems partly [or even at all] as a result of Brexit.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
Point of PB pedantry, Armenian was/is very much a separate language.
As are Ukrainian and Russian so how Macron defines Ukrainians and Russians as brothers and therefore is reluctant to call it genocide is odd to be generous.
AIUI Ukrainian and Russian are not 'very much a separate language'. I believe that when spoken speakers of one can understand the other. However the written language is more different. How and why I don't know.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
Point of PB pedantry, Armenian was/is very much a separate language.
As are Ukrainian and Russian so how Macron defines Ukrainians and Russians as brothers and therefore is reluctant to call it genocide is odd to be generous.
It's also a specific element of Kremlin propaganda to describe Ukraine as a "brotherly nation" to justify why they cannot allow it to be seduced by the West.
One huge mistake I think the Cameron government made when reforming (i.e. increasing) uni fees is that some subjects genuinely cost a lot of money to put on in particular science and medicine, while also being some of the most crucial to our economy (especially going forward). Them saying to unis you charge up to a cap there will be a market has totally failed, every uni just charges basically the max.
What has happened is a lot of management in unis have been enriched by this change.
What I think we actually wanted is the government to subsidise some courses to ensure they continue to teach them e.g. I believe significant number of unis don't offer / stopped Chemistry because it costs about £15k a year to run, while ensuring unis don't also just rip off the kids charging a lot of money for things that are effectively 30 chairs and a talking head.
There is no incentive to think about costs, you just charge the max for every course at every uni and incentive never to run ones that cost a lot of money.
A change I would like to see is make university exams open to all, for a fee related to exam costs only, similar to A Levels and GCSEs.
Then lets see how much cheaper and faster other suppliers can teach the same content. I bet plenty of 3 year degrees can be taught in 6 months full time.
Compare and contrast the University of Buckingham.
in 1850 or so my 3x Gt Grandfather obtained an MD from St Andrews University by simply turning up at the exam room, paying the fee and passing the exam. He was living in London at the time, didn't have to do any study in Scotland.
That is how it should be. If you know enough, you pass.
This is one free market idea that never seems to be pushed by the right. Perhaps because they dont want some oiks who happen to be bright or work hard, but don't have the connections to get into Oxbridge to outperform them in exams.
Depends on the course though. Mine was physics (four years combined masters) and a fair chunk of the assessment (over half for the masters year) was on lab work, not exams. That made sense, really, as the degree was about actually being able to do the stuff, not just know the answers or being able to work out the maths. You could have a theoretical physics degree completely assessed by exams, I guess.
Actually, the >50% final year 'lab' assessment was, for my project, analysis of pre-collected data from a NASA probe, but even that can only really be tested by being given some data and some weeks to develop analysis of it, not really something you can truly assess in an exam. The skills I developed in that project and earlire labs have been more useful for my future career (and also for my lab-partner who is not in academia) than the stuff we were tested on in the exams.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
.
Erm, I don't believe that's exactly right.
A squeeze on supply pushes up prices: basic economics of supply and demand. Take energy as an example, the rise in raw prices is nothing to do with a boom.
Likewise, supply problems partly as a result of Brexit mean that the supply squeeze pushes up prices.
Even schoolgirl economics taught me that too many people chasing too few goods = inflation.
You're cream crackers 24/7 aren't you?
.
Why oh why do you feel the need to go Ad Hominem? Pack it in.
There are major supply problems at the moment, including in China. The equilibrium between supply and demand has been broken a lot of it (of course) because of covid.
Take the second hand car market. Prices have rocketed: there simply aren't enough vehicles to go around, partly because of the problem of key components in the supply chains in the new car market.
That's not 'cream crackers' it's what all economic analysts are saying. Just drop the Ad hominen guff. Ta.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
Point of PB pedantry, Armenian was/is very much a separate language.
As are Ukrainian and Russian so how Macron defines Ukrainians and Russians as brothers and therefore is reluctant to call it genocide is odd to be generous.
AIUI Ukrainian and Russian are not 'very much a separate language'. I believe that when spoken speakers of one can understand the other. However the written language is more different. How and why I don't know.
However, I'm sure someone here does!
Its the same with many languages. German, Dutch and Afrikaans speakers can kind-of understand much of what each other say even without speaking the other language. Languages have evolved over time and some of those have become different languages over time but they're related to each other.
Can we now read it as a fact that the Mail consider the replacement of Chamberlain with Churchill in WWII to be a stupid mistake?
If not, why not? I understand there was a bloody war on at the time, and one somewhat closer to home and with a large number of British troops already in action.
Surely the difference is that Chamberlain was failing in WWII while Zelenskyy and all concerned seem to be saying that Boris is doing a very good job with respect to Ukraine.
Quite a difference there. If Chamberlain was winning WWII and was doing an excellent job with the war, would he have been defeated?
I still think Boris should go because for me as a point of principle lawmakers can't be lawbreakers but that's a really dodgy comparison.
There are a host of tories who would be better concerning Ukraine, Wallace, tugendhat, ellwood, Hunt even. Not sure whether Raab knows where Ukraine is though.
I think Zelenskyy thinks Boris is doing well because they are both entertaining
International recognition factor is a plus (doesn't counter his negative qualities!).
Morning all! Had a quiet night in Argelès last night. The weather was awful which left me rather less keen to explore than usual. I did make it to my new favourite brewery just in time for a very quick tour and tasting before they closed, then had a very tasty but not very French pizza with a few glasses of wine at the nearest restaurant to my hotel.
I think Argelès might be the camping capital of France; there were at least five campsites in the town itself, and I passed another eight or nine in the first couple of miles on my way out of the place this morning. One of them, called L’Hippocampe did almost get me thinking..
I’m now in St Cyprien (having my first, and soon second, beer) about halfway to Perpignan where I’ve decided to stay for two nights. I’ve booked an apartment rather than a hotel, with a washing machine so I can get all my clothes clean again - even my jeans!
There’s quite a lot to see in Perpignan and it’s pretty cheap to stay there. Also, on Good Friday they have some crazy ancient procession through the centre (pic from wiki below). I’m looking forward to seeing the train station, which Dali called the centre of the universe - and where I intend to stop walking, at least for a while!
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
.
Erm, I don't believe that's exactly right.
A squeeze on supply pushes up prices: basic economics of supply and demand. Take energy as an example, the rise in raw prices is nothing to do with a boom.
Likewise, supply problems partly as a result of Brexit mean that the supply squeeze pushes up prices.
Even schoolgirl economics taught me that too many people chasing too few goods = inflation.
You're cream crackers 24/7 aren't you?
.
Why oh why do you feel the need to go Ad Hominem? Pack it in.
There are major supply problems at the moment, including in China. The equilibrium between supply and demand has been broken a lot of it (of course) because of covid.
Take the second hand car market. Prices have rocketed: there simply aren't enough vehicles to go around, partly because of the problem of key components in the supply chains in the new car market.
That's not 'cream crackers' it's what all economic analysts are saying. Just drop the Ad hominen guff. Ta.
The cream crackers reference was for blaming Brexit. Don't troll and I won't call you out for it.
Global inflation is because the economy is rebounding and growing fast not because it is crashing.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry t
I thought you were a nurse?
If you have rampant inflation and a cost of living squeeze the like of which we haven't seen for 30 years or more, don't expect full employment to continue as the norm for ever and a day.
But I don't think anyway that people will go to the ballot box thinking, 'it has cost me £50 to get here and my family haven't got enough to eat each month let alone take a holiday or any of the former things we enjoyed ... but it's okay because I've got my job.'
Back in the day inflation was the litmus paper for everything else. It was what Margaret Thatcher based her entire economic policy around: getting down the PSBR to reduce inflation. We may have moved on from that but only because until now we have taken low inflation as a given.
High inflation is a curse on everyone: the whole population is affected by it.
My wife and daughter are nurses, I work in the M & E sector.
Inflation is a pain but it is worldwide inflation which the UK Government can do little about and it will pass.
The fact remains that the economy is still in good shape and people have money to spend as highlighted yesterday by Easy Jet reporting very high levels of bookings for the Summer.
Pubs and restuatants round here seem very busy and its impossible to get a taxi as they are booked all the time.
As someone who left school in the early 80's when there were no jobs for anyone, this does not feel like an economy that is tanking
Same thing, of course, in the UK housing market. They are not making enough houses, and God stopped making land, so there are too many people chasing too few properties. Ergo prices rise.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
The Government are screwing that up by raising taxes though.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
Point of PB pedantry, Armenian was/is very much a separate language.
As are Ukrainian and Russian so how Macron defines Ukrainians and Russians as brothers and therefore is reluctant to call it genocide is odd to be generous.
AIUI Ukrainian and Russian are not 'very much a separate language'. I believe that when spoken speakers of one can understand the other. However the written language is more different. How and why I don't know.
However, I'm sure someone here does!
Its the same with many languages. German, Dutch and Afrikaans speakers can kind-of understand much of what each other say even without speaking the other language. Languages have evolved over time and some of those have become different languages over time but they're related to each other.
Yes, and I, for instance, can understand American, and have been watching a lot of House clips on Youtube, though recent recommendations have included House dubbed into German, presumably because there are many Germans watching House clips in both languages.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
Point of PB pedantry, Armenian was/is very much a separate language.
As are Ukrainian and Russian so how Macron defines Ukrainians and Russians as brothers and therefore is reluctant to call it genocide is odd to be generous.
AIUI Ukrainian and Russian are not 'very much a separate language'. I believe that when spoken speakers of one can understand the other. However the written language is more different. How and why I don't know.
However, I'm sure someone here does!
Its the same with many languages. German, Dutch and Afrikaans speakers can kind-of understand much of what each other say even without speaking the other language. Languages have evolved over time and some of those have become different languages over time but they're related to each other.
Noted. I think that Dutch is sometimes comprehensible in English if one reads it slowly. I've often wondered what would have happened if England had not united and (say) Northumbria had evolved into a separate state. Would it be even more difficult, linguistically, for a Southerner to move to Geordie or Mackem territory than it is now?
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
Point of PB pedantry, Armenian was/is very much a separate language.
As are Ukrainian and Russian so how Macron defines Ukrainians and Russians as brothers and therefore is reluctant to call it genocide is odd to be generous.
It's also a specific element of Kremlin propaganda to describe Ukraine as a "brotherly nation" to justify why they cannot allow it to be seduced by the West.
Though being a brotherly nation does rather imply mass rape and murder are to be deplored, whether genocide or not.
This scandal is simultaneously outrageous and boring. It’s OMG and Yawn
I can see Boris surviving, quite easily, out of voter apathy
Is anyone out there really boiling with anger? I doubt it. It’s like a car crash filmed in such ultra-slow-motion you lose interest
As I say downthread, it's more a "fuck that, I'm not getting off my arse for that clown" come election time, rather than "MAKE WAY, I'M VOTING FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, THE LAST BASTION OF RIGHTOUSNESS, TO SMITE THESE WRONGDOERS".
Sadly, Clegg having messed up.
Indeed. Sorry yellows but there remains something grating about your messaging. A lot more work needed to attract floating voters rather than just preaching to the choir. In May if I get around to it I’ll be voting for the local independent candidate once again, that runs under the banner of a loose coalition of independent candidates.
Lib Dems still not doing enough for me. Boris broke the rules because the rules were stupid, draconian and ill advised. Whereas we still see too much pearl clutching about him needing to go because he didn’t piously adhere to those stupid rules.
I'm not quite as worried about Boris breaking the rules but about his insisting that he didn't, and indeed that there was no opportunity for him to do so.
I must say I don't envy Conservative canvassers over the next couple of weeks. I expect that we'll be told that in Epping they've been welcomed, of course.
I'd like to think the people of Epping will be asking themselves a more pertinent question: who will empty my dustbins next week? Surely the answer there, as almost everywhere, would be the LibDems?
Get your recycling / composting right and that can probably be once a fortnight or less frequently .
I was quite surprised that I cut my already modest recycling by 75%. I have since rather fallen off that particular wagon.
I think the Baroness Scotland one is probably the hardest one for Labour to dismiss...
Fixed Penalty Notice queen Harriet Harman then piroutted and defended Baroness Scotland, serving as Gordon Brown’s Attorney General at the time, when she received a £5,000 civil penalty notice for hiring an illegal worker. While this would have been bad enough, Scotland was a Home Office minister who helped introduce the very legislation under which she received the fine. Scotland said the penalty was caused by a technical error and compared it to a parking ticket, saying “it’s not a criminal offence”. Brown said “no further action was necessary”…
The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
...
Article VIII
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.
Genocide Convention 1948
...
Let's not forget that the French effectively armed and trained the guilty party in Rwanda 1994.
Means little though given Russia has a permanent veto on UN action on the Security Council
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry t
I thought you were a nurse?
If you have rampant inflation and a cost of living squeeze the like of which we haven't seen for 30 years or more, don't expect full employment to continue as the norm for ever and a day.
But I don't think anyway that people will go to the ballot box thinking, 'it has cost me £50 to get here and my family haven't got enough to eat each month let alone take a holiday or any of the former things we enjoyed ... but it's okay because I've got my job.'
Back in the day inflation was the litmus paper for everything else. It was what Margaret Thatcher based her entire economic policy around: getting down the PSBR to reduce inflation. We may have moved on from that but only because until now we have taken low inflation as a given.
High inflation is a curse on everyone: the whole population is affected by it.
The fact remains that the economy is still in good shape and people have money to spend
This really is out of tune I'm afraid.
As a single mum I know just how much my living standards are falling with a terrible squeeze. I'm making big cutbacks every month just to keep my head above water. So to ozzymandias, yes I do get agitated.
@moonshine piss off calling me a troll. It's beyond boring now. I'm not a troll. I'm a decent human being but, yes, I am on the left of centre and have alternative attitudes to lifestyle. The fact that you resort to namecalling me a troll says more about your own inability to access a worldview outside of your own. But it is also indicative of a demographic on here that is far from representative of this nation.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
The Government are screwing that up by raising taxes though.
Do you really think the UK economy is booming?
I think some sectors are booming, but by no means is everyone getting the benefit.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
The Government are screwing that up by raising taxes though.
Do you really think the UK economy is booming?
Non-state/third sector growth in February was 1% and 1.1% in January. The real economy is booming, about time too after two years of state expansion at the expense of the private sector.
The government needs to start thinking about shrinking the state and making room for the private sector again. I'd also include the NHS in that.
Morning all! Had a quiet night in Argelès last night. The weather was awful which left me rather less keen to explore than usual. I did make it to my new favourite brewery just in time for a very quick tour and tasting before they closed, then had a very tasty but not very French pizza with a few glasses of wine at the nearest restaurant to my hotel.
I think Argelès might be the camping capital of France; there were at least five campsites in the town itself, and I passed another eight or nine in the first couple of miles on my way out of the place this morning. One of them, called L’Hippocampe did almost get me thinking..
I’m now in St Cyprien (having my first, and soon second, beer) about halfway to Perpignan where I’ve decided to stay for two nights. I’ve booked an apartment rather than a hotel, with a washing machine so I can get all my clothes clean again - even my jeans!
There’s quite a lot to see in Perpignan and it’s pretty cheap to stay there. Also, on Good Friday they have some crazy ancient procession through the centre (pic from wiki below). I’m looking forward to seeing the train station, which Dali called the centre of the universe - and where I intend to stop walking, at least for a while!
If you don't know it, can I recommend Ceret? It's about 20 miles inland from where you are, and it's a great little market town with squares full of bars and restaurants to watch the world go by.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
That's interesting.
I keep being told it's all the fault of Brexit.
I've personally moved on from Brexit, though I find it sad. But that it is having 'some' effect is obviously undeniable. And yet there are people who do try to deny this, which is extraordinary!
Can we now read it as a fact that the Mail consider the replacement of Chamberlain with Churchill in WWII to be a stupid mistake?
If not, why not? I understand there was a bloody war on at the time, and one somewhat closer to home and with a large number of British troops already in action.
Surely the difference is that Chamberlain was failing in WWII while Zelenskyy and all concerned seem to be saying that Boris is doing a very good job with respect to Ukraine.
Quite a difference there. If Chamberlain was winning WWII and was doing an excellent job with the war, would he have been defeated?
I still think Boris should go because for me as a point of principle lawmakers can't be lawbreakers but that's a really dodgy comparison.
There are a host of tories who would be better concerning Ukraine, Wallace, tugendhat, ellwood, Hunt even. Not sure whether Raab knows where Ukraine is though.
That seems to be your bias showing, Zelenskyy doesn't seem to agree.
Putin does seem to have moved the agenda on and Ukraine saying over the weekend that the UK is Ukraine's best ally in this conflict seems to have secured Johnson for the time being at least.
Zelenskyy is doing a good job in PR and leading his people. I'm also sure that he says similar things to the other leaders who visit, we just don't get those comments reported to us. The mail etc are just playing up to Johnson 's Churchillian cosplay
One huge mistake I think the Cameron government made when reforming (i.e. increasing) uni fees is that some subjects genuinely cost a lot of money to put on in particular science and medicine, while also being some of the most crucial to our economy (especially going forward). Them saying to unis you charge up to a cap there will be a market has totally failed, every uni just charges basically the max.
What has happened is a lot of management in unis have been enriched by this change.
What I think we actually wanted is the government to subsidise some courses to ensure they continue to teach them e.g. I believe significant number of unis don't offer / stopped Chemistry because it costs about £15k a year to run, while ensuring unis don't also just rip off the kids charging a lot of money for things that are effectively 30 chairs and a talking head.
There is no incentive to think about costs, you just charge the max for every course at every uni and incentive never to run ones that cost a lot of money.
A change I would like to see is make university exams open to all, for a fee related to exam costs only, similar to A Levels and GCSEs.
Then lets see how much cheaper and faster other suppliers can teach the same content. I bet plenty of 3 year degrees can be taught in 6 months full time.
Compare and contrast the University of Buckingham.
in 1850 or so my 3x Gt Grandfather obtained an MD from St Andrews University by simply turning up at the exam room, paying the fee and passing the exam. He was living in London at the time, didn't have to do any study in Scotland.
That is how it should be. If you know enough, you pass.
This is one free market idea that never seems to be pushed by the right. Perhaps because they dont want some oiks who happen to be bright or work hard, but don't have the connections to get into Oxbridge to outperform them in exams.
Depends on the course though. Mine was physics (four years combined masters) and a fair chunk of the assessment (over half for the masters year) was on lab work, not exams. That made sense, really, as the degree was about actually being able to do the stuff, not just know the answers or being able to work out the maths. You could have a theoretical physics degree completely assessed by exams, I guess.
Actually, the >50% final year 'lab' assessment was, for my project, analysis of pre-collected data from a NASA probe, but even that can only really be tested by being given some data and some weeks to develop analysis of it, not really something you can truly assess in an exam. The skills I developed in that project and earlire labs have been more useful for my future career (and also for my lab-partner who is not in academia) than the stuff we were tested on in the exams.
In my system it would be fine for universities to charge external candidates for lab time in such circumstances. So your degree might end up costing several £k for the exams whereas a theoretical physics exam would cost several hundreds.
What happened during covid on similar courses? Did the universities deny the lab time whilst still charging full whack?
Bit of a scoop in Private Eye. We were discussing Owen Jones last night. This is not a good look for him or the Guardian
‘Owen Jones has relentlessly persecuted women online, including his own colleagues. An external investigator brought in by The Guardian has found him guilty of bullying a female columnist. Yet it has tried to keep the report quiet and appears not to have sanctioned Jones at all.’
Ross played an absolute blinder a few months ago, when he managed to get unanimity in his parliamentary group for the Johnson resignation call.
… then blew it all in a few short seconds when he did one of the most humiliating u-turns in modern Scottish political history.
He’s a dead duck.
My contempt and loathing for Johnson is unchanged over the last 24 hours, simply because it was already maxed out. But the scope has widened to encompass the whole of the cabinet, and beyond.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
Point of PB pedantry, Armenian was/is very much a separate language.
As are Ukrainian and Russian so how Macron defines Ukrainians and Russians as brothers and therefore is reluctant to call it genocide is odd to be generous.
AIUI Ukrainian and Russian are not 'very much a separate language'. I believe that when spoken speakers of one can understand the other. However the written language is more different. How and why I don't know.
However, I'm sure someone here does!
Its the same with many languages. German, Dutch and Afrikaans speakers can kind-of understand much of what each other say even without speaking the other language. Languages have evolved over time and some of those have become different languages over time but they're related to each other.
Used to go clubbing with a couple of Afrikaaner girls. Over the music it was impossible to tell whether they were speaking Afrikaaner or English. The cadence, sounds and tones are remarkably similar. Although that may have been the liquid MDMA.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
The Government are screwing that up by raising taxes though.
Do you really think the UK economy is booming?
GDP grew by about 7.5% in 2021.
Its not going to keep growing like that if the Government keep raising taxes though.
Morning all! Had a quiet night in Argelès last night. The weather was awful which left me rather less keen to explore than usual. I did make it to my new favourite brewery just in time for a very quick tour and tasting before they closed, then had a very tasty but not very French pizza with a few glasses of wine at the nearest restaurant to my hotel.
I think Argelès might be the camping capital of France; there were at least five campsites in the town itself, and I passed another eight or nine in the first couple of miles on my way out of the place this morning. One of them, called L’Hippocampe did almost get me thinking..
I’m now in St Cyprien (having my first, and soon second, beer) about halfway to Perpignan where I’ve decided to stay for two nights. I’ve booked an apartment rather than a hotel, with a washing machine so I can get all my clothes clean again - even my jeans!
There’s quite a lot to see in Perpignan and it’s pretty cheap to stay there. Also, on Good Friday they have some crazy ancient procession through the centre (pic from wiki below). I’m looking forward to seeing the train station, which Dali called the centre of the universe - and where I intend to stop walking, at least for a while!
If you don't know it, can I recommend Ceret? It's about 20 miles inland from where you are, and it's a great little market town with squares full of bars and restaurants to watch the world go by.
Thanks! I’ll definitely check it out before I head off from Perpignan.
The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
...
Article VIII
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.
Genocide Convention 1948
...
Let's not forget that the French effectively armed and trained the guilty party in Rwanda 1994.
Means little though given Russia has a permanent veto on UN action on the Security Council
Art VIII is just one way of going about things tho, it doesn't narrow the generality of the duty to prevent in Art I.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry t
I thought you were a nurse?
If you have rampant inflation and a cost of living squeeze the like of which we haven't seen for 30 years or more, don't expect full employment to continue as the norm for ever and a day.
But I don't think anyway that people will go to the ballot box thinking, 'it has cost me £50 to get here and my family haven't got enough to eat each month let alone take a holiday or any of the former things we enjoyed ... but it's okay because I've got my job.'
Back in the day inflation was the litmus paper for everything else. It was what Margaret Thatcher based her entire economic policy around: getting down the PSBR to reduce inflation. We may have moved on from that but only because until now we have taken low inflation as a given.
High inflation is a curse on everyone: the whole population is affected by it.
its impossible to get a taxi as they are booked all the time.
Chatted to a taxi driver the other day who said he's never been so busy. The reason? All the drivers left during covid. Well, obviously not 'everyone' but he said zillions packed up, many back to other countries.
What a twat. Does that mean that German Jews who were murdered in a genocide by their “German brothers” (so even more brotherly than Ukrainians/Russians as being, you know, the same nationality) weren’t actually victims of genocide?
The Hutu and Tutsi lived in the same country...
And the Armenia genocide - I’m assuming Macron doesn’t think that was genocide, right as they were all part of the same empire, not even separate countries/languages etc so clearly brothers?
Point of PB pedantry, Armenian was/is very much a separate language.
As are Ukrainian and Russian so how Macron defines Ukrainians and Russians as brothers and therefore is reluctant to call it genocide is odd to be generous.
AIUI Ukrainian and Russian are not 'very much a separate language'. I believe that when spoken speakers of one can understand the other. However the written language is more different. How and why I don't know.
However, I'm sure someone here does!
Its the same with many languages. German, Dutch and Afrikaans speakers can kind-of understand much of what each other say even without speaking the other language. Languages have evolved over time and some of those have become different languages over time but they're related to each other.
Used to go clubbing with a couple of Afrikaaner girls. Over the music it was impossible to tell whether they were speaking Afrikaaner or English. The cadence, sounds and tones are remarkably similar. Although that may have been the liquid MDMA.
Definitely the MDMA, Afrikaans is very guttural to me.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
That's interesting.
I keep being told it's all the fault of Brexit.
I've personally moved on from Brexit, though I find it sad. But that it is having 'some' effect is obviously undeniable. And yet there are people who do try to deny this, which is extraordinary!
It's almost as if Brexit belief is a cult.
No one sane thinks brexit has had no effects. However we cannot see the road not travelled, either on vaccines, jobs, P&O, anything. Its just something we need to deal with now. Governments cannot bind the hands of future parliaments, so the next government can change things. The biggest danger is for the polarised camps to stick to their guns;
Remainer - 'Its all down to Brexit' Leaver - 'Its nothing to do with Brexit'
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
.
Erm, I don't believe that's exactly right.
A squeeze on supply pushes up prices: basic economics of supply and demand. Take energy as an example, the rise in raw prices is nothing to do with a boom.
Likewise, supply problems partly as a result of Brexit mean that the supply squeeze pushes up prices.
Even schoolgirl economics taught me that too many people chasing too few goods = inflation.
You're cream crackers 24/7 aren't you?
.
Why oh why do you feel the need to go Ad Hominem? Pack it in.
There are major supply problems at the moment, including in China. The equilibrium between supply and demand has been broken a lot of it (of course) because of covid.
Take the second hand car market. Prices have rocketed: there simply aren't enough vehicles to go around, partly because of the problem of key components in the supply chains in the new car market.
That's not 'cream crackers' it's what all economic analysts are saying. Just drop the Ad hominen guff. Ta.
The cream crackers reference was for blaming Brexit. Don't troll and I won't call you out for it.
So basically, tow your right-wing worldview, agree with you, and you won't call me a troll. Stop and think about that. It's pathetic.
Obviously Brexit has had, and is having, 'an' effect. Not to list it among other reasons would be to descend into some dystopian depth of Orwellian horror.
I'm not going to stop posting my left of centre beliefs and nor should I be bullied into doing so. It's putting my perspective which currently holds the majority opinion in the United Kingdom.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
That's interesting.
I keep being told it's all the fault of Brexit.
I've personally moved on from Brexit, though I find it sad. But that it is having 'some' effect is obviously undeniable. And yet there are people who do try to deny this, which is extraordinary!
It's almost as if Brexit belief is a cult.
No one sane thinks brexit has had no effects. However we cannot see the road not travelled, either on vaccines, jobs, P&O, anything. Its just something we need to deal with now. Governments cannot bind the hands of future parliaments, so the next government can change things. The biggest danger is for the polarised camps to stick to their guns;
Remainer - 'Its all down to Brexit' Leaver - 'Its nothing to do with Brexit'
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
Why do you think the economy is tanking? We live in a country with full employment, something that has not happened for 60 years.. From my personal knowledge of the Construction Industry this is going a be another extremely busy year with Councils finally back at work trying to catch up on all the projects they didn't do over the last 2 years.
Inflation is happening because the country and the world is booming, not crashing.
.
Erm, I don't believe that's exactly right.
A squeeze on supply pushes up prices: basic economics of supply and demand. Take energy as an example, the rise in raw prices is nothing to do with a boom.
Likewise, supply problems partly as a result of Brexit mean that the supply squeeze pushes up prices.
Even schoolgirl economics taught me that too many people chasing too few goods = inflation.
You're cream crackers 24/7 aren't you?
.
Why oh why do you feel the need to go Ad Hominem? Pack it in.
There are major supply problems at the moment, including in China. The equilibrium between supply and demand has been broken a lot of it (of course) because of covid.
Take the second hand car market. Prices have rocketed: there simply aren't enough vehicles to go around, partly because of the problem of key components in the supply chains in the new car market.
That's not 'cream crackers' it's what all economic analysts are saying. Just drop the Ad hominen guff. Ta.
The cream crackers reference was for blaming Brexit. Don't troll and I won't call you out for it.
So basically, tow your right-wing worldview, agree with you, and you won't call me a troll. Stop and think about that. It's pathetic.
Obviously Brexit has had, and is having, 'an' effect. Not to list it among other reasons would be to descend into some dystopian depth of Orwellian horror.
I'm not going to stop posting my left of centre beliefs and nor should I be bullied into doing so. It's putting my perspective which currently holds the majority opinion in the United Kingdom.
If you want to credit Brexit as part of the reason why our inflation rate is lower than America's then sure go ahead with your dystopian nonsense, but you're being ridiculous.
No, Brexit is not having any significant effect whatsoever on global inflation.
Bit of a scoop in Private Eye. We were discussing Owen Jones last night. This is not a good look for him or the Guardian
‘Owen Jones has relentlessly persecuted women online, including his own colleagues. An external investigator brought in by The Guardian has found him guilty of bullying a female columnist. Yet it has tried to keep the report quiet and appears not to have sanctioned Jones at all.’
Sweden & Finland will be big assets to NATO. Highly integrated with each other, highly inter-operable with NATO & in the latter case the largest artillery force in Europe, among other strengths. Their membership will also make it easier to defend NATO's northern flank & Baltics.
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
That's interesting.
I keep being told it's all the fault of Brexit.
I've personally moved on from Brexit, though I find it sad. But that it is having 'some' effect is obviously undeniable. And yet there are people who do try to deny this, which is extraordinary!
It's almost as if Brexit belief is a cult.
No one sane thinks brexit has had no effects. However we cannot see the road not travelled, either on vaccines, jobs, P&O, anything. Its just something we need to deal with now. Governments cannot bind the hands of future parliaments, so the next government can change things. The biggest danger is for the polarised camps to stick to their guns;
Remainer - 'Its all down to Brexit' Leaver - 'Its nothing to do with Brexit'
Both are wrong.
We can't see the road not travelled but we can see the rest of the world like America with over 8% inflation.
Global inflation is not Brexit-related, Brexit is a rounding error compared to the effects of the pandemic.
This scandal is simultaneously outrageous and boring. It’s OMG and Yawn
I can see Boris surviving, quite easily, out of voter apathy
Is anyone out there really boiling with anger? I doubt it. It’s like a car crash filmed in such ultra-slow-motion you lose interest
As I say downthread, it's more a "fuck that, I'm not getting off my arse for that clown" come election time, rather than "MAKE WAY, I'M VOTING FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS, THE LAST BASTION OF RIGHTOUSNESS, TO SMITE THESE WRONGDOERS".
The Tories will be hoping that, come the 2024 election, partygate will be a dim and boring memory. This might well work. Unfortunately for them, by 2024 there’s a high chance the economy will be in the toilet, so they will get binned for THAT, instead
The Tories can bring up the pandemic without bringing up partygate.
No one will ‘bring up the pandemic’. It is so ghastly and bleak we will erase it from the collective memory ASAFP
What utter, complete, rubbish.
You are becoming the Dennis Healey of pb.com: whatever you say, we can be sure that the diametric opposite is true.
Except, history shows I am right
Read this brilliant piece by the great SeanT, who was once a congregant of this very same PB parish: "Why we remember wars but forget plagues"
He's correct, and the absence of plague literature proves it
Comments
It's worse.
https://news.sky.com/story/cost-of-living-effects-of-russias-war-push-uk-inflation-to-fresh-30-year-high-of-7-12588628
Then the economy was in great shape. This time it's tanking.
You are becoming the Dennis Healey of pb.com: whatever you say, we can be sure that the diametric opposite is true.
Ultimately we all pay for this as vast amount of this debt is going to be written off.
My father, and his brother and sister did two year courses before WWII, although my aunt did a one year top up in the early 50's.
And finally my wife did a two year course at the end of the 50's in a specific Teacher Training College.
https://amp.france24.com/en/20190424-france-national-commemoration-armenian-genocide
Another is that it was seen as simply a worse than usual winter flu year from the individual point of view and there was not a lot that could be done - I suppose it blurred into the wider death toll from poverty and disease pre-antobiotics and modern vaccines. This to some extent may explain the also rather thin collective memory of the bad flu epidemic in, was it 1968?, which we were also discussing a year or two back. There's at least one interestiong historical article in a medical or history of medicine journal available out there on the internet.
Edit: but that is on a timescale of decades, however.
Quite a difference there. If Chamberlain was winning WWII and was doing an excellent job with the war, would he have been defeated?
I still think Boris should go because for me as a point of principle lawmakers can't be lawbreakers but that's a really dodgy comparison.
What has happened is a lot of management in unis have been enriched by this change.
What I think we actually wanted is the government to subsidise some courses to ensure they continue to teach them e.g. I believe significant number of unis don't offer / stopped Chemistry because it costs about £15k a year to run, while ensuring unis don't also just rip off the kids charging a lot of money for things that are effectively 30 chairs and a talking head.
There is no incentive to think about costs, you just charge the max for every course at every uni and incentive never to run ones that cost a lot of money.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/20065001.douglas-ross-destroys-credibility-car-crash-bbc-scotland-interview/?ref=ebbn
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20063179.douglas-ross-spineless-standing-pm-partygate-fine/
And by the way, I suspect that the Spanish flu was subsequently treated that way because of two even more traumatic events which wiped over it. I know I know, deaths exceeded, but for sheer bloody trauma both world wars were unparalleled.
Then lets see how much cheaper and faster other suppliers can teach the same content. I bet plenty of 3 year degrees can be taught in 6 months full time.
Got the feeling big news coming up!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/13/joe-biden-accuses-vladimir-putin-of-committing-genocide-in-ukraine
Important because
Article I
The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in
time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to
punish.
...
Article VIII
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take
such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the
prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in
article III.
Genocide Convention 1948
...
Let's not forget that the French effectively armed and trained the guilty party in Rwanda 1994.
Perhaps you should take your own advice and debate issues sensibly.
Putin does seem to have moved the agenda on and Ukraine saying over the weekend that the UK is Ukraine's best ally in this conflict seems to have secured Johnson for the time being at least.
But as a bell-weather for this nation? Having your finger on the country's pulse? No no no.
It is shabby what all govts from 1997 to the current day have done with respect to further education and the younger generation.
in 1850 or so my 3x Gt Grandfather obtained an MD from St Andrews University by simply turning up at the exam room, paying the fee and passing the exam. He was living in London at the time, didn't have to do any study in Scotland.
@Parody_PM
·
26m
Grant Shapps is right, you have to judge me in the round. So don’t forget the thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths, illegally proroguing Parliament, the highest taxes since the 1950s, the empty shelves, my disastrous Brexit deal, PPE cronyism, £37bn wasted on test and trace
If you have rampant inflation and a cost of living squeeze the like of which we haven't seen for 30 years or more, don't expect full employment to continue as the norm for ever and a day.
But I don't think anyway that people will go to the ballot box thinking, 'it has cost me £50 to get here and my family haven't got enough to eat each month let alone take a holiday or any of the former things we enjoyed ... but it's okay because I've got my job.'
Back in the day inflation was the litmus paper for everything else. It was what Margaret Thatcher based her entire economic policy around: getting down the PSBR to reduce inflation. We may have moved on from that but only because until now we have taken low inflation as a given.
High inflation is a curse on everyone: the whole population is affected by it.
The Government are screwing that up by raising taxes though.
But yes, the expansion of university teaching without thinking much about accommodation causes lots of problems. In a rational free market world, lots more student flats would get built and their rents wouldn't go through the roof.
But we don't build enough of anything, anywhere.
I'm sure there are problems in Britain that don't spiral back to "build more houses and flats at fairly attractive highish density even if that rules out multiple parking spaces per dwelling", but I don't know what they are.
This is one free market idea that never seems to be pushed by the right. Perhaps because they dont want some oiks who happen to be bright or work hard, but don't have the connections to get into Oxbridge to outperform them in exams.
A squeeze on supply pushes up prices: basic economics of supply and demand. Take energy as an example, the rise in raw prices is nothing to do with a boom.
Likewise, supply problems partly as a result of Brexit mean that the supply squeeze pushes up prices.
Even schoolgirl economics taught me that too many people chasing too few goods = inflation.
Källor till Svenska Dagbladet uppger att statsminister Magdalena Anderssons mål är att Sverige går med i Nato i juni i år.
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/uppgift-s-kallar-till-nato-mote
Looks like we are about to see an historic shift in the tectonic plates of Northern Europe.
You're cream crackers 24/7 aren't you?
Yes too many people chasing goods = inflation and the too many people is because the world economy is overheating not because of supply problems partly [or even at all] as a result of Brexit.
Starts 2hrs:06
However, I'm sure someone here does!
… then blew it all in a few short seconds when he did one of the most humiliating u-turns in modern Scottish political history.
He’s a dead duck.
Actually, the >50% final year 'lab' assessment was, for my project, analysis of pre-collected data from a NASA probe, but even that can only really be tested by being given some data and some weeks to develop analysis of it, not really something you can truly assess in an exam. The skills I developed in that project and earlire labs have been more useful for my future career (and also for my lab-partner who is not in academia) than the stuff we were tested on in the exams.
There are major supply problems at the moment, including in China. The equilibrium between supply and demand has been broken a lot of it (of course) because of covid.
Take the second hand car market. Prices have rocketed: there simply aren't enough vehicles to go around, partly because of the problem of key components in the supply chains in the new car market.
That's not 'cream crackers' it's what all economic analysts are saying. Just drop the Ad hominen guff. Ta.
I think Argelès might be the camping capital of France; there were at least five campsites in the town itself, and I passed another eight or nine in the first couple of miles on my way out of the place this morning. One of them, called L’Hippocampe did almost get me thinking..
I’m now in St Cyprien (having my first, and soon second, beer) about halfway to Perpignan where I’ve decided to stay for two nights. I’ve booked an apartment rather than a hotel, with a washing machine so I can get all my clothes clean again - even my jeans!
There’s quite a lot to see in Perpignan and it’s pretty cheap to stay there. Also, on Good Friday they have some crazy ancient procession through the centre (pic from wiki below). I’m looking forward to seeing the train station, which Dali called the centre of the universe - and where I intend to stop walking, at least for a while!
Global inflation is because the economy is rebounding and growing fast not because it is crashing.
Inflation is a pain but it is worldwide inflation which the UK Government can do little about and it will pass.
The fact remains that the economy is still in good shape and people have money to spend as highlighted yesterday by Easy Jet reporting very high levels of bookings for the Summer.
Pubs and restuatants round here seem very busy and its impossible to get a taxi as they are booked all the time.
As someone who left school in the early 80's when there were no jobs for anyone, this does not feel like an economy that is tanking
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/content/news/new-car-delays-microchip-shortage
Last autumn: "Second-hand car prices surge amid new car shortage"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58993851
Supply and demand. Basic economics. There's a squeeze at the moment for a constellation of reasons and it pushes up prices.
It's the most fundamental law of economics.
Have a good rest of the day everyone
xx
I was quite surprised that I cut my already modest recycling by 75%. I have since rather fallen off that particular wagon.
https://order-order.com/2022/04/13/six-times-labour-lawmakers-were-law-breakers/
I think the Baroness Scotland one is probably the hardest one for Labour to dismiss...
Fixed Penalty Notice queen Harriet Harman then piroutted and defended Baroness Scotland, serving as Gordon Brown’s Attorney General at the time, when she received a £5,000 civil penalty notice for hiring an illegal worker. While this would have been bad enough, Scotland was a Home Office minister who helped introduce the very legislation under which she received the fine. Scotland said the penalty was caused by a technical error and compared it to a parking ticket, saying “it’s not a criminal offence”. Brown said “no further action was necessary”…
As a single mum I know just how much my living standards are falling with a terrible squeeze. I'm making big cutbacks every month just to keep my head above water. So to ozzymandias, yes I do get agitated.
@moonshine piss off calling me a troll. It's beyond boring now. I'm not a troll. I'm a decent human being but, yes, I am on the left of centre and have alternative attitudes to lifestyle. The fact that you resort to namecalling me a troll says more about your own inability to access a worldview outside of your own. But it is also indicative of a demographic on here that is far from representative of this nation.
I keep being told it's all the fault of Brexit.
The government needs to start thinking about shrinking the state and making room for the private sector again. I'd also include the NHS in that.
It's almost as if Brexit belief is a cult.
What happened during covid on similar courses? Did the universities deny the lab time whilst still charging full whack?
Ross is a worm.
Although that may have been the liquid MDMA.
Its not going to keep growing like that if the Government keep raising taxes though.
Supply and demand ...
The biggest danger is for the polarised camps to stick to their guns;
Remainer - 'Its all down to Brexit'
Leaver - 'Its nothing to do with Brexit'
Both are wrong.
Obviously Brexit has had, and is having, 'an' effect. Not to list it among other reasons would be to descend into some dystopian depth of Orwellian horror.
I'm not going to stop posting my left of centre beliefs and nor should I be bullied into doing so. It's putting my perspective which currently holds the majority opinion in the United Kingdom.
I'll come back in a minute
No, Brexit is not having any significant effect whatsoever on global inflation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=285DD7QECzY
https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1514190621581398022
Global inflation is not Brexit-related, Brexit is a rounding error compared to the effects of the pandemic.
Read this brilliant piece by the great SeanT, who was once a congregant of this very same PB parish: "Why we remember wars but forget plagues"
He's correct, and the absence of plague literature proves it
https://unherd.com/2020/05/why-we-remember-wars-but-forget-plagues/