Just looked at the Wiki page listing school (and university) shootings in the USA. Even if we think this has been going on forever, instances including the worst events have been accelerating greatly since the turn of this century - it looks like 10 of the 11 US education setting shootings with 10 or more fatalities (if I'm counting correctly) have happened since 1999.
I'm certainly no pro second amendment nut, but there is a productive side discussion to be had about the factors, other than the very existence of guns, that have driven this, really quite recent, acceleration.
There is definitely an element of shooters seeking notoriety, and aping previous shootings. So publicity of shootings probably does drive other shootings, this is also said to be an issue with suicides.
Social media plays a part because a would-be shooter can easily make a statement now that will bypass attempts to censor them, they can also find idiots who will egg them on and endorse the justification of such attacks, and they can even find a live audience now by streaming their attacks.
Those are side issues though, lots of gun leads to lots of shootings of all types.
There is a program that has had considerable success in taking guns away from criminals in parts of the United States. It is commonly known as "stop and frisk", but has a different legal name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop
It was so successful in New York City that criminals there began to use "community" guns. Rather than carry a gun on them, where it might be confiscated by a suspicious police officer, they would conceal them in public places, retrieving them only when they were about to commit a crime.
(They were called "community" guns because one gun was often shared by several criminals.)
Why wasn't this used more? The obvious reason; to make it work in New York, the police officers had to stop many young black and Hispanic men. That the program also saved the lives of hundreds in the same groups was not considered a sufficient reason to keep it.
Was it sometimes abused? Since police officers are, like the rest fo us, human, I'm sure it was.
Yglesias has a summary of the studies on this. It seems like putting a load of police on the streets of high-crime areas and having them frisk people did help reduce crime, but no more than you'd expect if you'd put the police on the streets of high-crime areas and not had them frisk people.
There is a program that has had considerable success in taking guns away from criminals in parts of the United States. It is commonly known as "stop and frisk", but has a different legal name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop
It was so successful in New York City that criminals there began to use "community" guns. Rather than carry a gun on them, where it might be confiscated by a suspicious police officer, they would conceal them in public places, retrieving them only when they were about to commit a crime.
(They were called "community" guns because one gun was often shared by several criminals.)
Why wasn't this used more? The obvious reason; to make it work in New York, the police officers had to stop many young black and Hispanic men. That the program also saved the lives of hundreds in the same groups was not considered a sufficient reason to keep it.
Was it sometimes abused? Since police officers are, like the rest fo us, human, I'm sure it was.
These school shootings arent usually by urban criminals though are they? They seem to be by suburban teenagers.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Some facts. The standard UC after rent for single under 25's is £ 265.31 per calendar month. For over 25's is £ 334.91. The average energy bill from October is predicted to be £233.33 per calendar month. This is not sustainable. Regardless of any fucker's pension fund.
And before anyone says small flat, don't use any energy. The standing charge percentage of that is huge. You could literally never turn it on and still be paying a whopping proportion.
I mean, it was less than 5 years ago that 411 people were shot in a SINGLE incident in Las Vegas, and nobody even talks about it.
It's amazing how such a massive attack disappeared from the news so quickly. I didn't even seem to generate the kind of soul-searching articles you would get in the left leaning press in the US, as has happened with other shootings. With no clear motive or angle even the anti-gun people weren't that interested. It was treated more like a natural disaster.
Must admit I'd forgotten all about it.
I was in Las Vegas for a conference a few weeks later, and the city itself was trying to emphasise that a few hundred shot wouldn't change it.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Some facts. The standard UC after rent for single under 25's is £ 265.31 per calendar month. For over 25's is £ 334.91. The average energy bill from October is predicted to be £233.33 per calendar month. This is not sustainable. Regardless of any fucker's pension fund.
And before anyone says small flat, don't use any energy. The standing charge percentage of that is huge. You could literally never turn it on and still be paying a whopping proportion.
Sounds like another rort whereby the poorest subsidise the wealthiest.
I mean, it was less than 5 years ago that 411 people were shot in a SINGLE incident in Las Vegas, and nobody even talks about it.
It's amazing how such a massive attack disappeared from the news so quickly. I didn't even seem to generate the kind of soul-searching articles you would get in the left leaning press in the US, as has happened with other shootings. With no clear motive or angle even the anti-gun people weren't that interested. It was treated more like a natural disaster.
Must admit I'd forgotten all about it.
I was in Las Vegas for a conference a few weeks later, and the city itself was trying to emphasise that a few hundred shot wouldn't change it.
In general that sort of attitude seems laudable, we've all seen that defiance, but I confess it does feel like for some things it really should change us.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
No you don’t understand, in recent decades energy prices paid by households was fair enough, dividends to a good place like pension funds is not leeching off consumers in that scenario. The problem with windfall tax is government marching into a market, arbitrary pointing at someone and declaring your profits this year are undeserved.
Profits benefit people who have the wealth to invest. Lower prices benefit everybody.
You're wrong, I DO understand, but I don't give a fuck about the income derived from wealth if people with no capital are going cold as a result. I've thought about my priorities here.
There is a program that has had considerable success in taking guns away from criminals in parts of the United States. It is commonly known as "stop and frisk", but has a different legal name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop
It was so successful in New York City that criminals there began to use "community" guns. Rather than carry a gun on them, where it might be confiscated by a suspicious police officer, they would conceal them in public places, retrieving them only when they were about to commit a crime.
(They were called "community" guns because one gun was often shared by several criminals.)
Why wasn't this used more? The obvious reason; to make it work in New York, the police officers had to stop many young black and Hispanic men. That the program also saved the lives of hundreds in the same groups was not considered a sufficient reason to keep it.
Was it sometimes abused? Since police officers are, like the rest fo us, human, I'm sure it was.
These school shootings arent usually by urban criminals though are they? They seem to be by suburban teenagers.
Teens who don't like Mondays.
So this shit has been going on for longer than I've been alive.
Vanity Fair is unfilmable because it’s a picaresque series of comic episodes; it’s the wrong structure.
I say that; Barry Lyndon is similar and of course was filmed by Kubrick. I believe it was panned at the time but some now regard it as his masterpiece.
I found Barry Lyndon slow.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Some facts. The standard UC after rent for single under 25's is £ 265.31 per calendar month. For over 25's is £ 334.91. The average energy bill from October is predicted to be £233.33 per calendar month. This is not sustainable. Regardless of any fucker's pension fund.
And before anyone says small flat, don't use any energy. The standing charge percentage of that is huge. You could literally never turn it on and still be paying a whopping proportion.
Sounds like another rort whereby the poorest subsidise the wealthiest.
It is expensive being poor. It's a version of Pratchett's boots. Standing charges aren't subject to any cap.
Oh for the love of Christ, tell me they will at least get a good payrise if they are also to be the school defence militia. BBC
In response to the shooting in Uvalde, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says the solution may be arming teachers.
Speaking to conservative news outlet Newsmax, Paxton said that "having potentially teachers and other administrators be armed" would help stop future attacks while authorities arrived.
"First responders typically can't get there in time to prevent a shooting. It's just not possible unless you have a police officer on every campus," he said. "I think you're going to have to do more at the school."
I mean, it was less than 5 years ago that 411 people were shot in a SINGLE incident in Las Vegas, and nobody even talks about it.
It's amazing how such a massive attack disappeared from the news so quickly. I didn't even seem to generate the kind of soul-searching articles you would get in the left leaning press in the US, as has happened with other shootings. With no clear motive or angle even the anti-gun people weren't that interested. It was treated more like a natural disaster.
Must admit I'd forgotten all about it.
I was in Las Vegas for a conference a few weeks later, and the city itself was trying to emphasise that a few hundred shot wouldn't change it.
In general that sort of attitude seems laudable, we've all seen that defiance, but I confess it does feel like for some things it really should change us.
I'm fairly sure that if a few hundred people had been bitten by snakes they would have done something about snakes.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Some facts. The standard UC after rent for single under 25's is £ 265.31 per calendar month. For over 25's is £ 334.91. The average energy bill from October is predicted to be £233.33 per calendar month. This is not sustainable. Regardless of any fucker's pension fund.
And before anyone says small flat, don't use any energy. The standing charge percentage of that is huge. You could literally never turn it on and still be paying a whopping proportion.
A single person on UC / housing benefit under 35 is only given an allowance for a room in a shared house, not a small flat. I lived in shared houses for 15 years. It was pretty bad sharing bathrooms and kitchens, but being able to divide council tax and utilities by 4 was a blessing.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Some facts. The standard UC after rent for single under 25's is £ 265.31 per calendar month. For over 25's is £ 334.91. The average energy bill from October is predicted to be £233.33 per calendar month. This is not sustainable. Regardless of any fucker's pension fund.
And before anyone says small flat, don't use any energy. The standing charge percentage of that is huge. You could literally never turn it on and still be paying a whopping proportion.
Sounds like another rort whereby the poorest subsidise the wealthiest.
It is expensive being poor. It's a version of Pratchett's boots.
I have always been angry about this.
In the Gardenwalker tyranny, there’s a special government department which tries to make life easier and/or cheaper for the least well off.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
If you're not sure how, then may I suggest that punitively taxing businesses when they make a profit (on top of the generic taxes they will already owe for the profit), while we simultaneously want them to be investing, is perhaps not the wisest of ideas.
There is a program that has had considerable success in taking guns away from criminals in parts of the United States. It is commonly known as "stop and frisk", but has a different legal name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop
It was so successful in New York City that criminals there began to use "community" guns. Rather than carry a gun on them, where it might be confiscated by a suspicious police officer, they would conceal them in public places, retrieving them only when they were about to commit a crime.
(They were called "community" guns because one gun was often shared by several criminals.)
Why wasn't this used more? The obvious reason; to make it work in New York, the police officers had to stop many young black and Hispanic men. That the program also saved the lives of hundreds in the same groups was not considered a sufficient reason to keep it.
Was it sometimes abused? Since police officers are, like the rest fo us, human, I'm sure it was.
Did you see the story about the women's lacrosse team?
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
No you don’t understand, in recent decades energy prices paid by households was fair enough, dividends to a good place like pension funds is not leeching off consumers in that scenario. The problem with windfall tax is government marching into a market, arbitrary pointing at someone and declaring your profits this year are undeserved.
Profits benefit people who have the wealth to invest. Lower prices benefit everybody.
You're wrong, I DO understand, but I don't give a fuck about the income derived from wealth if people with no capital are going cold as a result. I've thought about my priorities here.
“ I don't give a fuck about the income derived from wealth”
Then where does the government get money to raise UC, living wage, improve all the public services? Investment in those things has to come from somewhere, it doesn’t grow on magic money trees.
Did you say you vote Lib Dem? How can you be Lib Dem if you are so left wing and anti capitalism?
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Some facts. The standard UC after rent for single under 25's is £ 265.31 per calendar month. For over 25's is £ 334.91. The average energy bill from October is predicted to be £233.33 per calendar month. This is not sustainable. Regardless of any fucker's pension fund.
And before anyone says small flat, don't use any energy. The standing charge percentage of that is huge. You could literally never turn it on and still be paying a whopping proportion.
Sounds like another rort whereby the poorest subsidise the wealthiest.
It is expensive being poor. It's a version of Pratchett's boots.
I have always been angry about this.
In the Gardenwalker tyranny, there’s a special government department which tries to make life easier and/or cheaper for the least well off.
Universal government support for putting up deposits and first months rent on rentals. The government can garnish wages to get it back if it goes wrong. Allows people to move for job opportunities, or to get away from a bad landlord.
There are some limited local schemes for this, but it would be great to do it nationally.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Not Brexit - Encourage immigration - Fund R&D investment to equal or exceed peer economies - Fund infrastructure - Improve workforce training - Keep taxation lower than peer economies - Reform the planning regime
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
Vanity Fair is unfilmable because it’s a picaresque series of comic episodes; it’s the wrong structure.
I say that; Barry Lyndon is similar and of course was filmed by Kubrick. I believe it was panned at the time but some now regard it as his masterpiece.
I found Barry Lyndon slow.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
A similar tale of ruthless ambition and an antihero would be "Room at the Top". One of the best British films of the Fifties.
There is a program that has had considerable success in taking guns away from criminals in parts of the United States. It is commonly known as "stop and frisk", but has a different legal name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop
It was so successful in New York City that criminals there began to use "community" guns. Rather than carry a gun on them, where it might be confiscated by a suspicious police officer, they would conceal them in public places, retrieving them only when they were about to commit a crime.
(They were called "community" guns because one gun was often shared by several criminals.)
Why wasn't this used more? The obvious reason; to make it work in New York, the police officers had to stop many young black and Hispanic men. That the program also saved the lives of hundreds in the same groups was not considered a sufficient reason to keep it.
Was it sometimes abused? Since police officers are, like the rest fo us, human, I'm sure it was.
Yglesias has a summary of the studies on this. It seems like putting a load of police on the streets of high-crime areas and having them frisk people did help reduce crime, but no more than you'd expect if you'd put the police on the streets of high-crime areas and not had them frisk people.
It was common in ~Britain for a while ("Stop and search") and stopped for the same reason - people who were the 'wrong' colour got understandably fed up with being constantly stopped and searched because they were statistically more likely to be carrying a weapon. But I don't see how it worked at all in the US, since carrying guns is legal.
Vanity Fair is unfilmable because it’s a picaresque series of comic episodes; it’s the wrong structure.
I say that; Barry Lyndon is similar and of course was filmed by Kubrick. I believe it was panned at the time but some now regard it as his masterpiece.
I found Barry Lyndon slow.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
A similar tale of ruthless ambition and an antihero would be "Room at the Top". One of the best British films of the Fifties.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
How do E&P companies, that risk capital in the hope of finding new sources of oil and gas, live by "regulatory and political arbitrage"?
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Not Brexit - Encourage immigration - Fund R&D investment to equal or exceed peer economies - Fund infrastructure - Improve workforce training - Keep taxation lower than peer economies - Reform the planning regime
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
My 'we' in this instance was shorthand for the country, as in our goverments (though I don't flatter myself to do better than them) not having an idea.
I mean, they at least knew about reforming the planning regime, they just dropped the attempt (good or not) because it was so toxic in the shires.
There is a program that has had considerable success in taking guns away from criminals in parts of the United States. It is commonly known as "stop and frisk", but has a different legal name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop
It was so successful in New York City that criminals there began to use "community" guns. Rather than carry a gun on them, where it might be confiscated by a suspicious police officer, they would conceal them in public places, retrieving them only when they were about to commit a crime.
(They were called "community" guns because one gun was often shared by several criminals.)
Why wasn't this used more? The obvious reason; to make it work in New York, the police officers had to stop many young black and Hispanic men. That the program also saved the lives of hundreds in the same groups was not considered a sufficient reason to keep it.
Was it sometimes abused? Since police officers are, like the rest fo us, human, I'm sure it was.
These school shootings arent usually by urban criminals though are they? They seem to be by suburban teenagers.
Yup. Also most of the school shootings involve guns held legally.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Some facts. The standard UC after rent for single under 25's is £ 265.31 per calendar month. For over 25's is £ 334.91. The average energy bill from October is predicted to be £233.33 per calendar month. This is not sustainable. Regardless of any fucker's pension fund.
And before anyone says small flat, don't use any energy. The standing charge percentage of that is huge. You could literally never turn it on and still be paying a whopping proportion.
A single person on UC / housing benefit under 35 is only given an allowance for a room in a shared house, not a small flat. I lived in shared houses for 15 years. It was pretty bad sharing bathrooms and kitchens, but being able to divide council tax and utilities by 4 was a blessing.
Well indeed. However. If you rent a flat under 25 and have the misfortune to find yourself having to claim UC then a large proportion of your £265.31 pcm will go to the rent. Then energy. The numbers simply aren't adding up. That's before we talk about the disabled. Sick. Underemployed. Carers.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Not Brexit - Encourage immigration - Fund R&D investment to equal or exceed peer economies - Fund infrastructure - Improve workforce training - Keep taxation lower than peer economies - Reform the planning regime
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
My 'we' in this instance was shorthand for the country, as in our goverments (though I don't flatter myself to do better than them) not having an idea.
I mean, they at least knew about reforming the planning regime, they just dropped the attempt (good or not) because it was so toxic in the shires.
They had a mutant algorithm. It was an utter botch-job and it’s right that they dropped it.
They need to go back to the drawing board and have another go.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Not Brexit - Encourage immigration - Fund R&D investment to equal or exceed peer economies - Fund infrastructure - Improve workforce training - Keep taxation lower than peer economies - Reform the planning regime
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
Isn't cutting taxes and increasing government spending basically Reaganomics?
The thing that seems strange about all the comments saying pressure must be put on Ukraine to give up territory or Putin must be given an off ramp, etc, is that it’s all unnecessary. If the different governments want to make their views known to the Ukr govt, they can...
Saying it out loud only puts more pressure on Ukr and gives more hope to Putin. So why do it? I can’t think of one thing it gains but publicity and point scoring. Far better to provide what aid to Ukr you want, quietly let your position be known, and then step back.
I don’t think it’s the governments saying this. I think it’s the likes of Schroeder. (“Senior figures”). They have lost but are still trying to influence the debate in Russia’s favour
They are the worst, but I wouldn't underestimate the willingness of the French, German, Italian or Hungarian governments to push for Ukraine to make "concessions".
But the US and UK will fight to the last Ukrainian.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Not Brexit - Encourage immigration - Fund R&D investment to equal or exceed peer economies - Fund infrastructure - Improve workforce training - Keep taxation lower than peer economies - Reform the planning regime
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
My 'we' in this instance was shorthand for the country, as in our goverments (though I don't flatter myself to do better than them) not having an idea.
I mean, they at least knew about reforming the planning regime, they just dropped the attempt (good or not) because it was so toxic in the shires.
They had a mutant algorithm. It was an utter botch-job and it’s right that they dropped it.
They need to go back to the drawing board and have another go.
Yes, but will they? Or will they just think it too hard, especially with an election in a couple of years, and not risk cocking up again?
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
No you don’t understand, in recent decades energy prices paid by households was fair enough, dividends to a good place like pension funds is not leeching off consumers in that scenario. The problem with windfall tax is government marching into a market, arbitrary pointing at someone and declaring your profits this year are undeserved.
Profits benefit people who have the wealth to invest. Lower prices benefit everybody.
You're wrong, I DO understand, but I don't give a fuck about the income derived from wealth if people with no capital are going cold as a result. I've thought about my priorities here.
“ I don't give a fuck about the income derived from wealth”
Then where does the government get money to raise UC, living wage, improve all the public services? Investment in those things has to come from somewhere, it doesn’t grow on magic money trees.
Did you say you vote Lib Dem? How can you be Lib Dem if you are so left wing and anti capitalism?
I'm pro capitalism. I'm just not an absolutist about it.
The important qualifier I added was "if people with no capital are going cold as a result." If people are too poor to afford three cars, I don't care. If you can't afford to eat at a restaurant every night, I don't care. If you can't afford to heat your home, I do care.
In other words, there's a small set of life-essentials I would protect from the vicissitudes of capitalism. That's a sensible, centrist position that I'm sure would find sympathy on the right of Labour and the left of the Conservatives. And yes, amongst a large part of the Lib Dems.
Oh, and I'm not "a Lib Dem". I have voted for them in the past, including in 2019. I have voted Conservative at other times, and Green, and very recently SNP.
The thing that seems strange about all the comments saying pressure must be put on Ukraine to give up territory or Putin must be given an off ramp, etc, is that it’s all unnecessary. If the different governments want to make their views known to the Ukr govt, they can...
Saying it out loud only puts more pressure on Ukr and gives more hope to Putin. So why do it? I can’t think of one thing it gains but publicity and point scoring. Far better to provide what aid to Ukr you want, quietly let your position be known, and then step back.
I don’t think it’s the governments saying this. I think it’s the likes of Schroeder. (“Senior figures”). They have lost but are still trying to influence the debate in Russia’s favour
They are the worst, but I wouldn't underestimate the willingness of the French, German, Italian or Hungarian governments to push for Ukraine to make "concessions".
But the US and UK will fight to the last Ukrainian.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Not Brexit - Encourage immigration - Fund R&D investment to equal or exceed peer economies - Fund infrastructure - Improve workforce training - Keep taxation lower than peer economies - Reform the planning regime
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
My 'we' in this instance was shorthand for the country, as in our goverments (though I don't flatter myself to do better than them) not having an idea.
I mean, they at least knew about reforming the planning regime, they just dropped the attempt (good or not) because it was so toxic in the shires.
They had a mutant algorithm. It was an utter botch-job and it’s right that they dropped it.
They need to go back to the drawing board and have another go.
What was "mutant" about it other than NIMBYs didn't like the outcome and were worried it would spoil their ill gotten gains from rising house prices by making homes as affordable for the young as it was when they purchased their own home?
Was there anywhere with a 3x house-price to earnings multiple or lower being told that they needed to build lots of homes? I'm sceptical.
Vanity Fair is unfilmable because it’s a picaresque series of comic episodes; it’s the wrong structure.
I say that; Barry Lyndon is similar and of course was filmed by Kubrick. I believe it was panned at the time but some now regard it as his masterpiece.
I found Barry Lyndon slow.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
A similar tale of ruthless ambition and an antihero would be "Room at the Top". One of the best British films of the Fifties.
Excellent, excellent film.
The 60s/70s versions was a better adaption of the book. Especially man at the top which captured the wicker man type twist on film. I think because 70s was a better setting for it.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
They could be more creative than that. Right now, how the f*** do you pay to go to interviews? Or even scope out an opportunity? The single best benefit they could give the unemployed is a free bus and train pass. Like old folk have. Be good for the mental health just to have a day out or visit friends or relatives too. Or just go to the seaside. Daily Mail outrage.
The thing that seems strange about all the comments saying pressure must be put on Ukraine to give up territory or Putin must be given an off ramp, etc, is that it’s all unnecessary. If the different governments want to make their views known to the Ukr govt, they can...
Saying it out loud only puts more pressure on Ukr and gives more hope to Putin. So why do it? I can’t think of one thing it gains but publicity and point scoring. Far better to provide what aid to Ukr you want, quietly let your position be known, and then step back.
I don’t think it’s the governments saying this. I think it’s the likes of Schroeder. (“Senior figures”). They have lost but are still trying to influence the debate in Russia’s favour
They are the worst, but I wouldn't underestimate the willingness of the French, German, Italian or Hungarian governments to push for Ukraine to make "concessions".
But the US and UK will fight to the last Ukrainian.
We will, I hope, support what the government and people of Ukraine want. It is for them to decide what to do with their lives for themselves and their nation. At present they are willing to sacrifice. Time will tell how much sacrifice they can bear, but we have no need or right to encourage them to do less, or more. Just be there and do what we can if they ask for it. The West collectively is already not doing all they ask, as we think it too much, after all.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
Paterson and PPE contracts in general.
The 'one rule for us and another for them' meme is always dangerous for a government to allow to flourish.
Vanity Fair is unfilmable because it’s a picaresque series of comic episodes; it’s the wrong structure.
I say that; Barry Lyndon is similar and of course was filmed by Kubrick. I believe it was panned at the time but some now regard it as his masterpiece.
I found Barry Lyndon slow.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
A similar tale of ruthless ambition and an antihero would be "Room at the Top". One of the best British films of the Fifties.
Excellent, excellent film.
Yes, the book inspired me to my career in hospital medicine.
Though Johnson is no Becky Sharpe, nor Barry Lyndon or Joe Lampton, all of whom were ruthless at social climbing, but of humble origin.
Johnson was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went to Eton etc. He is more likely to bully and mock those of humble origins than to behave like one of them.
Vanity Fair is unfilmable because it’s a picaresque series of comic episodes; it’s the wrong structure.
I say that; Barry Lyndon is similar and of course was filmed by Kubrick. I believe it was panned at the time but some now regard it as his masterpiece.
I found Barry Lyndon slow.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
A similar tale of ruthless ambition and an antihero would be "Room at the Top". One of the best British films of the Fifties.
Probably best anti hero book of all, and certainly more film able than Tolstoy would be a hero of our time.
The thing that seems strange about all the comments saying pressure must be put on Ukraine to give up territory or Putin must be given an off ramp, etc, is that it’s all unnecessary. If the different governments want to make their views known to the Ukr govt, they can...
Saying it out loud only puts more pressure on Ukr and gives more hope to Putin. So why do it? I can’t think of one thing it gains but publicity and point scoring. Far better to provide what aid to Ukr you want, quietly let your position be known, and then step back.
I don’t think it’s the governments saying this. I think it’s the likes of Schroeder. (“Senior figures”). They have lost but are still trying to influence the debate in Russia’s favour
They are the worst, but I wouldn't underestimate the willingness of the French, German, Italian or Hungarian governments to push for Ukraine to make "concessions".
But the US and UK will fight to the last Ukrainian.
Supporting every last Ukrainian who wants to fight is absolutely the right thing to do. Its their home they are fighting for, against barbarians who are willing to rape, torture, pillage, murder, level and ethnically cleanse the land they're invading.
Is it any wonder Ukrainians don't want to surrender and are willing to fight to the last when faced with such an enemy?
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Not Brexit - Encourage immigration - Fund R&D investment to equal or exceed peer economies - Fund infrastructure - Improve workforce training - Keep taxation lower than peer economies - Reform the planning regime
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
My 'we' in this instance was shorthand for the country, as in our goverments (though I don't flatter myself to do better than them) not having an idea.
I mean, they at least knew about reforming the planning regime, they just dropped the attempt (good or not) because it was so toxic in the shires.
They had a mutant algorithm. It was an utter botch-job and it’s right that they dropped it.
They need to go back to the drawing board and have another go.
What was "mutant" about it other than NIMBYs didn't like the outcome and were worried it would spoil their ill gotten gains from rising house prices by making homes as affordable for the young as it was when they purchased their own home?
Was there anywhere with a 3x house-price to earnings multiple or lower being told that they needed to build lots of homes? I'm sceptical.
I am surprised you favoured it, it was a kind of Stalinist attempt to override local planning full stop.
Planning needs root and branch reform and we’ve both outlined our views on this at length, no need to rehearse.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
The polls began to turn in June. It's been pretty steady. The big crater was Patterson.
Vanity Fair is unfilmable because it’s a picaresque series of comic episodes; it’s the wrong structure.
I say that; Barry Lyndon is similar and of course was filmed by Kubrick. I believe it was panned at the time but some now regard it as his masterpiece.
I found Barry Lyndon slow.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
A similar tale of ruthless ambition and an antihero would be "Room at the Top". One of the best British films of the Fifties.
Excellent, excellent film.
Yes, the book inspired me to my career in hospital medicine.
Though Johnson is no Becky Sharpe, nor Barry Lyndon or Joe Lampton, all of whom were ruthless at social climbing, but of humble origin.
Johnson was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went to Eton etc. He is more likely to bully and mock those of humble origins than to behave like one of them.
Johnson would make Lampton minister for the north and levelling up.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Encourage immigration
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
“The number of visas issued to migrants from outside of the EU reached a record in 2021 as the first year of the UK's post-Brexit rules led to a more liberal immigration system, the Times has revealed. Home Office figures show that 843,538 non-EU migrants were granted visas to live, work and study in Britain last year.
The figure is a 107,000 increase when compared to 2019.”
There are two confounding factors, though:
1) Hong Kong; and 2) Our foreign student numbers are at record levels partly because Chinese and Indian students who would otherwise have gone to Australia/NZ have come here.
But overall, the “no one will want to come to nasty brexit Britain” stuff has been shown for the nonsense it always was. As if the average Indian or Chinese 18 year old gives a toss about internal UK politics.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Not Brexit - Encourage immigration - Fund R&D investment to equal or exceed peer economies - Fund infrastructure - Improve workforce training - Keep taxation lower than peer economies - Reform the planning regime
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
My 'we' in this instance was shorthand for the country, as in our goverments (though I don't flatter myself to do better than them) not having an idea.
I mean, they at least knew about reforming the planning regime, they just dropped the attempt (good or not) because it was so toxic in the shires.
They had a mutant algorithm. It was an utter botch-job and it’s right that they dropped it.
They need to go back to the drawing board and have another go.
What was "mutant" about it other than NIMBYs didn't like the outcome and were worried it would spoil their ill gotten gains from rising house prices by making homes as affordable for the young as it was when they purchased their own home?
Was there anywhere with a 3x house-price to earnings multiple or lower being told that they needed to build lots of homes? I'm sceptical.
I am surprised you favoured it, it was a kind of Stalinist attempt to override local planning full stop.
Planning needs root and branch reform and we’ve both outlined our views on this at length, no need to rehearse.
Why are you surprised, I don't think the state should be involved in planning so abolishing local planning is a good thing in my view. I thought I'd made that clear.
The proposals didn't go anywhere near far enough, but they were baby steps in the right direction, now even that has been drowned. Something that was actually a good idea as opposed to just more taxing and spending, so lets drown that and go back to the drawing board.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
The polls began to turn in June. It's been pretty steady. The big crater was Patterson.
The crater was NI rise and UC cut.
NI rise was a key election promise shredded Every single voter though UC cut was wrong with families, the poorest in our society, already struggling. People not work shy, doing numerous jobs for their families not even standing still their finances going backward, the sleepless nights of worry. Whilst the architect of the cut is how the other half live.
Vanity Fair is unfilmable because it’s a picaresque series of comic episodes; it’s the wrong structure.
I say that; Barry Lyndon is similar and of course was filmed by Kubrick. I believe it was panned at the time but some now regard it as his masterpiece.
I found Barry Lyndon slow.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
A similar tale of ruthless ambition and an antihero would be "Room at the Top". One of the best British films of the Fifties.
Excellent, excellent film.
Yes, the book inspired me to my career in hospital medicine.
Though Johnson is no Becky Sharpe, nor Barry Lyndon or Joe Lampton, all of whom were ruthless at social climbing, but of humble origin.
Johnson was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went to Eton etc. He is more likely to bully and mock those of humble origins than to behave like one of them.
Johnson would make Lampton minister for the north and levelling up.
No, I don't think so. Too much of a threat.
For those who haven't seen it, Room at the Top is on BFI Player, can be seen on their free trial:
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
The polls began to turn in June. It's been pretty steady. The big crater was Patterson.
The crater was NI rise and UC cut.
NI rise was a key election promise shredded Every single voter though UC cut was wrong with families already struggling.
Typical PB we can’t even agree on this.
Arguing about what “cut through” and what didn’t is prime PB steak.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
The polls began to turn in June. It's been pretty steady. The big crater was Patterson.
Saying it was all Patterson is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
The lead was narrowing long before Patterson, Deltapoll showed the lead narrowed to just 1% just weeks before the Patterson story kicked off.
In the space of less than three months we had the NI tax rise, the UC benefit cut, Patterson and Labour taking the lead.
I see no reason to think the only factor involved is the last one of the three. The last one might interest political anoraks more, but maybe the rest of the public are interested in how much money is in their pockets?
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Not Brexit - Encourage immigration - Fund R&D investment to equal or exceed peer economies - Fund infrastructure - Improve workforce training - Keep taxation lower than peer economies - Reform the planning regime
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
Isn't cutting taxes and increasing government spending basically Reaganomics?
Reagan also didn't pull the US out of the EU... Interesting...
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Not Brexit - Encourage immigration - Fund R&D investment to equal or exceed peer economies - Fund infrastructure - Improve workforce training - Keep taxation lower than peer economies - Reform the planning regime
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
Isn't cutting taxes and increasing government spending basically Reaganomics?
Reaganomics is a political strategy rather than a fiscal one I think.
There’s certainly no simple answer to the UK’s current situation, but at heart the country is over-incentivising non-productive activity and under-incentivising productive activity.
A government needs not only to reverse this but to signal that it doing so; in other words it needs a growth strategy.
IIRC the number of gun killings each year in the USA is over 20k with the number of deaths in mass shootings being under 1k.
Which is perhaps why mass shootings don't have more of an effect.
I fail to see the point of your numbers.
How many die annually in mass shootings in the UK?
I believe that hospitals in the UK are overloaded with people who have been knifed. "Knives, knives, knives."
As tragic as the knife situation is, especially common between rival drug gangs, people who are knifed mostly end up in hospital, while people who are shot end up in a morgue with their classmates and teacher.
Vanity Fair is unfilmable because it’s a picaresque series of comic episodes; it’s the wrong structure.
I say that; Barry Lyndon is similar and of course was filmed by Kubrick. I believe it was panned at the time but some now regard it as his masterpiece.
I found Barry Lyndon slow.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
A similar tale of ruthless ambition and an antihero would be "Room at the Top". One of the best British films of the Fifties.
Excellent, excellent film.
Yes, the book inspired me to my career in hospital medicine.
Though Johnson is no Becky Sharpe, nor Barry Lyndon or Joe Lampton, all of whom were ruthless at social climbing, but of humble origin.
Johnson was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went to Eton etc. He is more likely to bully and mock those of humble origins than to behave like one of them.
Johnson would make Lampton minister for the north and levelling up.
No, I don't think so. Too much of a threat.
For those who haven't seen it, Room at the Top is on BFI Player, can be seen on their free trial:
Vanity Fair is unfilmable because it’s a picaresque series of comic episodes; it’s the wrong structure.
I say that; Barry Lyndon is similar and of course was filmed by Kubrick. I believe it was panned at the time but some now regard it as his masterpiece.
I found Barry Lyndon slow.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
A similar tale of ruthless ambition and an antihero would be "Room at the Top". One of the best British films of the Fifties.
Excellent, excellent film.
Yes, the book inspired me to my career in hospital medicine.
Though Johnson is no Becky Sharpe, nor Barry Lyndon or Joe Lampton, all of whom were ruthless at social climbing, but of humble origin.
Johnson was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went to Eton etc. He is more likely to bully and mock those of humble origins than to behave like one of them.
Boris is perhaps similar to the great anti-hero Harry Flashman.
From a privileged background but popular with the people, the womanising, the cowardice, the lying and the incredible luck.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
The polls began to turn in June. It's been pretty steady. The big crater was Patterson.
The crater was NI rise and UC cut.
NI rise was a key election promise shredded Every single voter though UC cut was wrong with families, the poorest in our society, already struggling. People not work shy, doing numerous jobs for their families not even standing still their finances going backward, the sleepless nights of worry. Whilst the architect of the cut is how the other half live.
Typical PB we can’t even agree on this.
The polls dropped almost imperceptibly slowly from June onwards. They reached crossover in November at the time of Patterson. There hasn't been a Tory lead since early December as Sunil is fond of reminding us. Patterson was the turning point. It wasn't policy. It was perception. The other stuff has re-inforced that view, yes.
Foxy asked: "These school shootings arent usually by urban criminals though are they? They seem to be by suburban teenagers."
Mass shooters do seem to be more likely to be white, even allowing for the differences in the sizes of the groups. Whether school shooters, totally, are more likely to be white, is a more difficult question. I suspect not, but the sad fact is that black-on-black crime gets very little attention from our from our journalists. (That's an extreme case of what George W. Bush called the "soft bigotry of low expectations".)
For example, in this area, recently a gang banger waited for a high school to let out and killed, as I recall, a man and his son. It got very little coverage, even here. Similar attacks happen all over the country, every week.
Similarly, the evidence that the BLM protests led to signficant increases in crime, including murder, with most of the victims black, is strong -- but it would be a brave academic in most American universities who would do serious research on that question.
(I should caution all of you that the quality of the research on crime in th US is low, and that many touchy subjects will be avoided by almost everyone. For example, I think the evidence is strong that fatherless boys are far more likely to become criminals -- and fatherless girls are more likely to become victims, but I wouldn't advise anyone to ask for a research grant from, for example, the Ford Foundation, to study that question.
And heterodox findings, like Cass Sunstein's on the deterrence effect of the death penalty, will simply be ignored.)
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
How do E&P companies, that risk capital in the hope of finding new sources of oil and gas, live by "regulatory and political arbitrage"?
The odd windfall tax is very much at the gentle end of regulatory and political risk. They live and breath this stuff.
Vanity Fair is unfilmable because it’s a picaresque series of comic episodes; it’s the wrong structure.
I say that; Barry Lyndon is similar and of course was filmed by Kubrick. I believe it was panned at the time but some now regard it as his masterpiece.
I found Barry Lyndon slow.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
A similar tale of ruthless ambition and an antihero would be "Room at the Top". One of the best British films of the Fifties.
Excellent, excellent film.
Yes, the book inspired me to my career in hospital medicine.
Though Johnson is no Becky Sharpe, nor Barry Lyndon or Joe Lampton, all of whom were ruthless at social climbing, but of humble origin.
Johnson was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went to Eton etc. He is more likely to bully and mock those of humble origins than to behave like one of them.
Boris is perhaps similar to the great anti-hero Harry Flashman.
From a privileged background but popular with the people, the womanising, the cowardice, the lying and the incredible luck.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
The polls began to turn in June. It's been pretty steady. The big crater was Patterson.
The crater was NI rise and UC cut.
NI rise was a key election promise shredded Every single voter though UC cut was wrong with families, the poorest in our society, already struggling. People not work shy, doing numerous jobs for their families not even standing still their finances going backward, the sleepless nights of worry. Whilst the architect of the cut is how the other half live.
Typical PB we can’t even agree on this.
The polls dropped almost imperceptibly slowly from June onwards. They reached crossover in November at the time of Patterson. There hasn't been a Tory lead since early December as Sunil is fond of reminding us. Patterson was the turning point. It wasn't policy. It was perception. The other stuff has re-inforced that view, yes.
Since it takes a few weeks normally for news to filter through to opinion polls, if they reached crossover at the point of Patterson then you should look at a few weeks before Patterson to see what caused crossover.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
The polls began to turn in June. It's been pretty steady. The big crater was Patterson.
Saying it was all Patterson is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
The lead was narrowing long before Patterson, Deltapoll showed the lead narrowed to just 1% just weeks before the Patterson story kicked off.
In the space of less than three months we had the NI tax rise, the UC benefit cut, Patterson and Labour taking the lead.
I see no reason to think the only factor involved is the last one of the three. The last one might interest political anoraks more, but maybe the rest of the public are interested in how much money is in their pockets?
"I'm going to pay more tax but that Paterson got all that money"
"I'm having my benefits cut but that Paterson got all that money"
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
The polls began to turn in June. It's been pretty steady. The big crater was Patterson.
Saying it was all Patterson is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
The lead was narrowing long before Patterson, Deltapoll showed the lead narrowed to just 1% just weeks before the Patterson story kicked off.
In the space of less than three months we had the NI tax rise, the UC benefit cut, Patterson and Labour taking the lead.
I see no reason to think the only factor involved is the last one of the three. The last one might interest political anoraks more, but maybe the rest of the public are interested in how much money is in their pockets?
Yeah it was. I think Patterson was a symbolic crystallisation though of everything unformed but suspected on some level. A lot of the benefit of the doubt people turned then. Which isn't to say he can't win them back. But he's shown no signs so far
Foxy asked: "These school shootings arent usually by urban criminals though are they? They seem to be by suburban teenagers."
Mass shooters do seem to be more likely to be white, even allowing for the differences in the sizes of the groups. Whether school shooters, totally, are more likely to be white, is a more difficult question. I suspect not, but the sad fact is that black-on-black crime gets very little attention from our from our journalists. (That's an extreme case of what George W. Bush called the "soft bigotry of low expectations".)
For example, in this area, recently a gang banger waited for a high school to let out and killed, as I recall, a man and his son. It got very little coverage, even here. Similar attacks happen all over the country, every week.
Similarly, the evidence that the BLM protests led to signficant increases in crime, including murder, with most of the victims black, is strong -- but it would be a brave academic in most American universities who would do serious research on that question.
(I should caution all of you that the quality of the research on crime in th US is low, and that many touchy subjects will be avoided by almost everyone. For example, I think the evidence is strong that fatherless boys are far more likely to become criminals -- and fatherless girls are more likely to become victims, but I wouldn't advise anyone to ask for a research grant from, for example, the Ford Foundation, to study that question.
And heterodox findings, like Cass Sunstein's on the deterrence effect of the death penalty, will simply be ignored.)
In American inner cities the correlation of race and povery is very high. Is it black on black crime, or poor on poor?
School and other mass shootings make the news not just because of the scale, but also because the victims tend to be middle class suburbanites.
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Encourage immigration
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
“The number of visas issued to migrants from outside of the EU reached a record in 2021 as the first year of the UK's post-Brexit rules led to a more liberal immigration system, the Times has revealed. Home Office figures show that 843,538 non-EU migrants were granted visas to live, work and study in Britain last year.
The figure is a 107,000 increase when compared to 2019.”
There are two confounding factors, though:
1) Hong Kong; and 2) Our foreign student numbers are at record levels partly because Chinese and Indian students who would otherwise have gone to Australia/NZ have come here.
But overall, the “no one will want to come to nasty brexit Britain” stuff has been shown for the nonsense it always was. As if the average Indian or Chinese 18 year old gives a toss about internal UK politics.
Brown and black immigrants don't count to Remainers. They are mainly upset we don't let in unskilled white ones.
IIRC the number of gun killings each year in the USA is over 20k with the number of deaths in mass shootings being under 1k.
Which is perhaps why mass shootings don't have more of an effect.
I fail to see the point of your numbers.
How many die annually in mass shootings in the UK?
I believe that hospitals in the UK are overloaded with people who have been knifed. "Knives, knives, knives."
Yes. Regular readers may appreciate I experienced just so last Wednesday. The difference is I was 10 metres away minding my own business and was in absolutely no dangerous of crossfire stabbing.
Now a question for you, Foxy: Am I right that the girls victimized by grooming gangs in places like Rotherham mostly did not have fathers in their lives?
I would wager that is true for Jeffrey Epstein's victims, too -- and I doubt that any prominent reporter will tackle that question.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
The polls began to turn in June. It's been pretty steady. The big crater was Patterson.
The crater was NI rise and UC cut.
NI rise was a key election promise shredded Every single voter though UC cut was wrong with families, the poorest in our society, already struggling. People not work shy, doing numerous jobs for their families not even standing still their finances going backward, the sleepless nights of worry. Whilst the architect of the cut is how the other half live.
Typical PB we can’t even agree on this.
The polls dropped almost imperceptibly slowly from June onwards. They reached crossover in November at the time of Patterson. There hasn't been a Tory lead since early December as Sunil is fond of reminding us. Patterson was the turning point. It wasn't policy. It was perception. The other stuff has re-inforced that view, yes.
Patterson was just a political village thing, mostly enjoyed by journo’s. Partygate came up on the doorsteps in Shropshire North.
Partygate hollowed out Boris ratings very quickly, but what has really moved votes, and given his own party ideas to remove him, is complete absence of economical and fiscal strategy, as illuminated by his conference and CBI speech fiasco.
What dear bit of economic and fiscal strategy Boris government has had has been poorly managed.
People will start to wonder what the point in such a large majority is when the Government doesn't do anything.
One of the last things they tried to use their large majority for was to get a mate off from being suspended due to his own poor behaviour, so the problem is also what they choose to use it for.
Foxy asked: "These school shootings arent usually by urban criminals though are they? They seem to be by suburban teenagers."
Mass shooters do seem to be more likely to be white, even allowing for the differences in the sizes of the groups. Whether school shooters, totally, are more likely to be white, is a more difficult question. I suspect not, but the sad fact is that black-on-black crime gets very little attention from our from our journalists. (That's an extreme case of what George W. Bush called the "soft bigotry of low expectations".)
For example, in this area, recently a gang banger waited for a high school to let out and killed, as I recall, a man and his son. It got very little coverage, even here. Similar attacks happen all over the country, every week.
Similarly, the evidence that the BLM protests led to signficant increases in crime, including murder, with most of the victims black, is strong -- but it would be a brave academic in most American universities who would do serious research on that question.
(I should caution all of you that the quality of the research on crime in th US is low, and that many touchy subjects will be avoided by almost everyone. For example, I think the evidence is strong that fatherless boys are far more likely to become criminals -- and fatherless girls are more likely to become victims, but I wouldn't advise anyone to ask for a research grant from, for example, the Ford Foundation, to study that question.
And heterodox findings, like Cass Sunstein's on the deterrence effect of the death penalty, will simply be ignored.)
There is actually plenty of evidence of who is more likely to become criminals, and the evidence shows unwanted aborted foetuses are the most likely to have become criminals if you study the research. Oddly enough it seems that poor people who don't want a baby, if they're forced to have a baby anyway that child is far more likely to grow up to become a criminal.
Legalised abortion leads to a collapse in crime rates a generation later as the would-be criminals were simply never born.
It seems many American states will be witnessing the largest crime waves seen in generations in about eighteen years time if the Supreme Court has anything to do with it.
Not sure if that was the kind of evidence you were looking for though.
A windfall tax is a great idea because the idea that energy is a free market is bullshit anyway. These guys live by regulatory and political arbitrage.
It won’t raise much but every little helps. The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts.
“ The immediate fiscal priority must be to reverse the universal credit cuts. “
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
There's a number of things that have happened in the past twelve months to make people of all shades disappointed in the Government.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
The polls began to turn in June. It's been pretty steady. The big crater was Patterson.
The crater was NI rise and UC cut.
NI rise was a key election promise shredded Every single voter though UC cut was wrong with families, the poorest in our society, already struggling. People not work shy, doing numerous jobs for their families not even standing still their finances going backward, the sleepless nights of worry. Whilst the architect of the cut is how the other half live.
Typical PB we can’t even agree on this.
The polls dropped almost imperceptibly slowly from June onwards. They reached crossover in November at the time of Patterson. There hasn't been a Tory lead since early December as Sunil is fond of reminding us. Patterson was the turning point. It wasn't policy. It was perception. The other stuff has re-inforced that view, yes.
Since it takes a few weeks normally for news to filter through to opinion polls, if they reached crossover at the point of Patterson then you should look at a few weeks before Patterson to see what caused crossover.
What happened a few weeks before Patterson?
People realised they'd been conned? It's rarely one thing. The polls had been drifting since Hartlepool. The Budget and Patterson was a one-two. We've been conned. You can't see it. Maybe most won't. But it's a grift. Nothing more nor less
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Encourage immigration
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
“The number of visas issued to migrants from outside of the EU reached a record in 2021 as the first year of the UK's post-Brexit rules led to a more liberal immigration system, the Times has revealed. Home Office figures show that 843,538 non-EU migrants were granted visas to live, work and study in Britain last year.
The figure is a 107,000 increase when compared to 2019.”
There are two confounding factors, though:
1) Hong Kong; and 2) Our foreign student numbers are at record levels partly because Chinese and Indian students who would otherwise have gone to Australia/NZ have come here.
But overall, the “no one will want to come to nasty brexit Britain” stuff has been shown for the nonsense it always was. As if the average Indian or Chinese 18 year old gives a toss about internal UK politics.
Brown and black immigrants don't count to Remainers. They are mainly upset we don't let in unskilled white ones.
Now a question for you, Foxy: Am I right that the girls victimized by grooming gangs in places like Rotherham mostly did not have fathers in their lives?
I would wager that is true for Jeffrey Epstein's victims, too -- and I doubt that any prominent reporter will tackle that question.
The sort of society we are today, the violence of football hooligans, due to family breakdown. Isn’t this the sort of stuff Gareth Southgate was warbling on about today?
What was all that stuff. Where was it all coming from Gareth?
Now a question for you Jimmy Miller, if girls end up vulnerable in teen years due to a lack of father figure, where are you apportioning blame?
Can't we find a better way of funding our retirement than leeching off people's gas bills? Is that really beyond us?
Here are some ways:
1) Pay more tax 2) Reduce government spending on other things 3) Save more money 4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
I don't think people are opposed to creating wealth, we just have no idea how.
You could do some of these things:
- Encourage immigration
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
“The number of visas issued to migrants from outside of the EU reached a record in 2021 as the first year of the UK's post-Brexit rules led to a more liberal immigration system, the Times has revealed. Home Office figures show that 843,538 non-EU migrants were granted visas to live, work and study in Britain last year.
The figure is a 107,000 increase when compared to 2019.”
There are two confounding factors, though:
1) Hong Kong; and 2) Our foreign student numbers are at record levels partly because Chinese and Indian students who would otherwise have gone to Australia/NZ have come here.
But overall, the “no one will want to come to nasty brexit Britain” stuff has been shown for the nonsense it always was. As if the average Indian or Chinese 18 year old gives a toss about internal UK politics.
Brown and black immigrants don't count to Remainers. They are mainly upset we don't let in unskilled white ones.
Found this for you, @Aslan. Something to ponder as you pause between shit-posts.
The thing that seems strange about all the comments saying pressure must be put on Ukraine to give up territory or Putin must be given an off ramp, etc, is that it’s all unnecessary. If the different governments want to make their views known to the Ukr govt, they can...
Saying it out loud only puts more pressure on Ukr and gives more hope to Putin. So why do it? I can’t think of one thing it gains but publicity and point scoring. Far better to provide what aid to Ukr you want, quietly let your position be known, and then step back.
I don’t think it’s the governments saying this. I think it’s the likes of Schroeder. (“Senior figures”). They have lost but are still trying to influence the debate in Russia’s favour
They are the worst, but I wouldn't underestimate the willingness of the French, German, Italian or Hungarian governments to push for Ukraine to make "concessions".
But the US and UK will fight to the last Ukrainian.
The plan is to fight to the last Russian.
Who has his finger on a big red button. What could possibly go wrong?
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the Russians handed their arses on a plate as much as the next man. But the notion that it is somehow immoral to seek ways to end the war, save lives and reduce the risk of nuclear annihilation, even if it means giving the Russians their pyrrhic victory, is absurd.
In 2011, 83% of murders involved a firearm, and 6.4% were the result of a stabbing. 10% of murders in 2011 were the result of an armed robbery and at least 60% were gang or gang narcotics altercations. Over 40% of victims and 60% of offenders were between the ages of 17 and 25. 90.1% of victims were male. 75.3% of victims and 70.5% of offenders were African American, 18.9% were Hispanic (20.3% of offenders), and whites were 5.6% of victims (3.5% of offenders).[71]
Murder rates in Chicago vary greatly depending on the neighborhood in question. Many of the predominantly African American neighborhoods on the South Side are impoverished, lack educational resources and noted for high levels of street gang activity.[73] The neighborhoods of Englewood on the South Side, and Austin on the West side, for example, have homicide rates that are ten times higher than other parts of the city.[74] Violence in these neighborhoods has had a detrimental impact on the academic performance of children in schools, as well as a higher financial burden for school districts in need of counselors, social workers, and psychiatrists to help children cope with the violence.[75] In 2014, Chicago Public Schools adopted the "Safe Passage Route" program to place unarmed volunteers, police officers and firefighters along designated walking routes to provide security for children en route to school.[76] From 2010 to 2014, 114 school children were murdered in Chicago.
A personal note: In the late 1960s, I taught in a slum school on the west side of Chicago. It was an elementary school, so we only had one full-time police officer on duty. (A nearby high school had four.) My experience then persuaded me that crime i our inner cities is more often a cause of poverty, than the other way around.
Comments
Social media plays a part because a would-be shooter can easily make a statement now that will bypass attempts to censor them, they can also find idiots who will egg them on and endorse the justification of such attacks, and they can even find a live audience now by streaming their attacks.
Those are side issues though, lots of gun leads to lots of shootings of all types.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/eriic-adams-stop-frisk?s=r
Nothing will change. Nothing ever will.
But lets tell women they can't control their own bodies because life is sacred, or something or other.
https://www.fudgekitchen.co.uk/en/shops/york-fudge-kitchen
Loved seeing that done when I was little.
Ripping yarn with gripping drama. Or robbing yarn with grabbing drama?
Lower prices benefit everybody.
You're wrong, I DO understand, but I don't give a fuck about the income derived from wealth if people with no capital are going cold as a result. I've thought about my priorities here.
So this shit has been going on for longer than I've been alive.
If the 6 episode BBC wasn’t called war and peace I wouldn’t have recognised. I have watched a longer version of war and peace from the 70s with Anthony Hopkins that also didn’t capture the philosophising the book is about. TV adaptions go for characters and set pieces, what set the books apart are the philosophising that stimulated the mind.
Standing charges aren't subject to any cap.
In response to the shooting in Uvalde, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says the solution may be arming teachers.
Speaking to conservative news outlet Newsmax, Paxton said that "having potentially teachers and other administrators be armed" would help stop future attacks while authorities arrived.
"First responders typically can't get there in time to prevent a shooting. It's just not possible unless you have a police officer on every campus," he said. "I think you're going to have to do more at the school."
1) Pay more tax
2) Reduce government spending on other things
3) Save more money
4) Create more wealth
Now how many people want to do any of that ?
In the Gardenwalker tyranny, there’s a special government department which tries to make life easier and/or cheaper for the least well off.
Then where does the government get money to raise UC, living wage, improve all the public services? Investment in those things has to come from somewhere, it doesn’t grow on magic money trees.
Did you say you vote Lib Dem? How can you be Lib Dem if you are so left wing and anti capitalism?
Which is perhaps why mass shootings don't have more of an effect.
There are some limited local schemes for this, but it would be great to do it nationally.
- Not Brexit
- Encourage immigration
- Fund R&D investment to equal or exceed peer economies
- Fund infrastructure
- Improve workforce training
- Keep taxation lower than peer economies
- Reform the planning regime
Pretty much the reverse of what the current government is doing.
How many die annually in mass shootings in the UK?
I agree on that. The drop in Tory polling seems now to date from very moment they cut it.
I mean, they at least knew about reforming the planning regime, they just dropped the attempt (good or not) because it was so toxic in the shires.
The numbers simply aren't adding up.
That's before we talk about the disabled. Sick. Underemployed. Carers.
It was an utter botch-job and it’s right that they dropped it.
They need to go back to the drawing board and have another go.
While people seem keen in general to blame/credit [delete as appropriate] Partygate as the reason, its worth noting that the Tories were already behind in the polls even before Partygate began.
Allegra Stratton resigned early December, that was the beginning of Partygate really, but crossover had already been reached in the polls in November and Labour had more poll leads than the Tories in November and momentum was only going one way.
For some it might be UC, for others (like myself) it was raising National Insurance.
But the government's unpopularity is about much more and much more systemic than who may or may not have had alcohol on a random night two years ago.
There's likely been another 50-100 gun deaths in the USA today.
Something which the USA seems happy to live with.
Whereas a mass shooting in the UK is a far higher proportion of gun deaths.
The important qualifier I added was "if people with no capital are going cold as a result."
If people are too poor to afford three cars, I don't care. If you can't afford to eat at a restaurant every night, I don't care. If you can't afford to heat your home, I do care.
In other words, there's a small set of life-essentials I would protect from the vicissitudes of capitalism. That's a sensible, centrist position that I'm sure would find sympathy on the right of Labour and the left of the Conservatives. And yes, amongst a large part of the Lib Dems.
Oh, and I'm not "a Lib Dem". I have voted for them in the past, including in 2019. I have voted Conservative at other times, and Green, and very recently SNP.
Was there anywhere with a 3x house-price to earnings multiple or lower being told that they needed to build lots of homes? I'm sceptical.
The single best benefit they could give the unemployed is a free bus and train pass. Like old folk have.
Be good for the mental health just to have a day out or visit friends or relatives too.
Or just go to the seaside. Daily Mail outrage.
The 'one rule for us and another for them' meme is always dangerous for a government to allow to flourish.
Though Johnson is no Becky Sharpe, nor Barry Lyndon or Joe Lampton, all of whom were ruthless at social climbing, but of humble origin.
Johnson was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went to Eton etc. He is more likely to bully and mock those of humble origins than to behave like one of them.
Is it any wonder Ukrainians don't want to surrender and are willing to fight to the last when faced with such an enemy?
Planning needs root and branch reform and we’ve both outlined our views on this at length, no need to rehearse.
The figure is a 107,000 increase when compared to 2019.”
There are two confounding factors, though:
1) Hong Kong; and
2) Our foreign student numbers are at record levels partly because Chinese and Indian students who would otherwise have gone to Australia/NZ have come here.
But overall, the “no one will want to come to nasty brexit Britain” stuff has been shown for the nonsense it always was. As if the average Indian or Chinese 18 year old gives a toss about internal UK politics.
The proposals didn't go anywhere near far enough, but they were baby steps in the right direction, now even that has been drowned. Something that was actually a good idea as opposed to just more taxing and spending, so lets drown that and go back to the drawing board.
NI rise was a key election promise shredded
Every single voter though UC cut was wrong with families, the poorest in our society, already struggling. People not work shy, doing numerous jobs for their families not even standing still their finances going backward, the sleepless nights of worry. Whilst the architect of the cut is how the other half live.
Typical PB we can’t even agree on this.
For those who haven't seen it, Room at the Top is on BFI Player, can be seen on their free trial:
https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-room-at-the-top-1958-online
Though they are adept at copying Labour's homework.
The lead was narrowing long before Patterson, Deltapoll showed the lead narrowed to just 1% just weeks before the Patterson story kicked off.
In the space of less than three months we had the NI tax rise, the UC benefit cut, Patterson and Labour taking the lead.
I see no reason to think the only factor involved is the last one of the three. The last one might interest political anoraks more, but maybe the rest of the public are interested in how much money is in their pockets?
There’s certainly no simple answer to the UK’s current situation, but at heart the country is over-incentivising non-productive activity and under-incentivising productive activity.
A government needs not only to reverse this but to signal that it doing so; in other words it needs a growth strategy.
Poor Jon Bon Govi thought he had finished the bugger off in 2016 😆
From a privileged background but popular with the people, the womanising, the cowardice, the lying and the incredible luck.
Patterson was the turning point. It wasn't policy. It was perception.
The other stuff has re-inforced that view, yes.
Mass shooters do seem to be more likely to be white, even allowing for the differences in the sizes of the groups. Whether school shooters, totally, are more likely to be white, is a more difficult question. I suspect not, but the sad fact is that black-on-black crime gets very little attention from our from our journalists. (That's an extreme case of what George W. Bush called the "soft bigotry of low expectations".)
For example, in this area, recently a gang banger waited for a high school to let out and killed, as I recall, a man and his son. It got very little coverage, even here. Similar attacks happen all over the country, every week.
Similarly, the evidence that the BLM protests led to signficant increases in crime, including murder, with most of the victims black, is strong -- but it would be a brave academic in most American universities who would do serious research on that question.
(I should caution all of you that the quality of the research on crime in th US is low, and that many touchy subjects will be avoided by almost everyone. For example, I think the evidence is strong that fatherless boys are far more likely to become criminals -- and fatherless girls are more likely to become victims, but I wouldn't advise anyone to ask for a research grant from, for example, the Ford Foundation, to study that question.
And heterodox findings, like Cass Sunstein's on the deterrence effect of the death penalty, will simply be ignored.)
What happened a few weeks before Patterson?
"I'm having my benefits cut but that Paterson got all that money"
A lot of the benefit of the doubt people turned then.
Which isn't to say he can't win them back. But he's shown no signs so far
“Thank goodness I’ve got your 80 seat majority to get my policies through,”
Let’s see if Starmer’s spin doctors read PB and use this one.
School and other mass shootings make the news not just because of the scale, but also because the victims tend to be middle class suburbanites.
The difference is I was 10 metres away minding my own business and was in absolutely no dangerous of crossfire stabbing.
I would wager that is true for Jeffrey Epstein's victims, too -- and I doubt that any prominent reporter will tackle that question.
Partygate hollowed out Boris ratings very quickly, but what has really moved votes, and given his own party ideas to remove him, is complete absence of economical and fiscal strategy, as illuminated by his conference and CBI speech fiasco.
What dear bit of economic and fiscal strategy Boris government has had has been poorly managed.
Legalised abortion leads to a collapse in crime rates a generation later as the would-be criminals were simply never born.
It seems many American states will be witnessing the largest crime waves seen in generations in about eighteen years time if the Supreme Court has anything to do with it.
Not sure if that was the kind of evidence you were looking for though.
See the work of Donohue and Levitt for this one.
It's rarely one thing. The polls had been drifting since Hartlepool.
The Budget and Patterson was a one-two.
We've been conned. You can't see it. Maybe most won't. But it's a grift.
Nothing more nor less
What was all that stuff. Where was it all coming from Gareth?
Now a question for you Jimmy Miller, if girls end up vulnerable in teen years due to a lack of father figure, where are you apportioning blame?
Something to ponder as you pause between shit-posts.
Special Economic Operation.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the Russians handed their arses on a plate as much as the next man. But the notion that it is somehow immoral to seek ways to end the war, save lives and reduce the risk of nuclear annihilation, even if it means giving the Russians their pyrrhic victory, is absurd.
A personal note: In the late 1960s, I taught in a slum school on the west side of Chicago. It was an elementary school, so we only had one full-time police officer on duty. (A nearby high school had four.) My experience then persuaded me that crime i our inner cities is more often a cause of poverty, than the other way around.