My new “landlord” in Tbilisi Old town recommended a place. “Really good Georgian food@. On Freedom Sqaure. Which is bit like recommending a restaurant on Oxford Circus or Leicester Square
I had grave doubts to say the least. Plus it also feels like an old Russian canteen from about 1965. Nonetheless I have turned up, thinking Why not. and my God he is right. Khinkali done so well you think Why would I ever eat anything else. and all with this intensely smoky chili sauce, Ajika
Sublime!
Its great when you get tips from locals. I find that on my cycle trips in France in the middle of nowhere. In the 90s I worked in Nicosia and was taken to places where if you were a tourist you wouldn't touch with a barge pole. All were fantastic.
I had tomato and cucumber and walnut salad: mmmmm
Then this intensely yummy pork barbecue kebab with Ajika, it was so juicy maybe it was suckling pig? Seared to porky perfection with crunchy burnt bits
Then the best khinkali EVUH (OK I’ve only had them twice but wow, they are worth the 25 minute wait); I can see why Anthony Bourdain spent his final years obsessed with Chinese hot soup dumplings. These are exactly the same, only Caucasian
All with highly palatable red wine at £2 a glass. A magnificent dinner for £16
EVERYONE I know who has been to Georgia has told me: Tbilisi is brilliant and the food and wine situation is great: GO
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
Lord Geidt has written to PM asking whether he considers a fixed penalty notice to be a breach of the ministerial code...
PM has replied: “Taking account of all the circumstances, I did not breach the Code. In coming to the conclusion I have duly considered past precedents of Ministers who have unwittingly breached regulations where there was no intent to break the law...
... I have been fully accountable to Parliament and the British people and rightly apologised for the mistake...
PM argues he has not broken rules as he has "corrected the parliamentary record in relation to statements and I have followed the principles of leadership and accountability in doing so."
PM getting it in the neck tonight from party and now Whitehall big wigs...
Geidt heaping pressure on FPN .. and demanding a explanation..
sounds like full letter to be published shortly alongside Geidt's annual report
Understand PM has also helpfully told Geidt the same excuses apply to Sunak for not breaking the code....
"In my view the same principles apply to the fixed penalty notice paid by the Chancellor”
So, the increase in tax rates in Scotland have actually brought in about £200m less than before rather than £500m more. Why is this?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a Laffer curve I told you so, although that certainly plays a part. The average income in Scotland has not risen as rapidly as the average income in rUK. This may, in part, be because some of the highest paid jobs, especially in financial services, are drifting southwards. But it also reflects an economy that is becoming ever more public sector dominated where words like "profit" are dirty things.
Kate Forbes, fresh from her High School prom, states that the provision of services must be reset (another word for cut) with the priorities being health, social security and helping firms recover. Not sure how much that last one is getting but social security spending is forecast to increase from 10-14% of the budget over the next 4 years. How are firms going to recover when we don't even have a satisfactory railway service? How on earth do we attract foreign investment when people don't even know what currency we will be using in 5 years time? How can we indulge ourselves with Net Zero, another budget priority, when we have oil and gas waiting to be exploited for that nasty profit thing once again in the North Sea.
Justice is going to be cut, despite an unprecedented backlog of trials from Covid. Victims of crime are going to have to wait even longer for trials where the evidence is all the fainter.
And still we have no opposition worthy of the name. It's a sad state of affairs.
The IFS is stark:
Brutal: "On the plans set out today, the axe is set to fall on a wide range of public service areas. Budgets for local government, the police, justice, universities, rural affairs are due to fall by around 8% in real-terms over the next four years."
I wonder if they were counting on having more pliant SNP local authorities in place, rather than opposition coalitions who will complain about “SNP CUTS!!!”
Mind you, since the census is fecked they won’t be able to work out local authority allocations anyway….
The plan is to blame Westminster. Yes your services have turned to shite but its the fault of Westminster. If you vote for independence it all magically gets fixed.
It all shows how disastrous identity politics can be. In Scotland the SNP are assured of c40% whatever they do thus breaking the link between performance and electoral reward. Does not bode well.
Why don't other large parties try compete for SNP voters, then? In a democracy, it seems fair enough that parties should move toward the voters. But perhaps the problem is that they are hidebound by disastrous British unionist identity politics.
The SNP got 45% at the last general election, exactly the same as Yes got in 2014, they are the party for pro independence Nationalists, there is no point trying to win them over if you are a Unionist party
Successfully getting the flight out may well defer some letters going in, depending on the MP, expecially if they think a successor might not stick with the policy.
No successor will stick to the Rwanda policy. It will be scrapped. Part of the coming leadership campaigns will be all candidates committed to a “look at it for improvements”.
Why? Because anyone with two brain cells know the most important thing for any “red meat” policy is that it’s actually got to work at the end of the day, you have to dine out on its record, put it in your leaflets not hand your opponents expensive failure to put in their leaflets - this scheme as currently stands is both far too expensive in tax payer money per migrant, and won’t achieve nearly enough Deterrent.
Let’s be clear, I’m calling it axed not on basis of a party tacking back to the centre, nor overlooking that tackling illegal entry isn’t vital to Tory reelection campaigns across the country, it’s because the headline costs are HUGE it’s potential of deterrent MINIMAL.
How can I be so certain it’s doomed? Because they avoided a commons vote on it knowing their back benchers not gullible enough to back it.
The department that just brought you the unusable Scottish Census:
And it's striking that when you look at the table setting out that referendum spending, you can see it comes at the direct expense of Historic Environment Scotland, which is having its budget slashed by nearly a quarter.
On July 17, 2020, the Scottish government announced that the next census, due to be held in 2021, would in fact be delayed until this year. According to Fiona Hyslop, then the minister responsible for the census, postponement was not a decision to be taken lightly but doing so would ensure that “the quality of the census data” would “remain robust” and moving the date would help ensure “the highest possible response rate from people across Scotland”.
Oops. Last week, Nicola Sturgeon was left with no option but to admit that Scotland’s census may be worthless. Although the deadline for submitting forms was extended by a month, as of last Saturday just 86 per cent of forms had been completed. Since the census is useless unless it is comprehensive and since the revised cut-off point for submitting returns is tomorrow, it will be a surprise if returns have reached the 90-plus per cent level deemed necessary for success.
So, the increase in tax rates in Scotland have actually brought in about £200m less than before rather than £500m more. Why is this?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a Laffer curve I told you so, although that certainly plays a part. The average income in Scotland has not risen as rapidly as the average income in rUK. This may, in part, be because some of the highest paid jobs, especially in financial services, are drifting southwards. But it also reflects an economy that is becoming ever more public sector dominated where words like "profit" are dirty things.
Kate Forbes, fresh from her High School prom, states that the provision of services must be reset (another word for cut) with the priorities being health, social security and helping firms recover. Not sure how much that last one is getting but social security spending is forecast to increase from 10-14% of the budget over the next 4 years. How are firms going to recover when we don't even have a satisfactory railway service? How on earth do we attract foreign investment when people don't even know what currency we will be using in 5 years time? How can we indulge ourselves with Net Zero, another budget priority, when we have oil and gas waiting to be exploited for that nasty profit thing once again in the North Sea.
Justice is going to be cut, despite an unprecedented backlog of trials from Covid. Victims of crime are going to have to wait even longer for trials where the evidence is all the fainter.
And still we have no opposition worthy of the name. It's a sad state of affairs.
The IFS is stark:
Brutal: "On the plans set out today, the axe is set to fall on a wide range of public service areas. Budgets for local government, the police, justice, universities, rural affairs are due to fall by around 8% in real-terms over the next four years."
I wonder if they were counting on having more pliant SNP local authorities in place, rather than opposition coalitions who will complain about “SNP CUTS!!!”
Mind you, since the census is fecked they won’t be able to work out local authority allocations anyway….
The plan is to blame Westminster. Yes your services have turned to shite but its the fault of Westminster. If you vote for independence it all magically gets fixed.
It all shows how disastrous identity politics can be. In Scotland the SNP are assured of c40% whatever they do thus breaking the link between performance and electoral reward. Does not bode well.
Why don't other large parties try compete for SNP voters, then? In a democracy, it seems fair enough that parties should move toward the voters. But perhaps the problem is that they are hidebound by disastrous British unionist identity politics.
The SNP got 45% at the last general election, exactly the same as Yes got in 2014, they are the party for pro independence Nationalists, there is no point trying to win them over if you are a Unionist party
If I'd known Nicola Sturgeon was going to look at my census form, I'd have written a nice little note to her. Still, I guess I'll get another chance in the 2030s at the rate the other parties are closing the gap
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
Having been away at my godfather's funeral this afternoon, I see from earlier posts in this thread I am now described as a Fascist on here, which is apparently what those still loyal to Boris are now described as. Heaven help those posters if they ever faced a real Fascist government!
The Comres is 27-29 fully after the money splurge which Nick claimed reduced the Lab lead to 2. Tories 31 lead ELEVEN Nick.
MoonRabbit poll predictor queen. 😝
Very true. I'm delighted.
Comres is very much last poll reported syndrome though. Redfield had plus 5. One of them is heading in the incorrect direction or is just an outlier. Or its really opiniums no movement that is right.
The EMA has the Labour lead at 6.4% and 14 seats short of an overall majority on the new boundaries.
EDIT: I think Electoral Calculus is under playing the LibDems.
Has UNS ever worked to model seats for the Liberals/Alliance/Lib Dems?
No. And the Electoral Calculus tactical voting option doesn't work (not for me anyway).
So I would add 15 seats to LibDems making 26 and take 15 seats off the Tories giving Labour an overall majority of 1.
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
Increasingly a problem in law, as well. They are all women and they can’t be arsed once they’ve got babies
Govt says it wants a flight to Rwanda on 14th June, 6 days before Rwanda hosts Commonwealth CHOGM
Legal action will delay that flight. But ramping up controversy over the hosts human rights record may split Commonwealth. A headache for Buckingham Palace, esp Charles & William
Is the goverment's Rwanda policy, by amplifying the controversy over the human rights record of Rwanda - exacerbating the splits in the Commonwealth that could make the sensitive issue of the Headship after the Queen's reign much more difficult?
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
So... men are put off from becoming doctors because they don't feel represented in prospectuses?
Are we really having this discussion? I feel like someone's spiked me or something.
Govt says it wants a flight to Rwanda on 14th June, 6 days before Rwanda hosts Commonwealth CHOGM
Legal action will delay that flight. But ramping up controversy over the hosts human rights record may split Commonwealth. A headache for Buckingham Palace, esp Charles & William
Is the goverment's Rwanda policy, by amplifying the controversy over the human rights record of Rwanda - exacerbating the splits in the Commonwealth that could make the sensitive issue of the Headship after the Queen's reign much more difficult?
Interesting to see from earlier posts in this thread I am now described as a Fascist on here, which is apparently what those still loyal to Boris are now described as. Heaven help those posters if they ever faced a real Fascist government!
I find the way some throw fascist around deeply unpleasant and of course you are not fascist and neither is Boris
Having been away at my godfather's funeral this afternoon, I see from earlier posts in this thread I am now described as a Fascist on here, which is apparently what those still loyal to Boris are now described as. Heaven help those posters if they ever faced a real Fascist government!
Lord Geidt has written to PM asking whether he considers a fixed penalty notice to be a breach of the ministerial code...
PM has replied: “Taking account of all the circumstances, I did not breach the Code. In coming to the conclusion I have duly considered past precedents of Ministers who have unwittingly breached regulations where there was no intent to break the law...
... I have been fully accountable to Parliament and the British people and rightly apologised for the mistake...
PM argues he has not broken rules as he has "corrected the parliamentary record in relation to statements and I have followed the principles of leadership and accountability in doing so."
PM getting it in the neck tonight from party and now Whitehall big wigs...
Geidt heaping pressure on FPN .. and demanding a explanation..
sounds like full letter to be published shortly alongside Geidt's annual report
Understand PM has also helpfully told Geidt the same excuses apply to Sunak for not breaking the code....
"In my view the same principles apply to the fixed penalty notice paid by the Chancellor”
The Comres is 27-29 fully after the money splurge which Nick claimed reduced the Lab lead to 2. Tories 31 lead ELEVEN Nick.
MoonRabbit poll predictor queen. 😝
Very true. I'm delighted.
Comres is very much last poll reported syndrome though. Redfield had plus 5. One of them is heading in the incorrect direction or is just an outlier. Or its really opiniums no movement that is right.
The EMA has the Labour lead at 6.4% and 14 seats short of an overall majority on the new boundaries.
EDIT: I think Electoral Calculus is under playing the LibDems.
Has UNS ever worked to model seats for the Liberals/Alliance/Lib Dems?
No. And the Electoral Calculus tactical voting option doesn't work (not for me anyway).
So I would add 15 seats to LibDems making 26 and take 15 seats off the Tories giving Labour an overall majority of 1.
So Corbyn standing and winning as old Labour could leave them 1 short?
Last week it was in two places that made it certain Boris time is up. Grant Shapps face. And PB.
My reading of PB is it has crossed a sort of Rubicon – the opposition parties, Libdems, Labour, more than happy for this status quo of Boris still there and hope it will go on now all the way up to the general election. It’s the Tory posters I sense leaning towards the idea of turning a page on Boris and his government and having to defend the indefensible on the doorstep and everywhere, and getting a fresh start to rally around instead. By all means correct me if I have this wrong.
The idea Boris remains popular and becomes more popular after he is out is laughable, his time as PM wont be remembered well as time passes.
His spell has been more shit than Gordon Brown. It doesn’t deserve to be longer!
It'll be interesting to see how the Tories behave post-Boris (should he be ousted). I can easily see a split, a kind of GoP/Trump scenario with the pragmatists moving on with the new leader, whilst the Borisites bewail a terrible injustice and try desperately to keep the Boris flame alive. (Five years ago I'd have thought the latter scenario crazy, but now I'm far from sure.)
I still think the latter scenario is crazy. Who are "the Borisites"?
Who actually loves his record as PM?
Who actually likes waking up to being lied to by a once loved charismatic cad promising the earth, now revealed as fraudster who never gave a shit about you all along?
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
So... men are put off from becoming doctors because they don't feel represented in prospectuses?
Are we really having this discussion? I feel like someone's spiked me or something.
We have this discussion when professions are heavily masculine and masculine for no obvious reason. So, yes, why should we not do the same in reverse? Are you really lacking in wits to that extent?
The greater success of women/females in GCSEs and then A Levels and then University degrees is now, belatedly, feeding through into the professions. And yes it is a problem if 60-70% of lawyers or GPs or whatever are women (or even more) just as we accept that it is now an issue how women dominate primary school teaching (and it IS a problem). We have successfully made life easier for women - a good thing - but it is now extremely arguable that we have feminised education and the higher professions to an extent that is BAD
i am the father of two daughters. I want them to succeed. But not at the expense of anyone with a Y chromosome per se
Govt says it wants a flight to Rwanda on 14th June, 6 days before Rwanda hosts Commonwealth CHOGM
Legal action will delay that flight. But ramping up controversy over the hosts human rights record may split Commonwealth. A headache for Buckingham Palace, esp Charles & William
Is the goverment's Rwanda policy, by amplifying the controversy over the human rights record of Rwanda - exacerbating the splits in the Commonwealth that could make the sensitive issue of the Headship after the Queen's reign much more difficult?
I remember when SeanT was fantasising about deporting or interning all British Muslims back in 2016. The prospect of mass deportations of law-abiding foreigners to scratch the racist itch seemed remote back then.
In next CP leads market (BF) Hunt clear favourite at 6.2, Truss 8.2, Tugendat 8.4, Wallace 10.5.
I can't see Hunt getting past the membership - I would sell him.
(Heck it is far from clear that he either stands or makes it past the MPs. Big sell.)
I don't have any personal information, but I'm a constituent and know him a bit. I'm pretty sure he'll stand, and I agree he'd be good medicine for their Blue Wall problem, more so than Wallace or Truss.
Do you think he’d be able to keep the red wall too ?
The Tories best bet iro that is to focus on the bits they are best placed to retain imo - where they took a big lead, Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield, Rother Valley etc, forget Redcar, Leigh etc they are dropping anyway, and look at seats that had a big bxp vote - Hartlepool (obv try and retain from by election) Sunderland etc
By the time the next election comes Brexit will be 4+ years ago. Voters will be expecting to see results and Bishop Auckland / Sedgefield there is no success to talk about...
I disagree. I think the shift was for the thing to be done not for it to achieve an end, as we see with the not particularly drastic movement in brexit polling since. The thing was done. It marks a shift in these areas that will partially 'naturally' hold against national movements (opposite true in remainia of course) Dehenna in Bishop Auckland for example has a massive majority and first time incumbancy. In all but a meltdown i have her safe
Do you live or work in the constituency? Or are you looking from a distance without local knowledge, local news, local gossip down the pub...
I asked @wooliedyed if he lived in another constituency yesterday. If we keep this up he will get paranoid that we trying to track him down.
I'll make it easy! Im in Norwich South. No, i have no specific Bishop Auckland knowledge, eek, and if anyone has then please do counter me. Im going on the 2019 result, the fact shes a first time incumbant and the slightly less drastic loss of support in parts if brexity red wall the locals hinted at. Shes got an 18% majority. Gossip down the pub is overrated. All constituencies have very varied wards so unless youre drinking in a LOT of pubs it means very little. Local news, sure, but somebody will usually chime in if there is a specific local issue.
I’m not in bishop Auckland but I am in a Durham seat and I agree with you. I think the seat has been trending Tory for many years now.
The other element is Dehenna Davison is a brilliant MP, I rate her highly and think she will go right up the greased pole
Govt says it wants a flight to Rwanda on 14th June, 6 days before Rwanda hosts Commonwealth CHOGM
Legal action will delay that flight. But ramping up controversy over the hosts human rights record may split Commonwealth. A headache for Buckingham Palace, esp Charles & William
Is the goverment's Rwanda policy, by amplifying the controversy over the human rights record of Rwanda - exacerbating the splits in the Commonwealth that could make the sensitive issue of the Headship after the Queen's reign much more difficult?
I remember when SeanT was fantasising about deporting or interning all British Muslims back in 2016. The prospect of mass deportations of law-abiding foreigners to scratch the racist itch seemed remote back then.
Just rejoice at this news of Rwandan deportations. Hopefully the first of billions. Once we’ve sent every single “migrant” to Kigali we should move on to France, and deport them as well, maybe to Burundi. Thus reclaiming Aquitaine
You really are a nasty piece of work, I'm sad to say.
Actually that's not totally fair. You are a person who I think is besieged by your own demons and you lash out on a forum where you know you can play big fish-little pond. So it's wrong to say you are a nasty piece of work. Rather that you allow much nastiness to emerge and spew forth. I wish you wouldn't.
Beneath all of this I think you are still hurting. And it's that part of you which is the softer, truer, you.
You really are a nasty piece of work, I'm sad to say.
Actually that's not totally fair. You are a person who I think is besieged by your own demons and you lash out on a forum where you know you can play big fish-little pond. So it's wrong to say you are a nasty piece of work. Rather that you allow much nastiness to emerge and spew forth. I wish you wouldn't.
Beneath all of this I think you are still hurting. And it's that part of you which is the softer, truer, you.
You really are a nasty piece of work, I'm sad to say.
Actually that's not totally fair. You are a person who I think is besieged by your own demons and you lash out on a forum where you know you can play big fish-little pond. So it's wrong to say you are a nasty piece of work. Rather that you allow much nastiness to emerge and spew forth. I wish you wouldn't.
Beneath all of this I think you are still hurting. And it's that part of you which is the softer, truer, you.
x
Oh dear. You’re just not…. Very bright, Are you?
Probably not but I do have a 1st from Univ of Oxford and a DPhil.
Not that my message was about that kind of intelligence. It was about feeling.
p.s. I realise you were, hopefully, jesting but as any good psychologist will tell you, we often jest about that which we are serious.
You really are a nasty piece of work, I'm sad to say.
Actually that's not totally fair. You are a person who I think is besieged by your own demons and you lash out on a forum where you know you can play big fish-little pond. So it's wrong to say you are a nasty piece of work. Rather that you allow much nastiness to emerge and spew forth. I wish you wouldn't.
Beneath all of this I think you are still hurting. And it's that part of you which is the softer, truer, you.
x
Oh dear. You’re just not…. Very bright, Are you?
Probably not but I do have a 1st from Univ of Oxford and a DPhil.
Not that my message was about that kind of intelligence. It was about feeling.
Jeez. i heard Oxford was in decline what with all this Wokery. And here we are
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
So... men are put off from becoming doctors because they don't feel represented in prospectuses?
Are we really having this discussion? I feel like someone's spiked me or something.
We have this discussion when professions are heavily masculine and masculine for no obvious reason. So, yes, why should we not do the same in reverse? Are you really lacking in wits to that extent?
The greater success of women/females in GCSEs and then A Levels and then University degrees is now, belatedly, feeding through into the professions. And yes it is a problem if 60-70% of lawyers or GPs or whatever are women (or even more) just as we accept that it is now an issue how women dominate primary school teaching (and it IS a problem). We have successfully made life easier for women - a good thing - but it is now extremely arguable that we have feminised education and the higher professions to an extent that is BAD
i am the father of two daughters. I want them to succeed. But not at the expense of anyone with a Y chromosome per se
Exam success in teenage years is a really interesting point, and I think we're barking up the right tree now, FWIW. Girls and boys mature at different rates, and I think girls have a natural advantage at a certain age. Personally, I'm in favour of organising education around a different principle to the one we have now, where set-piece exams channel people away from academic achievement before they've had a chance to grow into themselves*.
It would be a big change, but I think the maturity gap between boys and girls is going to be a challenge under the current system of in-step cohorts.
One thing I do not think is credible is the idea that boys lack male role models in the "doctor" side of the medical world. If it was about boys going into nursing, I would agree. Better representation would probably help.
So, the increase in tax rates in Scotland have actually brought in about £200m less than before rather than £500m more. Why is this?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a Laffer curve I told you so, although that certainly plays a part. The average income in Scotland has not risen as rapidly as the average income in rUK. This may, in part, be because some of the highest paid jobs, especially in financial services, are drifting southwards. But it also reflects an economy that is becoming ever more public sector dominated where words like "profit" are dirty things.
Kate Forbes, fresh from her High School prom, states that the provision of services must be reset (another word for cut) with the priorities being health, social security and helping firms recover. Not sure how much that last one is getting but social security spending is forecast to increase from 10-14% of the budget over the next 4 years. How are firms going to recover when we don't even have a satisfactory railway service? How on earth do we attract foreign investment when people don't even know what currency we will be using in 5 years time? How can we indulge ourselves with Net Zero, another budget priority, when we have oil and gas waiting to be exploited for that nasty profit thing once again in the North Sea.
Justice is going to be cut, despite an unprecedented backlog of trials from Covid. Victims of crime are going to have to wait even longer for trials where the evidence is all the fainter.
And still we have no opposition worthy of the name. It's a sad state of affairs.
All true. As Scottish politics sits within a Unionist vs Nationalist prison which itself is within the ongoing UK Tories vs non Tories battle, the ability to oppose is difficult.
The simple reality is that for the three opposition parties to effectively work together is politically impossible. They manage it at council level where nobody is looking, but nationally Labour can't drop its pretence that its dominance is about to come back, the LibDems need to be heard so want to stand apart, and nobody will work with the Tories because morals.
I don't know how we fix it. Because despite the SNP's genuine non-scum compared to the Tories image, they are a big screw up on a whole heap of policy areas. And keep trying to drag us off down the independence rabbit hole without actually wanting to say what is on the other side.
Scotland desperately needs a new, centrist party, something like what the Tories were turning into under Ruth but with more breadth of vision and proper policy options focused on Scotland. I will be interested to see what Blair, Ruth, Rory and others are up to but the experience of Alba does not give much encouragement.
If only people listened to Alex Cole-Hamilton. I honestly believe we are trying to offer a new centrist vision - we're certainly not just banging a unionist drum saying "the status quo is best". The problem remains cut-through, and with respect to every non-SNP politician since Ruth Davidson they have been shown to be boring non-entities, or have spectacular implosions, or both. ACH included.
People don't listen because he is crap, has nothing to offer and is a London Lickspittle sockpuppet. Nothing will change till there is a real Scottish opposition party. People have listened to the london regional muppets forever, they are going nowhere till they become real Scottish parties.
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
So... men are put off from becoming doctors because they don't feel represented in prospectuses?
Are we really having this discussion? I feel like someone's spiked me or something.
We have this discussion when professions are heavily masculine and masculine for no obvious reason. So, yes, why should we not do the same in reverse? Are you really lacking in wits to that extent?
The greater success of women/females in GCSEs and then A Levels and then University degrees is now, belatedly, feeding through into the professions. And yes it is a problem if 60-70% of lawyers or GPs or whatever are women (or even more) just as we accept that it is now an issue how women dominate primary school teaching (and it IS a problem). We have successfully made life easier for women - a good thing - but it is now extremely arguable that we have feminised education and the higher professions to an extent that is BAD
i am the father of two daughters. I want them to succeed. But not at the expense of anyone with a Y chromosome per se
As a father of boys and a girl, it seems to me that girls are more concerned about being seen to fail. That makes them more conscientious, which means they study harder than boys, who would generally rather being doing anything else.
The Comres is 27-29 fully after the money splurge which Nick claimed reduced the Lab lead to 2. Tories 31 lead ELEVEN Nick.
MoonRabbit poll predictor queen. 😝
Very true. I'm delighted.
Comres is very much last poll reported syndrome though. Redfield had plus 5. One of them is heading in the incorrect direction or is just an outlier. Or its really opiniums no movement that is right.
They both have labour in much the same place but a 5% difference in Tory share.
I felt for weeks the Tory share may begin to drop a bit in a media narrative almost constantly hostile to them across a range of things, I didn’t expect or predict a Labour surge into 40’s. Maybe some pollsters now getting less green more labour responses. The Lib Dem share also bitten by these two labour in 40 polls.
A possible explanation, from your polling queen - for weeks the Tory’s and their supports in the media were on election mode, but eased off the gas once the locals were over, with their foot on the electioneering peddle it may have suppressed top range of Labours polling.
I like the way Opinium is consistent. Tories never lower than the latest 43 and labour never higher than 38 or lead above 4. So if that were to change you would have a sense of something happening the more all over shop pollsters never give you.
I remember when SeanT was fantasising about deporting or interning all British Muslims back in 2016. The prospect of mass deportations of law-abiding foreigners to scratch the racist itch seemed remote back then.
Govt says it wants a flight to Rwanda on 14th June, 6 days before Rwanda hosts Commonwealth CHOGM
Legal action will delay that flight. But ramping up controversy over the hosts human rights record may split Commonwealth. A headache for Buckingham Palace, esp Charles & William
Is the goverment's Rwanda policy, by amplifying the controversy over the human rights record of Rwanda - exacerbating the splits in the Commonwealth that could make the sensitive issue of the Headship after the Queen's reign much more difficult?
So, the increase in tax rates in Scotland have actually brought in about £200m less than before rather than £500m more. Why is this?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a Laffer curve I told you so, although that certainly plays a part. The average income in Scotland has not risen as rapidly as the average income in rUK. This may, in part, be because some of the highest paid jobs, especially in financial services, are drifting southwards. But it also reflects an economy that is becoming ever more public sector dominated where words like "profit" are dirty things.
Kate Forbes, fresh from her High School prom, states that the provision of services must be reset (another word for cut) with the priorities being health, social security and helping firms recover. Not sure how much that last one is getting but social security spending is forecast to increase from 10-14% of the budget over the next 4 years. How are firms going to recover when we don't even have a satisfactory railway service? How on earth do we attract foreign investment when people don't even know what currency we will be using in 5 years time? How can we indulge ourselves with Net Zero, another budget priority, when we have oil and gas waiting to be exploited for that nasty profit thing once again in the North Sea.
Justice is going to be cut, despite an unprecedented backlog of trials from Covid. Victims of crime are going to have to wait even longer for trials where the evidence is all the fainter.
And still we have no opposition worthy of the name. It's a sad state of affairs.
The IFS is stark:
Brutal: "On the plans set out today, the axe is set to fall on a wide range of public service areas. Budgets for local government, the police, justice, universities, rural affairs are due to fall by around 8% in real-terms over the next four years."
I wonder if they were counting on having more pliant SNP local authorities in place, rather than opposition coalitions who will complain about “SNP CUTS!!!”
Mind you, since the census is fecked they won’t be able to work out local authority allocations anyway….
The plan is to blame Westminster. Yes your services have turned to shite but its the fault of Westminster. If you vote for independence it all magically gets fixed.
It all shows how disastrous identity politics can be. In Scotland the SNP are assured of c40% whatever they do thus breaking the link between performance and electoral reward. Does not bode well.
Why don't other large parties try compete for SNP voters, then? In a democracy, it seems fair enough that parties should move toward the voters. But perhaps the problem is that they are hidebound by disastrous British unionist identity politics.
The Conservatives in Scotland effectively made themselves a one-issue, one-person party by calling themselves "The Ruth Davidson Says No to Independence/Independence Referendums" party - very much so, certainly in terms of the actual branding. That was far more of an 'identity politics' jag than the SNP do.
It was inevitable reaction to SNP success. Scots Tories (and all other Unionists) would much rather Scots politics was dominated by anything other than the constitution. But they have to go where the votes are, and a very significant number of Scots are passionately anti-Indy, even if they are less noisy than the other side. That's why its all so divisive and unpleasant. But that's identity politics for you.
What is unpleasant about it pray tell. Sounds like bollox unionist vomit to me. You unionists arseholes just want to keep us under your jackboot.
I remember when SeanT was fantasising about deporting or interning all British Muslims back in 2016. The prospect of mass deportations of law-abiding foreigners to scratch the racist itch seemed remote back then.
Just rejoice at this news of Rwandan deportations. Hopefully the first of billions. Once we’ve sent every single “migrant” to Kigali we should move on to France, and deport them as well, maybe to Burundi. Thus reclaiming Aquitaine
Why do you care who comes to this country? You're never fucking here.
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
So... men are put off from becoming doctors because they don't feel represented in prospectuses?
Are we really having this discussion? I feel like someone's spiked me or something.
It’s a real thing. One of the ways we have tried to encourag3 more women into subjects is to make sure the profession looks like them. So for engineering you will see plenty of female engineers in prospectuses, even when the courses are 80-90 % male. Healthcare has it the other way. You may think it sounds stupid, but it’s not. It is of course not the only thing that can be done.
And just imagine how furious you'll be when the courts put the flights on hold because of legal challenges. You will be incandescent and you will heap hate on the lefty lawyers and the judicial establishment. And so the government's culture war strategy will be vindicated once more and on we will go.
I remember when SeanT was fantasising about deporting or interning all British Muslims back in 2016. The prospect of mass deportations of law-abiding foreigners to scratch the racist itch seemed remote back then.
Just rejoice at this news of Rwandan deportations. Hopefully the first of billions. Once we’ve sent every single “migrant” to Kigali we should move on to France, and deport them as well, maybe to Burundi. Thus reclaiming Aquitaine
Why do you care who comes to this country? You're never fucking here.
Indeed if we made it a PB law that you can’t post about British politics if you aren’t in Britain then we’d be reduced to you, a man who is so pitifully scared of “driving on the right” he won’t holiday abroad. And I would hate to see PB so enfeebled and epicene
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
So... men are put off from becoming doctors because they don't feel represented in prospectuses?
Are we really having this discussion? I feel like someone's spiked me or something.
We have this discussion when professions are heavily masculine and masculine for no obvious reason. So, yes, why should we not do the same in reverse? Are you really lacking in wits to that extent?
The greater success of women/females in GCSEs and then A Levels and then University degrees is now, belatedly, feeding through into the professions. And yes it is a problem if 60-70% of lawyers or GPs or whatever are women (or even more) just as we accept that it is now an issue how women dominate primary school teaching (and it IS a problem). We have successfully made life easier for women - a good thing - but it is now extremely arguable that we have feminised education and the higher professions to an extent that is BAD
i am the father of two daughters. I want them to succeed. But not at the expense of anyone with a Y chromosome per se
As a father of boys and a girl, it seems to me that girls are more concerned about being seen to fail. That makes them more conscientious, which means they study harder than boys, who would generally rather being doing anything else.
Hard to generalise from small samples but with a son and two daughters that's kind of my experience too. Girls seem to mature more quickly too, which helps them. My son doesn't want to be seen as a "neek" but has recently raised his game as I think he is conscious of underperforming.
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
So... men are put off from becoming doctors because they don't feel represented in prospectuses?
Are we really having this discussion? I feel like someone's spiked me or something.
It’s a real thing. One of the ways we have tried to encourag3 more women into subjects is to make sure the profession looks like them. So for engineering you will see plenty of female engineers in prospectuses, even when the courses are 80-90 % male. Healthcare has it the other way. You may think it sounds stupid, but it’s not. It is of course not the only thing that can be done.
"Healthcare" is a broad church. But there's no way in hell I'm accepting that there's a perception amongst boys about doctors being a "female" profession. I certainly accept that many jobs are seen as gendered and that perception needs to be taken account of. But in the popular imagination, doctors are men. I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that most GPs are female. It's not a this-is-not-for-me problem. The "lack" of male doctors is down to something else.
So, the increase in tax rates in Scotland have actually brought in about £200m less than before rather than £500m more. Why is this?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a Laffer curve I told you so, although that certainly plays a part. The average income in Scotland has not risen as rapidly as the average income in rUK. This may, in part, be because some of the highest paid jobs, especially in financial services, are drifting southwards. But it also reflects an economy that is becoming ever more public sector dominated where words like "profit" are dirty things.
Kate Forbes, fresh from her High School prom, states that the provision of services must be reset (another word for cut) with the priorities being health, social security and helping firms recover. Not sure how much that last one is getting but social security spending is forecast to increase from 10-14% of the budget over the next 4 years. How are firms going to recover when we don't even have a satisfactory railway service? How on earth do we attract foreign investment when people don't even know what currency we will be using in 5 years time? How can we indulge ourselves with Net Zero, another budget priority, when we have oil and gas waiting to be exploited for that nasty profit thing once again in the North Sea.
Justice is going to be cut, despite an unprecedented backlog of trials from Covid. Victims of crime are going to have to wait even longer for trials where the evidence is all the fainter.
And still we have no opposition worthy of the name. It's a sad state of affairs.
The IFS is stark:
Brutal: "On the plans set out today, the axe is set to fall on a wide range of public service areas. Budgets for local government, the police, justice, universities, rural affairs are due to fall by around 8% in real-terms over the next four years."
I wonder if they were counting on having more pliant SNP local authorities in place, rather than opposition coalitions who will complain about “SNP CUTS!!!”
Mind you, since the census is fecked they won’t be able to work out local authority allocations anyway….
The plan is to blame Westminster. Yes your services have turned to shite but its the fault of Westminster. If you vote for independence it all magically gets fixed.
It all shows how disastrous identity politics can be. In Scotland the SNP are assured of c40% whatever they do thus breaking the link between performance and electoral reward. Does not bode well.
Why don't other large parties try compete for SNP voters, then? In a democracy, it seems fair enough that parties should move toward the voters. But perhaps the problem is that they are hidebound by disastrous British unionist identity politics.
Exactly , they cannot understand that the people do not want London carpetbaggers running their affairs. The shite the unionists spout on here is vomit inducing, not happy that they rob us of all our money and only send back about 40% of it and think we should be kissing their arses for their largesse. A pox on all of them and preferably monkey one.
I remember when SeanT was fantasising about deporting or interning all British Muslims back in 2016. The prospect of mass deportations of law-abiding foreigners to scratch the racist itch seemed remote back then.
Just rejoice at this news of Rwandan deportations. Hopefully the first of billions. Once we’ve sent every single “migrant” to Kigali we should move on to France, and deport them as well, maybe to Burundi. Thus reclaiming Aquitaine
Why do you care who comes to this country? You're never fucking here.
Indeed if we made it a PB law that you can’t post about British politics if you aren’t in Britain then we’d be reduced to you, a man who is so pitifully scared of “driving on the right” he won’t holiday abroad. And I would hate to see PB so enfeebled and epicene
The department that just brought you the unusable Scottish Census:
And it's striking that when you look at the table setting out that referendum spending, you can see it comes at the direct expense of Historic Environment Scotland, which is having its budget slashed by nearly a quarter.
On July 17, 2020, the Scottish government announced that the next census, due to be held in 2021, would in fact be delayed until this year. According to Fiona Hyslop, then the minister responsible for the census, postponement was not a decision to be taken lightly but doing so would ensure that “the quality of the census data” would “remain robust” and moving the date would help ensure “the highest possible response rate from people across Scotland”.
Oops. Last week, Nicola Sturgeon was left with no option but to admit that Scotland’s census may be worthless. Although the deadline for submitting forms was extended by a month, as of last Saturday just 86 per cent of forms had been completed. Since the census is useless unless it is comprehensive and since the revised cut-off point for submitting returns is tomorrow, it will be a surprise if returns have reached the 90-plus per cent level deemed necessary for success.
It reminds me of that moment in that historical film set in Ancient Rome when the would be fascist emperor (the first ever kaiser) said, infamy, infamy, they all got infamy.
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
So... men are put off from becoming doctors because they don't feel represented in prospectuses?
Are we really having this discussion? I feel like someone's spiked me or something.
We have this discussion when professions are heavily masculine and masculine for no obvious reason. So, yes, why should we not do the same in reverse? Are you really lacking in wits to that extent?
The greater success of women/females in GCSEs and then A Levels and then University degrees is now, belatedly, feeding through into the professions. And yes it is a problem if 60-70% of lawyers or GPs or whatever are women (or even more) just as we accept that it is now an issue how women dominate primary school teaching (and it IS a problem). We have successfully made life easier for women - a good thing - but it is now extremely arguable that we have feminised education and the higher professions to an extent that is BAD
i am the father of two daughters. I want them to succeed. But not at the expense of anyone with a Y chromosome per se
As a father of boys and a girl, it seems to me that girls are more concerned about being seen to fail. That makes them more conscientious, which means they study harder than boys, who would generally rather being doing anything else.
Hard to generalise from small samples but with a son and two daughters that's kind of my experience too. Girls seem to mature more quickly too, which helps them. My son doesn't want to be seen as a "neek" but has recently raised his game as I think he is conscious of underperforming.
I see it in my daughter, her cousins, all their friends. Girls seem to feel much more "judged" than boy and that affects the way they engage with studying. But it is a small cohort and I am a bloke and I guess I am doing some judging myself!
And just imagine how furious you'll be when the courts put the flights on hold because of legal challenges. You will be incandescent and you will heap hate on the lefty lawyers and the judicial establishment. And so the government's culture war strategy will be vindicated once more and on we will go.
Jesus F Sodding Christ. Do I really need to spell this out?
It was a joke AIMED at this ludicrous Tory “policy” which the Tory government has no intention of applying in any way that makes sense (ie you have to do it to everyone, like Australia, or it won’t work) because the Tories are futile cowards, scared of the BBC
If I thought the Tories might actually get all Australian on these migrants, and actually deport them, I would not “air punch”. It would be a grim and ugly necessity, something to be sadly regretted, and reluctantly accepted, not celebrated
I did me comment to see what daft Lefties would get outraged. An IQ test. You failed
Having been away at my godfather's funeral this afternoon, I see from earlier posts in this thread I am now described as a Fascist on here, which is apparently what those still loyal to Boris are now described as. Heaven help those posters if they ever faced a real Fascist government!
Its on its way sweetie. Its what you want. Remember, you earlier said that people who don't vote for you can be ignored by government. That is not the function of government. And your government is moving to silence its critics. Dismantle the rule of law.
And just imagine how furious you'll be when the courts put the flights on hold because of legal challenges. You will be incandescent and you will heap hate on the lefty lawyers and the judicial establishment. And so the government's culture war strategy will be vindicated once more and on we will go.
Jesus F Sodding Christ. Do I really need to spell this out?
It was a joke AIMED at this ludicrous Tory “policy” which the Tory government has no intention of applying in any way that makes sense (ie you have to do it to everyone, like Australia, or it won’t work) because the Tories are futile cowards, scared of the BBC
If I thought the Tories might actually get all Australian on these migrants, and actually deport them, I would not “air punch”. It would be a grim and ugly necessity, something to be sadly regretted, and reluctantly accepted, not celebrated
I did me comment to see what daft Lefties would get outraged. An IQ test. You failed
I was not outraged, I was totally unsurprised. I do have a very low IQ, though.
So, the increase in tax rates in Scotland have actually brought in about £200m less than before rather than £500m more. Why is this?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a Laffer curve I told you so, although that certainly plays a part. The average income in Scotland has not risen as rapidly as the average income in rUK. This may, in part, be because some of the highest paid jobs, especially in financial services, are drifting southwards. But it also reflects an economy that is becoming ever more public sector dominated where words like "profit" are dirty things.
Kate Forbes, fresh from her High School prom, states that the provision of services must be reset (another word for cut) with the priorities being health, social security and helping firms recover. Not sure how much that last one is getting but social security spending is forecast to increase from 10-14% of the budget over the next 4 years. How are firms going to recover when we don't even have a satisfactory railway service? How on earth do we attract foreign investment when people don't even know what currency we will be using in 5 years time? How can we indulge ourselves with Net Zero, another budget priority, when we have oil and gas waiting to be exploited for that nasty profit thing once again in the North Sea.
Justice is going to be cut, despite an unprecedented backlog of trials from Covid. Victims of crime are going to have to wait even longer for trials where the evidence is all the fainter.
And still we have no opposition worthy of the name. It's a sad state of affairs.
All true. As Scottish politics sits within a Unionist vs Nationalist prison which itself is within the ongoing UK Tories vs non Tories battle, the ability to oppose is difficult.
The simple reality is that for the three opposition parties to effectively work together is politically impossible. They manage it at council level where nobody is looking, but nationally Labour can't drop its pretence that its dominance is about to come back, the LibDems need to be heard so want to stand apart, and nobody will work with the Tories because morals.
I don't know how we fix it. Because despite the SNP's genuine non-scum compared to the Tories image, they are a big screw up on a whole heap of policy areas. And keep trying to drag us off down the independence rabbit hole without actually wanting to say what is on the other side.
Scotland desperately needs a new, centrist party, something like what the Tories were turning into under Ruth but with more breadth of vision and proper policy options focused on Scotland. I will be interested to see what Blair, Ruth, Rory and others are up to but the experience of Alba does not give much encouragement.
If only people listened to Alex Cole-Hamilton. I honestly believe we are trying to offer a new centrist vision - we're certainly not just banging a unionist drum saying "the status quo is best". The problem remains cut-through, and with respect to every non-SNP politician since Ruth Davidson they have been shown to be boring non-entities, or have spectacular implosions, or both. ACH included.
ACH is OK. But Willie Rennie, when you see him speaking at Holyrood, is really excellent. Need more MSPs like him.
Scot LibDems are now only really competitive in a handful of places - west end of Edinburgh, NE Fife, the northern bit of Highland, plus the Northern Isles. That's really it. Not sure that I can really see them coming back elsewhere particularly if SLab pick up under Sarwar.
Holy crap did you have your head run over by a bus, two absolute no users. Wee Wullie was only good for a belly laugh at his stupidity , ACH is useless and more invisible than the Invisible man. Neither are liiberal or Democratic.
So, the increase in tax rates in Scotland have actually brought in about £200m less than before rather than £500m more. Why is this?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a Laffer curve I told you so, although that certainly plays a part. The average income in Scotland has not risen as rapidly as the average income in rUK. This may, in part, be because some of the highest paid jobs, especially in financial services, are drifting southwards. But it also reflects an economy that is becoming ever more public sector dominated where words like "profit" are dirty things.
Kate Forbes, fresh from her High School prom, states that the provision of services must be reset (another word for cut) with the priorities being health, social security and helping firms recover. Not sure how much that last one is getting but social security spending is forecast to increase from 10-14% of the budget over the next 4 years. How are firms going to recover when we don't even have a satisfactory railway service? How on earth do we attract foreign investment when people don't even know what currency we will be using in 5 years time? How can we indulge ourselves with Net Zero, another budget priority, when we have oil and gas waiting to be exploited for that nasty profit thing once again in the North Sea.
Justice is going to be cut, despite an unprecedented backlog of trials from Covid. Victims of crime are going to have to wait even longer for trials where the evidence is all the fainter.
And still we have no opposition worthy of the name. It's a sad state of affairs.
The IFS is stark:
Brutal: "On the plans set out today, the axe is set to fall on a wide range of public service areas. Budgets for local government, the police, justice, universities, rural affairs are due to fall by around 8% in real-terms over the next four years."
I wonder if they were counting on having more pliant SNP local authorities in place, rather than opposition coalitions who will complain about “SNP CUTS!!!”
Mind you, since the census is fecked they won’t be able to work out local authority allocations anyway….
The plan is to blame Westminster. Yes your services have turned to shite but its the fault of Westminster. If you vote for independence it all magically gets fixed.
Will the local now non-SNP councils blame Westminster?
Given the Labour and Tory numpties that will be wrecking them, they will be treated with the contempt that carpetbaggers deserve.
It reminds me of that moment in that historical film set in Ancient Rome when the would be fascist emperor (the first ever kaiser) said, infamy, infamy, they all got infamy.
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
Yes, say it quietly, but it’s a huge problem for the NHS if half the doctors they’re training up don’t make it 10 years in the profession before an extended sabbatical, possibly followed by another decade or two of part time work.
So, the increase in tax rates in Scotland have actually brought in about £200m less than before rather than £500m more. Why is this?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a Laffer curve I told you so, although that certainly plays a part. The average income in Scotland has not risen as rapidly as the average income in rUK. This may, in part, be because some of the highest paid jobs, especially in financial services, are drifting southwards. But it also reflects an economy that is becoming ever more public sector dominated where words like "profit" are dirty things.
Kate Forbes, fresh from her High School prom, states that the provision of services must be reset (another word for cut) with the priorities being health, social security and helping firms recover. Not sure how much that last one is getting but social security spending is forecast to increase from 10-14% of the budget over the next 4 years. How are firms going to recover when we don't even have a satisfactory railway service? How on earth do we attract foreign investment when people don't even know what currency we will be using in 5 years time? How can we indulge ourselves with Net Zero, another budget priority, when we have oil and gas waiting to be exploited for that nasty profit thing once again in the North Sea.
Justice is going to be cut, despite an unprecedented backlog of trials from Covid. Victims of crime are going to have to wait even longer for trials where the evidence is all the fainter.
And still we have no opposition worthy of the name. It's a sad state of affairs.
The IFS is stark:
Brutal: "On the plans set out today, the axe is set to fall on a wide range of public service areas. Budgets for local government, the police, justice, universities, rural affairs are due to fall by around 8% in real-terms over the next four years."
I wonder if they were counting on having more pliant SNP local authorities in place, rather than opposition coalitions who will complain about “SNP CUTS!!!”
Mind you, since the census is fecked they won’t be able to work out local authority allocations anyway….
In next CP leads market (BF) Hunt clear favourite at 6.2, Truss 8.2, Tugendat 8.4, Wallace 10.5.
I can't see Hunt getting past the membership - I would sell him.
(Heck it is far from clear that he either stands or makes it past the MPs. Big sell.)
I don't have any personal information, but I'm a constituent and know him a bit. I'm pretty sure he'll stand, and I agree he'd be good medicine for their Blue Wall problem, more so than Wallace or Truss.
Do you think he’d be able to keep the red wall too ?
The Tories best bet iro that is to focus on the bits they are best placed to retain imo - where they took a big lead, Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield, Rother Valley etc, forget Redcar, Leigh etc they are dropping anyway, and look at seats that had a big bxp vote - Hartlepool (obv try and retain from by election) Sunderland etc
By the time the next election comes Brexit will be 4+ years ago. Voters will be expecting to see results and Bishop Auckland / Sedgefield there is no success to talk about...
I disagree. I think the shift was for the thing to be done not for it to achieve an end, as we see with the not particularly drastic movement in brexit polling since. The thing was done. It marks a shift in these areas that will partially 'naturally' hold against national movements (opposite true in remainia of course) Dehenna in Bishop Auckland for example has a massive majority and first time incumbancy. In all but a meltdown i have her safe
Do you live or work in the constituency? Or are you looking from a distance without local knowledge, local news, local gossip down the pub...
I asked @wooliedyed if he lived in another constituency yesterday. If we keep this up he will get paranoid that we trying to track him down.
I'll make it easy! Im in Norwich South. No, i have no specific Bishop Auckland knowledge, eek, and if anyone has then please do counter me. Im going on the 2019 result, the fact shes a first time incumbant and the slightly less drastic loss of support in parts if brexity red wall the locals hinted at. Shes got an 18% majority. Gossip down the pub is overrated. All constituencies have very varied wards so unless youre drinking in a LOT of pubs it means very little. Local news, sure, but somebody will usually chime in if there is a specific local issue.
I’m not in bishop Auckland but I am in a Durham seat and I agree with you. I think the seat has been trending Tory for many years now.
The other element is Dehenna Davison is a brilliant MP, I rate her highly and think she will go right up the greased pole
Another reason to get rid of Boris. Clear out time. Give her Rees-Mogg's job.
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
So... men are put off from becoming doctors because they don't feel represented in prospectuses?
Are we really having this discussion? I feel like someone's spiked me or something.
It’s a real thing. One of the ways we have tried to encourag3 more women into subjects is to make sure the profession looks like them. So for engineering you will see plenty of female engineers in prospectuses, even when the courses are 80-90 % male. Healthcare has it the other way. You may think it sounds stupid, but it’s not. It is of course not the only thing that can be done.
"Healthcare" is a broad church. But there's no way in hell I'm accepting that there's a perception amongst boys about doctors being a "female" profession. I certainly accept that many jobs are seen as gendered and that perception needs to be taken account of. But in the popular imagination, doctors are men. I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that most GPs are female. It's not a this-is-not-for-me problem. The "lack" of male doctors is down to something else.
You’re wrong. You’re even wrong in my case
When I think “GP” I now think, if I gender it: “Woman”. Because at my central London surgery 76% of the GPs are women and have been so for 20 years., The receptionists are also women. The people who do my blood tests (I am hypothyroid) are also women. Nurses are women. Healthcare is female, and this goes to the top. And I am a middle aged git, heading to my 60s
So for much younger British people the idea of “doctor” must now skew heavily female
Interesting to see from earlier posts in this thread I am now described as a Fascist on here, which is apparently what those still loyal to Boris are now described as. Heaven help those posters if they ever faced a real Fascist government!
I find the way some throw fascist around deeply unpleasant and of course you are not fascist and neither is Boris
In next CP leads market (BF) Hunt clear favourite at 6.2, Truss 8.2, Tugendat 8.4, Wallace 10.5.
I can't see Hunt getting past the membership - I would sell him.
(Heck it is far from clear that he either stands or makes it past the MPs. Big sell.)
I don't have any personal information, but I'm a constituent and know him a bit. I'm pretty sure he'll stand, and I agree he'd be good medicine for their Blue Wall problem, more so than Wallace or Truss.
Do you think he’d be able to keep the red wall too ?
The Tories best bet iro that is to focus on the bits they are best placed to retain imo - where they took a big lead, Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield, Rother Valley etc, forget Redcar, Leigh etc they are dropping anyway, and look at seats that had a big bxp vote - Hartlepool (obv try and retain from by election) Sunderland etc
By the time the next election comes Brexit will be 4+ years ago. Voters will be expecting to see results and Bishop Auckland / Sedgefield there is no success to talk about...
I disagree. I think the shift was for the thing to be done not for it to achieve an end, as we see with the not particularly drastic movement in brexit polling since. The thing was done. It marks a shift in these areas that will partially 'naturally' hold against national movements (opposite true in remainia of course) Dehenna in Bishop Auckland for example has a massive majority and first time incumbancy. In all but a meltdown i have her safe
Do you live or work in the constituency? Or are you looking from a distance without local knowledge, local news, local gossip down the pub...
I asked @wooliedyed if he lived in another constituency yesterday. If we keep this up he will get paranoid that we trying to track him down.
I'll make it easy! Im in Norwich South. No, i have no specific Bishop Auckland knowledge, eek, and if anyone has then please do counter me. Im going on the 2019 result, the fact shes a first time incumbant and the slightly less drastic loss of support in parts if brexity red wall the locals hinted at. Shes got an 18% majority. Gossip down the pub is overrated. All constituencies have very varied wards so unless youre drinking in a LOT of pubs it means very little. Local news, sure, but somebody will usually chime in if there is a specific local issue.
I’m not in bishop Auckland but I am in a Durham seat and I agree with you. I think the seat has been trending Tory for many years now.
The other element is Dehenna Davison is a brilliant MP, I rate her highly and think she will go right up the greased pole
Another reason to get rid of Boris. Clear out time. Give her Rees-Mogg's job.
In next CP leads market (BF) Hunt clear favourite at 6.2, Truss 8.2, Tugendat 8.4, Wallace 10.5.
I can't see Hunt getting past the membership - I would sell him.
(Heck it is far from clear that he either stands or makes it past the MPs. Big sell.)
I don't have any personal information, but I'm a constituent and know him a bit. I'm pretty sure he'll stand, and I agree he'd be good medicine for their Blue Wall problem, more so than Wallace or Truss.
Do you think he’d be able to keep the red wall too ?
The Tories best bet iro that is to focus on the bits they are best placed to retain imo - where they took a big lead, Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield, Rother Valley etc, forget Redcar, Leigh etc they are dropping anyway, and look at seats that had a big bxp vote - Hartlepool (obv try and retain from by election) Sunderland etc
By the time the next election comes Brexit will be 4+ years ago. Voters will be expecting to see results and Bishop Auckland / Sedgefield there is no success to talk about...
I disagree. I think the shift was for the thing to be done not for it to achieve an end, as we see with the not particularly drastic movement in brexit polling since. The thing was done. It marks a shift in these areas that will partially 'naturally' hold against national movements (opposite true in remainia of course) Dehenna in Bishop Auckland for example has a massive majority and first time incumbancy. In all but a meltdown i have her safe
Do you live or work in the constituency? Or are you looking from a distance without local knowledge, local news, local gossip down the pub...
I asked @wooliedyed if he lived in another constituency yesterday. If we keep this up he will get paranoid that we trying to track him down.
I'll make it easy! Im in Norwich South. No, i have no specific Bishop Auckland knowledge, eek, and if anyone has then please do counter me. Im going on the 2019 result, the fact shes a first time incumbant and the slightly less drastic loss of support in parts if brexity red wall the locals hinted at. Shes got an 18% majority. Gossip down the pub is overrated. All constituencies have very varied wards so unless youre drinking in a LOT of pubs it means very little. Local news, sure, but somebody will usually chime in if there is a specific local issue.
I’m not in bishop Auckland but I am in a Durham seat and I agree with you. I think the seat has been trending Tory for many years now.
The other element is Dehenna Davison is a brilliant MP, I rate her highly and think she will go right up the greased pole
Another reason to get rid of Boris. Clear out time. Give her Rees-Mogg's job.
Interesting to see from earlier posts in this thread I am now described as a Fascist on here, which is apparently what those still loyal to Boris are now described as. Heaven help those posters if they ever faced a real Fascist government!
I find the way some throw fascist around deeply unpleasant and of course you are not fascist and neither is Boris
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
So, wait, you're lamenting the fact that the majority of GPs are women. Have I understood that right?
No. I'm lamenting the fact that we don't have enough GPs because so many are part-time. And there is indisputably a link to that being because so many are women. Very few men go part-time. It's just a fact and probably needs to be taken into account when it comes to workforce planning.
So, what do you want to do? Recruit more doctors? Force part timers to work full time?
It’s a well known problem in healthcare. One thing is too look at recruitment to uni courses. Why are they now dominated by women? Are we sending out the wrong messages? Have we pushed women’s careers so well at the detriment of men’s? Even simple things such as choice of photos in a propectus. Does your course onl6 show women in its photos? And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
So... men are put off from becoming doctors because they don't feel represented in prospectuses?
Are we really having this discussion? I feel like someone's spiked me or something.
It’s a real thing. One of the ways we have tried to encourag3 more women into subjects is to make sure the profession looks like them. So for engineering you will see plenty of female engineers in prospectuses, even when the courses are 80-90 % male. Healthcare has it the other way. You may think it sounds stupid, but it’s not. It is of course not the only thing that can be done.
"Healthcare" is a broad church. But there's no way in hell I'm accepting that there's a perception amongst boys about doctors being a "female" profession. I certainly accept that many jobs are seen as gendered and that perception needs to be taken account of. But in the popular imagination, doctors are men. I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that most GPs are female. It's not a this-is-not-for-me problem. The "lack" of male doctors is down to something else.
You’re wrong. You’re even wrong in my case
When I think “GP” I now think, if I gender it: “Woman”. Because at my central London surgery 76% of the GPs are women and have been so for 20 years., The receptionists are also women. The people who do my blood tests (I am hypothyroid) are also women. Nurses are women. Healthcare is female, and this goes to the top. And I am a middle aged git, heading to my 60s
So for much younger British people the idea of “doctor” must now skew heavily female
I don't think either you or I believe that you are in any way a typical. You are a unique and beautiful snowflake.
And just imagine how furious you'll be when the courts put the flights on hold because of legal challenges. You will be incandescent and you will heap hate on the lefty lawyers and the judicial establishment. And so the government's culture war strategy will be vindicated once more and on we will go.
Jesus F Sodding Christ. Do I really need to spell this out?
It was a joke AIMED at this ludicrous Tory “policy” which the Tory government has no intention of applying in any way that makes sense (ie you have to do it to everyone, like Australia, or it won’t work) because the Tories are futile cowards, scared of the BBC
If I thought the Tories might actually get all Australian on these migrants, and actually deport them, I would not “air punch”. It would be a grim and ugly necessity, something to be sadly regretted, and reluctantly accepted, not celebrated
I did me comment to see what daft Lefties would get outraged. An IQ test. You failed
You may jest. The smirking monster does not. Despite Rwanda being dangerous enough that we grant 100% of asylum claims of people fleeing there our government wants its battle in the courts with the leftie lawyers and the traitor judges. Because it thinks enough people are cold-hearted enough to give them credit.
And if it demolishes relations with the Commonwealth in the Jubilee year? Bloody forrin whiners telling us what we can and can't do...
So, the increase in tax rates in Scotland have actually brought in about £200m less than before rather than £500m more. Why is this?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a Laffer curve I told you so, although that certainly plays a part. The average income in Scotland has not risen as rapidly as the average income in rUK. This may, in part, be because some of the highest paid jobs, especially in financial services, are drifting southwards. But it also reflects an economy that is becoming ever more public sector dominated where words like "profit" are dirty things.
Kate Forbes, fresh from her High School prom, states that the provision of services must be reset (another word for cut) with the priorities being health, social security and helping firms recover. Not sure how much that last one is getting but social security spending is forecast to increase from 10-14% of the budget over the next 4 years. How are firms going to recover when we don't even have a satisfactory railway service? How on earth do we attract foreign investment when people don't even know what currency we will be using in 5 years time? How can we indulge ourselves with Net Zero, another budget priority, when we have oil and gas waiting to be exploited for that nasty profit thing once again in the North Sea.
Justice is going to be cut, despite an unprecedented backlog of trials from Covid. Victims of crime are going to have to wait even longer for trials where the evidence is all the fainter.
And still we have no opposition worthy of the name. It's a sad state of affairs.
The IFS is stark:
Brutal: "On the plans set out today, the axe is set to fall on a wide range of public service areas. Budgets for local government, the police, justice, universities, rural affairs are due to fall by around 8% in real-terms over the next four years."
I wonder if they were counting on having more pliant SNP local authorities in place, rather than opposition coalitions who will complain about “SNP CUTS!!!”
Mind you, since the census is fecked they won’t be able to work out local authority allocations anyway….
The plan is to blame Westminster. Yes your services have turned to shite but its the fault of Westminster. If you vote for independence it all magically gets fixed.
It all shows how disastrous identity politics can be. In Scotland the SNP are assured of c40% whatever they do thus breaking the link between performance and electoral reward. Does not bode well.
Why don't other large parties try compete for SNP voters, then? In a democracy, it seems fair enough that parties should move toward the voters. But perhaps the problem is that they are hidebound by disastrous British unionist identity politics.
The SNP got 45% at the last general election, exactly the same as Yes got in 2014, they are the party for pro independence Nationalists, there is no point trying to win them over if you are a Unionist party
I remember when SeanT was fantasising about deporting or interning all British Muslims back in 2016. The prospect of mass deportations of law-abiding foreigners to scratch the racist itch seemed remote back then.
Just rejoice at this news of Rwandan deportations. Hopefully the first of billions. Once we’ve sent every single “migrant” to Kigali we should move on to France, and deport them as well, maybe to Burundi. Thus reclaiming Aquitaine
Why do you care who comes to this country? You're never fucking here.
Indeed if we made it a PB law that you can’t post about British politics if you aren’t in Britain then we’d be reduced to you, a man who is so pitifully scared of “driving on the right” he won’t holiday abroad. And I would hate to see PB so enfeebled and epicene
Was anyone suggesting that ? Just why it was that you cared.
So, the increase in tax rates in Scotland have actually brought in about £200m less than before rather than £500m more. Why is this?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a Laffer curve I told you so, although that certainly plays a part. The average income in Scotland has not risen as rapidly as the average income in rUK. This may, in part, be because some of the highest paid jobs, especially in financial services, are drifting southwards. But it also reflects an economy that is becoming ever more public sector dominated where words like "profit" are dirty things.
Kate Forbes, fresh from her High School prom, states that the provision of services must be reset (another word for cut) with the priorities being health, social security and helping firms recover. Not sure how much that last one is getting but social security spending is forecast to increase from 10-14% of the budget over the next 4 years. How are firms going to recover when we don't even have a satisfactory railway service? How on earth do we attract foreign investment when people don't even know what currency we will be using in 5 years time? How can we indulge ourselves with Net Zero, another budget priority, when we have oil and gas waiting to be exploited for that nasty profit thing once again in the North Sea.
Justice is going to be cut, despite an unprecedented backlog of trials from Covid. Victims of crime are going to have to wait even longer for trials where the evidence is all the fainter.
And still we have no opposition worthy of the name. It's a sad state of affairs.
The IFS is stark:
Brutal: "On the plans set out today, the axe is set to fall on a wide range of public service areas. Budgets for local government, the police, justice, universities, rural affairs are due to fall by around 8% in real-terms over the next four years."
I wonder if they were counting on having more pliant SNP local authorities in place, rather than opposition coalitions who will complain about “SNP CUTS!!!”
Mind you, since the census is fecked they won’t be able to work out local authority allocations anyway….
It is no coincidence that the date announced for the first flight is 7 days before the critical by-elections. It's being done to drag the immigration issue to the forefront in time to try to deflect from Johnson's many failings..
Sadly everything this government does has to be looked at through the prism of saving Big Dog. Saving Johnson's neck seems to be the only discernible strategy this government has had for the last 6 months.
Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner receive questionnaires from Durham Police re beergate
Okay, so as widely predicted no one at this work event gets an FPN. But another element to this is Starmer and Rayner have now set a high bar for themselves for the rest of their careers with their public stand issued here. It will take much less for one of them to stand down in future than it will take for Boris to, so they need to be lucky and very diligent to some degree.
Number 10 has had a busy day. Ringing round MPs promising to sack junior ministers and promote them if they back him. And apparently an all day operation trying to persuade Geight not to resign https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1531696290349948930
Shortages of GPs. The BBC has published a map, and I had expected it would correlate with Brexit, via left-behind and declining towns, but instead its most striking feature is the clear division between east and west. There are more doctors per 100,000 patients in the west half of the country. Not Brexit country; not the prosperous Home Counties or South-East either. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61598158
Northumberland right at the top of the supply there. Which is wondrous cos it's three weeks here to see a GP. Better or deid by the time you see anyone.
Jeremy Hunt's new book Zero mentions that he did persuade Theresa May to open medical schools and train more doctors. Hunt says he recruited 3,000 more GPs a year but it made no difference as existing GPs retired or moved to part-time working.
You can't really say it out loud, but the number of GPs who are women is pretty disastrous. They all seem to be part-time. That obviously impacts in the surgeries but also means the medical schools are so less productive as they are full of female students who will also go part-time after a few years. But, as I say, you can't say this out loud.
Yes, say it quietly, but it’s a huge problem for the NHS if half the doctors they’re training up don’t make it 10 years in the profession before an extended sabbatical, possibly followed by another decade or two of part time work.
Junior doctors taking years out is common. It may be one issue is that doctors need to choose their training paths too far in advance. Another might be that medical school recruitment is picking up the wrong people — any sixth former who gets top grades in science subjects will see medicine as one of the best paid and highest status options.
So, the increase in tax rates in Scotland have actually brought in about £200m less than before rather than £500m more. Why is this?
The answer, sadly, is more complicated than a Laffer curve I told you so, although that certainly plays a part. The average income in Scotland has not risen as rapidly as the average income in rUK. This may, in part, be because some of the highest paid jobs, especially in financial services, are drifting southwards. But it also reflects an economy that is becoming ever more public sector dominated where words like "profit" are dirty things.
Kate Forbes, fresh from her High School prom, states that the provision of services must be reset (another word for cut) with the priorities being health, social security and helping firms recover. Not sure how much that last one is getting but social security spending is forecast to increase from 10-14% of the budget over the next 4 years. How are firms going to recover when we don't even have a satisfactory railway service? How on earth do we attract foreign investment when people don't even know what currency we will be using in 5 years time? How can we indulge ourselves with Net Zero, another budget priority, when we have oil and gas waiting to be exploited for that nasty profit thing once again in the North Sea.
Justice is going to be cut, despite an unprecedented backlog of trials from Covid. Victims of crime are going to have to wait even longer for trials where the evidence is all the fainter.
And still we have no opposition worthy of the name. It's a sad state of affairs.
The IFS is stark:
Brutal: "On the plans set out today, the axe is set to fall on a wide range of public service areas. Budgets for local government, the police, justice, universities, rural affairs are due to fall by around 8% in real-terms over the next four years."
I wonder if they were counting on having more pliant SNP local authorities in place, rather than opposition coalitions who will complain about “SNP CUTS!!!”
Mind you, since the census is fecked they won’t be able to work out local authority allocations anyway….
The plan is to blame Westminster. Yes your services have turned to shite but its the fault of Westminster. If you vote for independence it all magically gets fixed.
It all shows how disastrous identity politics can be. In Scotland the SNP are assured of c40% whatever they do thus breaking the link between performance and electoral reward. Does not bode well.
Why don't other large parties try compete for SNP voters, then? In a democracy, it seems fair enough that parties should move toward the voters. But perhaps the problem is that they are hidebound by disastrous British unionist identity politics.
The SNP got 45% at the last general election, exactly the same as Yes got in 2014, they are the party for pro independence Nationalists, there is no point trying to win them over if you are a Unionist party
But this will fade….. in time…..
Would that be before or after the Sun grows ancient and engulfs the Earth?
Two things. Firstly, judging by the way everyone is talking on here, the only thing now that can save Boris is something the causes a deep and immediate political freeze that lasts the few weeks and distracts the public. So, er, long live the King I guess.
You're not following your thoughts on fascism to their logical conclusion:
@IndiaWilloughby When the Queen dies, wouldn’t be surprised if Boris appoints himself Fuhrer and assumes total control. That’s how close I think Britain is to Nazi Germany.
Number 10 has had a busy day. Ringing round MPs promising to sack junior ministers and promote them if they back him. And apparently an all day operation trying to persuade Geight not to resign https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1531696290349948930
Prepare for CoE Peter Bone; Home Sec Christopher Chope; Foreign Sec Desmond Swayne.
Andrew Rosindell is otherwise engaged, I believe.
Bone, Chope, & Swayne sounds like a firm of lawyers from a Dickens book
Number 10 has had a busy day. Ringing round MPs promising to sack junior ministers and promote them if they back him. And apparently an all day operation trying to persuade Geight not to resign https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1531696290349948930
Prepare for CoE Peter Bone; Home Sec Christopher Chope; Foreign Sec Desmond Swayne.
Andrew Rosindell is otherwise engaged, I believe.
Bone, Chope, & Swayne sounds like a firm of lawyers from a Dickens book
It reminds me of that moment in that historical film set in Ancient Rome when the would be fascist emperor (the first ever kaiser) said, infamy, infamy, they all got infamy.
Meanwhile in the definitely nothing to see here time to move on world of government, another Lord is being investigated for recommending his own company to receive £50m of PPE contracts
Comments
Then this intensely yummy pork barbecue kebab with Ajika, it was so juicy maybe it was suckling pig? Seared to porky perfection with crunchy burnt bits
Then the best khinkali EVUH (OK I’ve only had them twice but wow, they are worth the 25 minute wait); I can see why Anthony Bourdain spent his final years obsessed with Chinese hot soup dumplings. These are exactly the same, only Caucasian
All with highly palatable red wine at £2 a glass. A magnificent dinner for £16
EVERYONE I know who has been to Georgia has told me: Tbilisi is brilliant and the food and wine situation is great: GO
They were right
PM has replied: “Taking account of all the circumstances, I did not breach the Code. In coming to the conclusion I have duly considered past precedents of Ministers who have unwittingly breached regulations where there was no intent to break the law...
... I have been fully accountable to Parliament and the British people and rightly apologised for the mistake...
PM argues he has not broken rules as he has "corrected the parliamentary record in relation to statements and I have followed the principles of leadership and accountability in doing so."
PM getting it in the neck tonight from party and now Whitehall big wigs...
Geidt heaping pressure on FPN .. and demanding a explanation..
sounds like full letter to be published shortly alongside Geidt's annual report
Understand PM has also helpfully told Geidt the same excuses apply to Sunak for not breaking the code....
"In my view the same principles apply to the fixed penalty notice paid by the Chancellor”
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1531681342299201536
Why? Because anyone with two brain cells know the most important thing for any “red meat” policy is that it’s actually got to work at the end of the day, you have to dine out on its record, put it in your leaflets not hand your opponents expensive failure to put in their leaflets - this scheme as currently stands is both far too expensive in tax payer money per migrant, and won’t achieve nearly enough Deterrent.
Let’s be clear, I’m calling it axed not on basis of a party tacking back to the centre, nor overlooking that tackling illegal entry isn’t vital to Tory reelection campaigns across the country, it’s because the headline costs are HUGE it’s potential of deterrent MINIMAL.
How can I be so certain it’s doomed? Because they avoided a commons vote on it knowing their back benchers not gullible enough to back it.
What the fuck are you even on about?
Still, I guess I'll get another chance in the 2030s at the rate the other parties are closing the gap
And then for those in the profession. Of course many will want part time work. Pay is good, they are often married to other good earners too and there is more to life than work. I’m not sure what the answer is to that.
*airpunch*
“Rwanda deportation: First migrants to be sent to east African country in a fortnight, says Home Office“”
https://news.sky.com/story/rwanda-deportation-first-migrants-to-be-sent-to-east-african-country-in-a-fortnight-says-home-office-12624907
GET IN
So I would add 15 seats to LibDems making 26 and take 15 seats off the Tories giving Labour an overall majority of 1.
Govt says it wants a flight to Rwanda on 14th June, 6 days before Rwanda hosts Commonwealth CHOGM
Legal action will delay that flight. But ramping up controversy over the hosts human rights record may split Commonwealth. A headache for Buckingham Palace, esp Charles & William
Is the goverment's Rwanda policy, by amplifying the controversy over the human rights record of Rwanda - exacerbating the splits in the Commonwealth that could make the sensitive issue of the Headship after the Queen's reign much more difficult?
https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1531684787043319809
Are we really having this discussion? I feel like someone's spiked me or something.
DO IT, PRITI
Lord Geidt, the official ethics watchdog, says question of whether Boris Johnson broke ministerial code is 'legitimate'
'It may be especially difficult to inspire trust in ministerial code if any PM, whose code it is, declines to refer to it'
Lord Geidt warns the ministerial code risks being placed in 'ridicule' and that his position as an independent adviser could be undermined
He says he repeatedly asked the PM to make a public comment on his obligations under ministerial code
'That advice has not been heeded'
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1531685617339359234
Who actually likes waking up to being lied to by a once loved charismatic cad promising the earth, now revealed as fraudster who never gave a shit about you all along?
The greater success of women/females in GCSEs and then A Levels and then University degrees is now, belatedly, feeding through into the professions. And yes it is a problem if 60-70% of lawyers or GPs or whatever are women (or even more) just as we accept that it is now an issue how women dominate primary school teaching (and it IS a problem). We have successfully made life easier for women - a good thing - but it is now extremely arguable that we have feminised education and the higher professions to an extent that is BAD
i am the father of two daughters. I want them to succeed. But not at the expense of anyone with a Y chromosome per se
But yes. Like in Predator
That should be the motto for all of UK governance.
“How do we do this?”
“Like they did in PREDATOR”
“Ah. Got it.”
Actually that's not totally fair. You are a person who I think is besieged by your own demons and you lash out on a forum where you know you can play big fish-little pond. So it's wrong to say you are a nasty piece of work. Rather that you allow much nastiness to emerge and spew forth. I wish you wouldn't.
Beneath all of this I think you are still hurting. And it's that part of you which is the softer, truer, you.
x
https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1531687983883112448
Not that my message was about that kind of intelligence. It was about feeling.
p.s. I realise you were, hopefully, jesting but as any good psychologist will tell you, we often jest about that which we are serious.
Girls and boys mature at different rates, and I think girls have a natural advantage at a certain age.
Personally, I'm in favour of organising education around a different principle to the one we have now, where set-piece exams channel people away from academic achievement before they've had a chance to grow into themselves*.
It would be a big change, but I think the maturity gap between boys and girls is going to be a challenge under the current system of in-step cohorts.
One thing I do not think is credible is the idea that boys lack male role models in the "doctor" side of the medical world. If it was about boys going into nursing, I would agree. Better representation would probably help.
*also my objection to selection at the age of 11.
There's a lot of violence around at the moment.
Have as peaceful an evening as you may
xx
I felt for weeks the Tory share may begin to drop a bit in a media narrative almost constantly hostile to them across a range of things, I didn’t expect or predict a Labour surge into 40’s. Maybe some pollsters now getting less green more labour responses. The Lib Dem share also bitten by these two labour in 40 polls.
A possible explanation, from your polling queen - for weeks the Tory’s and their supports in the media were on election mode, but eased off the gas once the locals were over, with their foot on the electioneering peddle it may have suppressed top range of Labours polling.
I like the way Opinium is consistent. Tories never lower than the latest 43 and labour never higher than 38 or lead above 4. So if that were to change you would have a sense of something happening the more all over shop pollsters never give you.
A smiling @SirGrahamBrady speaks to ITV News after being asked whether there are enough no confidence letters to trigger a vote on @BorisJohnson's leadership https://t.co/3rpifr35bn https://t.co/8CkC0T4qLx
It is done.
Tho it doesn’t seem to stop @Gardenwalker, @edmundintokyo, @Roger, @rcs1000, @felix, @Aslan and innumerable other PB-ers
Indeed if we made it a PB law that you can’t post about British politics if you aren’t in Britain then we’d be reduced to you, a man who is so pitifully scared of “driving on the right” he won’t holiday abroad. And I would hate to see PB so enfeebled and epicene
But there's no way in hell I'm accepting that there's a perception amongst boys about doctors being a "female" profession.
I certainly accept that many jobs are seen as gendered and that perception needs to be taken account of. But in the popular imagination, doctors are men. I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that most GPs are female. It's not a this-is-not-for-me problem. The "lack" of male doctors is down to something else.
The shite the unionists spout on here is vomit inducing, not happy that they rob us of all our money and only send back about 40% of it and think we should be kissing their arses for their largesse. A pox on all of them and preferably monkey one.
End of days stuff.
Who says excitement isn't approaching fever pitch?
It was a joke AIMED at this ludicrous Tory “policy” which the Tory government has no intention of applying in any way that makes sense (ie you have to do it to everyone, like Australia, or it won’t work) because the Tories are futile cowards, scared of the BBC
If I thought the Tories might actually get all Australian on these migrants, and actually deport them, I would not “air punch”. It would be a grim and ugly necessity, something to be sadly regretted, and reluctantly accepted, not celebrated
I did me comment to see what daft Lefties would get outraged. An IQ test. You failed
Durham police going through the motions
When I think “GP” I now think, if I gender it: “Woman”. Because at my central London surgery 76% of the GPs are women and have been so for 20 years., The receptionists are also women. The people who do my blood tests (I am hypothyroid) are also women. Nurses are women. Healthcare is female, and this goes to the top. And I am a middle aged git, heading to my 60s
So for much younger British people the idea of “doctor” must now skew heavily female
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Poujade#Poujadism
Watching the British establishment try to deal with Johnson is quite something - like a country club trying to eject Al Capone without making a scene.
Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner receive questionnaires from Durham Police re beergate
And if it demolishes relations with the Commonwealth in the Jubilee year? Bloody forrin whiners telling us what we can and can't do...
Just why it was that you cared.
(Same is true of Brexit at a larger scale).
Sadly everything this government does has to be looked at through the prism of saving Big Dog. Saving Johnson's neck seems to be the only discernible strategy this government has had for the last 6 months.
For shame.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/31/lords-standards-watchdog-investigates-tory-peer-over-vip-ppe-contracts