Something has happened besides Penny Mordaunt's launch and the new poll. Is a Mordaunt fan trying to rig the market or has Rishi come out for sending small boys up chimneys?
ETA I see Nick Palmer has also raised an eyebrow.
Watching the betting and seeing Rishi come in a point and go out a point and come in a point and rinse and repeat. It does not look natural.
Was it the snap YouGov poll that pushed Mordaunt up? (see BBC live feed)
It's becoming clear the key question for Tory MPs in the next 48 hours is whether they want Truss or Mordaunt to be the next PM. Whoever they put through to the final 2 against Sunak will win (if ConHome and YouGov are to be believed). https://twitter.com/theobertram/status/1546815658968719366
JESUS. I just solved basically every problem in the West
Childless people should be taxed. Heavily
That solves the demographic issue - bingo. It also brings in a ton of money for HMG. Bringing down debt and deficit
SORTED
The French do something similar, in effect. You get tax breaks for having children. It's unusual in the west in the high birth rates among middle class people.
Yes but we need to get punitive. This is a demographic crisis. Your duty is to have kids. End of
I SUPPOSE we can make exceptions for people without wombs etc, but other than that: slam them with harsh taxes, maybe even deny them normal human rights. Stop them joining choirs. Let them into larger cities only between 3-5pm. Why do they need to move around anyway if they don’t have kids?
I'll admit that on a pretty meagre income I can live a 'decent' life in large part because I don't have a family to support. You have to be careful though. Some people are frankly not suited to being parents. The major problem as I see it is that if we know that some people won't have children and very few have more than two, then fertility rates are going to be below replacement level.
The extortionate cost of housing for Gen Y/Z is the obvious problem.
As someone recently married, and with the kids question looming, the financials are scary. Currently we're blessed by being very well off - probably ~£50kpa income between us after tax, we've two houses, both half paid off. If we sold one, we'd probably have £100k left after paying the other mortgage off. If we have a couple of kids, my wife will probably give up work at least for a while, we ideally need a bigger house, which probably means selling the remaining house for around £160k and spending £300-£400k (bigger ex-council houses aren't really a thing, and anything that isn't ex-council is a big step up in price).
It's quite possible we'll end up with two kids, a £100k mortgage, and £25kpa post tax income, which is OK, but rather a change from the present situation where we literally can't spend money as fast as we're earning it.
On the housing madness, I had some estate agents out to look at my wife's house in North Somerset on Monday. She bought in 2017 for £202.5k - all three agents thought we should get £250-260k - I.E. it's gained £10k in value a year. If we let it out, we should expect ~£900pcm.
The whole situation seems both mad and unsustainable.
Nadhim Zahawi is using NZ4PM as his leadership election tag. If you click on http://NZ4PM.com you are redirected to Penny Mordaunt’s leadership home page. Comedy gold. You gotta love this contest
Anyone who doesn't want the tortoise face should back Penny.
Sunak is TOAST on that poll
Rishi’s only hope is getting to the final round with a candidate who then self-combusts through scandal.
Could we possibly see a surprise result in the first round? Rishi underperforming as MPs realise he is unlikely to win the membership, and switching support?
Imagine if Team Rishi managed to engineer a run-off against Braverman, and then he lost.
I'm having enough difficulty sleeping in the heat as it is.....
I'm very surprised by Mordaunt's low score on that poll. I'd have thought she would have been the most popular with the public. But I suspect there is a strong name recognition effect.
Yep, and it diminishes Sunak further because of it.
Members numbers do look absolubtely terminal for Rishi.
It's another reason why a Penny v Kemi contest would be better for everyone.
I suspect the Kemi ramping from Gove et al is designed to keep Penny out of the final two. Sunak probably fancies his chances against Truss whatever the polling says.
Something has happened besides Penny Mordaunt's launch and the new poll. Is a Mordaunt fan trying to rig the market or has Rishi come out for sending small boys up chimneys?
ETA I see Nick Palmer has also raised an eyebrow.
Watching the betting and seeing Rishi come in a point and go out a point and come in a point and rinse and repeat. It does not look natural.
Was it the snap YouGov poll that pushed Mordaunt up? (see BBC live feed)
It may well be the poll wot dun it for Penny but the way Rishi's price was fluctuating by a point looked suspicious.
120 minutes for 358 MPs to vote gives an average of about 20 seconds for each one to vote.
Why can't they do it electronically??? Then it need only take minutes
Because electronic voting isn't reliable and can be hacked.
They managed to make it work for Parliament
It really is not the same thing expanded out nationally. The scalability of any successful attempt to defraud it is a huge risk that is not easy to do with mundane solutions.
If Sunak is going to win this, he needs to win big today, I would suggest at least 40% of the votes. He needs to look the inevitable choice so that he picks up endorsements of those eliminated. If he just wins I think he will be overtaken, possibly twice, eliminating him. Even more so if he doesn't top the poll of course. Any talk of him lending out votes to anyone else is utter foolishness, he needs every single one he can get.
Even 40% would not be enough. The MPs can see these Tory member polls. Sunak is not obviously, personally popular and he still has those huge drawbacks - non dom, Green Card, three foot two, trillionaire
He'd need to get over 50% - to my mind - to possibly get the momentum necessary to overcome these major headwinds.
Also, I imagine some MPs - if they can't abide Truss, Mordaunt, or Badenoch - will be looking somewhere else?
Who polls better with the public? Truss or mordant?
I don’t think there’s been a lot of polling on this and the stuff that has been done has to be taken with a pinch of salt.
The general public could probably name, out of the leadership contenders, Rishi, Truss and Hunt at a push. And maybe Zahawi.
Most people won’t know who Mordaunt, Badenoch, Tugendhat or Braverman are, so polling this time is going to be a bit unreliable I suspect. It may become a little bit more helpful during the membership vote.
Penny Mordaunt is a lot more like Boris Johnson than most of people recognise. The same inability to back down when a mistake has been made or the wrong thing has been said - always the instinct to double down.
120 minutes for 358 MPs to vote gives an average of about 20 seconds for each one to vote.
Why can't they do it electronically??? Then it need only take minutes
Because electronic voting isn't reliable and can be hacked.
They managed to make it work for Parliament
It really is not the same thing expanded out nationally. The scalability of any successful attempt to defraud it is a huge risk that is not easy to do with mundane solutions.
But for a Tory leadership contest? Manageable
I was only talking about doing it for the MPs. A very small number of voters with access to a closed system.
I am not so sure that I would put this much weight on a Yougov poll in the same week as Rishi effectively forced Boris to stand down by triggering a tsunami of resignations from his government. Boris still had many supporters and the JRM jibe of betrayal will have reasonated. Whether that would still be the case after a month of meetings with members around the country doesn't seem to me to necessarily follow. As people look forward rather than back I suspect his glib smoothness will win over many doubters, especially if against someone as inarticulate as Truss.
Of course you cannot lose sight of the fact that this is the party that thought IDS was a better bet than Ken Clarke (sob)but that was a long time ago and pre-Cameron. I don't think that this is the same party now.
120 minutes for 358 MPs to vote gives an average of about 20 seconds for each one to vote.
Why can't they do it electronically??? Then it need only take minutes
Because electronic voting isn't reliable and can be hacked.
They managed to make it work for Parliament
It really is not the same thing expanded out nationally. The scalability of any successful attempt to defraud it is a huge risk that is not easy to do with mundane solutions.
But for a Tory leadership contest? Manageable
Also NB Pmt votes aren't secret. Members can see what vote is put to their name. Hence Kezia Dugdale tryhing to change her mind when she pressed the wrong button or something once.
Penny Mordaunt says that Britain has lost its sense of self
She compares it to Paul McCartney's set at Glastonbury - 'he was playing new tunes but what we really wanted was the good old stuff'
Didn't Paul play literally loads of old stuff, or did I watch a different performance
Yes – terrible analogy. Not content with having a pop at Dad’s Army, she’s now having a pop at Paul McCartney.
There’s the kernel of a point here. A nation is a nation because of the stories it tells itself about itself and has in common; common cultural reference points, beliefs, and so on. There are fewer and fewer of these. We have less and less in common; both our view of our common history and our view of our common culture*. And so the Glastonbury Festival – which even thirty years ago was still quite a long way from the mainstream – is presented as the centrepiece of the British Summer; but it is headlined by a man playing songs from 60 years ago because that was our last common cultural reference point.
I’m just scratching at this issue; I’m not convinced I’m going at it right and I’m not sure where it leads. There are side issues about education, sport, situation comedy, the BBC, pubs, online and real life interactions. There’s a persuasive point about British society in here somewhere, and reflections about the extent Britain is typical or atypical of the west in the 21st century, but I’m not sure what it is or what to do about it.
I’m not a massive Paul McCartney fan, by the way. I prefer my music less melodic. But I do recognise a) his talent, and b) his cultural importance, and c) that he pitched his set excellently.
*On which point, I urge anyone to visit the Comedy Carpet in Blackpool, which is the best example we have of a common cultural reference point. It’s about half an acre of polished paving into which have been embossed dozens and dozens of punch lines and catch phrases which almost all British people and only British people will understand. “Don’t tell him, Pike – I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order – Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” You don’t have to find any of it funny – though if absolutely none of it raises a smile you are either foreign or dead – but marvel at the fact that you can contextualise almost all of it without having had to try. And rejoice that there is at least something that we still have in common.
And partly that's because the boomers are so numerous, and are insisting on hanging around so long. Imagine George Formby still being the big thing in the 1960s.
The gentle evolution of popular culture that ought to have kept happening has ground to a halt and has become a bit of a tug of war.
The fragmentation of mass media doesn't help. Have we had any universally shared moments this year apart from Paddington and the Queen?
I saw a teenage kid my daughter's age wearing a Beatles t-shirt yesterday, it did make me feel a bit sad. Mind you, my daughter wears my old Deltic Preservation Society sweatshirt, apparently her friends all rave about how vintage it is. It does feel a bit as if the culture is ossifying.
I concur.
Saw a German boy aged about twelve wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt yesterday. That’s like if I had gone about in the 1980s wearing a Fletcher Henderson Orchestra t-shirt. Simply tragic.
Guess you must have missed Flanders & Swann headlining Glasto in '72.
I went to see the Pixies last week. Where I was (middle aged man in a mosh pit), I was surrounded by people 20 years younger than me. They treated me as something of an amusing oddity. Yet I was only just old enough to be into the Pixies first time around; most of these people must have been born some time after they split up*. I don't begrudge them this, and am happy that the music I love has found a new audience, but I'm slightly bemused by it. (This isn't necessarily the case at other bands from that era I've seen recently: people under 40 were rare at the Wedding Present and nonexistent at Half Man Half Biscuit.)
*yes I know they reformed and have been releasing new albums, but 90% of the set was the pre-1992 era. They know what their audience wants.
I was at Half Man Half Biscuit in Leeds a few weeks ago and there were loads of younger people. To be honest, I was surprised how many.
Of course 85% of the audience was 40-plus overeducated, underpaid beta male centrist dads, just like me (not that I'm a dad, but you get what I mean). But there was a respectable amount of young uns. Some of them were even female. I saw one girl, probably early 20s, happily sporting a hi-vis vest and some - presumably Joy Division - oven gloves.
That was not the impression I got of the audience in Manchester! I have never been part of an audience which was older, fatter, or more disreputable looking.
Not much to conclude from that except that individual views are partial.
Haha maybe that's just Manchester for you!
You make a good point with the Pixies, by the way. An old girlfriend introduced me to them in something like '97 or '98 and they seemed like a band from the generation before me, like the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. Looking back it's odd that I listened to them so late, I was a huge Nirvana fan and they were always saying how much the Pixies influenced them.
My favourite line of Penny's this morning was 'we are going to modernise government with the white heat of modernisation' which got a round of applause.
Members numbers do look absolubtely terminal for Rishi.
It's another reason why a Penny v Kemi contest would be better for everyone.
I suspect the Kemi ramping from Gove et al is designed to keep Penny out of the final two. Sunak probably fancies his chances against Truss whatever the polling says.
The best way to keep PM4PM out of the final two is to ramp Truss, so it’s Sunak/Truss. Badenoch mania is hurting Truss by fishing in the same pool.
If Sunak is going to win this, he needs to win big today, I would suggest at least 40% of the votes. He needs to look the inevitable choice so that he picks up endorsements of those eliminated. If he just wins I think he will be overtaken, possibly twice, eliminating him. Even more so if he doesn't top the poll of course. Any talk of him lending out votes to anyone else is utter foolishness, he needs every single one he can get.
Even 40% would not be enough. The MPs can see these Tory member polls. Sunak is not obviously, personally popular and he still has those huge drawbacks - non dom, Green Card, three foot two, trillionaire
He'd need to get over 50% - to my mind - to possibly get the momentum necessary to overcome these major headwinds.
Also, I imagine some MPs - if they can't abide Truss, Mordaunt, or Badenoch - will be looking somewhere else?
It would be great if the MPs see sense now, and the three ladies are the top three.
If Sunak is going to win this, he needs to win big today, I would suggest at least 40% of the votes. He needs to look the inevitable choice so that he picks up endorsements of those eliminated. If he just wins I think he will be overtaken, possibly twice, eliminating him. Even more so if he doesn't top the poll of course. Any talk of him lending out votes to anyone else is utter foolishness, he needs every single one he can get.
Even 40% would not be enough. The MPs can see these Tory member polls. Sunak is not obviously, personally popular and he still has those huge drawbacks - non dom, Green Card, three foot two, trillionaire
He'd need to get over 50% - to my mind - to possibly get the momentum necessary to overcome these major headwinds.
Also, I imagine some MPs - if they can't abide Truss, Mordaunt, or Badenoch - will be looking somewhere else?
It would be great if the MPs see sense now, and the three ladies are the top three.
If it isn't Sunak whoever wins should reverse the NI tax rise.
My favourite line of Penny's this morning was 'we are going to modernise government with the white heat of modernisation' which got a round of applause.
I am not so sure that I would put this much weight on a Yougov poll in the same week as Rishi effectively forced Boris to stand down by triggering a tsunami of resignations from his government. Boris still had many supporters and the JRM jibe of betrayal will have reasonated. Whether that would still be the case after a month of meetings with members around the country doesn't seem to me to necessarily follow. As people look forward rather than back I suspect his glib smoothness will win over many doubters, especially if against someone as inarticulate as Truss.
Of course you cannot lose sight of the fact that this is the party that thought IDS was a better bet than Ken Clarke (sob)but that was a long time ago and pre-Cameron. I don't think that this is the same party now.
Both Truss and Mordaunt have whopping leads over him. Can't see a way back, and I say that as someone who thought he was the best choice. I still think Truss is good value.
As someone was saying above, the comments on ToryHome are largely anti-Penny, which is odd.
That all said, other commentators on the site have been making the point that much of the Tory membership is legacy-Cameron, and leans left of Tory voters overall (many rightwingers are Ukip members, not Tory members).
Hence why Penny polls so well with the membership perhaps? They are more liberal than one might think?
Like our Leon and Casino, what judgement they have goes out the window because of their obsession with being ‘anti-woke’. Most of the fuss about Mordaunt on ConHome appears to relate to one old comment about trans people, which the crusty pensioners who inhabit that site can’t see beyond.
Did we ever get word of the MPs who had the whip suspended? Also, will we see Boris Johnson in the voting room? Traditionally, the outgoing leader abstains, but we know quite a bit about Johnson and tradition.
How else can he do a write-in for himself?
Danger with Boris Johnson in the voting room, is that he'll do an Alan Clark.
IIRC, Clark revealed in his (published) diary that fiddled with voting papers in similar circumstance.
I am not so sure that I would put this much weight on a Yougov poll in the same week as Rishi effectively forced Boris to stand down by triggering a tsunami of resignations from his government. Boris still had many supporters and the JRM jibe of betrayal will have reasonated. Whether that would still be the case after a month of meetings with members around the country doesn't seem to me to necessarily follow. As people look forward rather than back I suspect his glib smoothness will win over many doubters, especially if against someone as inarticulate as Truss.
Of course you cannot lose sight of the fact that this is the party that thought IDS was a better bet than Ken Clarke (sob)but that was a long time ago and pre-Cameron. I don't think that this is the same party now.
Both Truss and Mordaunt have whopping leads over him. Can't see a way back, and I say that as someone who thought he was the best choice. I still think Truss is good value.
Will MPs abandon Sunak enough that he drops out of the top 2? Seems unlikely. Of course, both Mordaunt and Truss would rather face Sunak than each other!
Members numbers do look absolubtely terminal for Rishi.
It's another reason why a Penny v Kemi contest would be better for everyone.
I suspect the Kemi ramping from Gove et al is designed to keep Penny out of the final two. Sunak probably fancies his chances against Truss whatever the polling says.
The best way to keep PM4PM out of the final two is to ramp Truss, so it’s Sunak/Truss. Badenoch mania is hurting Truss by fishing in the same pool.
My favourite line of Penny's this morning was 'we are going to modernise government with the white heat of modernisation' which got a round of applause.
Members numbers do look absolubtely terminal for Rishi.
It's another reason why a Penny v Kemi contest would be better for everyone.
I suspect the Kemi ramping from Gove et al is designed to keep Penny out of the final two. Sunak probably fancies his chances against Truss whatever the polling says.
The best way to keep PM4PM out of the final two is to ramp Truss, so it’s Sunak/Truss. Badenoch mania is hurting Truss by fishing in the same pool.
Truss could offer Badenoch a senior role.
Home and dry with the membership then, I reckon.
It’s the obvious play, yes. I don’t know whether it would be enough to beat Mordaunt, however.
As someone was saying above, the comments on ToryHome are largely anti-Penny, which is odd.
That all said, other commentators on the site have been making the point that much of the Tory membership is legacy-Cameron, and leans left of Tory voters overall (many rightwingers are Ukip members, not Tory members).
Hence why Penny polls so well with the membership perhaps? They are more liberal than one might think?
Like our Leon and Casino, what judgement they have goes out the window because of their obsession with being ‘anti-woke’. Most of the fuss about Mordaunt on ConHome appears to relate to one old comment about trans people, which the crusty pensioners who inhabit that site can’t see beyond.
If you ever actually did some reading, you'd know that Mordaunt's Wokeness goes far beyond "one comment"
However, she seems to have realised her error (at least politically) and is busy tacking away. The tide on the right turns strongly against Wokeness, any whiff of it is terminal for a Tory
If it was a duplicate of the post below, it really wasn't. Besides which she is a rabid right- winger.
This may come as a dreadful surprise, but I have a distinct tolerance for "rabid right wingers", especially if they are only "rabidly right wing" by the warped standards of the deviant Woke Left
Penny Mordaunt is a lot more like Boris Johnson than most of people recognise. The same inability to back down when a mistake has been made or the wrong thing has been said - always the instinct to double down.
Jolyon has hired a new Chief of Staff for the Good Law Project: former National Coordinator of Momentum – yes, that Momentum – Laura Parker. The same Laura Parker who stood side by side with Corbyn right up to Labour’s car crash defeat in 2019…
If you're a Tory MP right now, would you vote for Sunak?
He is likely to lose. Everyone wants to vote for the winner. And maybe announce it, to curry favour
You'd have to believe he REALLY is the man for the job, way above all the others. I see no clear evidence of that
I wonder if we’ll start to see shades of David Davis in 2005. Out of the blocks as the clear frontrunner, looked absolutely insurmountable, then just pathetically crumpled when it came to the crunch.
My favourite line of Penny's this morning was 'we are going to modernise government with the white heat of modernisation' which got a round of applause.
What utterly meaningless twaddle.
You get the impression, not for the first time, that these people grew up watching The Day Today and thought it a political manual rather than satire.
I think he's beginning to struggle. Needs to turn it around quickly, with something dramatic, like a naked limbo dance under his alleged Chinese spy wife, in Whitehall at midnight illuminated by Nazi type flares with marching stormtroopers carrying shrieking, newly trapped pandas
My favourite line of Penny's this morning was 'we are going to modernise government with the white heat of modernisation' which got a round of applause.
What utterly meaningless twaddle.
You get the impression, not for the first time, that these people grew up watching The Day Today and thought it a political manual rather than satire.
Progress from Tony Blair's day, where we had people who grew up reading 1984 and thought it was a political manual rather than a warning.
In other news the latest MoD map has Ukrainian forces pretty near to the outskirts of the city of Kherson.
Awesome. And the enemy has no weapons, after they stored the ammo next to the railway line right where it went over the river. Getting the enemy back over the river is the first aim of the defenders.
If you're a Tory MP right now, would you vote for Sunak?
He is likely to lose. Everyone wants to vote for the winner. And maybe announce it, to curry favour
You'd have to believe he REALLY is the man for the job, way above all the others. I see no clear evidence of that
Suppose you subscribe to the view that the PM has to have had experience of a great office of state. The remaining choices for you now are Sunak, Truss, Hunt and, technically, Zahawi.
Hunt has even less chance of winning with the members than Sunak. So if you want someone with big job experience it's only Sunak or Truss.
Cool. What an interesting rocket. Looks like it did what it was supposed to.
Why are they talking in gibberish?
They're French?
Is it? Or is it Swahili? Sounds like someone gargling. They should stop it. Talk fucking English like a normal person. Talking a babbled foreign dialect in a serious moment or in some professional capacity is a ridiculous affectation, like me doing my driving test in mime
I think he's beginning to struggle. Needs to turn it around quickly, with something dramatic, like a naked limbo dance under his alleged Chinese spy wife, in Whitehall at midnight illuminated by Nazi type flares with marching stormtroopers carrying shrieking, newly trapped pandas
Something eye-catching
I fear that would be too understated in this competition. Abolition of IT with a doubling of public spending?
The other time you know you are getting old is when some youngster says I love such and such new song, its a cover of some old song by x....and you have to tell them that was itself a cover of....
So true. That does work on us too though, I spent two decades thinking Always On My Mind was by the Pet Shop Boys.
A year or so ago I heard a 1990 cover of Strawberry Fields that gave me flashbacks to being a snotty teenager and absolutely insisting to my parents that it was *so very much better* than the boring old original, urgh!, eye-roll, eye-roll.
In other news the latest MoD map has Ukrainian forces pretty near to the outskirts of the city of Kherson.
I wonder if the new weapons that Ukraine has received are making a big difference?
Yes they’re making a massive difference. The MLRS have better range and much higher accuracy than anything the enemy possesses, and the enemy air defences are failing to take the rockets out.
Cool. What an interesting rocket. Looks like it did what it was supposed to.
Why are they talking in gibberish?
They're French?
Is it? Or is it Swahili? Sounds like someone gargling. They should stop it. Talk fucking English like a normal person. Talking a babbled foreign dialect in a serious moment or in some professional capacity is a ridiculous affectation, like me doing my driving test in mime
If it was a duplicate of the post below, it really wasn't. Besides which she is a rabid right- winger.
This may come as a dreadful surprise, but I have a distinct tolerance for "rabid right wingers", especially if they are only "rabidly right wing" by the warped standards of the deviant Woke Left
Mussolini, for example ?
"Tyranny tempered by complete disobedience of all laws"
In other news the latest MoD map has Ukrainian forces pretty near to the outskirts of the city of Kherson.
I wonder if the new weapons that Ukraine has received are making a big difference?
Yes they’re making a massive difference. The MLRS have better range and much higher accuracy than anything the enemy possesses, and the enemy air defences are failing to take the rockets out.
Keep them coming, NATO.
I just hope they can keep the ammunition coming. From the sounds of it the ammunition for them is expensive and relatively rare.
Only having a few of them, but being able to move them so they don't get destroyed, might work. But not if they run out of ammunition.
The other time you know you are getting old is when some youngster says I love such and such new song, its a cover of some old song by x....and you have to tell them that was itself a cover of....
So true. That does work on us too though, I spent two decades thinking Always On My Mind was by the Pet Shop Boys.
A year or so ago I heard a 1990 cover of Strawberry Fields that gave me flashbacks to being a snotty teenager and absolutely insisting to my parents that it was *so very much better* than the boring old original, urgh!, eye-roll, eye-roll.
I remember that cover. Candyflip. It's excellent. Takes the already druggy original and makes it even dreamier and trippier, but with a better beat. Nothing wrong with that
Cool. What an interesting rocket. Looks like it did what it was supposed to.
Why are they talking in gibberish?
They're French?
Is it? Or is it Swahili? Sounds like someone gargling. They should stop it. Talk fucking English like a normal person. Talking a babbled foreign dialect in a serious moment or in some professional capacity is a ridiculous affectation, like me doing my driving test in mime
To be fair, as it's something vaguely technical you'd think it was Swahili even if they were speaking the Queen's English.
Best for you to stick with your guzzling of non-specialist media about AI or aliens.
Member's poll is so bad for Sunak that I wonder if some MPs might switch away from him now. He's got 52 declared support but if you want to stop Truss then you need to switch to Mordaunt...
In other news the latest MoD map has Ukrainian forces pretty near to the outskirts of the city of Kherson.
I wonder if the new weapons that Ukraine has received are making a big difference?
Yes they’re making a massive difference. The MLRS have better range and much higher accuracy than anything the enemy possesses, and the enemy air defences are failing to take the rockets out.
Keep them coming, NATO.
I just hope they can keep the ammunition coming. From the sounds of it the ammunition for them is expensive and relatively rare.
Only having a few of them, but being able to move them so they don't get destroyed, might work. But not if they run out of ammunition.
Yes, they use a lot of ammo - dedicated rocket packs, rather than standard 155mm shells. The HIMARS and M270 do use the same type though. Requires a substantial logistics operation behind them.
Just a reminder: there will be plenty of opportunities in this contest for a candidate who seems to be doing well to crash and burn. Sometimes it only takes one slightly misphrased answer to a question. This is especially true of a candidate who is less well-known.
Cool. What an interesting rocket. Looks like it did what it was supposed to.
Why are they talking in gibberish?
They're French?
Is it? Or is it Swahili? Sounds like someone gargling. They should stop it. Talk fucking English like a normal person. Talking a babbled foreign dialect in a serious moment or in some professional capacity is a ridiculous affectation, like me doing my driving test in mime
To be fair, as it's something vaguely technical you'd think it was Swahili even if they were speaking the Queen's English.
Best for you to stick with your guzzling of non-specialist media about AI or aliens.
You'd have a point if I hadn't spent seven years working for Thales in thermomechanics, commuting between Cayenne and Paris
Member's poll is so bad for Sunak that I wonder if some MPs might switch away from him now. He's got 52 declared support but if you want to stop Truss then you need to switch to Mordaunt...
I'm wondering whether he might actually come second in this first vote. And if he does he could suddenly start losing support to other candidates who were only supporting him because he was the frontrunner.
In other news the latest MoD map has Ukrainian forces pretty near to the outskirts of the city of Kherson.
I wonder if the new weapons that Ukraine has received are making a big difference?
Yes they’re making a massive difference. The MLRS have better range and much higher accuracy than anything the enemy possesses, and the enemy air defences are failing to take the rockets out.
Keep them coming, NATO.
Allegedly the Ukrainians are firing other rockets at the same time, confusing the Russian's fire-control radars. Allegedly.
One odd advantage the Ukrainians may have is that they have much the same kit as the Russians, and therefore have a good idea about its limitations and how to spoof it.
Hey, that's with Matt from the Interplanetary Podcast! Putting the Ace back into Space!
What's the thing that looks like a laser reflector inset with mirrors/catseyes?
A thingymajig ?
(When I was a kid, any object my dad didn't know the name of was either a thingymajig or a jim-jam for a doofferator.
So it is. But on further digging (most of the stuff in the media is about the launcher), it is indeed the laser reflecting variety of widget. Plus six more satellites.
And, further to my comment this morning, isn't it rather remarkable that you can get over 3.0 on Zahawi coming last in the first round (Smarkets)? I got 3.5 earlier. I'd have thought he should be evens at absolute max, more probably odds-on.
Member's poll is so bad for Sunak that I wonder if some MPs might switch away from him now. He's got 52 declared support but if you want to stop Truss then you need to switch to Mordaunt...
Absolutely.
If any MP currently supporting Sunak prefers Mordaunt to Truss then they absolutely have to switch to Mordaunt.
Member's poll is so bad for Sunak that I wonder if some MPs might switch away from him now. He's got 52 declared support but if you want to stop Truss then you need to switch to Mordaunt...
I'm wondering whether he might actually come second in this first vote. And if he does he could suddenly start losing support to other candidates who were only supporting him because he was the frontrunner.
I’m imagining the glorious cluster**** that would be a result like 70 Sunak/70 Truss/70 Mordaunt/50 Badenoch/40 Tugendhat. Would set the cat among the pigeons.
In other news the latest MoD map has Ukrainian forces pretty near to the outskirts of the city of Kherson.
I wonder if the new weapons that Ukraine has received are making a big difference?
Yes they’re making a massive difference. The MLRS have better range and much higher accuracy than anything the enemy possesses, and the enemy air defences are failing to take the rockets out.
Keep them coming, NATO.
I just hope they can keep the ammunition coming. From the sounds of it the ammunition for them is expensive and relatively rare.
Only having a few of them, but being able to move them so they don't get destroyed, might work. But not if they run out of ammunition.
It's bizarre, the US Army had 1366 of the M270 and M142 launchers, and other countries have more, that all use the same rocket pods, and yet we're worrying about whether they can maintain supplies of the ammunition for Ukraine, who only have 12 so far.
How did they ever expect to keep 1,000 of the things supplied?
Cool. What an interesting rocket. Looks like it did what it was supposed to.
Why are they talking in gibberish?
They're French?
Is it? Or is it Swahili? Sounds like someone gargling. They should stop it. Talk fucking English like a normal person. Talking a babbled foreign dialect in a serious moment or in some professional capacity is a ridiculous affectation, like me doing my driving test in mime
To be fair, as it's something vaguely technical you'd think it was Swahili even if they were speaking the Queen's English.
Best for you to stick with your guzzling of non-specialist media about AI or aliens.
You'd have a point if I hadn't spent seven years working for Thales in thermomechanics, commuting between Cayenne and Paris
Ah, it's wine o'clock again.
I nearly spent a placement year at CERN. Really. My life would be *very* different if I had. Went to Acorn instead...
"Nick Fletcher MP @NickFletcherMP · 1h I’ve been listening to the candidates and to my constituents. I’ve come to a decision. I’m voting for @KemiBadenoch. She has the strength of character for leadership and a clear vision for the country. She’s the one for me."
"Nick Fletcher MP @NickFletcherMP · 1h I’ve been listening to the candidates and to my constituents. I’ve come to a decision. I’m voting for @KemiBadenoch. She has the strength of character for leadership and a clear vision for the country. She’s the one for me."
Member's poll is so bad for Sunak that I wonder if some MPs might switch away from him now. He's got 52 declared support but if you want to stop Truss then you need to switch to Mordaunt...
Absolutely.
If any MP currently supporting Sunak prefers Mordaunt to Truss then they absolutely have to switch to Mordaunt.
Member's poll is so bad for Sunak that I wonder if some MPs might switch away from him now. He's got 52 declared support but if you want to stop Truss then you need to switch to Mordaunt...
Absolutely.
If any MP currently supporting Sunak prefers Mordaunt to Truss then they absolutely have to switch to Mordaunt.
That’s why they call this the world’s most sophisticated electorate!
I don't think despising Labour is really a strength. It's very difficult to win over the other side's voters if you are busy despising the party they vote for.
In other news the latest MoD map has Ukrainian forces pretty near to the outskirts of the city of Kherson.
I wonder if the new weapons that Ukraine has received are making a big difference?
Yes they’re making a massive difference. The MLRS have better range and much higher accuracy than anything the enemy possesses, and the enemy air defences are failing to take the rockets out.
Keep them coming, NATO.
I just hope they can keep the ammunition coming. From the sounds of it the ammunition for them is expensive and relatively rare.
Only having a few of them, but being able to move them so they don't get destroyed, might work. But not if they run out of ammunition.
It's bizarre, the US Army had 1366 of the M270 and M142 launchers, and other countries have more, that all use the same rocket pods, and yet we're worrying about whether they can maintain supplies of the ammunition for Ukraine, who only have 12 so far.
How did they ever expect to keep 1,000 of the things supplied?
The other time you know you are getting old is when some youngster says I love such and such new song, its a cover of some old song by x....and you have to tell them that was itself a cover of....
So true. That does work on us too though, I spent two decades thinking Always On My Mind was by the Pet Shop Boys.
A year or so ago I heard a 1990 cover of Strawberry Fields that gave me flashbacks to being a snotty teenager and absolutely insisting to my parents that it was *so very much better* than the boring old original, urgh!, eye-roll, eye-roll.
I remember that cover. Candyflip. It's excellent. Takes the already druggy original and makes it even dreamier and trippier, but with a better beat. Nothing wrong with that
I think my opinion of it is coloured by it being THE BEST TRACK EVER in my teenage estimation. For a couple of impassioned weeks anyway. And now thinking 'ok, it's.. alright I guess' is quite a come-down.
But then I've had quite a few come-downs from the early 90s so what's another...
There's under an hour to go until the first round of voting closes in the Conservative leadership contest. It is understood around 300 MPs have already cast their vote for one of the eight remaining candidates to replace Boris Johnson. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, among the contenders, smiled as she arrived to cast her ballot in the first stage of the contest. Ms Truss, who dodged the queues as the early rush to vote subsided, said little upon arrival at a Commons committee room. Candidates need to secure 30 votes today in order to move on."
Comments
https://twitter.com/theobertram/status/1546815658968719366
If we have a couple of kids, my wife will probably give up work at least for a while, we ideally need a bigger house, which probably means selling the remaining house for around £160k and spending £300-£400k (bigger ex-council houses aren't really a thing, and anything that isn't ex-council is a big step up in price).
It's quite possible we'll end up with two kids, a £100k mortgage, and £25kpa post tax income, which is OK, but rather a change from the present situation where we literally can't spend money as fast as we're earning it.
On the housing madness, I had some estate agents out to look at my wife's house in North Somerset on Monday. She bought in 2017 for £202.5k - all three agents thought we should get £250-260k - I.E. it's gained £10k in value a year. If we let it out, we should expect ~£900pcm.
The whole situation seems both mad and unsustainable.
But for a Tory leadership contest? Manageable
He'd need to get over 50% - to my mind - to possibly get the momentum necessary to overcome these major headwinds.
Also, I imagine some MPs - if they can't abide Truss, Mordaunt, or Badenoch - will be looking somewhere else?
The general public could probably name, out of the leadership contenders, Rishi, Truss and Hunt at a push. And maybe Zahawi.
Most people won’t know who Mordaunt, Badenoch, Tugendhat or Braverman are, so polling this time is going to be a bit unreliable I suspect. It may become a little bit more helpful during the membership vote.
Penny Mordaunt is a lot more like Boris Johnson than most of people recognise. The same inability to back down when a mistake has been made or the wrong thing has been said - always the instinct to double down.
https://twitter.com/NicholasTyrone/status/1547205020453593088
Very easy to manage
Of course you cannot lose sight of the fact that this is the party that thought IDS was a better bet than Ken Clarke (sob)but that was a long time ago and pre-Cameron. I don't think that this is the same party now.
Tory leadership is secret ballot though.
You make a good point with the Pixies, by the way. An old girlfriend introduced me to them in something like '97 or '98 and they seemed like a band from the generation before me, like the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. Looking back it's odd that I listened to them so late, I was a huge Nirvana fan and they were always saying how much the Pixies influenced them.
I still think Truss is good value.
IIRC, Clark revealed in his (published) diary that fiddled with voting papers in similar circumstance.
Home and dry with the membership then, I reckon.
He is likely to lose. Everyone wants to vote for the winner. And maybe announce it, to curry favour
You'd have to believe he REALLY is the man for the job, way above all the others. I see no clear evidence of that
However, she seems to have realised her error (at least politically) and is busy tacking away. The tide on the right turns strongly against Wokeness, any whiff of it is terminal for a Tory
I think he's beginning to struggle. Needs to turn it around quickly, with something dramatic, like a naked limbo dance under his alleged Chinese spy wife, in Whitehall at midnight illuminated by Nazi type flares with marching stormtroopers carrying shrieking, newly trapped pandas
Something eye-catching
Hunt has even less chance of winning with the members than Sunak. So if you want someone with big job experience it's only Sunak or Truss.
(When I was a kid, any object my dad didn't know the name of was either a thingymajig or a jim-jam for a doofferator.
Laid Sunak a bit more at 4.7 (lucky I did so yesterday at 3 based on the Wallace rumour). Think that's as far as I'll go laying him.
I have now somewhat changed my position.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp6Wc9IQ1w0
Keep them coming, NATO.
Only having a few of them, but being able to move them so they don't get destroyed, might work. But not if they run out of ammunition.
Best for you to stick with your guzzling of non-specialist media about AI or aliens.
Looks great so far though!
One odd advantage the Ukrainians may have is that they have much the same kit as the Russians, and therefore have a good idea about its limitations and how to spoof it.
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2022/07/vega-c-debut-launch/
If any MP currently supporting Sunak prefers Mordaunt to Truss then they absolutely have to switch to Mordaunt.
How did they ever expect to keep 1,000 of the things supplied?
I nearly spent a placement year at CERN. Really. My life would be *very* different if I had. Went to Acorn instead...
@NickFletcherMP
·
1h
I’ve been listening to the candidates and to my constituents. I’ve come to a decision. I’m voting for
@KemiBadenoch. She has the strength of character for leadership and a clear vision for the country. She’s the one for me."
https://twitter.com/KemiBadenoch
I like her
See here:
https://twitter.com/willbarnesUK/status/1546935189661687810?s=20&t=WepuULD-gLphxDtwo_iyiw
But then I've had quite a few come-downs from the early 90s so what's another...
There's under an hour to go until the first round of voting closes in the Conservative leadership contest. It is understood around 300 MPs have already cast their vote for one of the eight remaining candidates to replace Boris Johnson. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, among the contenders, smiled as she arrived to cast her ballot in the first stage of the contest. Ms Truss, who dodged the queues as the early rush to vote subsided, said little upon arrival at a Commons committee room. Candidates need to secure 30 votes today in order to move on."
https://news.sky.com/story/tory-leadership-race-live-updates-first-leadership-ballot-takes-place-today-amid-row-over-dirty-tricks-12593360