I'm wondering if @MaxPB and @Morris_Dancer etc. still want to see the energy price cap abolished?
I quite like Ed Miliband, but the energy price cap is not looking like one of his better policy ideas.
From a purely political angle, it fails to cap energy prices, but it has the government assume responsibility for their increase. Absolutely mental.
And, to paraphrase Blair, it's not exactly, "tough on high energy prices, tough on the causes of high energy prices," because it does nothing to address why energy prices are increasing.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
King Cole, no hindsight required. I said at the time it was a bloody stupid decision. So did many others.
The problem in Japan was earthquake + tsunami. Germany is not renowned for tsunamis. The change was deranged, unless one takes the view she was acting more for Russia than Germany (not my opinion - I think she was a damned fool, tying her country to Russia for reasons that were stupid rather than treacherous).
I'm not at all saying Germany did the right thing after Fukushima but the meta-problem behind the Japanese accident was cost-cutting and regulatory capture. If you have those problems then there are plenty of other ways for a nuclear plant to fail.
As Ammianus Marcellinus pointed out in the 4th century, in a rare criticism of Julian the Apostate, they're known to cause shortages and even famine.
If you set a rate that a business cannot afford the business will end. A high cap just means people are charged what they would be anyway or, possibly, more as the ceiling turns into a floor.
When prices are artificially heightened by taxes on energy the government can easily reduce the prices paid by consumers by suspending or ending the green levy and suchlike.
Anyway, I must be off. Play nicely, and stay cool.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Pity that Labour, SNP etc are equally devoid of answers though.
The SNP have one big advantage: focus. We have a crystal clear goal.
Labour are also not in the same problematic position as the Conservatives. Although they don’t know what they want, they do know what they don’t want. Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them. Starmer clearly intends on doing bugger all before polling day. It just might be a winning strategy. After the Oaf post cognitive dissonance, a PM who does bugger all might be a refreshing change.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Pity that Labour, SNP etc are equally devoid of answers though.
Starmer's stance on the energy price cap is good though.
I will just point out here I have been saying for months that it needs to be frozen.
Unless he is committing to taxpayers paying the difference it is no solution at all.
I am sure his stance will be the same as the LD's
"The Liberal Democrat plan is to cancel the 70% increase in the energy price cap expected to be announced by Ofgem later this month. The Government would instead pay the shortfall to energy suppliers so that they can afford to supply customers at the current rates."
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Pity that Labour, SNP etc are equally devoid of answers though.
Starmer's stance on the energy price cap is good though.
I will just point out here I have been saying for months that it needs to be frozen.
Unless he is committing to taxpayers paying the difference it is no solution at all.
Labour and the LibDems have the immense advantage of being in opposition here. They just have to sound vaguely credible. The detail does not matter. But, yes, taxpayer money does need to be the final resort here. We have a wartime economy, even if we are not ourselves at war directly. In wartime, extraordinary measures are called for.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
I agree with you.
Was Mary Whitehouse woke before her time?
Yes, bizarrely
The new left is like the old prudish moralising Whitehouse right. Utterly depressing
My arty lefty friends are in despair, apart from the Woke ones who are now mere ideologues. I tend to avoid them
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Pity that Labour, SNP etc are equally devoid of answers though.
Starmer's stance on the energy price cap is good though.
I will just point out here I have been saying for months that it needs to be frozen.
The irony is that the cap was brought in for different reasons and was wrong in a free market. Now it could be be very useful to protect the poor from devastating price rises and the government dithers. If they are going to do it though retail power suppliers need protecting from bankruptcy. Ideally by a windfall tax on the producers of power.
In due course (once normalised) this all needs scraping though. These are exceptional circumstances. In normal times the market should not be interfered with by caps and windfall taxes.
Surely the biggest advantage of freezing energy bills rather than giving handouts to the public to pay for higher bills is that it keeps the inflation figure much lower, in turn:
1) Saving the Govt a huge amount of interest on index linked gilts
2) Saving the Govt a huge amount on future inflation linked pension and benefit rises
3) Takes at least some pressure off demand for huge pay increases (both public and private) which would otherwise also increase inflation
It basically stops the spiral getting going in the first place.
Finally it is also by far the best bet electorally. The public has had it drummed into them that energy prices are about to go up massively. If that now doesn't happen, Truss will get lots of credit. The public won't care less about how it will be funded.
It is completely unaffordable. At £2-3k per household it would cost somewhere near £60bn this year.Our education budget is roughly £40bn for a comparison. It would also not stop inflation because businesses and the public sector would have to pay the commercial rate which is going to feed into their cost base for everything else. And if the government borrows the money, which it would have to, it increases the money supply which is, of course, inflationary.
We have to accept that when international energy prices move this much we have to pay more for them. We need to use that as an incentive to drive down consumption, increase insulation, rapidly develop more domestic alternatives etc but the government cannot hide us from this. All of these subsidy policies are based on the concept this is a one off, like covid, that will come and go. That is almost certainly not the case. Even if the war in Ukraine ended in some messy stalemate can you really see us going back to buying Russian gas again? I can't. If this is not a one off but a new normal what the hell does the government do next year?
It's completely affordable.
"The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in very high levels of public spending. Current estimates of the cost of Government measures announced so far range from about £310 to £410 billion"
You are now going to say: "but on top of Covid spending it's completely unaffordable".
I will say: windfall tax on energy producers, wealth tax, and yes inflation will come down significantly versus where it will go with an untrammelled price cap - that will provide a big offset.
Affordable for how many years? 2? 3? 4?
The Covid response did show that there was more flexibility in the government balance sheet than I and, I think, most others had appreciated but it was like fighting a sharp war over 2 years. We can afford to pay it off over a decade or more although much of current inflation is being driven by that borrowing, QE and increase in the money supply. But we simply do not know how long this is going to last and I, for one, am pessimistic.
I'm wondering if @MaxPB and @Morris_Dancer etc. still want to see the energy price cap abolished?
I quite like Ed Miliband, but the energy price cap is not looking like one of his better policy ideas.
From a purely political angle, it fails to cap energy prices, but it has the government assume responsibility for their increase. Absolutely mental.
And, to paraphrase Blair, it's not exactly, "tough on high energy prices, tough on the causes of high energy prices," because it does nothing to address why energy prices are increasing.
But how would removing it solve the CoL crisis?
The energy price cap is irrelevant to the cost of living crisis, but it is currently the focus of everyone's attention.
The government should be prioritising investment in energy supply that's not affected by wild swings in commodity prices (wind, tidal, nuclear), and providing financial support for those who are unable to absorb the current high prices (increase UC). It could also reform the pricing model for energy by abolishing the standing charge, so that heavy users of energy were not subsidised by light users of energy.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Pity that Labour, SNP etc are equally devoid of answers though.
The SNP have one big advantage: focus. We have a crystal clear goal.
Labour are also not in the same problematic position as the Conservatives. Although they don’t know what they want, they do know what they don’t want. Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them. Starmer clearly intends on doing bugger all before polling day. It just might be a winning strategy. After the Oaf post cognitive dissonance, a PM who does bugger all might be a refreshing change.
Your failure to mention the Lib Dems duly noted 😉
I only mentioned parties in government in the UK, but yes I don't think the Lib Dems have many answers either. Certainly the SNP in government in Holyrood seem equally lost at sea.
A stagnant economy, an ageing population, crumbling public services and the highest rate of tax take since post war austerity is a situation with no simple answers, or electorally appealing ones.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
Bury North is Labour's top target seat in the UK, if they can't even win there they would make no progress at all. Cost of living and inflation would also still be a problem for any incoming Labour government until the Russian and Ukraine war is over and sanctions have ended and energy supplies been increased
FUDHY at his empathetic best.
Con voters in personal and family distress? Not our problem. Bury is dispensable.
So, when do Conservatives start caring?
Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East?
Suffolk Coastal?
Havant?
If people want endless handouts they can vote Labour and for the higher taxes to match. Other than support for the poorest that is not the Tory way.
Labour will then have to deal with the deficit and inflation in government
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
The more offensive the joke when written out, the more important the context.
Look at the recent controversy over Jimmy Carr, where writing out 10 seconds of a five-minute ‘bit’, served only to change the context completely.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Pity that Labour, SNP etc are equally devoid of answers though.
Starmer's stance on the energy price cap is good though.
I will just point out here I have been saying for months that it needs to be frozen.
Unless he is committing to taxpayers paying the difference it is no solution at all.
Labour and the LibDems have the immense advantage of being in opposition here. They just have to sound vaguely credible. The detail does not matter. But, yes, taxpayer money does need to be the final resort here. We have a wartime economy, even if we are not ourselves at war directly. In wartime, extraordinary measures are called for.
Incarceration of insufficiently patriotic types next on the agenda.
When fascism comes to England again, it will be wearing a suit and carrying a flag.
O/T Our neighbour's son-in-law help run his parents big arable farm in Dorset: They have just finished their largest grain harvest ever. So much crop that have had to temporarily store some on the ground in the farmyard while they wait for grain lorries to come and collect it. No drying costs either.
Somebody's having a good year.
Well,that's good news, but there will be losers elsewhere, particularly vegetable farmers:
Sure. I was surprised tbh. I thought the lack of water would have affected grain size and thus overall yield.
There was enough rain earlier in the summer, and we’ve now had perfect ripening and harvesting conditions for weeks. I’m not surprised by a good grain harvest. Other crops may be more challenging.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
Bury North is Labour's top target seat in the UK, if they can't even win there they would make no progress at all. Cost of living and inflation would also still be a problem for any incoming Labour government until the Russian and Ukraine war is over and sanctions have ended and energy supplies been increased
FUDHY at his empathetic best.
Con voters in personal and family distress? Not our problem. Bury is dispensable.
So, when do Conservatives start caring?
Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East?
Suffolk Coastal?
Havant?
If people want endless handouts they can vote Labour and for the higher taxes to match. Other than support for the poorest that is not the Tory way.
Labour will then have to deal with the deficit and inflation in government
Meanwhile Truss offers to borrow heavily to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
I agree with you.
Was Mary Whitehouse woke before her time?
Yes, bizarrely
The new left is like the old prudish moralising Whitehouse right. Utterly depressing
My arty lefty friends are in despair, apart from the Woke ones who are now mere ideologues. I tend to avoid them
My only major difference with you is that I see as much censorious bollocks on the right as I do on the left. It may look slightly different, but the intolerance and the refusal to engage is the same. It's a tragedy, genuinely, because argument is one of the great human achievements. And one of the vital foundation stones of progress. I blame social media. Almost entirely.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Pity that Labour, SNP etc are equally devoid of answers though.
Starmer's stance on the energy price cap is good though.
I will just point out here I have been saying for months that it needs to be frozen.
Unless he is committing to taxpayers paying the difference it is no solution at all.
Labour and the LibDems have the immense advantage of being in opposition here. They just have to sound vaguely credible. The detail does not matter. But, yes, taxpayer money does need to be the final resort here. We have a wartime economy, even if we are not ourselves at war directly. In wartime, extraordinary measures are called for.
Incarceration of insufficiently patriotic types next on the agenda.
When fascism comes to England again, it will be wearing a suit and carrying a flag.
Again? I assume you mean the Nazi warplanes shot down over England in WW2. I don’t recall any fascism here, aside of some pathetic wannabes, no more scary than Spodes Black Shorts.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
Bury North is Labour's top target seat in the UK, if they can't even win there they would make no progress at all. Cost of living and inflation would also still be a problem for any incoming Labour government until the Russian and Ukraine war is over and sanctions have ended and energy supplies been increased
FUDHY at his empathetic best.
Con voters in personal and family distress? Not our problem. Bury is dispensable.
So, when do Conservatives start caring?
Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East?
Suffolk Coastal?
Havant?
If people want endless handouts they can vote Labour and for the higher taxes to match. Other than support for the poorest that is not the Tory way.
Labour will then have to deal with the deficit and inflation in government
Still no empathy.
The core teachings of Christ clearly passed you by.
You are a “Christian” in the same way as you are a “Conservative”: it is all just a game.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
Ah, the old 'if you're voting for the Fat Lying Sack of Jizz. you know what you’re letting yourself in for' argument.
King Cole, no hindsight required. I said at the time it was a bloody stupid decision. So did many others.
The problem in Japan was earthquake + tsunami. Germany is not renowned for tsunamis. The change was deranged, unless one takes the view she was acting more for Russia than Germany (not my opinion - I think she was a damned fool, tying her country to Russia for reasons that were stupid rather than treacherous).
It was popular. She was good at keeping herself in power.
The Met Office have a new weather map in Beta, and it's quite interesting as it integrates observational and forecast data, so you can step through the recent rainfall radar observations and then forward through into the rainfall forecasts. With the current showers developing, the discontinuity between observations and forecasts is not to the Met Office's best advantage, but it is useful, and they have an alternative colour scale for those who are colour-blind too.
The precipitation type forecast is also useful - it's forecasting some hail in the thunderstorms over Ireland tonight, but none elsewhere at the moment. Will be interesting to be able to look at that through the winter.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Pity that Labour, SNP etc are equally devoid of answers though.
Starmer's stance on the energy price cap is good though.
I will just point out here I have been saying for months that it needs to be frozen.
Unless he is committing to taxpayers paying the difference it is no solution at all.
Labour and the LibDems have the immense advantage of being in opposition here. They just have to sound vaguely credible. The detail does not matter. But, yes, taxpayer money does need to be the final resort here. We have a wartime economy, even if we are not ourselves at war directly. In wartime, extraordinary measures are called for.
Incarceration of insufficiently patriotic types next on the agenda.
When fascism comes to England again, it will be wearing a suit and carrying a flag.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
Says the man who called for those asking for a vote on the Brexit deal to be, er, shot.
At least I’m not dull
However, you need to provide a citation. I doubt I ever said that
UFOs, Woke, what3words, Dall-E-2, English fizz, etc and very much etc.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
I agree with you.
Was Mary Whitehouse woke before her time?
Yes, bizarrely
The new left is like the old prudish moralising Whitehouse right. Utterly depressing
My arty lefty friends are in despair, apart from the Woke ones who are now mere ideologues. I tend to avoid them
My only major difference with you is that I see as much censorious bollocks on the right as I do on the left. It may look slightly different, but the intolerance and the refusal to engage is the same. It's a tragedy, genuinely, because argument is one of the great human achievements. And one of the vital foundation stones of progress. I blame social media. Almost entirely.
The right is odious in multiple ways. Undeniable. But at least it makes a vague, often feeble attempt to support free speech. I can’t remember the last time the right tried to cancel a comedy show at the Fringe or similar venues. Probably the Mary Whitehouse era, actually
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
Says the man who called for those asking for a vote on the Brexit deal to be, er, shot.
At least I’m not dull
However, you need to provide a citation. I doubt I ever said that
UFOs, Woke, what3words, Dall-E-2, English fizz, etc and very much etc.
Dull, dull, dull.
I don't find the topics intrinsically dull. It's the endless repetition that is really dull, dull, dull. For such a good writer, it's disappointing.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
I agree with you.
Was Mary Whitehouse woke before her time?
Yes, bizarrely
The new left is like the old prudish moralising Whitehouse right. Utterly depressing
My arty lefty friends are in despair, apart from the Woke ones who are now mere ideologues. I tend to avoid them
My only major difference with you is that I see as much censorious bollocks on the right as I do on the left. It may look slightly different, but the intolerance and the refusal to engage is the same. It's a tragedy, genuinely, because argument is one of the great human achievements. And one of the vital foundation stones of progress. I blame social media. Almost entirely.
The right is odious in multiple ways. Undeniable. But at least it makes a vague, often feeble attempt to support free speech. I can’t remember the last time the right tried to cancel a comedy show at the Fringe or similar venues. Probably the Mary Whitehouse era, actually
I thought she mainly got off on attacking Dr Who, the mad old bitch.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
Bury North is Labour's top target seat in the UK, if they can't even win there they would make no progress at all. Cost of living and inflation would also still be a problem for any incoming Labour government until the Russian and Ukraine war is over and sanctions have ended and energy supplies been increased
FUDHY at his empathetic best.
Con voters in personal and family distress? Not our problem. Bury is dispensable.
So, when do Conservatives start caring?
Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East?
Suffolk Coastal?
Havant?
If people want endless handouts they can vote Labour and for the higher taxes to match. Other than support for the poorest that is not the Tory way.
Labour will then have to deal with the deficit and inflation in government
Support for the poorest without "endless handouts" is the Tory way?
Hmmm, how do we square that circle? I've got it, workhouses!
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
Last Saturday I was at an interesting double bill of plays at the Curve theatre in Leicester marking the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Ugandan Asians in the UK.
The first was set in Uganda, and the developing crisis in one family as they gradually realise that they will be lucky to flee at all, and their comfortable middle class life is gone.
The second was set in Leicester, with much focus on the racism and hardship faced on arrival, from hostile racism to patronising incomprehension in the resettlement camps. The P word was appropriate in that theatrical context.
The plays were interestingly balanced, indeed the motivations of the Ugandan Africans almost sympathetically described.
Surely the biggest advantage of freezing energy bills rather than giving handouts to the public to pay for higher bills is that it keeps the inflation figure much lower, in turn:
1) Saving the Govt a huge amount of interest on index linked gilts
2) Saving the Govt a huge amount on future inflation linked pension and benefit rises
3) Takes at least some pressure off demand for huge pay increases (both public and private) which would otherwise also increase inflation
It basically stops the spiral getting going in the first place.
Finally it is also by far the best bet electorally. The public has had it drummed into them that energy prices are about to go up massively. If that now doesn't happen, Truss will get lots of credit. The public won't care less about how it will be funded.
It is completely unaffordable. At £2-3k per household it would cost somewhere near £60bn this year.Our education budget is roughly £40bn for a comparison. It would also not stop inflation because businesses and the public sector would have to pay the commercial rate which is going to feed into their cost base for everything else. And if the government borrows the money, which it would have to, it increases the money supply which is, of course, inflationary.
We have to accept that when international energy prices move this much we have to pay more for them. We need to use that as an incentive to drive down consumption, increase insulation, rapidly develop more domestic alternatives etc but the government cannot hide us from this. All of these subsidy policies are based on the concept this is a one off, like covid, that will come and go. That is almost certainly not the case. Even if the war in Ukraine ended in some messy stalemate can you really see us going back to buying Russian gas again? I can't. If this is not a one off but a new normal what the hell does the government do next year?
It's completely affordable.
"The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in very high levels of public spending. Current estimates of the cost of Government measures announced so far range from about £310 to £410 billion"
You are now going to say: "but on top of Covid spending it's completely unaffordable".
I will say: windfall tax on energy producers, wealth tax, and yes inflation will come down significantly versus where it will go with an untrammelled price cap - that will provide a big offset.
Affordable for how many years? 2? 3? 4?
The Covid response did show that there was more flexibility in the government balance sheet than I and, I think, most others had appreciated but it was like fighting a sharp war over 2 years. We can afford to pay it off over a decade or more although much of current inflation is being driven by that borrowing, QE and increase in the money supply. But we simply do not know how long this is going to last and I, for one, am pessimistic.
We should plan for a 5 year period of high energy prices and use that period to invest heavily in energy security.
One way or another that's going to need to happen. The current government is just putting its head in the sand.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
It does rather bring to mind the infamous (and often censored scene) in Fawlty Towers with the Major taking his girlfriend to see India.
When he uses the racial slurs, we're supposed to be laughing at him (and at his brand of casual racism) rather than with him. However using the words is central to the joke.
Without knowing the context of the joke, it's hard to make any judgement call on whether or not it was appropriate. Racist slurs are deplorable, but if they're being used in context to make fun of racists, it's acceptable.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
Says the man who called for those asking for a vote on the Brexit deal to be, er, shot.
At least I’m not dull
However, you need to provide a citation. I doubt I ever said that
UFOs, Woke, what3words, Dall-E-2, English fizz, etc and very much etc.
Dull, dull, dull.
I don't find the topics intrinsically dull. It's the endless repetition that is really dull, dull, dull. For such a good writer, it's disappointing.
You manage to keep your posts more interesting by way of relative sparsity. It's hard not to be repetitive when you're posting six times as often.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
Says the man who called for those asking for a vote on the Brexit deal to be, er, shot.
At least I’m not dull
However, you need to provide a citation. I doubt I ever said that
UFOs, Woke, what3words, Dall-E-2, English fizz, etc and very much etc.
Dull, dull, dull.
Mate, all you talk about is Scottish fucking Nationalism, and Scotland. That is literally it. A tiny, quite drizzly party of the earth’s land surface which gives you fleeting, nostalgia inducing micro-erections
I go from interstellar visitors to English sparkling wine to the advent of True AI in about 3 seconds
Gee, I wonder which one of us could make a living as a wide ranging writer, should we ever take that career path
It is the energy cap but as a diversion, Rishi Sunak has called for sanctions against Iran. Liz Truss is our actual Foreign Secretary.
Great, shall we just shit on anyone who might sell us some oil? What's next, whoopie cushions for visiting Saudi Royals? Cruise missile attack on Norway?
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
Says the man who called for those asking for a vote on the Brexit deal to be, er, shot.
At least I’m not dull
However, you need to provide a citation. I doubt I ever said that
UFOs, Woke, what3words, Dall-E-2, English fizz, etc and very much etc.
Dull, dull, dull.
I don't find the topics intrinsically dull. It's the endless repetition that is really dull, dull, dull. For such a good writer, it's disappointing.
For sure, it's the (no doubt expensive) boot of his current obsessions stamping on a human face forever that quenches the spirit.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Pity that Labour, SNP etc are equally devoid of answers though.
Starmer's stance on the energy price cap is good though.
I will just point out here I have been saying for months that it needs to be frozen.
The irony is that the cap was brought in for different reasons and was wrong in a free market. Now it could be be very useful to protect the poor from devastating price rises and the government dithers. If they are going to do it though retail power suppliers need protecting from bankruptcy. Ideally by a windfall tax on the producers of power.
In due course (once normalised) this all needs scraping though. These are exceptional circumstances. In normal times the market should not be interfered with by caps and windfall taxes.
The absolute irony is that the cap was brought in to protect the vulnerable from the 'free market'.
Smartarses like me (and I suspect most of us on PB) were getting fixed deals at 9p a kWh at the expense of those without the means or wherewithal to seek out best deals.
Now it can (and, I confidently predict, will) be used to protect the country from civil unrest and/or catastrophic economic chaos. TINA.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
Last Saturday I was at an interesting double bill of plays at the Curve theatre in Leicester marking the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Ugandan Asians in the UK.
The first was set in Uganda, and the developing crisis in one family as they gradually realise that they will be lucky to flee at all, and their comfortable middle class life is gone.
The second was set in Leicester, with much focus on the racism and hardship faced on arrival, from hostile racism to patronising incomprehension in the resettlement camps. The P word was appropriate in that theatrical context.
The plays were interestingly balanced, indeed the motivations of the Ugandan Africans almost sympathetically described.
I had a Ugandan Asian solicitor who worked for me, who found The Last King of Scotland unbearable. I've always thought that Forest Whittaker as Idi Amin was outstanding.
Surely the biggest advantage of freezing energy bills rather than giving handouts to the public to pay for higher bills is that it keeps the inflation figure much lower, in turn:
1) Saving the Govt a huge amount of interest on index linked gilts
2) Saving the Govt a huge amount on future inflation linked pension and benefit rises
3) Takes at least some pressure off demand for huge pay increases (both public and private) which would otherwise also increase inflation
It basically stops the spiral getting going in the first place.
Finally it is also by far the best bet electorally. The public has had it drummed into them that energy prices are about to go up massively. If that now doesn't happen, Truss will get lots of credit. The public won't care less about how it will be funded.
It is completely unaffordable. At £2-3k per household it would cost somewhere near £60bn this year.Our education budget is roughly £40bn for a comparison. It would also not stop inflation because businesses and the public sector would have to pay the commercial rate which is going to feed into their cost base for everything else. And if the government borrows the money, which it would have to, it increases the money supply which is, of course, inflationary.
We have to accept that when international energy prices move this much we have to pay more for them. We need to use that as an incentive to drive down consumption, increase insulation, rapidly develop more domestic alternatives etc but the government cannot hide us from this. All of these subsidy policies are based on the concept this is a one off, like covid, that will come and go. That is almost certainly not the case. Even if the war in Ukraine ended in some messy stalemate can you really see us going back to buying Russian gas again? I can't. If this is not a one off but a new normal what the hell does the government do next year?
It's completely affordable.
"The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in very high levels of public spending. Current estimates of the cost of Government measures announced so far range from about £310 to £410 billion"
You are now going to say: "but on top of Covid spending it's completely unaffordable".
I will say: windfall tax on energy producers, wealth tax, and yes inflation will come down significantly versus where it will go with an untrammelled price cap - that will provide a big offset.
Affordable for how many years? 2? 3? 4?
The Covid response did show that there was more flexibility in the government balance sheet than I and, I think, most others had appreciated but it was like fighting a sharp war over 2 years. We can afford to pay it off over a decade or more although much of current inflation is being driven by that borrowing, QE and increase in the money supply. But we simply do not know how long this is going to last and I, for one, am pessimistic.
We should plan for a 5 year period of high energy prices and use that period to invest heavily in energy security.
One way or another that's going to need to happen. The current government is just putting its head in the sand.
We are in agreement about energy security and probably in agreement about the failure of governments over the last 20 years to address it.
But a policy that has governments protect the populace (albeit with a very large slice of their own money) is contrary to such priorities. Energy security will also cost money, at least initially and we are already borrowing excessive amounts which is driving inflation. We need to help the vulnerable of course but the rest of us need to tighten their belts, reprioritise our spending and cope with the current scenario whilst urging our government to get on with reducing our dependency.
I'm wondering if @MaxPB and @Morris_Dancer etc. still want to see the energy price cap abolished?
I quite like Ed Miliband, but the energy price cap is not looking like one of his better policy ideas.
From a purely political angle, it fails to cap energy prices, but it has the government assume responsibility for their increase. Absolutely mental.
And, to paraphrase Blair, it's not exactly, "tough on high energy prices, tough on the causes of high energy prices," because it does nothing to address why energy prices are increasing.
But how would removing it solve the CoL crisis?
The energy price cap is irrelevant to the cost of living crisis, but it is currently the focus of everyone's attention.
The government should be prioritising investment in energy supply that's not affected by wild swings in commodity prices (wind, tidal, nuclear), and providing financial support for those who are unable to absorb the current high prices (increase UC). It could also reform the pricing model for energy by abolishing the standing charge, so that heavy users of energy were not subsidised by light users of energy.
The price cap is neither here nor there.
??? Wait until the price cap reaches £5k, then you'll see a real CoL crisis. You ain't seen nothing yet.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
Says the man who called for those asking for a vote on the Brexit deal to be, er, shot.
At least I’m not dull
However, you need to provide a citation. I doubt I ever said that
UFOs, Woke, what3words, Dall-E-2, English fizz, etc and very much etc.
Dull, dull, dull.
Mate, all you talk about is Scottish fucking Nationalism, and Scotland. That is literally it. A tiny, quite drizzly party of the earth’s land surface which gives you fleeting, nostalgia inducing micro-erections
I go from interstellar visitors to English sparkling wine to the advent of True AI in about 3 seconds
Gee, I wonder which one of us could make a living as a wide ranging writer, should we ever take that career path
You (if from a very low info starting point) talk about Scottish fucking Nationalism and Scotland more than I do, it's only one squirt of your copious diarrhoea of pixels.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Pity that Labour, SNP etc are equally devoid of answers though.
Starmer's stance on the energy price cap is good though.
I will just point out here I have been saying for months that it needs to be frozen.
Unless he is committing to taxpayers paying the difference it is no solution at all.
Labour and the LibDems have the immense advantage of being in opposition here. They just have to sound vaguely credible. The detail does not matter. But, yes, taxpayer money does need to be the final resort here. We have a wartime economy, even if we are not ourselves at war directly. In wartime, extraordinary measures are called for.
Incarceration of insufficiently patriotic types next on the agenda.
When fascism comes to England again, it will be wearing a suit and carrying a flag.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
I agree with you.
Was Mary Whitehouse woke before her time?
I'm sure she would have demanded that this show be banned.
Interesting nugget on the Opinium polling from Peston - “support for Truss mostly comes from the older end of the Tory party, as she has a 40 point lead among those aged over 65. Among the under 50s, she is 8 points behind Sunak”.
More even than her predecessors Truss will have to be laser-like in looking after the interests of the Tories' elderly client vote.
It that due to policy differences, or just reflecting different generations attitudes towards race?
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
It does rather bring to mind the infamous (and often censored scene) in Fawlty Towers with the Major taking his girlfriend to see India.
When he uses the racial slurs, we're supposed to be laughing at him (and at his brand of casual racism) rather than with him. However using the words is central to the joke.
Without knowing the context of the joke, it's hard to make any judgement call on whether or not it was appropriate. Racist slurs are deplorable, but if they're being used in context to make fun of racists, it's acceptable.
Isn't the stage character of Sadowitz a right wing racist, misogynistic boor? Supposedly knowingly tongue in cheek like Alf Garnet, but in reality popular with genuine right wing racists and misogynist who miss the point.
Sadowitz can say what he likes, but no one is obliged to either give him a stage or to tolerate him without complaint.
It is the energy cap but as a diversion, Rishi Sunak has called for sanctions against Iran. Liz Truss is our actual Foreign Secretary.
Great, shall we just shit on anyone who might sell us some oil? What's next, whoopie cushions for visiting Saudi Royals? Cruise missile attack on Norway?
After the anaemic 2021 Christmas tree, some might think it justified.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
It does rather bring to mind the infamous (and often censored scene) in Fawlty Towers with the Major taking his girlfriend to see India.
When he uses the racial slurs, we're supposed to be laughing at him (and at his brand of casual racism) rather than with him. However using the words is central to the joke.
Without knowing the context of the joke, it's hard to make any judgement call on whether or not it was appropriate. Racist slurs are deplorable, but if they're being used in context to make fun of racists, it's acceptable.
I don't disagree with that. I started the debate by pointing out that a) one should take the Mail's reporting on Sadowitz with a pinch of salt, and b) I don't believe in cancelling stuff.
Having said that, I was merely pointing out that Sunak is of Indian, rather than Pakistani, origin. If you're going to use racial slurs as a weapon in humour, you could at least be accurate. Or maybe that was the joke; I don't know, I wasn't there.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
Last Saturday I was at an interesting double bill of plays at the Curve theatre in Leicester marking the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Ugandan Asians in the UK.
The first was set in Uganda, and the developing crisis in one family as they gradually realise that they will be lucky to flee at all, and their comfortable middle class life is gone.
The second was set in Leicester, with much focus on the racism and hardship faced on arrival, from hostile racism to patronising incomprehension in the resettlement camps. The P word was appropriate in that theatrical context.
The plays were interestingly balanced, indeed the motivations of the Ugandan Africans almost sympathetically described.
That sounds like the most tediously depressing, Woke-ishly worthy “double theatrical bill” in history. But fair enough. Some people like that
What gives me comic solace is that you saw it in… Leicester, the most tediously depressing city in Western Europe
I admire your ability to withstand suicide-inducing levels of boredom. Even more, I admire that faculty in your wife
Mr. Sandpit, good job Germany didn't do something really stupid like close a load of nuclear reactors because of something that happened in Japan due to an earthquake and tsunami, right?
The question is: was Merkel acting in the Russian interest, or just genuinely stupid when she made that call?
And now they're hooked on Russian gas.
To be fair, the West generally has made some bad calls (including with China) but this was especially foolish and unnecessary.
Wonderful thing, hindsight.
This however, was foresight. One could have predicted that cosying up to Putin was unwise.
I'm wondering if @MaxPB and @Morris_Dancer etc. still want to see the energy price cap abolished?
I quite like Ed Miliband, but the energy price cap is not looking like one of his better policy ideas.
From a purely political angle, it fails to cap energy prices, but it has the government assume responsibility for their increase. Absolutely mental.
And, to paraphrase Blair, it's not exactly, "tough on high energy prices, tough on the causes of high energy prices," because it does nothing to address why energy prices are increasing.
But how would removing it solve the CoL crisis?
The energy price cap is irrelevant to the cost of living crisis, but it is currently the focus of everyone's attention.
The government should be prioritising investment in energy supply that's not affected by wild swings in commodity prices (wind, tidal, nuclear), and providing financial support for those who are unable to absorb the current high prices (increase UC). It could also reform the pricing model for energy by abolishing the standing charge, so that heavy users of energy were not subsidised by light users of energy.
The price cap is neither here nor there.
??? Wait until the price cap reaches £5k, then you'll see a real CoL crisis. You ain't seen nothing yet.
This is precisely the problem with the price cap. It's not the increase in the price cap that is the cause of the crisis. It's the increase in the international market price of gas due to a supply shock that is the cause of the crisis.
You need to tackle the problem at source, at supply. You can't fix the problem by fixing the price. The track record of that approach is that it leads to absolute shortages and interruptions to supply.
Paying a very high price for energy is not good. Nor is paying more tax so that government can give more money to the poorest to help them survive the price increases. But having interruptions to the gas and electric supply so that I can't cook dinner, or stop the food in my freezer from spoiling, at any price will be a hell of a lot worse.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
I agree with you.
Was Mary Whitehouse woke before her time?
Yes, bizarrely
The new left is like the old prudish moralising Whitehouse right. Utterly depressing
My arty lefty friends are in despair, apart from the Woke ones who are now mere ideologues. I tend to avoid them
My only major difference with you is that I see as much censorious bollocks on the right as I do on the left. It may look slightly different, but the intolerance and the refusal to engage is the same. It's a tragedy, genuinely, because argument is one of the great human achievements. And one of the vital foundation stones of progress. I blame social media. Almost entirely.
The right is odious in multiple ways. Undeniable. But at least it makes a vague, often feeble attempt to support free speech. I can’t remember the last time the right tried to cancel a comedy show at the Fringe or similar venues. Probably the Mary Whitehouse era, actually
The BBC is ta frequent target of the right's fury. It makes a decision and then reverses it in the face of relentless attacks from the right-wing commentariat - see furores over the Last Night of the Proms, for example. Then there's the government itself making peaceful protest a criminal offence. And look at how Liz Truss reacted to protestors at a recent hustings.
I think freedom is under threat from all corners. It is terrifying.
Interesting nugget on the Opinium polling from Peston - “support for Truss mostly comes from the older end of the Tory party, as she has a 40 point lead among those aged over 65. Among the under 50s, she is 8 points behind Sunak”.
More even than her predecessors Truss will have to be laser-like in looking after the interests of the Tories' elderly client vote.
It that due to policy differences, or just reflecting different generations attitudes towards race?
Unlikely. I can remember discussing the racism scandal at Yorkshire Cricket Club with my father, and he said, "surely younger people aren't like that", and I pointed out that the people coming out with stuff like "p*kis smell", were at least twenty years younger than me, and forty five years younger than him.
Mr. Sandpit, good job Germany didn't do something really stupid like close a load of nuclear reactors because of something that happened in Japan due to an earthquake and tsunami, right?
The question is: was Merkel acting in the Russian interest, or just genuinely stupid when she made that call?
And now they're hooked on Russian gas.
To be fair, the West generally has made some bad calls (including with China) but this was especially foolish and unnecessary.
Wonderful thing, hindsight.
This however, was foresight. One could have predicted that cosying up to Putin was unwise.
India and China are currently cosying up to China, and swimming in cut price energy as a result. It may be morally dubious; unwise it ain't.
Mr. Sandpit, good job Germany didn't do something really stupid like close a load of nuclear reactors because of something that happened in Japan due to an earthquake and tsunami, right?
The question is: was Merkel acting in the Russian interest, or just genuinely stupid when she made that call?
And now they're hooked on Russian gas.
To be fair, the West generally has made some bad calls (including with China) but this was especially foolish and unnecessary.
Wonderful thing, hindsight.
This however, was foresight. One could have predicted that cosying up to Putin was unwise.
India and China are currently cosying up to China, and swimming in cut price energy as a result. It may be morally dubious; unwise it ain't.
It's the long term that matters. People like Putin and the CCP don't give things away without expecting a return. Get dependent on cheap energy on Russia, and then you find your prices will finally go through the roof when you have to take a stand. Borrow money cheaply from China, and in the end, people are storming the Presidential Palace.
O/T Our neighbour's son-in-law help run his parents big arable farm in Dorset: They have just finished their largest grain harvest ever. So much crop that have had to temporarily store some on the ground in the farmyard while they wait for grain lorries to come and collect it. No drying costs either.
Somebody's having a good year.
Well,that's good news, but there will be losers elsewhere, particularly vegetable farmers:
Sure. I was surprised tbh. I thought the lack of water would have affected grain size and thus overall yield.
There was enough rain earlier in the summer, and we’ve now had perfect ripening and harvesting conditions for weeks. I’m not surprised by a good grain harvest. Other crops may be more challenging.
Stories starting to come into the papers of apples and veg being 1/2 normal crop.
Food inflation is gonna hit Truss as much as energy this winter.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
Last Saturday I was at an interesting double bill of plays at the Curve theatre in Leicester marking the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Ugandan Asians in the UK.
The first was set in Uganda, and the developing crisis in one family as they gradually realise that they will be lucky to flee at all, and their comfortable middle class life is gone.
The second was set in Leicester, with much focus on the racism and hardship faced on arrival, from hostile racism to patronising incomprehension in the resettlement camps. The P word was appropriate in that theatrical context.
The plays were interestingly balanced, indeed the motivations of the Ugandan Africans almost sympathetically described.
That sounds like the most tediously depressing, Woke-ishly worthy “double theatrical bill” in history. But fair enough. Some people like that
What gives me comic solace is that you saw it in… Leicester, the most tediously depressing city in Western Europe
I admire your ability to withstand suicide-inducing levels of boredom. Even more, I admire that faculty in your wife
No it was community theatre at its best. There were a lot of older Ugandan Asians in the audience who gasped at the shocking bits, laughed at the comedy bits, and several were in tears at the interval, including the woman next to me who remembered her own time in the camps.
Yes, they were amateurs so the acting at times was clunky, and some of the plotting also a bit implausible, but heartfelt and showed the community in the round, from those successful in business and those who never psychologically recovered from their expulsion.
For a supposed free thinker you really are very narrow minded. Never has the cliche of travel broadening the mind been so wrong.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
It does rather bring to mind the infamous (and often censored scene) in Fawlty Towers with the Major taking his girlfriend to see India.
When he uses the racial slurs, we're supposed to be laughing at him (and at his brand of casual racism) rather than with him. However using the words is central to the joke.
Without knowing the context of the joke, it's hard to make any judgement call on whether or not it was appropriate. Racist slurs are deplorable, but if they're being used in context to make fun of racists, it's acceptable.
I don't disagree with that. I started the debate by pointing out that a) one should take the Mail's reporting on Sadowitz with a pinch of salt, and b) I don't believe in cancelling stuff.
Having said that, I was merely pointing out that Sunak is of Indian, rather than Pakistani, origin. If you're going to use racial slurs as a weapon in humour, you could at least be accurate. Or maybe that was the joke; I don't know, I wasn't there.
I'm a fan of Sadowitz, but insofar as the term p*ki can ever not be racist, I'd say using it in reference to somone of Indian heritage is unmistakeably so.
One tweeter said he's seen Sadowitz a few times and previously he's heard him use 'pakistani' (dunno in what context). I wonder if like many of the instinctively combatitive JS feels he's got to ramp it up with the dying of the light? That would be sad. Luckily we don't see that sort of thing on PB.
Mr. Sandpit, good job Germany didn't do something really stupid like close a load of nuclear reactors because of something that happened in Japan due to an earthquake and tsunami, right?
The question is: was Merkel acting in the Russian interest, or just genuinely stupid when she made that call?
And now they're hooked on Russian gas.
To be fair, the West generally has made some bad calls (including with China) but this was especially foolish and unnecessary.
Wonderful thing, hindsight.
This however, was foresight. One could have predicted that cosying up to Putin was unwise.
India and China are currently cosying up to China, and swimming in cut price energy as a result. It may be morally dubious; unwise it ain't.
To badly paraphrase Ben Franklin, India is currently giving up long-term freedoms, in exchange for temporary short-term security.
Listening to the New Statesman podcast on Germany and how it is torn between east and west the most disturbing thing is how amidst all the romantic fascination with Russia there seems to be little mention of the other Slavic peoples. It's as if they don't exist.
The encouraging thing was the sense of a generational divide with younger Germans more in the pro western/Ukraine camp.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
I agree with you.
Was Mary Whitehouse woke before her time?
Yes, bizarrely
The new left is like the old prudish moralising Whitehouse right. Utterly depressing
My arty lefty friends are in despair, apart from the Woke ones who are now mere ideologues. I tend to avoid them
My only major difference with you is that I see as much censorious bollocks on the right as I do on the left. It may look slightly different, but the intolerance and the refusal to engage is the same. It's a tragedy, genuinely, because argument is one of the great human achievements. And one of the vital foundation stones of progress. I blame social media. Almost entirely.
The right is odious in multiple ways. Undeniable. But at least it makes a vague, often feeble attempt to support free speech. I can’t remember the last time the right tried to cancel a comedy show at the Fringe or similar venues. Probably the Mary Whitehouse era, actually
The BBC is ta frequent target of the right's fury. It makes a decision and then reverses it in the face of relentless attacks from the right-wing commentariat - see furores over the Last Night of the Proms, for example. Then there's the government itself making peaceful protest a criminal offence. And look at how Liz Truss reacted to protestors at a recent hustings.
I think freedom is under threat from all corners. It is terrifying.
Hmm. Different points, I think
I’m not sure the right’s alleged assault on peaceful protest is all you claim. And the defence of the LNO the Proms is simply that, a defence, they DON’T want it cancelled. The censorious in the UK comes from the left, now, no question.
However the library book bans in the USA by republicans tell me that this can be two ways and that this will end with both sides trying to destroy the favoured culture of the other, and it is likely this will reach the UK
O/T Our neighbour's son-in-law help run his parents big arable farm in Dorset: They have just finished their largest grain harvest ever. So much crop that have had to temporarily store some on the ground in the farmyard while they wait for grain lorries to come and collect it. No drying costs either.
Somebody's having a good year.
Well,that's good news, but there will be losers elsewhere, particularly vegetable farmers:
Sure. I was surprised tbh. I thought the lack of water would have affected grain size and thus overall yield.
There was enough rain earlier in the summer, and we’ve now had perfect ripening and harvesting conditions for weeks. I’m not surprised by a good grain harvest. Other crops may be more challenging.
Stories starting to come into the papers of apples and veg being 1/2 normal crop.
Food inflation is gonna hit Truss as much as energy this winter.
I have several trees loaded with plums, but the dry heat has made them rather tasteless. I gave the roots a bit of a soaking to see if that plumps them up.
Apples and pears appear as if they will be good albeit small.
Listening to the New Statesman podcast on Germany and how it is torn between east and west the most disturbing thing is how amidst all the romantic fascination with Russia there seems to be little mention of the other Slavic peoples. It's as if they don't exist.
The encouraging thing was the sense of a generational divide with younger Germans more in the pro western/Ukraine camp.
Younger Germans feel almost no guilt about the war, and are much more clear eyed. In my experience. A good thing
What a cretin Alex Salmond is, he wants a Lord Advocate in the mould of Suella Braverman, positively Trumpian politics.
Nicola Sturgeon has come in for more criticism from her predecessor and one-time mentor Alex Salmond, who branded her government’s approach to achieving independence “absurd”.
The former Scottish National Party leader, who won UK government consent for the 2014 independence referendum, criticised the lord advocate, Dorothy Bain, for failing to support Sturgeon’s position on the legality of holding a referendum without Westminster’s support.
Instead, the matter has been referred to the Supreme Court, where Salmond said the Scottish government expected to be defeated.
“For goodness’ sake, don’t go into a court where you expect to lose as some sort of ‘nifty’ political ‘strategy’, just because you didn’t have the sense to ask the lord advocate before you appointed her what was her opinion,” Salmond said at an Alba party event in Edinburgh.
He added that, when he was in office, he expected lord advocates to support the government’s position. “If somebody felt that their conscience or their difficulties or their professional reputation were such that they couldn’t make a convincing argument to any court or, much more importantly, take a bill through the Scottish parliament, then they wouldn’t have been lord advocate.”
Mr. Sandpit, good job Germany didn't do something really stupid like close a load of nuclear reactors because of something that happened in Japan due to an earthquake and tsunami, right?
The question is: was Merkel acting in the Russian interest, or just genuinely stupid when she made that call?
And now they're hooked on Russian gas.
To be fair, the West generally has made some bad calls (including with China) but this was especially foolish and unnecessary.
Wonderful thing, hindsight.
This however, was foresight. One could have predicted that cosying up to Putin was unwise.
India and China are currently cosying up to China, and swimming in cut price energy as a result. It may be morally dubious; unwise it ain't.
Whether China and India have any security of supply when the Russian energy sector starts breaking and can't be repaired without Western kit is another matter. Another view is that they are just raping Russia short term because they can.
O/T Our neighbour's son-in-law help run his parents big arable farm in Dorset: They have just finished their largest grain harvest ever. So much crop that have had to temporarily store some on the ground in the farmyard while they wait for grain lorries to come and collect it. No drying costs either.
Somebody's having a good year.
Well,that's good news, but there will be losers elsewhere, particularly vegetable farmers:
Sure. I was surprised tbh. I thought the lack of water would have affected grain size and thus overall yield.
There was enough rain earlier in the summer, and we’ve now had perfect ripening and harvesting conditions for weeks. I’m not surprised by a good grain harvest. Other crops may be more challenging.
Stories starting to come into the papers of apples and veg being 1/2 normal crop.
Food inflation is gonna hit Truss as much as energy this winter.
I have several trees loaded with plums, but the dry heat has made them rather tasteless. I gave the roots a bit of a soaking to see if that plumps them up.
Apples and pears appear as if they will be good albeit small.
That's my experience. It's an excellent year for home grown tomatoes, however.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
It does rather bring to mind the infamous (and often censored scene) in Fawlty Towers with the Major taking his girlfriend to see India.
When he uses the racial slurs, we're supposed to be laughing at him (and at his brand of casual racism) rather than with him. However using the words is central to the joke.
Without knowing the context of the joke, it's hard to make any judgement call on whether or not it was appropriate. Racist slurs are deplorable, but if they're being used in context to make fun of racists, it's acceptable.
I don't disagree with that. I started the debate by pointing out that a) one should take the Mail's reporting on Sadowitz with a pinch of salt, and b) I don't believe in cancelling stuff.
Having said that, I was merely pointing out that Sunak is of Indian, rather than Pakistani, origin. If you're going to use racial slurs as a weapon in humour, you could at least be accurate. Or maybe that was the joke; I don't know, I wasn't there.
I'm a fan of Sadowitz, but insofar as the term p*ki can ever not be racist, I'd say using it in reference to somone of Indian heritage is unmistakeably so.
One tweeter said he's seen Sadowitz a few times and previously he's heard him use 'pakistani' (dunno in what context). I wonder if like many of the instinctively combatitive JS feels he's got to ramp it up with the dying of the light? That would be sad. Luckily we don't see that sort of thing on PB.
I was amazed he was still going. I’d not heard anything about him since the 90s.
Getting your todger out in the reported (albeit by the tabloids) circumstance probably constitutes a criminal offence. What’s been reported is not like nudity in a play.
O/T Our neighbour's son-in-law help run his parents big arable farm in Dorset: They have just finished their largest grain harvest ever. So much crop that have had to temporarily store some on the ground in the farmyard while they wait for grain lorries to come and collect it. No drying costs either.
Somebody's having a good year.
Well,that's good news, but there will be losers elsewhere, particularly vegetable farmers:
Sure. I was surprised tbh. I thought the lack of water would have affected grain size and thus overall yield.
There was enough rain earlier in the summer, and we’ve now had perfect ripening and harvesting conditions for weeks. I’m not surprised by a good grain harvest. Other crops may be more challenging.
Stories starting to come into the papers of apples and veg being 1/2 normal crop.
Food inflation is gonna hit Truss as much as energy this winter.
I have several trees loaded with plums, but the dry heat has made them rather tasteless. I gave the roots a bit of a soaking to see if that plumps them up.
Apples and pears appear as if they will be good albeit small.
Good crop of blackberries. Small because of the lack of water - but very intense flavour to make up for it.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
I agree with you.
Was Mary Whitehouse woke before her time?
Yes, bizarrely
The new left is like the old prudish moralising Whitehouse right. Utterly depressing
My arty lefty friends are in despair, apart from the Woke ones who are now mere ideologues. I tend to avoid them
My only major difference with you is that I see as much censorious bollocks on the right as I do on the left. It may look slightly different, but the intolerance and the refusal to engage is the same. It's a tragedy, genuinely, because argument is one of the great human achievements. And one of the vital foundation stones of progress. I blame social media. Almost entirely.
The right is odious in multiple ways. Undeniable. But at least it makes a vague, often feeble attempt to support free speech. I can’t remember the last time the right tried to cancel a comedy show at the Fringe or similar venues. Probably the Mary Whitehouse era, actually
The BBC is ta frequent target of the right's fury. It makes a decision and then reverses it in the face of relentless attacks from the right-wing commentariat - see furores over the Last Night of the Proms, for example. Then there's the government itself making peaceful protest a criminal offence. And look at how Liz Truss reacted to protestors at a recent hustings.
I think freedom is under threat from all corners. It is terrifying.
Hmm. Different points, I think
I’m not sure the right’s alleged assault on peaceful protest is all you claim. And the defence of the LNO the Proms is simply that, a defence, they DON’T want it cancelled. The censorious in the UK comes from the left, now, no question.
However the library book bans in the USA by republicans tell me that this can be two ways and that this will end with both sides trying to destroy the favoured culture of the other, and it is likely this will reach the UK
Grim. But you lot started it
In the Fifties and Sixties, calls for censorship usually came from the Right.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
Last Saturday I was at an interesting double bill of plays at the Curve theatre in Leicester marking the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Ugandan Asians in the UK.
The first was set in Uganda, and the developing crisis in one family as they gradually realise that they will be lucky to flee at all, and their comfortable middle class life is gone.
The second was set in Leicester, with much focus on the racism and hardship faced on arrival, from hostile racism to patronising incomprehension in the resettlement camps. The P word was appropriate in that theatrical context.
The plays were interestingly balanced, indeed the motivations of the Ugandan Africans almost sympathetically described.
That sounds like the most tediously depressing, Woke-ishly worthy “double theatrical bill” in history. But fair enough. Some people like that
What gives me comic solace is that you saw it in… Leicester, the most tediously depressing city in Western Europe
I admire your ability to withstand suicide-inducing levels of boredom. Even more, I admire that faculty in your wife
No it was community theatre at its best. There were a lot of older Ugandan Asians in the audience who gasped at the shocking bits, laughed at the comedy bits, and several were in tears at the interval, including the woman next to me who remembered her own time in the camps.
Yes, they were amateurs so the acting at times was clunky, and some of the plotting also a bit implausible, but heartfelt and showed the community in the round, from those successful in business and those who never psychologically recovered from their expulsion.
For a supposed free thinker you really are very narrow minded. Never has the cliche of travel broadening the mind been so wrong.
I said good for you! I was actually applauding your loyalty to regional theatre with earnest double bills about racial integration
Someone has to go to these things and you do. Well done (sincerely).
I was also complimentary about your good lady wife - who is able to withstand two hours of your conversation while only stabbing herself twice in the thigh with a fork to stay awake.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
It does rather bring to mind the infamous (and often censored scene) in Fawlty Towers with the Major taking his girlfriend to see India.
When he uses the racial slurs, we're supposed to be laughing at him (and at his brand of casual racism) rather than with him. However using the words is central to the joke.
Without knowing the context of the joke, it's hard to make any judgement call on whether or not it was appropriate. Racist slurs are deplorable, but if they're being used in context to make fun of racists, it's acceptable.
I don't disagree with that. I started the debate by pointing out that a) one should take the Mail's reporting on Sadowitz with a pinch of salt, and b) I don't believe in cancelling stuff.
Having said that, I was merely pointing out that Sunak is of Indian, rather than Pakistani, origin. If you're going to use racial slurs as a weapon in humour, you could at least be accurate. Or maybe that was the joke; I don't know, I wasn't there.
Yep, agree, that's the problem, without knowing the context you can't judge the joke.
There is a Stewart Lee routine where he describes himself as being of "scotch" heritage in front of a Scottish audience. Using the wrong word to describe his heritage is integral to the routine.
O/T Our neighbour's son-in-law help run his parents big arable farm in Dorset: They have just finished their largest grain harvest ever. So much crop that have had to temporarily store some on the ground in the farmyard while they wait for grain lorries to come and collect it. No drying costs either.
Somebody's having a good year.
Well,that's good news, but there will be losers elsewhere, particularly vegetable farmers:
Sure. I was surprised tbh. I thought the lack of water would have affected grain size and thus overall yield.
There was enough rain earlier in the summer, and we’ve now had perfect ripening and harvesting conditions for weeks. I’m not surprised by a good grain harvest. Other crops may be more challenging.
Stories starting to come into the papers of apples and veg being 1/2 normal crop.
Food inflation is gonna hit Truss as much as energy this winter.
I have several trees loaded with plums, but the dry heat has made them rather tasteless. I gave the roots a bit of a soaking to see if that plumps them up.
Apples and pears appear as if they will be good albeit small.
There is an excellent farm shop locally, which my wife often visits. She brought some juicy plums there last week and some first crop apples. I have to say the apples didn't keep more than a week; those we ate at the end of the week were not of the quality of their contemporaries earlier! Might just have been a variety of course!
Mr. Sandpit, good job Germany didn't do something really stupid like close a load of nuclear reactors because of something that happened in Japan due to an earthquake and tsunami, right?
The question is: was Merkel acting in the Russian interest, or just genuinely stupid when she made that call?
And now they're hooked on Russian gas.
To be fair, the West generally has made some bad calls (including with China) but this was especially foolish and unnecessary.
Wonderful thing, hindsight.
This however, was foresight. One could have predicted that cosying up to Putin was unwise.
India and China are currently cosying up to China, and swimming in cut price energy as a result. It may be morally dubious; unwise it ain't.
It's the long term that matters. People like Putin and the CCP don't give things away without expecting a return. Get dependent on cheap energy on Russia, and then you find your prices will finally go through the roof when you have to take a stand. Borrow money cheaply from China, and in the end, people are storming the Presidential Palace.
That's not how I see the oil situation. India and China are exploiting the current situation to get cheap Russian oil. It's obviously in their interests to do so. Russia is the supplicant. They can always get their oil from elsewhere as it's a global market. Gas is rather different of course.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
Last Saturday I was at an interesting double bill of plays at the Curve theatre in Leicester marking the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Ugandan Asians in the UK.
The first was set in Uganda, and the developing crisis in one family as they gradually realise that they will be lucky to flee at all, and their comfortable middle class life is gone.
The second was set in Leicester, with much focus on the racism and hardship faced on arrival, from hostile racism to patronising incomprehension in the resettlement camps. The P word was appropriate in that theatrical context.
The plays were interestingly balanced, indeed the motivations of the Ugandan Africans almost sympathetically described.
That sounds like the most tediously depressing, Woke-ishly worthy “double theatrical bill” in history. But fair enough. Some people like that
What gives me comic solace is that you saw it in… Leicester, the most tediously depressing city in Western Europe
I admire your ability to withstand suicide-inducing levels of boredom. Even more, I admire that faculty in your wife
No it was community theatre at its best. There were a lot of older Ugandan Asians in the audience who gasped at the shocking bits, laughed at the comedy bits, and several were in tears at the interval, including the woman next to me who remembered her own time in the camps.
Yes, they were amateurs so the acting at times was clunky, and some of the plotting also a bit implausible, but heartfelt and showed the community in the round, from those successful in business and those who never psychologically recovered from their expulsion.
For a supposed free thinker you really are very narrow minded. Never has the cliche of travel broadening the mind been so wrong.
I said good for you! I was actually applauding your loyalty to regional theatre with earnest double bills about racial integration
Someone has to go to these things and you do. Well done (sincerely).
I was also complimentary about your good lady wife - who is able to withstand two hours of your conversation while only stabbing herself twice in the thigh with a fork to stay awake.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
I'm wondering if @MaxPB and @Morris_Dancer etc. still want to see the energy price cap abolished?
I quite like Ed Miliband, but the energy price cap is not looking like one of his better policy ideas.
From a purely political angle, it fails to cap energy prices, but it has the government assume responsibility for their increase. Absolutely mental.
And, to paraphrase Blair, it's not exactly, "tough on high energy prices, tough on the causes of high energy prices," because it does nothing to address why energy prices are increasing.
But how would removing it solve the CoL crisis?
The energy price cap is irrelevant to the cost of living crisis, but it is currently the focus of everyone's attention.
The government should be prioritising investment in energy supply that's not affected by wild swings in commodity prices (wind, tidal, nuclear), and providing financial support for those who are unable to absorb the current high prices (increase UC). It could also reform the pricing model for energy by abolishing the standing charge, so that heavy users of energy were not subsidised by light users of energy.
The price cap is neither here nor there.
??? Wait until the price cap reaches £5k, then you'll see a real CoL crisis. You ain't seen nothing yet.
This is precisely the problem with the price cap. It's not the increase in the price cap that is the cause of the crisis. It's the increase in the international market price of gas due to a supply shock that is the cause of the crisis.
You need to tackle the problem at source, at supply. You can't fix the problem by fixing the price. The track record of that approach is that it leads to absolute shortages and interruptions to supply.
Paying a very high price for energy is not good. Nor is paying more tax so that government can give more money to the poorest to help them survive the price increases. But having interruptions to the gas and electric supply so that I can't cook dinner, or stop the food in my freezer from spoiling, at any price will be a hell of a lot worse.
Good points. The regrettably popular price cap idea is bad economics. If Truss gets in I'm encouraged that she listens to the likes of the IEA and Patrick Minford who are sound on the issue.
Genuine question, as far as I understand it the UK's increase is by far the highest in Europe, do other countries not have a cap? A lower cap? Why is our increase so high?
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
It does rather bring to mind the infamous (and often censored scene) in Fawlty Towers with the Major taking his girlfriend to see India.
When he uses the racial slurs, we're supposed to be laughing at him (and at his brand of casual racism) rather than with him. However using the words is central to the joke.
Without knowing the context of the joke, it's hard to make any judgement call on whether or not it was appropriate. Racist slurs are deplorable, but if they're being used in context to make fun of racists, it's acceptable.
I don't disagree with that. I started the debate by pointing out that a) one should take the Mail's reporting on Sadowitz with a pinch of salt, and b) I don't believe in cancelling stuff.
Having said that, I was merely pointing out that Sunak is of Indian, rather than Pakistani, origin. If you're going to use racial slurs as a weapon in humour, you could at least be accurate. Or maybe that was the joke; I don't know, I wasn't there.
Yep, agree, that's the problem, without knowing the context you can't judge the joke.
There is a Stewart Lee routine where he describes himself as being of "scotch" heritage in front of a Scottish audience. Using the wrong word to describe his heritage is integral to the routine.
Does the fact that the theatre cancelled the show not suggest that the penile exposure and racism was not appropriately bound by theatrical context?
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
I agree with you.
Was Mary Whitehouse woke before her time?
Yes, bizarrely
The new left is like the old prudish moralising Whitehouse right. Utterly depressing
My arty lefty friends are in despair, apart from the Woke ones who are now mere ideologues. I tend to avoid them
My only major difference with you is that I see as much censorious bollocks on the right as I do on the left. It may look slightly different, but the intolerance and the refusal to engage is the same. It's a tragedy, genuinely, because argument is one of the great human achievements. And one of the vital foundation stones of progress. I blame social media. Almost entirely.
The right is odious in multiple ways. Undeniable. But at least it makes a vague, often feeble attempt to support free speech. I can’t remember the last time the right tried to cancel a comedy show at the Fringe or similar venues. Probably the Mary Whitehouse era, actually
The BBC is ta frequent target of the right's fury. It makes a decision and then reverses it in the face of relentless attacks from the right-wing commentariat - see furores over the Last Night of the Proms, for example. Then there's the government itself making peaceful protest a criminal offence. And look at how Liz Truss reacted to protestors at a recent hustings.
I think freedom is under threat from all corners. It is terrifying.
Hmm. Different points, I think
I’m not sure the right’s alleged assault on peaceful protest is all you claim. And the defence of the LNO the Proms is simply that, a defence, they DON’T want it cancelled. The censorious in the UK comes from the left, now, no question.
However the library book bans in the USA by republicans tell me that this can be two ways and that this will end with both sides trying to destroy the favoured culture of the other, and it is likely this will reach the UK
Grim. But you lot started it
Your childlike simplicity in dividing the world into “Lefties” and the Right is endearing. You clearly have very little in common with the “ban this filth” Tory voter of Daily Mail-on-the-Wold that reveres Mary Whitehouse (of blessed memory) and which type, undoubtedly “started it” many years before you’d even heard the term “woke”. Yet you adopt them as being your “lot”.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
I let this pass, but in fact, NO
Because: what actually is wrong with a bit of willy waving and racism? How have we become so pitifully anxious that this unnerves us?
It’s a penis. It’s part of the human anatomy. Unless Jerry Sadowitz is forcing it down your throat, it is utterly harmless. Indeed a detumescent penis is a forlorn and unthreatening thing, like the buttock of a pensioner. Was someone really so scandalised by it they fainted and complained?
As for calling the chancellor a p*ki, that’s rude and probably racist BUT IT’S JUST A WORD. he’s a billionaire chancellor. He can probably cope. My god
More to the point, this is the Fringe. It’s meant to be fringey and edgy, but that’s all gone, so now it will become another sanitised woke-fest and comics will self censor and the grey illiberal lefties win again
It’s dreadful. The whole woke moralising shit is dreadful. We are censoring ourselves to cultural oblivion. We are like the prim victorians but without the empire, the confidence and the amazing engineering. We are just prim, and dull
I agree with you.
Was Mary Whitehouse woke before her time?
Yes, bizarrely
The new left is like the old prudish moralising Whitehouse right. Utterly depressing
My arty lefty friends are in despair, apart from the Woke ones who are now mere ideologues. I tend to avoid them
My only major difference with you is that I see as much censorious bollocks on the right as I do on the left. It may look slightly different, but the intolerance and the refusal to engage is the same. It's a tragedy, genuinely, because argument is one of the great human achievements. And one of the vital foundation stones of progress. I blame social media. Almost entirely.
The right is odious in multiple ways. Undeniable. But at least it makes a vague, often feeble attempt to support free speech. I can’t remember the last time the right tried to cancel a comedy show at the Fringe or similar venues. Probably the Mary Whitehouse era, actually
The BBC is ta frequent target of the right's fury. It makes a decision and then reverses it in the face of relentless attacks from the right-wing commentariat - see furores over the Last Night of the Proms, for example. Then there's the government itself making peaceful protest a criminal offence. And look at how Liz Truss reacted to protestors at a recent hustings.
I think freedom is under threat from all corners. It is terrifying.
Hmm. Different points, I think
I’m not sure the right’s alleged assault on peaceful protest is all you claim. And the defence of the LNO the Proms is simply that, a defence, they DON’T want it cancelled. The censorious in the UK comes from the left, now, no question.
However the library book bans in the USA by republicans tell me that this can be two ways and that this will end with both sides trying to destroy the favoured culture of the other, and it is likely this will reach the UK
Grim. But you lot started it
What absolute rot. Whatever the left is doing now it didn’t invent the concept of censoring public expression in the name of morality. I suggest you look at the enthusiastic public indecency prosecutions under various Tory Home Secretaries in the 50s. Or the private prosecution of The Well of Loneliness earlier in the century. Historically the right is far more sinned against than sinning in terms of censorship of free expression. I’m very opposed to censorship in any form but the howls of victimisation from the right is rank hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
Last Saturday I was at an interesting double bill of plays at the Curve theatre in Leicester marking the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Ugandan Asians in the UK.
The first was set in Uganda, and the developing crisis in one family as they gradually realise that they will be lucky to flee at all, and their comfortable middle class life is gone.
The second was set in Leicester, with much focus on the racism and hardship faced on arrival, from hostile racism to patronising incomprehension in the resettlement camps. The P word was appropriate in that theatrical context.
The plays were interestingly balanced, indeed the motivations of the Ugandan Africans almost sympathetically described.
That sounds like the most tediously depressing, Woke-ishly worthy “double theatrical bill” in history. But fair enough. Some people like that
What gives me comic solace is that you saw it in… Leicester, the most tediously depressing city in Western Europe
I admire your ability to withstand suicide-inducing levels of boredom. Even more, I admire that faculty in your wife
No it was community theatre at its best. There were a lot of older Ugandan Asians in the audience who gasped at the shocking bits, laughed at the comedy bits, and several were in tears at the interval, including the woman next to me who remembered her own time in the camps.
Yes, they were amateurs so the acting at times was clunky, and some of the plotting also a bit implausible, but heartfelt and showed the community in the round, from those successful in business and those who never psychologically recovered from their expulsion.
For a supposed free thinker you really are very narrow minded. Never has the cliche of travel broadening the mind been so wrong.
I said good for you! I was actually applauding your loyalty to regional theatre with earnest double bills about racial integration
Someone has to go to these things and you do. Well done (sincerely).
I was also complimentary about your good lady wife - who is able to withstand two hours of your conversation while only stabbing herself twice in the thigh with a fork to stay awake.
Our 33rd anniversary shortly, so yes a bit of toleration and respect for each others interests and views is a large part of the reason we have had such a successful marriage.
Oh, stop being disarmingly civil and polite
I thought we were having an amusing punch up
If you are in a happy marriage then that’s fantastic. I am partly envious. I often wonder if I could have had that, long term. But I’m just not domesticated. I’m absolutely feral. A mangy Tom cat. I had a brilliantly happy marriage but it was wild and hedonistic and she was 30 years younger and so it had to end.
And now I’m free again and I wander the world. As I wish. Which is great - but very different to domestic bliss. Enjoy!
Interesting nugget on the Opinium polling from Peston - “support for Truss mostly comes from the older end of the Tory party, as she has a 40 point lead among those aged over 65. Among the under 50s, she is 8 points behind Sunak”.
More even than her predecessors Truss will have to be laser-like in looking after the interests of the Tories' elderly client vote.
It that due to policy differences, or just reflecting different generations attitudes towards race?
Look at those age bands, and consider Liz Truss is (to an extent) cos-playing Mrs Thatcher, who left office in 1990, 32 years ago.
Over 65s (who favour Truss) were adults during Mrs Thatcher's hegemony. Under 50s (who favour Sunak) have no adult memory of Thatcher in office. Those in between would have been young adults (club 18-30) in the Thatcher years, more likely hit by cuts and unemployment. If you don't remember Mrs T, you are perhaps oblivious to Truss's echoes.
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
It does rather bring to mind the infamous (and often censored scene) in Fawlty Towers with the Major taking his girlfriend to see India.
When he uses the racial slurs, we're supposed to be laughing at him (and at his brand of casual racism) rather than with him. However using the words is central to the joke.
Without knowing the context of the joke, it's hard to make any judgement call on whether or not it was appropriate. Racist slurs are deplorable, but if they're being used in context to make fun of racists, it's acceptable.
I don't disagree with that. I started the debate by pointing out that a) one should take the Mail's reporting on Sadowitz with a pinch of salt, and b) I don't believe in cancelling stuff.
Having said that, I was merely pointing out that Sunak is of Indian, rather than Pakistani, origin. If you're going to use racial slurs as a weapon in humour, you could at least be accurate. Or maybe that was the joke; I don't know, I wasn't there.
Yep, agree, that's the problem, without knowing the context you can't judge the joke.
There is a Stewart Lee routine where he describes himself as being of "scotch" heritage in front of a Scottish audience. Using the wrong word to describe his heritage is integral to the routine.
Does the fact that the theatre cancelled the show not suggest that the penile exposure and racism was not appropriately bound by theatrical context?
The problem isn't the Tory party, its the voters. People want contradictory things but refuse to accept there is a contradiction. A series of events have empowered them to believe their genuine ignorance on a subject holds the same weight as actual knowledge and experience. They aren't wrong, the experts are wrong.
There is a way through though - find us a new Blair or Thatcher, someone who does know what they are talking about and has political umph. People said "that is Boris" but as all but the remaining holdouts now accept Boris stood for nothing, with no great policies delivered and settled in his time.
Ummm, BoZo was the politician more than any other in my lifetime that told voters they could have contradictory things. Denied the contradictions. That experts were to be derided.
He was the problem
The fact his opponents failed to make their case shows how poor they were
Not entirely.
If you are in a debate with someone shameless and dishonest enough, it can be really hard to persuade an audience.
It tends to go this;
BORIS-ALIKE Something involving cake and eat it
RORY-ALIKE (because he at least tried) That's not possible- once you have eaten your cake, it's gone...
BORIS-ALIKE There you go, with your doomy gloomy negativity. Remember we are Great Britain! We are being held back by your fears... (Continues ad nauseum.)
Boris style cakeism is a really attractive prospectus. It's awfully hard to argue against, because deep down we want it to be true, and want to believe that there's some meanie stopping it being true for us. That's been the case since the apple/snake/Eve fiasco in Genesis.
It would have been better for the UK had someone successfully argued us out of Borisism, but I'm not convinced that was possible.
It would have been better for the Conservatives and the UK to have not fallen for Borisism, but that required human nature to be something it isn't.
The culpability for (gestures round) all of this belongs with the clique who proposed it, who lied to the public about it, who smeared and deposed those who questioned it.
Not particularly with those who fell for it, and certainly not with those who did their best to argue against it.
Unless you had a better plan to argue against Boris, in which case I'm all ears.
And unless he didn't vote for the Conservatives when Mr Johnson was their leader.
I want to make this clear
I supported Johnson on brexit, covid and Ukraine but he lost me from Paterson onwards
Starmer would have had our economy in lockdown forever if he could, and it is to Johnson's credit he opened the economy when he did
That's a very silly thing to write. Starmer wanted us "in lockdown forever"?
Profoundly stupid read of the situation that isn't worthy of yours usual sage analysis.
Forever is a stretch, but Starmer was ALWAYS on the side of more and longer restrictions.
I accept forever was one of my rather exaggerated comments but there is no doubt Starmer favoured a much stricter and longer lockdown and it was Johnson who made the correct decision and it has been proven as the right thing to do
It is rather hot and I apologise for my exaggeration
Boris caused longer lockdowns by always being slow to initiate a lockdown. Had we acted promptly, we would have better controlled infection rates and could’ve come out of lockdown sooner. It’s yet more short term thinking.
Oh what nonsense. Claimed by people who want to justify lockdowns. Taking away civil liberties as a precautionary measure is unacceptable and the virus would still be prevalent on our continent after any lockdown it wasn't a magic pill that would get rid of it.
What country in Europe successfully had a short, sharp lockdown that was rapidly ended and not repeated?
I can in hindsight point at a country and say we should have done that, Sweden. Can you name any country that had a rapid premature lockdown that worked, fixed things and meant coming out of lockdown sooner?
Following the Swedish model would have been utterly catastrophic. Look at their death rates compared to their immediate neighbours. Thousands of additional people died in Sweden who did not need to because of the route they chose. And that is in spite of the fact that far more people in Sweden work from home anyway so the effects of a lockdown would have been considerably less on their economy.
Many - if not all - European countries got their policies wrong in the pandemic in one way or another. Sweden is certainly no exception.
Thousands extra dying, almost all of whom would have died soon anyway, is better than stripping tens of millions of two years of civil liberties, trashing education and development for years that will have consequences for generations to come, spending hundreds of billions and creating NHS waiting lists for years to come.
The price we paid to keep people alive was not a price worth paying. There's more to life than a mortuary league table.
If the vulnerable wishes to shield that should be there prerogative but not at the price of trashing children's education etc
Bolded: incorrect, and pointed out to you repeatedly before.
Half of those in ICUs were under 60. A quarter were under 50.
Using averages of deaths is as irrelevant as using the average age of people locked down (which was over 40, so why are we worrying about childrens education when none of them are anywhere near 40. Which would be an absurd argument, but is just as true).
Over 13,000 children lost a parent to covid. Under your plan, that number would be several times higher. And we'd still have had a large (if not larger) economic impact.
In ICU doesn't mean dead.
Some extra casualties is still better than the alternative. Life is for living, even if some people die, we all die eventually.
Shutting down life in fear of death was not a price worth paying. Simply saying "more would die" isn't an argument winner against someone saying death is acceptable.
People go to ICU when there's a very significant chance that they could die without the assistance. Should there be no more capacity in ICU, no-one else could go to ICU. Those who would have survived with ICU assistance would therefore be dead.
Even "lesser" hospitalisation would see far more dead without hospital assistance. It's a key reason we have hospitals and healthcare in the first place.
Both ICUs and hospitals were maxed out and beyond maxed out. It was the hospital loadings and ICU loadings that governed the call for lockdowns.
Yes, it's true that everyone dies. We do consider it civilized to minimize avoidable deaths. We could close the deficit and cut taxes hugely at a stroke by abolishing all healthcare spending and pension spending, for example, on the grounds that yes, loads of people would die due to lack of healthcare and/or starve to death in old age, but hey - people die, right?
That is, to me, an absurd case to make, but not far off of your argument.
You're right its not far off the argument and make it less ridiculous and its not unreasonable either.
A budget should be available to the NHS for healthcare and the best available treatment based upon what is affordable - the NHS should not have a blank cheque.
If the NHS not having a blank cheque means more die and fewer receive pensions, then so be it. We can't afford to keep everyone alive forever, nor should we.
The NHS has never had a blank cheque and is never going to, so why this straw man argument?
Because Andy made the extreme argument of abolishing the budget entirely, so I retorted with the opposite extreme.
So is it fair to say we both agree that a budget is acceptable and we both agree that it is acceptable for avoidable deaths to occur if they're not viably avoidable within the budget.
Well if so, I consider the lockdown an unacceptable price to pay and if that means extra deaths then so be it, that's the price you pay for not having a blank cheque.
When it comes to what the NHS should spend money on, we have agreed cut-offs used by NICE in terms of £ per quality-adjusted life year gained. Have you or anyone else tried to systematise this argument you are making in terms of what was gained by lockdown in terms of QALYs saved and what it cost, turning all the costs of lockdown into a monetary equivalent amount?
Or are you just saying that lockdown was so awful that no number of QALYs saved would ever justify it?
The former would be interesting to read. The latter seems somewhat absolutist. Your insistence that lockdown should never be done again in any circumstance seems to either assign too much cost to lockdown or to suggest a lack of epidemiological imagination in terms of future pandemics.
I would absolutely love to see a QALY-style calculation, with the cost of lockdowns economically combined with as you suggest a monetary equivalent amount for the loss of liberty and disruption to education. I would assign a very high monetary equivalent 'cost' for education, liberty etc to be curtailed.
This is not my area of expertise but I fully expect that such a QALY calculation would categorically show that lockdown was not remotely "worth" it by pre-existing standards.
Comparing what happened with the range of what might have happened without lockdowns could be done in terms of QALYs without any reference to money, bearing in mind that being locked down reduces the quality of life measurably similarly to how it can be reduced due to physical weakness etc. - at least for most people. Personally I still ran 5km every day outside which was lawful throughout.
Compared with a lingering death through debilitating illness and chronic pain, not being allowed to sit on a park bench for a couple of months during lockdown is of nothing. Check your privilege, as the Wokeists say. Remember David Cameron's remark, after Ivan's death, that he did not know if his son had ever been happy for a single day.
I take your point, @DecrepiterJohnL . I am not complaining about my own experience. And there is something brutal about the whole idea of society-wide QALY calculations. But a calculation can nonetheless be done, and the effects of lockdown for some people included not just a decrease in their QOL by 0.001% for a few months but a deterioration in their health such as to lop an appreciable amount of time off their life expectancy, e.g. as a result of depression. So if Britain's per capita QALY score in 2020 was say 50.0y (??), one could make a few assumptions and say that lockdown "in itself" reduced it by say 0.20y (??), and that had lockdown not been imposed then that 0.20y drop would not have occurred but an estimated drop of ???y +/- ###y would have occurred because of the trouble that would have been caused by a greater spread of SARSCoV2, and it would be interesting to know if ??? was smaller than or greater than 0.20. Someone should do that calculation, and there is no need to bring money into it.
Fun* message from our neighbour. There is a plot of land for sale at the back of her property - we all have shared access which is in our respective title deeds.
Cue potential buyer taking pictures saying "I would buy the lane and bar access, you can park on the road".
Have emailed the estate agent to remind them that (a) there is legal shared access and (b) having raised this fact to them they have a responsibility not to misrepresent this fact to potential clients...
Meanwhile, if the Mail is correct (I know, I know), Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh show attracted complaints because he got his penis out on stage, and engaged in racial slurs about Sunak. So it was cancelled. Honestly, these snowflakes. What's wrong with a bit of willy-waving and racism, eh?
He’s Jerry Sadowitz. As with Frankie Boyle, if you’re buying a ticket with his name on it, you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
I'm not in favour of cancelling. But again, if the Mail is accurate:
He called Rishi Sunak a 'p***'; said the economy was awful because it is run by 'blacks and women'. He got his penis out to a woman in the front row.'
He's treading a fine line, surely?
Forgive my nervousness at believing tabloid reports of controversial comedy club acts, devoid of the context and nuance that would have been present at the venue for the live audience.
Just wondering what context you imagine calling Sunak a "Paki" is appropriate.
Or indeed accurate.
It does rather bring to mind the infamous (and often censored scene) in Fawlty Towers with the Major taking his girlfriend to see India.
When he uses the racial slurs, we're supposed to be laughing at him (and at his brand of casual racism) rather than with him. However using the words is central to the joke.
Without knowing the context of the joke, it's hard to make any judgement call on whether or not it was appropriate. Racist slurs are deplorable, but if they're being used in context to make fun of racists, it's acceptable.
I don't disagree with that. I started the debate by pointing out that a) one should take the Mail's reporting on Sadowitz with a pinch of salt, and b) I don't believe in cancelling stuff.
Having said that, I was merely pointing out that Sunak is of Indian, rather than Pakistani, origin. If you're going to use racial slurs as a weapon in humour, you could at least be accurate. Or maybe that was the joke; I don't know, I wasn't there.
Yep, agree, that's the problem, without knowing the context you can't judge the joke.
There is a Stewart Lee routine where he describes himself as being of "scotch" heritage in front of a Scottish audience. Using the wrong word to describe his heritage is integral to the routine.
Does the fact that the theatre cancelled the show not suggest that the penile exposure and racism was not appropriately bound by theatrical context?
Probably. Perhaps even likely. And I'm certainly not rushing to the defence of a penis-flashing racist.
But there is a big gulf between "suggest" and "prove". Given the broader context of comedians being cancelled by people wilfully misinterpreting them based on a partial reading of the joke, I'd want to understand the specifics of the joke in the context of the routine before making a judgement.
- “… there’s no floor to the government’s unpopularity.“
I think this is correct. While unlikely, I do think that a Canada-scenario is feasible.
I note that Martin Baxter’s “Low Seats” prediction for the Tories is currently 102. As the shit hits the fan that number could fall.
This video of a Bury North focus group posted by @rottenborough on the previous thread is essential viewing for Conservatives. These are their 2019 voters. They are in pain. Deep pain. One hates to think what they are going to say in 12 months time.
The final piece in the Canada jigsaw would be Farage chipping away at Conservative support on the right.
Up to now, he has pulled his pinches when it counts. But...
Like all opportunists, he recognises an opportunity when he sees one.
One heck of an opportunity is about to be presented on a plate to the far-right. Farage’s latest vehicle is in by far the best position to mop up that type of voter.
I finally got round to reading that Spectator article Mike recommended yesterday. Jeepers creepers! You don’t usually see that kind of stuff in the Spectator! Pulls no punches. This is a party that is ripe for shedding voters left, centre… and right.
In those final fateful moments, you can observe highly intelligent, highly trained professionals making error after error, gradually dooming them and their passengers. Despite the ringing alarms of the onboard systems, they lose sight of what they are doing or how to avoid the impending doom. They pull the joystick instead of releasing it, they shut down the working engine instead of the failing one, or sometimes the two pilots pull in different directions, cancelling each other out. Eventually, they hit the Point of No Return and, shortly after, the ground.
Pity that Labour, SNP etc are equally devoid of answers though.
Starmer's stance on the energy price cap is good though.
I will just point out here I have been saying for months that it needs to be frozen.
The irony is that the cap was brought in for different reasons and was wrong in a free market. Now it could be be very useful to protect the poor from devastating price rises and the government dithers. If they are going to do it though retail power suppliers need protecting from bankruptcy. Ideally by a windfall tax on the producers of power.
In due course (once normalised) this all needs scraping though. These are exceptional circumstances. In normal times the market should not be interfered with by caps and windfall taxes.
The absolute irony is that the cap was brought in to protect the vulnerable from the 'free market'.
Smartarses like me (and I suspect most of us on PB) were getting fixed deals at 9p a kWh at the expense of those without the means or wherewithal to seek out best deals.
Now it can (and, I confidently predict, will) be used to protect the country from civil unrest and/or catastrophic economic chaos. TINA.
I agree, but it is a case of where do you draw the line re interfering with the market. In the current circumstance we should for precisely the reasons you give in your last sentence/para and also to protect those without the means or wherewithal from being put into absolutely disastrous situations.
However in normal times it shouldn't exist. Where do you draw the line? Carrots? Fix all supermarket prices? Putting price caps on products completely messes up commerce. It was for this reason so many suppliers went under leaving just the big boys who can then dominate the market. People benefit more from active honest competition.
Those who struggle to pay their bills should (in normal circumstances) be protected by other means.
However current circumstance are extreme and the price cap does seem the obvious way to protect the public, as long as the retail suppliers are protected from being made bankrupt by the cap.
We have a general election in exactly 4 weeks time. I haven’t got the faintest scoobie who to vote for. I don’t even know which bloc to vote for. Ditto the council and regional elections on the same day.
We’ve got eight parliamentary parties, and I could seriously consider voting for six of them.
"In just over three weeks’ time, there will be a new government" - Simon Clarke, MP, Telegraph.
Nice try Clarke, but no it will not be a new government. It is the same tired, clapped out, corrupted government as was elected in 2019.
Unfortunately enough people believe this . It’s why Tory MPs can trash previous polices that they voted for and pretend they were done by another party . This is the Truss playbook .
"In just over three weeks’ time, there will be a new government" - Simon Clarke, MP, Telegraph.
Nice try Clarke, but no it will not be a new government. It is the same tired, clapped out, corrupted government as was elected in 2019.
Unfortunately enough people believe this . It’s why Tory MPs can trash previous polices that they voted for and pretend they were done by another party . This is the Truss playbook .
Clarke probably believes this. Thick as mince that giant boy.
We have a general election in exactly 4 weeks time. I haven’t got the faintest scoobie who to vote for. I don’t even know which bloc to vote for. Ditto the council and regional elections on the same day.
We’ve got eight parliamentary parties, and I could seriously consider voting for six of them.
Looks like Welsh Labour and the Scottish National Party are lucky. Both don’t have to face the electorate again for 4 years, thereby missing the worst of the crisis (hopefully).
The Tories on the other hand have run out of road.
Interesting nugget on the Opinium polling from Peston - “support for Truss mostly comes from the older end of the Tory party, as she has a 40 point lead among those aged over 65. Among the under 50s, she is 8 points behind Sunak”.
More even than her predecessors Truss will have to be laser-like in looking after the interests of the Tories' elderly client vote.
It that due to policy differences, or just reflecting different generations attitudes towards race?
Look at those age bands, and consider Liz Truss is (to an extent) cos-playing Mrs Thatcher, who left office in 1990, 32 years ago.
Over 65s (who favour Truss) were adults during Mrs Thatcher's hegemony. Under 50s (who favour Sunak) have no adult memory of Thatcher in office. Those in between would have been young adults (club 18-30) in the Thatcher years, more likely hit by cuts and unemployment. If you don't remember Mrs T, you are perhaps oblivious to Truss's echoes.
Truss' 'cos-play' looks to me like the tribute act of someone who remembers the myth not the person and I'd expect those who lived through the 80s to see its inauthenticity rather than go wow that's brilliant.
Comments
As Ammianus Marcellinus pointed out in the 4th century, in a rare criticism of Julian the Apostate, they're known to cause shortages and even famine.
If you set a rate that a business cannot afford the business will end. A high cap just means people are charged what they would be anyway or, possibly, more as the ceiling turns into a floor.
When prices are artificially heightened by taxes on energy the government can easily reduce the prices paid by consumers by suspending or ending the green levy and suchlike.
Anyway, I must be off. Play nicely, and stay cool.
Labour are also not in the same problematic position as the Conservatives. Although they don’t know what they want, they do know what they don’t want. Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them. Starmer clearly intends on doing bugger all before polling day. It just might be a winning strategy. After the Oaf post cognitive dissonance, a PM who does bugger all might be a refreshing change.
Your failure to mention the Lib Dems duly noted 😉
"The Liberal Democrat plan is to cancel the 70% increase in the energy price cap expected to be announced by Ofgem later this month. The Government would instead pay the shortfall to energy suppliers so that they can afford to supply customers at the current rates."
https://www.libdems.org.uk/scrap-energy-price-hike
We will see tomorrow.
He’s hoping no one will spot that little detail.
The new left is like the old prudish moralising Whitehouse right. Utterly depressing
My arty lefty friends are in despair, apart from the Woke ones who are now mere ideologues. I tend to avoid them
In due course (once normalised) this all needs scraping though. These are exceptional circumstances. In normal times the market should not be interfered with by caps and windfall taxes.
The Covid response did show that there was more flexibility in the government balance sheet than I and, I think, most others had appreciated but it was like fighting a sharp war over 2 years. We can afford to pay it off over a decade or more although much of current inflation is being driven by that borrowing, QE and increase in the money supply. But we simply do not know how long this is going to last and I, for one, am pessimistic.
The government should be prioritising investment in energy supply that's not affected by wild swings in commodity prices (wind, tidal, nuclear), and providing financial support for those who are unable to absorb the current high prices (increase UC). It could also reform the pricing model for energy by abolishing the standing charge, so that heavy users of energy were not subsidised by light users of energy.
The price cap is neither here nor there.
A stagnant economy, an ageing population, crumbling public services and the highest rate of tax take since post war austerity is a situation with no simple answers, or electorally appealing ones.
Labour will then have to deal with the deficit and inflation in government
Look at the recent controversy over Jimmy Carr, where writing out 10 seconds of a five-minute ‘bit’, served only to change the context completely.
When fascism comes to England again, it will be wearing a suit and carrying a flag.
Betfair next prime minister
1.08 Liz Truss 93%
12 Rishi Sunak 8%
Next Conservative leader
1.08 Liz Truss 93%
12 Rishi Sunak 8%
The core teachings of Christ clearly passed you by.
You are a “Christian” in the same way as you are a “Conservative”: it is all just a game.
The precipitation type forecast is also useful - it's forecasting some hail in the thunderstorms over Ireland tonight, but none elsewhere at the moment. Will be interesting to be able to look at that through the winter.
Dull, dull, dull.
Hmmm, how do we square that circle? I've got it, workhouses!
The first was set in Uganda, and the developing crisis in one family as they gradually realise that they will be lucky to flee at all, and their comfortable middle class life is gone.
The second was set in Leicester, with much focus on the racism and hardship faced on arrival, from hostile racism to patronising incomprehension in the resettlement camps. The P word was appropriate in that theatrical context.
The plays were interestingly balanced, indeed the motivations of the Ugandan Africans almost sympathetically described.
One way or another that's going to need to happen. The current government is just putting its head in the sand.
When he uses the racial slurs, we're supposed to be laughing at him (and at his brand of casual racism) rather than with him. However using the words is central to the joke.
Without knowing the context of the joke, it's hard to make any judgement call on whether or not it was appropriate. Racist slurs are deplorable, but if they're being used in context to make fun of racists, it's acceptable.
I go from interstellar visitors to English sparkling wine to the advent of True AI in about 3 seconds
Gee, I wonder which one of us could make a living as a wide ranging writer, should we ever take that career path
The absolute irony is that the cap was brought in to protect the vulnerable from the 'free market'.
Smartarses like me (and I suspect most of us on PB) were getting fixed deals at 9p a kWh at the expense of those without the means or wherewithal to seek out best deals.
Now it can (and, I confidently predict, will) be used to protect the country from civil unrest and/or catastrophic economic chaos. TINA.
But a policy that has governments protect the populace (albeit with a very large slice of their own money) is contrary to such priorities. Energy security will also cost money, at least initially and we are already borrowing excessive amounts which is driving inflation. We need to help the vulnerable of course but the rest of us need to tighten their belts, reprioritise our spending and cope with the current scenario whilst urging our government to get on with reducing our dependency.
??? Wait until the price cap reaches £5k, then you'll see a real CoL crisis. You ain't seen nothing yet.
Mate.
in reality popular with genuine right wing racists and misogynist who miss the point.
Sadowitz can say what he likes, but no one is obliged to either give him a stage or to tolerate him without complaint.
Having said that, I was merely pointing out that Sunak is of Indian, rather than Pakistani, origin. If you're going to use racial slurs as a weapon in humour, you could at least be accurate. Or maybe that was the joke; I don't know, I wasn't there.
What gives me comic solace is that you saw it in… Leicester, the most tediously depressing city in Western Europe
I admire your ability to withstand suicide-inducing levels of boredom. Even more, I admire that faculty in your wife
You need to tackle the problem at source, at supply. You can't fix the problem by fixing the price. The track record of that approach is that it leads to absolute shortages and interruptions to supply.
Paying a very high price for energy is not good. Nor is paying more tax so that government can give more money to the poorest to help them survive the price increases. But having interruptions to the gas and electric supply so that I can't cook dinner, or stop the food in my freezer from spoiling, at any price will be a hell of a lot worse.
I think freedom is under threat from all corners. It is terrifying.
Food inflation is gonna hit Truss as much as energy this winter.
Yes, they were amateurs so the acting at times was clunky, and some of the plotting also a bit implausible, but heartfelt and showed the community in the round, from those successful in business and those who never psychologically recovered from their expulsion.
For a supposed free thinker you really are very narrow minded. Never has the cliche of travel broadening the mind been so wrong.
One tweeter said he's seen Sadowitz a few times and previously he's heard him use 'pakistani' (dunno in what context). I wonder if like many of the instinctively combatitive JS feels he's got to ramp it up with the dying of the light? That would be sad. Luckily we don't see that sort of thing on PB.
The encouraging thing was the sense of a generational divide with younger Germans more in the pro western/Ukraine camp.
I’m not sure the right’s alleged assault on peaceful protest is all you claim. And the defence of the LNO the Proms is simply that, a defence, they DON’T want it cancelled. The censorious in the UK comes from the left, now, no question.
However the library book bans in the USA by republicans tell me that this can be two ways and that this will end with both sides trying to destroy the favoured culture of the other, and it is likely this will reach the UK
Grim. But you lot started it
Apples and pears appear as if they will be good albeit small.
Labour to call for actual cap on energy prices.
Younger Germans feel almost no guilt about the war, and are much more clear eyed. In my experience. A good thing
Nicola Sturgeon has come in for more criticism from her predecessor and one-time mentor Alex Salmond, who branded her government’s approach to achieving independence “absurd”.
The former Scottish National Party leader, who won UK government consent for the 2014 independence referendum, criticised the lord advocate, Dorothy Bain, for failing to support Sturgeon’s position on the legality of holding a referendum without Westminster’s support.
Instead, the matter has been referred to the Supreme Court, where Salmond said the Scottish government expected to be defeated.
“For goodness’ sake, don’t go into a court where you expect to lose as some sort of ‘nifty’ political ‘strategy’, just because you didn’t have the sense to ask the lord advocate before you appointed her what was her opinion,” Salmond said at an Alba party event in Edinburgh.
He added that, when he was in office, he expected lord advocates to support the government’s position. “If somebody felt that their conscience or their difficulties or their professional reputation were such that they couldn’t make a convincing argument to any court or, much more importantly, take a bill through the Scottish parliament, then they wouldn’t have been lord advocate.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/alex-salmond-hits-out-at-absurd-moves-to-win-independence-7v6n3xmnt
Not looking good for the Tories
Getting your todger out in the reported (albeit by the tabloids) circumstance probably constitutes a criminal offence. What’s been reported is not like nudity in a play.
Someone has to go to these things and you do. Well done (sincerely).
I was also complimentary about your good lady wife - who is able to withstand two hours of your conversation while only stabbing herself twice in the thigh with a fork to stay awake.
There is a Stewart Lee routine where he describes himself as being of "scotch" heritage in front of a Scottish audience. Using the wrong word to describe his heritage is integral to the routine.
Might just have been a variety of course!
I thought we were having an amusing punch up
If you are in a happy marriage then that’s fantastic. I am partly envious. I often wonder if I could have had that, long term. But I’m just not domesticated. I’m absolutely feral. A mangy Tom cat. I had a brilliantly happy marriage but it was wild and hedonistic and she was 30 years younger and so it
had to end.
And now I’m free again and I wander the world. As I wish. Which is great - but very different to domestic bliss. Enjoy!
Over 65s (who favour Truss) were adults during Mrs Thatcher's hegemony. Under 50s (who favour Sunak) have no adult memory of Thatcher in office. Those in between would have been young adults (club 18-30) in the Thatcher years, more likely hit by cuts and unemployment. If you don't remember Mrs T, you are perhaps oblivious to Truss's echoes.
But it also looks like Sunak voters cite his superiority on the economy, whereas Truss voters like her loyalty to Boris. Both sets seem to prefer that Boris should stay.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/13/poll-of-tory-members-gives-liz-truss-22-point-lead-to-be-next-prime-minister
Nice try Clarke, but no it will not be a new government. It is the same tired, clapped out, corrupted government as was elected in 2019.
Cue potential buyer taking pictures saying "I would buy the lane and bar access, you can park on the road".
Have emailed the estate agent to remind them that (a) there is legal shared access and (b) having raised this fact to them they have a responsibility not to misrepresent this fact to potential clients...
But there is a big gulf between "suggest" and "prove". Given the broader context of comedians being cancelled by people wilfully misinterpreting them based on a partial reading of the joke, I'd want to understand the specifics of the joke in the context of the routine before making a judgement.
However in normal times it shouldn't exist. Where do you draw the line? Carrots? Fix all supermarket prices? Putting price caps on products completely messes up commerce. It was for this reason so many suppliers went under leaving just the big boys who can then dominate the market. People benefit more from active honest competition.
Those who struggle to pay their bills should (in normal circumstances) be protected by other means.
However current circumstance are extreme and the price cap does seem the obvious way to protect the public, as long as the retail suppliers are protected from being made bankrupt by the cap.
We’ve got eight parliamentary parties, and I could seriously consider voting for six of them.
Abstaining is not my thing.
Coin toss?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Swedish_general_election
Timing is a huge aspect in luck.
Looks like Welsh Labour and the Scottish National Party are lucky. Both don’t have to face the electorate again for 4 years, thereby missing the worst of the crisis (hopefully).
The Tories on the other hand have run out of road.