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Some stark front pages this Saturday morning – politicalbetting.com
Some stark front pages this Saturday morning – politicalbetting.com
One of the problems about the timing of the leadership contest is that less attention is being paid to the coming disaster that will be created by the sharp rise in energy prices.
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1.07 Liz Truss 93%
15 Rishi Sunak 7%
Next Conservative leader
1.06 Liz Truss 94%
15.5 Rishi Sunak 6%
Home Secretary fights to save her job as leadership frontrunner plans shake-up of the Cabinet
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/08/26/priti-patel-set-exiled-back-benches-liz-truss-plots-cull-big/ (£££)
The Telegraph is also not too keen on the career prospects of Grant Shapps, Mark Spencer, Greg Clark, George Eustice, Steve Barclay, Nigel Adams, Michael Gove, Dominic Raab, Alok Sharma and Rishi Sunak.
There is no betting on the next Home Secretary that I can see, though I've not checked everywhere.
People smugglers are using the platform to advertise prices 40 per cent cheaper than ‘standard’ rates ahead of bank holiday crackdown
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/26/albanian-migrants-offered-tiktok-black-friday-channel-crossing/ (£££)
The power of the free market.
http://redirect.viglink.com/?key=71fe2139a887ad501313cd8cce3053c5&subId=3414711&u=https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/7lxb647ksn/SundayTimes_StateOfTheUnion_220819%20%28Wales%29.pdf
Wait till those energy bills start landing in the letter boxes...
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.160683973
Shapps is utterly unfit to be a minister: incompetent, arrogant and dishonest, including misleading the House. So I'm surprised Truss wouldn't want him. He might make her look almost up to the job.
Patel should have gone long ago for similar reasons (for 'misleading the House' read 'bullying her staff').
Barclay, Sharma and Spencer are hardly 'big beasts.'
I am surprised about Eustice, even allowing for Truss' appalling lack of judgment. I think it unlikely she will find anyone better suited to his current role where as far as I can judge he's been quietly effective, and given the shitstorm about to engulf agriculture through enormous fuel and fertiliser bills coupled to the ongoing disruption of the new trading reality it really isn't a good moment for a change there. Perhaps he just dared to tell her to her face once that she was talking nonsense.
F1: Verstappen and Leclerc to start from the back due to changing parts.
If we’d had better leaders, we could have been in a similar position to norway, right now;
https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0
More seriously, I did mention Perez at 23 for the win, can be hedged at 10 if you feel inclined.
I'm betting they will forget to change the wheels in a pit stop.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11150663/ANDREW-NEIL-Liz-Truss-Prime-Minister-needs-watch-Tory-MPs-not-Labour.html
2) The Conservative Party.
2) Teachers? (Since 'most' people have no contact with them...)
“Ellen White suffered punctured lung during acupuncture”
*cough*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=209&v=XV2inLzeoy8&feature=emb_logo
The oil and gas sector is making extraordinary profits, not as the result of recent changes to risk taking or innovation or efficiency, but as the result of surging global commodity prices, driven in part by Russia’s war.
Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, House of Commons, 26th May.
Just pointing out your jestful comment could apply elsewhere.
As it happens, I'd be fine with a windfall tax on energy companies as long as it does not affect their short-term work or long-term investment. And I believe some of the proposals do not. Pension funds might not like it, though...
If she does badly in the May election they will get rid of her. They are collectively insane, the party is on the point of meltdown.
Johnson comes back in a 'save the furniture' move for the GE as Rudd did for Australian Labor. If they start the next leadership contest in May it should be over in time for him to go on multiple summer holidays before the election.
... something ...
(2) Damn it! Why is oil & gas production dropping, and why are companies investing in other countries instead?
Their reporting is also sufficiently opaque that it’s hard to determine a proper breakdown of how their underlying profit has been generated. I know Robert disagrees but I am correct that to a large degree ytd profits have been been from global trading activities (often on foreign balance sheets).
Meanwhile the unpredictability of the uk tax regime for extractors harms investment:
https://www.ft.com/content/1ae8c2fc-6e9b-40f8-ad13-84451828004c
It makes marginal opportunities not worth pursuing. This goes for the big (like Harbour) to the very smallest, who are looking at single infill wells of end of life assets. This in turns harms our long term energy security. A rot that set in with that chimpanzee George Osborne, who understood so little about the way of the world. But it was continued with reckless enthusiasm by Sunak, who stakes a claim to outshining Gordon Brown in worst chancellor stakes.
With that said... There's no doubt that they did a much better job than we did in terms of a sensible, long term oil & gas taxation framework.
I am not sure what the attraction of a well stocked backwater on the left hand side of Conservative England, both geographically and politically has to the English Nationalists. Other than piping our water along the Boris Johnson Canal to London I suspect Wales serves little purpose to them.
(Edit: So along with Truss replacing a PM who once did have very strong support)
Given reliability and such (and I need to check the weather) I'm a little wary of a dual bet.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/08/27/new-pm-faces-right-old-pickle-who-could-have-seen-coming/
The other random factor in Belgium, is that the circuit has its own little private weather system, and it always rains at some point during the day.
Major is perhaps the closest, but again it was more of a lack of a fan club as opposed to his own party thinking he was likely to fail and/or did not stand for their views.
With Truss I think at least a third of the Tory MPs think she is likely to fail and/or does not stand for their views and values. She has a big majority but it is made of straw.
@ydoethur. On my way back from working in Worcester yesterday I swung by Bentley's fruit farm, so took the opportunity to check out @Leon 's regular travelog reports regarding Newent. I noted the little Ford dealership where I once filled up with petrol is no more, but the town is blessed with a range of thriving independent shops. Whilst it is not down at heel like many Forest of Dean towns it was a little tired, much like nearby Ledbury and Great Malvern (contrasting with Ross which is buzzing with enterprise and enthusiasm).
Newent was a pleasant enough experience except for the young man who staggered out of the social club (opposite the Red Lion) at 4.30 jangling his car keys, and much to my wife's alarm stuck his head through the open passenger window of my beige estate car and asked "is this a rally car?" before meandering off to find his car (or tractor) for what I suspect would have been a white knuckle ride home.
Oh and who is the much celebrated little pony?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/25/zelensky-putin-russia-ukraine-war/
I think he’s a better driver than Perez, Ferrari look close to RB, and Sainz has the nous to resist Ferrari’s more stupid strategy calls (see Monaco and Silverstone).
There's a genuine dilemma, though. In British politics, you pick a side fairly early in the process. But those sides are big and can change a lot year-to-year. What do you do if your side goes off on one, and the Otherlot Party better reflects your vision of how the country should be run?
Think of Labour moderates under Corbyn. Sane Republicans under Trump. Conservatives who believe in objective reality under Johnson.
There isn't an easy answer. Leaving your old party and creating a new one hardly ever works. Staying and fighting makes you (at least a bit) culpable for what your party does whilst it's on its bender.
So it will probably be announced next week.
Absolutely delighted to see the Welsh waking up.
I know it’s only a subsamples, and the usual caveats apply in droves, but is this a straw in the wind?
Wales:
Plaid Cymru 27%
Labour 27%
Conservatives 17%
Welsh Greens 15%
WLD 9%
UKIP 4%
Ref 1%
(Deltapoll; Fieldwork: 19th - 22nd August 2022)
British Nationalism is damaging all the members of the Union.
Strong figures on whether the Welsh expect Scotland to leave the UK and become an independent country within the next ten years.
Right now , we need to tighten our belts to enable fat cats to get fatter in a broken energy market.
If it’s a war, free markets cannot function properly, so you nationalise key resources.
I suspect the current lot don’t want to do that because someone is getting mind boggingly rich.
TBF, given the representation of such companies in pension funds, I'm not sure that the image of profiteers in the Great War is entirely applicable today.
Meanwhile Russia’s only play seems to be to find cannon fodder wherever it can. Retired soldier associations, prisons, Syria, North Korea even! They’re not giving much by way of training. And the complexity of arms is getting worse not better. The occasional advance into a village in Donbas is being achieved by indiscriminate flattening of the territory using heavy artillery and then moving into a narrow salient. It’s not a recipe for strategic success, especially when there’s a time limit to the game, by how many shells (and barrels) you have in storage to play with.
As for the economic war, it’s true that oil sanctions have largely failed. But prices are coming down which will hurt Russian earning power. And gas to Europe has now gone for ever, no one will ever trust Russian supply again except at the margins. So it’s a one time poison pill for Europe that has already been swallowed. The only thing really that matters is whether the White House is lived in by someone who wants to keep the military aid going.
"There's a problem, so I'll blame my usual suspects for the problem, and use my usual 'solutions' for it."
Eventually we may have enough wind and solar to cover us most of the time but right now more than 40% of our power is coming from gas and most of it is imported. We need to do what we can to reduce that.
It's also a matter of swings and roundabouts - farmers had some very lean times while the libertarian free market ruled, in between the war booms (Revolutionary/Napoleonic, Gt War, WW2).
I've read, in contrast, of one Quaker firm which accepted Government orders of clothing etc for the Army in the Crimean War, for humanitarian reasons, but put every penny of the profit towards a community centre for the town.
Are you saying the energy market isn’t broken?
Are you saying some organisations aren’t getting rich?
Are you saying in wartime resources aren’t often nationalised?
Are you saying the chancellor didn’t tell us to tighten our belts became of the war?