@SirNorfolkPassmore - Ok you seem certain and I'm going to believe you rather than that government website. Bankrupts CAN stand for parliament. It's a wrap.
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I don't know what's uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt.
But it does raise an interesting question: If the only bar to being an MP (save bankruptcy, which I am putting aside as an interesting quirk for now) is the view of the voters, we need to make sure the voters have the tools to remove an MP. FPTP gives that. Not many other systems do.
Except that FPTP also gives us safe seats that are in most cases only open to change in theory but rarely in practice
True. But in the case of an MP the voters have truly taken against, no seat is safe. Exhibit 1 is Neil Hamilton, 1997.
Exhibit 2 is Michael Portillo and David Mellor, 1997. Granted the seats weren't as safe, but imagine a list system in London: both these characters would be up near the top of the list and extremely difficult to dislodge.
My view is that even with very safe seats it is easier to dislodge a wrong'un with FPTP than with a list system.
Of course, STV gives the voters even more control.
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I don't know what's uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt.
But it does raise an interesting question: If the only bar to being an MP (save bankruptcy, which I am putting aside as an interesting quirk for now) is the view of the voters, we need to make sure the voters have the tools to remove an MP. FPTP gives that. Not many other systems do.
Plus being in prison at the time you are elected for a sentence of over a year, being under 18, being a serving member of the House of Lords, Senedd or Stormont or (by convention) the royal family, not being a British or Irish citizen or Commonwealth citizen with leave to remain in the UK, or being in the police, armed forces, civil service, judiciary bar you from being an MP
Those are very different restrictions, though. There's no suggestion being a judge is reprehensible, just that it would be inappropriate to combine with being a parliamentary candidate given the central requirement of the job to be and be seen to be strictly impartial.
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I would make gullibility to be unforgivable and have them all take a polygraph. Disqualification would be certain on the basis of answering "yes" to any of the three following questions:
"Do you believe in alien abduction?" "Do you believe that the NHS was ever the "envy of the world"?" "Did you believe Boris Johnson's statement to the house on Partygate?"
You celebrate that fact - while everyone else commenting on it on twitter are going - HTF did this end up being prosecuted given the sheer number of mitigating circumstances and screw ups absolutely every...
On a different topic, a former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee and another member of the US establishment writes, unremarked on the Politico website, and unshared and retweeted by any other sites, as if it's just another regular and day-today topic : "If the U.S government has UFO crash materials, it's time to reveal them."
So? They don’t have, so nothing will be forthcoming. People are being hoodwinked by some of the usual players. Bigelow, he of the Skinwalker Ranch nonsense, is behind a lot of this.
The sum total of all the ‘good stuff’ videos released this year have all been explained. I get that people want to believe. I really do. But there’s nothing behind the curtain folks.
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
You are almost utterly, utterly wrong.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I don't know what's uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt.
But it does raise an interesting question: If the only bar to being an MP (save bankruptcy, which I am putting aside as an interesting quirk for now) is the view of the voters, we need to make sure the voters have the tools to remove an MP. FPTP gives that. Not many other systems do.
Except that FPTP also gives us safe seats that are in most cases only open to change in theory but rarely in practice
True. But in the case of an MP the voters have truly taken against, no seat is safe. Exhibit 1 is Neil Hamilton, 1997.
Exhibit 2 is Michael Portillo and David Mellor, 1997. Granted the seats weren't as safe, but imagine a list system in London: both these characters would be up near the top of the list and extremely difficult to dislodge.
My view is that even with very safe seats it is easier to dislodge a wrong'un with FPTP than with a list system.
Of course, STV gives the voters even more control.
Dan Hannan once (2009 I think, and long since lost in the old Telegraph blogs pages) wrote a really good piece on voting systems, that started along the lines of “Next week, I will be re-elected to my seat in the European Parliament!”. He was #1 on the Tory list in the South East region, which elected 12 MEPs, so there was literally no chance to kick him out if you didn’t like him. Party lists are the worst possible system for electing people.
Hannan finally got his wish to be kicked out of the European Parliament a decade later, only to be elevated to the Lords alongside several other redundant MEPs!
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
It would be unlike me to be unnecessarily rude, but forgive me for observing that you don't quite strike me as quite the person to make that judgement call?
My view on Boris changes often - from sympathy, to amusement, to annoyance, to disappointment - a lot of the latter. However, I do find it rather silly how a hardcore of our brave PB-Tories want to forget someone who actually won a General Election, in favour of someone whose only electoral test as party leader saw the party perform worse than even their expectations management lead everyone to believe they would. The Rishi train, with Hunt shovelling the coal, is heading off a precipice. I am not sure that Boris is the man to apply the brake, but frankly it would be nice if someone did.
Frankly, another leader, whoever it might be, and policy U-turn, whatever form that might take, would have no effect at all in averting the electoral truck of doom heading for the party.
Except for Boris, who would cause an implosion pre-election.
Usually I would agree, however, there is in Britain a new four party (I include the SNP and Lib Dems) political consensus based around a set of deeply unpopular and economically harmful policies, largely the result of politicians (and administrators) agreeing to things at international symposia.
This is why Starmer hasn't sealed the deal and isn't trusted or liked. Whilst he's hamstrung with these terrible policies (support for ulez, stratospheric green levies, destroying the UK's oil industry, open door immigration), he will always be vulnerable to the first party to espouse a more popular agenda, be it Nigel, or (as they did successfully before) the Tories robbing Nigel's clothes.
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I don't know what's uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt.
But it does raise an interesting question: If the only bar to being an MP (save bankruptcy, which I am putting aside as an interesting quirk for now) is the view of the voters, we need to make sure the voters have the tools to remove an MP. FPTP gives that. Not many other systems do.
Plus being in prison at the time you are elected for a sentence of a year or more, being under 18, being a serving member of the House of Lords, Senedd or Stormont or (by convention) the royal family, not being a British or Irish citizen or Commonwealth citizen with leave to remain in the UK, or being in the police, armed forces, civil service or judiciary bar you from being an MP
When were the armed forces barred? In both world wars, there were many MPs in uniform. Most famously, after the Dardanelles fiasco, Winston Churchill went off to fight in the trenches.
Tesla's Autopilot system has been involved in more than 700 crashes in the US since 2019, including 17 fatalities, far more than previously reported, according to regulators."
700 autopilot crashes since 2019. c. 7m non-autopilot crashes per year in the US, so around 30m in the same period.
Perhaps Tesla Autopilot isn't as unsafe as is being suggested...?
What we don't know is whether the crashes were *because* of the autopilot making an error or whether it was coincidental to the fatality. I have it on my Tesla but rarely use it. I still find the lane changing quite unnerving.
The stat you want is number of crashes per mile driven.
I think autopilot still comes out very badly.
Also, don't automatically believe Tesla when they say whether the car involved in an incident was under autopilot control or not. It is widely believed that if the system senses an accident is about to occur, it switches off. They can therefore say that the driver was in charge, not autopilot, even if autopilot got the car into the mess in the first place.
Which is why the data logs from crashed cars should not be downloadable just by the manufacturer; they should be downloadable by the police in case they need using as evidence. (Then there's the problem of interpreting the logs as well...)
*widely believed* !!! Hmmm, yes of course! Widely believed by all those weird obsessive Tesla haters
I have to let you know. My Tesla is the most amazing car I have ever had. Performance, road holding acceleration and of course the innovative tech; better than my numerous BMWs, Mercedes including a Merc SL500 that I have had. But sure, you carry on hating and going with the "widely believed" if it helps you lol
No. I believe the relevant authorities in the US called Tesla out over just this.
*I believe*? More equivocation. Is this belief based on some bloke at the pub who is part of the *widely believed* demographic perhaps?
Generally the relevant authorities aka regulators will ban a technology if it is proven to be unsafe. Not happened yet. Will it? I can't say, but there are millions of Tesla users using it quite safely and the data suggests that the AI based decision making is quicker and better than the average human. Is it infallible? Probably not.
I'm in the middle of cooking dinner, so cannot look up the refs.
But let's look at what happens: *) Autopilot gets itself into a muddle and heads towards a lane divider at 70MPH. *) Two seconds before impact, it turns control over to the meat in the driver's seat. *) Car crashes, killing the meat.
Whose responsibility is that? Tesla can say it is the driver's fault, as it had turned over control to the meat. What time span makes it reasonable to say that and blame the meat? Thirty seconds? Ten seconds? Five seconds? One second? And at what point does it become the manufacturer's fault?
And those timings are currently provided by the manufacturer.
I'm glad you like your Tesla. Good for you.
"and the data suggests that the AI based decision making is quicker and better than the average human."
Since you're accusing me of equivocation, can you provide links to this claim please, wrt Tesla?
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I don't know what's uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt.
But it does raise an interesting question: If the only bar to being an MP (save bankruptcy, which I am putting aside as an interesting quirk for now) is the view of the voters, we need to make sure the voters have the tools to remove an MP. FPTP gives that. Not many other systems do.
Plus being in prison at the time you are elected for a sentence of a year or more, being under 18, being a serving member of the House of Lords, Senedd or Stormont or (by convention) the royal family, not being a British or Irish citizen or Commonwealth citizen with leave to remain in the UK, or being in the police, armed forces, civil service or judiciary bar you from being an MP
When were the armed forces barred? In both world wars, there were many MPs in uniform. Most famously, after the Dardanelles fiasco, Winston Churchill went off to fight in the trenches.
I'm not sure he was the most famous. This one turned up in uniform:
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
You are almost utterly, utterly wrong.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
You do realise you have been drawn into one of HY's pointless rabbit holes. God knows what you might find down there.
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
I'm not. I might be mistaken but that is what I meant.
Brown cultivated an intellectual image and maybe believed he was one, but there isn't much evidence he was particularly interested in ideas. Do any of his interventions on the constitutional question regarding Scotland show any great depth of thought?
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I don't know what's uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt.
But it does raise an interesting question: If the only bar to being an MP (save bankruptcy, which I am putting aside as an interesting quirk for now) is the view of the voters, we need to make sure the voters have the tools to remove an MP. FPTP gives that. Not many other systems do.
Except that FPTP also gives us safe seats that are in most cases only open to change in theory but rarely in practice
True. But in the case of an MP the voters have truly taken against, no seat is safe. Exhibit 1 is Neil Hamilton, 1997.
Exhibit 2 is Michael Portillo and David Mellor, 1997. Granted the seats weren't as safe, but imagine a list system in London: both these characters would be up near the top of the list and extremely difficult to dislodge.
My view is that even with very safe seats it is easier to dislodge a wrong'un with FPTP than with a list system.
Of course, STV gives the voters even more control.
Granted, but they are exceptions, nonetheless. There continue to be a lot of quite awful MPs who know that with the exception of a political cataclysm they can behave anyway they like and they are going nowhere. it isn't really very healthy IMO
On a different topic, a former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee and another member of the US establishment writes, unremarked on the Politico website, and unshared and retweeted by any other sites, as if it's just another regular and day-today topic : "If the U.S government has UFO crash materials, it's time to reveal them."
So? They don’t have, so nothing will be forthcoming. People are being hoodwinked by some of the usual players. Bigelow, he of the Skinwalker Ranch nonsense, is behind a lot of this.
The sum total of all the ‘good stuff’ videos released this year have all been explained. I get that people want to believe. I really do. But there’s nothing behind the curtain folks.
Well, we'll just have to wait and see.
For myself, I wouldn't really describe myself as "needing to believe" in it, but I certainly would see myself as maintaining a position of open-minded curiosity on it.
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I don't know what's uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt.
But it does raise an interesting question: If the only bar to being an MP (save bankruptcy, which I am putting aside as an interesting quirk for now) is the view of the voters, we need to make sure the voters have the tools to remove an MP. FPTP gives that. Not many other systems do.
Except that FPTP also gives us safe seats that are in most cases only open to change in theory but rarely in practice
True. But in the case of an MP the voters have truly taken against, no seat is safe. Exhibit 1 is Neil Hamilton, 1997.
Exhibit 2 is Michael Portillo and David Mellor, 1997. Granted the seats weren't as safe, but imagine a list system in London: both these characters would be up near the top of the list and extremely difficult to dislodge.
My view is that even with very safe seats it is easier to dislodge a wrong'un with FPTP than with a list system.
Of course, STV gives the voters even more control.
Dan Hannan once (2009 I think, and long since lost in the old Telegraph blogs pages) wrote a really good piece on voting systems, that started along the lines of “Next week, I will be re-elected to my seat in the European Parliament!”. He was #1 on the Tory list in the South East region, which elected 12 MEPs, so there was literally no chance to kick him out if you didn’t like him. Party lists are the worst possible system for electing people.
Hannan finally got his wish to be kicked out of the European Parliament a decade later, only to be elevated to the Lords alongside several other redundant MEPs!
STV with multi-member constituencies is the best system on almost all counts, and definitely the most brutally effective at kicking out wronguns.
I suspect Ms Owen is being rewarded for services to Carrie Johnson.
I don’t put much stock in the idea she had an affair with Boris, and there is zero credibility in the motion she is related to him.
I think her appointment to the House of Lords is ridiculous enough on the basis of the known facts.
It speaks ill of our times that this is not enough for people to focus on, and instead there's a scramble for some additional explanation - she's a love-child, mistress, etc - with a complete absence of any evidence whatsoever. This sort of conspiratorial thinking is really not at all helpful.
In some respects it makes the whole charade okay, in the sense that it creates the idea that if she isn't Johnson's child or mistress that there would be nothing to object to in her absurd appointment.
I'd agree.
I don't think she should be appointed because its fairly obvious she has brought nothing to public service in her eight years as a SPAD. Her parentage, friends, or otherwise have nothing to do with it.
It's been pointed out elsewhere, that she now collects a guaranteed £322 per day for her appointment, which given her youth and life expectancy, could well cost the tax payer nearly £6m (not inflation adjusted, not adjusted for any increase she may get, and not adjusted for any further payments she might receive).
Is this appointment confirmed? Because I can see it bringing the whole appointments system into serious disrepute otherwise as more and more news organisations pick it up.
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
You are almost utterly, utterly wrong.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
You do realise you have been drawn into one of HY's pointless rabbit holes. God knows what you might find down there.
I have the advantage of having to go back to work in a minute
Seriously, Balfour was probably the high point of intellectual politicians. He wrote philosophy books as a hobby. Quite good ones too.
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I don't know what's uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt.
But it does raise an interesting question: If the only bar to being an MP (save bankruptcy, which I am putting aside as an interesting quirk for now) is the view of the voters, we need to make sure the voters have the tools to remove an MP. FPTP gives that. Not many other systems do.
Plus being in prison at the time you are elected for a sentence of a year or more, being under 18, being a serving member of the House of Lords, Senedd or Stormont or (by convention) the royal family, not being a British or Irish citizen or Commonwealth citizen with leave to remain in the UK, or being in the police, armed forces, civil service or judiciary bar you from being an MP
When were the armed forces barred? In both world wars, there were many MPs in uniform. Most famously, after the Dardanelles fiasco, Winston Churchill went off to fight in the trenches.
Former soldiers are allowed eg Johnny Mercer, now current serving members of the armed forces are barred and have been since the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I don't know what's uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt.
But it does raise an interesting question: If the only bar to being an MP (save bankruptcy, which I am putting aside as an interesting quirk for now) is the view of the voters, we need to make sure the voters have the tools to remove an MP. FPTP gives that. Not many other systems do.
Except that FPTP also gives us safe seats that are in most cases only open to change in theory but rarely in practice
True. But in the case of an MP the voters have truly taken against, no seat is safe. Exhibit 1 is Neil Hamilton, 1997.
Exhibit 2 is Michael Portillo and David Mellor, 1997. Granted the seats weren't as safe, but imagine a list system in London: both these characters would be up near the top of the list and extremely difficult to dislodge.
My view is that even with very safe seats it is easier to dislodge a wrong'un with FPTP than with a list system.
Of course, STV gives the voters even more control.
Granted, but they are exceptions, nonetheless. There continue to be a lot of quite awful MPs who know that with the exception of a political cataclysm they can behave anyway they like and they are going nowhere. it isn't really very healthy IMO
No, but there is more chance to kick them out than there is with most (not all) other systems.
I suspect Ms Owen is being rewarded for services to Carrie Johnson.
I don’t put much stock in the idea she had an affair with Boris, and there is zero credibility in the motion she is related to him.
I think her appointment to the House of Lords is ridiculous enough on the basis of the known facts.
It speaks ill of our times that this is not enough for people to focus on, and instead there's a scramble for some additional explanation - she's a love-child, mistress, etc - with a complete absence of any evidence whatsoever. This sort of conspiratorial thinking is really not at all helpful.
In some respects it makes the whole charade okay, in the sense that it creates the idea that if she isn't Johnson's child or mistress that there would be nothing to object to in her absurd appointment.
I'd agree.
I don't think she should be appointed because its fairly obvious she has brought nothing to public service in her eight years as a SPAD. Her parentage, friends, or otherwise have nothing to do with it.
It's been pointed out elsewhere, that she now collects a guaranteed £322 per day for her appointment, which given her youth and life expectancy, could well cost the tax payer nearly £6m (not inflation adjusted, not adjusted for any increase she may get, and not adjusted for any further payments she might receive).
Is this appointment confirmed? Because I can see it bringing the whole appointments system into serious disrepute otherwise as more and more news organisations pick it up.
Spielman has done nothing for public service in eleven years, but she's claimed a lot more than that.
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I don't know what's uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt.
But it does raise an interesting question: If the only bar to being an MP (save bankruptcy, which I am putting aside as an interesting quirk for now) is the view of the voters, we need to make sure the voters have the tools to remove an MP. FPTP gives that. Not many other systems do.
Plus being in prison at the time you are elected for a sentence of a year or more, being under 18, being a serving member of the House of Lords, Senedd or Stormont or (by convention) the royal family, not being a British or Irish citizen or Commonwealth citizen with leave to remain in the UK, or being in the police, armed forces, civil service or judiciary bar you from being an MP
When were the armed forces barred? In both world wars, there were many MPs in uniform. Most famously, after the Dardanelles fiasco, Winston Churchill went off to fight in the trenches.
I'm not sure he was the most famous. This one turned up in uniform:
Christian 43.0% Muslim 12.5% Hindu 8.6% Sikh 4.1% Buddhist 0.9% Jewish 0.2% Others 0.7% No religion 23.7% Not answered 6.2%
pretty typical of UK then
Not at all actually. Much higher Muslim, Hindu and Sikh. Much, much lower no religion. And a bit lower Christian too.
The well above average Hindu vote in Uxbridge will likely boost Rishi and the Tories there
Why didn't the very similar Watford vote Conservative in the May?
Uxbridge still has a higher Hindu percentage than Watford.
8.6% vs 8.2%
That's the equivalent of 80 people. Let's say a sixth off for those who aren't eligible to vote (passport), a quarter off for under-18s, and then a quarter off the remainder for "can vote but won't".
Thirty-eight people.
Now let's say they go from a quarter voting Tory to three quarters voting Tory. Your Sunak Hindu swing is about twenty extra votes.
Now I come back to my question from the weekend. How many of the other 102,000 people in the constituency are 2019 Tory voters who for whatever reason don't want to vote for party lead by a Hindu man. Do you think you can find more or less than TWENTY voters?
If so, you're left with a net deficit due to people voting within racial/religious boundaries.
It might occur to you at this point that there are a great number of other reasons people might shift their vote to or from a party other than religion. If so, please step into that beam of sunlight that's broken through into your weird little psephological dungeon. You'll find that people are better than you suppose.
So still higher than Watford then.
And you deliberately and completely ignored EVERY other point I made as they don't suit your argument, so I will repeat them below:
'Watford was not Conservative held in 1997, Uxbridge was. Watford was only 50% Leave, Hillingdon was 56% Leave. The Tories also held Hillingdon council last year even if they don't control Watford council.
Maybe those strange brown Hindu people are like other human beings, though, and make up their own minds how to vote, rather than automatically preferring "one of their own kind".
I don't think you can conclude from that information that. I don't deny that at a demographic level somebody's religion can certainly be a *predictor* (to be used among other factors) of how they might vote, but even in the strongest correlation on there - Muslims and Labour - it's still only about half.
Hounslow's last election was 2022 when the Roman Catholic Boris was PM not the Hindu Sunak.
Yes there will never be 100% correlation but the fact that on that chart Labour won about 50% of Muslims in 2019 and a narrow plurality of atheists and Christian Pentecostals (mainly Black churches) even when it lost by a landslide nationally tells you those groups lean Labour.
While the bigger than average Conservative lead amongst Jews and Anglicans, Baptists and URC and Methodists tells you those groups lean Conservative. Hindus, Roman Catholics and Church of Scotland and Buddhists and Orthodox closer to swing voters.
LDs meanwhile seem to do best amongst Buddhists and Baptists, Farage's Party amongst evangelicals, Methodists and Anglicans, the SNP unsurprisingly amongst Church of Scotland voters
My hunch is that middle-class Hindus are more Conservative than average, as you seen in places like Harrow East.
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
You are almost utterly, utterly wrong.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
Gladstone was more intellectual than all of those, as probably was Macmillan. Wilson was a clever economist, he was not very widely read on the arts.
Pitt the Younger was clever and very hardworking, he didn't spend a great amount of time being a very well read intellectual.
Balfour I may grant you as the extra great intellectual of former PMs
I suspect Ms Owen is being rewarded for services to Carrie Johnson.
I don’t put much stock in the idea she had an affair with Boris, and there is zero credibility in the motion she is related to him.
I think her appointment to the House of Lords is ridiculous enough on the basis of the known facts.
It speaks ill of our times that this is not enough for people to focus on, and instead there's a scramble for some additional explanation - she's a love-child, mistress, etc - with a complete absence of any evidence whatsoever. This sort of conspiratorial thinking is really not at all helpful.
In some respects it makes the whole charade okay, in the sense that it creates the idea that if she isn't Johnson's child or mistress that there would be nothing to object to in her absurd appointment.
I'd agree.
I don't think she should be appointed because its fairly obvious she has brought nothing to public service in her eight years as a SPAD. Her parentage, friends, or otherwise have nothing to do with it.
It's been pointed out elsewhere, that she now collects a guaranteed £322 per day for her appointment, which given her youth and life expectancy, could well cost the tax payer nearly £6m (not inflation adjusted, not adjusted for any increase she may get, and not adjusted for any further payments she might receive).
Is this appointment confirmed? Because I can see it bringing the whole appointments system into serious disrepute otherwise as more and more news organisations pick it up.
Isn't the £300 a day for attending parliament? I don't think it is a sinecure, unless they changed it to WFH during the pandemic.
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
You are almost utterly, utterly wrong.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
Gladstone was more intellectual than all of those, as probably was Macmillan. Wilson was a clever economist, he was not very widely read on the arts.
Pitt the Younger was clever and very hardworking, he didn't spend a great amount of time being a very well read intellectual.
Balfour I may grant you as the extra great intellectual of former PMs
Bonar Law was a more than decent chess player - does that count as "intellectual"?
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
You are almost utterly, utterly wrong.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
Gladstone was more intellectual than all of those, as probably was Macmillan. Wilson was a clever economist, he was not very widely read on the arts.
Pitt the Younger was clever and very hardworking, he didn't spend a great amount of time being a very well read intellectual.
Balfour I may grant you as the extra great intellectual of former PMs
By that logic, the most intellectual of all our Prime Ministers was Baldwin, who was more widely read even than Gladstone.
Good god. Paris has erected two skyscrapers which make the Walkie Talkie look elegant. Possibly as bad as the Big Jobbie in Edinburgh
Was the architect watching the C4 intro?
Look at it. LOOK AT IT
It’s kinda heartening to learn that Paris can easily throw up buildings as ugly as anything in London
Wow that’s properly fugly. And with Paris being famous for having very few tall buildings, several million people are going to have a view of that monstrosity at any one time.
Almost an exact repeat of 1997 on voteshare except the LDs doing a bit worse, RefUK (compared to the Referendum Party and UKIP) and the Greens doing a bit better
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
You are almost utterly, utterly wrong.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
Gladstone was more intellectual than all of those, as probably was Macmillan. Wilson was a clever economist, he was not very widely read on the arts.
Pitt the Younger was clever and very hardworking, he didn't spend a great amount of time being a very well read intellectual.
Balfour I may grant you as the extra great intellectual of former PMs
Bonar Law was a more than decent chess player - does that count as "intellectual"?
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
You are almost utterly, utterly wrong.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
Gladstone was more intellectual than all of those, as probably was Macmillan. Wilson was a clever economist, he was not very widely read on the arts.
Pitt the Younger was clever and very hardworking, he didn't spend a great amount of time being a very well read intellectual.
Balfour I may grant you as the extra great intellectual of former PMs
Bonar Law was a more than decent chess player - does that count as "intellectual"?
I’m a really good chess player, even won my age group in the Chess Congress at Oxford back in the mists of time, and I’m certainly no intellectual.
Good god. Paris has erected two skyscrapers which make the Walkie Talkie look elegant. Possibly as bad as the Big Jobbie in Edinburgh
Was the architect watching the C4 intro?
Look at it. LOOK AT IT
It’s kinda heartening to learn that Paris can easily throw up buildings as ugly as anything in London
It's more obviouslly French and daring / experimental than anything that would be given permission in London, although also sadly in this case, not very good.
Actually , scratch that, it's dreadful. French daring and experimentalism can work sometimes, but not this time.
Good god. Paris has erected two skyscrapers which make the Walkie Talkie look elegant. Possibly as bad as the Big Jobbie in Edinburgh
Was the architect watching the C4 intro?
Same architect did the shitty shopping mall next to St Paul’s Cathedral.
One New Change is merely banal. It is not hideous. This thing in Paris is on a different level
Jean Nouvel in general must be one of the most overrated architects on the planet
He is utter shit, I agree. He is also responsible for the totalitarian desolation of “Euralille”, which confronts passengers aligning from the Eurostar at Lille.
Good god. Paris has erected two skyscrapers which make the Walkie Talkie look elegant. Possibly as bad as the Big Jobbie in Edinburgh
Was the architect watching the C4 intro?
Look at it. LOOK AT IT
It’s kinda heartening to learn that Paris can easily throw up buildings as ugly as anything in London
Wow that’s properly fugly. And with Paris being famous for having very few tall buildings, several million people are going to have a view of that monstrosity at any one time.
I'm surprised that got built. People hate the tour Montparnasse and that's just a very bland skyscraper rather than being intrisically ugly like those buildings.
MacMillan won a scholarship to Balliol, graduated in Classics with First Class Hons, and read Trollope in between the odd bit of decolonisation.
That’s the kind of leader that appeals to British prejudices.
He was also a pretty good PM, the economy grew under his premiership, he built lots of new houses for those on low incomes especially, he was a close ally of JFK and as you say managed a largely effective African decolonisation programme. My late grandmother once campaigned for him in his Bromley constituency and we have a signed letter of thanks from him.
You don't have to work 24/7 and have no interests outside politics to be an effective PM as he proved (he also notably got a 1st in Classics not PPE, even Boris only got a 2nd in Classics)
Tesla's Autopilot system has been involved in more than 700 crashes in the US since 2019, including 17 fatalities, far more than previously reported, according to regulators."
700 autopilot crashes since 2019. c. 7m non-autopilot crashes per year in the US, so around 30m in the same period.
Perhaps Tesla Autopilot isn't as unsafe as is being suggested...?
What we don't know is whether the crashes were *because* of the autopilot making an error or whether it was coincidental to the fatality. I have it on my Tesla but rarely use it. I still find the lane changing quite unnerving.
The stat you want is number of crashes per mile driven.
I think autopilot still comes out very badly.
Also, don't automatically believe Tesla when they say whether the car involved in an incident was under autopilot control or not. It is widely believed that if the system senses an accident is about to occur, it switches off. They can therefore say that the driver was in charge, not autopilot, even if autopilot got the car into the mess in the first place.
Which is why the data logs from crashed cars should not be downloadable just by the manufacturer; they should be downloadable by the police in case they need using as evidence. (Then there's the problem of interpreting the logs as well...)
*widely believed* !!! Hmmm, yes of course! Widely believed by all those weird obsessive Tesla haters
I have to let you know. My Tesla is the most amazing car I have ever had. Performance, road holding acceleration and of course the innovative tech; better than my numerous BMWs, Mercedes including a Merc SL500 that I have had. But sure, you carry on hating and going with the "widely believed" if it helps you lol
No. I believe the relevant authorities in the US called Tesla out over just this.
*I believe*? More equivocation. Is this belief based on some bloke at the pub who is part of the *widely believed* demographic perhaps?
Generally the relevant authorities aka regulators will ban a technology if it is proven to be unsafe. Not happened yet. Will it? I can't say, but there are millions of Tesla users using it quite safely and the data suggests that the AI based decision making is quicker and better than the average human. Is it infallible? Probably not.
I'm in the middle of cooking dinner, so cannot look up the refs.
But let's look at what happens: *) Autopilot gets itself into a muddle and heads towards a lane divider at 70MPH. *) Two seconds before impact, it turns control over to the meat in the driver's seat. *) Car crashes, killing the meat.
Whose responsibility is that? Tesla can say it is the driver's fault, as it had turned over control to the meat. What time span makes it reasonable to say that and blame the meat? Thirty seconds? Ten seconds? Five seconds? One second? And at what point does it become the manufacturer's fault?
And those timings are currently provided by the manufacturer.
I'm glad you like your Tesla. Good for you.
"and the data suggests that the AI based decision making is quicker and better than the average human."
Since you're accusing me of equivocation, can you provide links to this claim please, wrt Tesla?
The bottom line (not necessarily in that article) is that if the system was found to be unsafe on balance then risk averse regulators would ban it. They haven't.
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
You are almost utterly, utterly wrong.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
Gladstone was more intellectual than all of those, as probably was Macmillan. Wilson was a clever economist, he was not very widely read on the arts.
Pitt the Younger was clever and very hardworking, he didn't spend a great amount of time being a very well read intellectual.
Balfour I may grant you as the extra great intellectual of former PMs
By that logic, the most intellectual of all our Prime Ministers was Baldwin, who was more widely read even than Gladstone.
I only have to put it that way...
Baldwin was one of my favourite PMs but only got a 3rd from Cambridge in History whereas Gladstone got a double first from Oxford in Mathematics and Classics
Good god. Paris has erected two skyscrapers which make the Walkie Talkie look elegant. Possibly as bad as the Big Jobbie in Edinburgh
Was the architect watching the C4 intro?
Same architect did the shitty shopping mall next to St Paul’s Cathedral.
One New Change is merely banal. It is not hideous. This thing in Paris is on a different level
Jean Nouvel in general must be one of the most overrated architects on the planet
He is utter shit, I agree. He is also responsible for the totalitarian desolation of “Euralille”, which confronts passengers aligning from the Eurostar at Lille.
He’s also responsible for this exploding steel tumour in Paris
And this pig ugly tower in Barcelona which tries to be the gherkin but just looks like a giant weird poo
Good god. Paris has erected two skyscrapers which make the Walkie Talkie look elegant. Possibly as bad as the Big Jobbie in Edinburgh
Was the architect watching the C4 intro?
Look at it. LOOK AT IT
It’s kinda heartening to learn that Paris can easily throw up buildings as ugly as anything in London
Wow that’s properly fugly. And with Paris being famous for having very few tall buildings, several million people are going to have a view of that monstrosity at any one time.
I'm surprised that got built. People hate the tour Montparnasse and that's just a very bland skyscraper rather than being intrisically ugly like those buildings.
Since it was built Paris council has introduced a new law forbidding skyscrapers in most of the city (outside La Defense)
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
You are almost utterly, utterly wrong.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
Gladstone was more intellectual than all of those, as probably was Macmillan. Wilson was a clever economist, he was not very widely read on the arts.
Pitt the Younger was clever and very hardworking, he didn't spend a great amount of time being a very well read intellectual.
Balfour I may grant you as the extra great intellectual of former PMs
By that logic, the most intellectual of all our Prime Ministers was Baldwin, who was more widely read even than Gladstone.
I only have to put it that way...
Baldwin was one of my favourite PMs but only got a 3rd from Cambridge in History whereas Gladstone got a double first from Oxford in Mathematics and Classics
This is a good thread - though it fails in turn to note that "the commentariat" was hardly unanimous in its (belatedly vanished) enthusiasm for Johnson. Seldon, I hope, has the good judgment to blush deeply when he rereads some of the shit he came out with.
But there's a question he doesn't address here, which needs more attention.
It troubled me about his book, too. So let me try to explain... 🧵
I posted this before. It’s an important thread.
Someone needs to explain how Seldon was so stupidly fooled in the first place.
Is it some kind of dysfunctional class affinity?
The last actually intellectual PM was Gordon Brown. And before that, I’d controversially nominate Margaret Thatcher.
The idea that Gordon Brown was an intellectual just shows how good he was at personal branding. I'd place both Blair and Johnson above him on that score.
You are confusing “intellectual” with “intelligent”
Brown was more intellectual than Blair, though probably less intelligent.
Our most intellectual PMs were probably Gladstone and Disraeli, Macmillan, Brown and Churchill. Gladstone for one had 20,000 books in his personal library. That does not mean they had the highest IQ though or were most intelligent. Thatcher and Blair, Peel, Salisbury, Baldwin and Lloyd George and Attlee and arguably Wilson and Cameron in terms of decision making on the facts they faced were often very good but they were not great intellectuals
You are almost utterly, utterly wrong.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
Gladstone was more intellectual than all of those, as probably was Macmillan. Wilson was a clever economist, he was not very widely read on the arts.
Pitt the Younger was clever and very hardworking, he didn't spend a great amount of time being a very well read intellectual.
Balfour I may grant you as the extra great intellectual of former PMs
By that logic, the most intellectual of all our Prime Ministers was Baldwin, who was more widely read even than Gladstone.
I only have to put it that way...
Baldwin was one of my favourite PMs but only got a 3rd from Cambridge in History whereas Gladstone got a double first from Oxford in Mathematics and Classics
I had no idea you were that old.
Still not quite as old as BigG who remembers the Gladstone and Disraeli years as if they were yesterday
Good god. Paris has erected two skyscrapers which make the Walkie Talkie look elegant. Possibly as bad as the Big Jobbie in Edinburgh
Was the architect watching the C4 intro?
Look at it. LOOK AT IT
It’s kinda heartening to learn that Paris can easily throw up buildings as ugly as anything in London
Wow that’s properly fugly. And with Paris being famous for having very few tall buildings, several million people are going to have a view of that monstrosity at any one time.
I'm surprised that got built. People hate the tour Montparnasse and that's just a very bland skyscraper rather than being intrisically ugly like those buildings.
Since it was built Paris council has introduced a new law forbidding skyscrapers in most of the city (outside La Defense)
Everyone hates it. A disastrous building. Lol
Although it's better than the new ones you just posted a photo of.
Good god. Paris has erected two skyscrapers which make the Walkie Talkie look elegant. Possibly as bad as the Big Jobbie in Edinburgh
Was the architect watching the C4 intro?
Look at it. LOOK AT IT
It’s kinda heartening to learn that Paris can easily throw up buildings as ugly as anything in London
Wow that’s properly fugly. And with Paris being famous for having very few tall buildings, several million people are going to have a view of that monstrosity at any one time.
I'm surprised that got built. People hate the tour Montparnasse and that's just a very bland skyscraper rather than being intrisically ugly like those buildings.
Indeed. I just looked it up, and only the Tour Montparnasse (and the Tour Eiffel) is taller than the bigger of these two monstrosities. They are the 2nd and 5th tallest buildings in the whole city!
Does the west currently have a strategy when it comes to Russian scorched earth tactics? The response to Kakhovka has been muted, at least in public. What deterrent can we offer?
Tesla's Autopilot system has been involved in more than 700 crashes in the US since 2019, including 17 fatalities, far more than previously reported, according to regulators."
700 autopilot crashes since 2019. c. 7m non-autopilot crashes per year in the US, so around 30m in the same period.
Perhaps Tesla Autopilot isn't as unsafe as is being suggested...?
What we don't know is whether the crashes were *because* of the autopilot making an error or whether it was coincidental to the fatality. I have it on my Tesla but rarely use it. I still find the lane changing quite unnerving.
The stat you want is number of crashes per mile driven.
I think autopilot still comes out very badly.
Also, don't automatically believe Tesla when they say whether the car involved in an incident was under autopilot control or not. It is widely believed that if the system senses an accident is about to occur, it switches off. They can therefore say that the driver was in charge, not autopilot, even if autopilot got the car into the mess in the first place.
Which is why the data logs from crashed cars should not be downloadable just by the manufacturer; they should be downloadable by the police in case they need using as evidence. (Then there's the problem of interpreting the logs as well...)
*widely believed* !!! Hmmm, yes of course! Widely believed by all those weird obsessive Tesla haters
I have to let you know. My Tesla is the most amazing car I have ever had. Performance, road holding acceleration and of course the innovative tech; better than my numerous BMWs, Mercedes including a Merc SL500 that I have had. But sure, you carry on hating and going with the "widely believed" if it helps you lol
No. I believe the relevant authorities in the US called Tesla out over just this.
*I believe*? More equivocation. Is this belief based on some bloke at the pub who is part of the *widely believed* demographic perhaps?
Generally the relevant authorities aka regulators will ban a technology if it is proven to be unsafe. Not happened yet. Will it? I can't say, but there are millions of Tesla users using it quite safely and the data suggests that the AI based decision making is quicker and better than the average human. Is it infallible? Probably not.
I'm in the middle of cooking dinner, so cannot look up the refs.
But let's look at what happens: *) Autopilot gets itself into a muddle and heads towards a lane divider at 70MPH. *) Two seconds before impact, it turns control over to the meat in the driver's seat. *) Car crashes, killing the meat.
Whose responsibility is that? Tesla can say it is the driver's fault, as it had turned over control to the meat. What time span makes it reasonable to say that and blame the meat? Thirty seconds? Ten seconds? Five seconds? One second? And at what point does it become the manufacturer's fault?
And those timings are currently provided by the manufacturer.
I'm glad you like your Tesla. Good for you.
"and the data suggests that the AI based decision making is quicker and better than the average human."
Since you're accusing me of equivocation, can you provide links to this claim please, wrt Tesla?
The bottom line (not necessarily in that article) is that if the system was found to be unsafe on balance then risk averse regulators would ban it. They haven't.
To know the goodness or badness of Tesla Autopilot we must know:
The number of true accidents it prevents (pram in road; swerve to avoid pram: carry on on way)
The number of true accidents it causes (pram in road: swerves to hit pram)
The number of true accidents it ignores (pram in road: does not change course)
The number of false accidents it prevents (no pram in road; swerve to avoid pram: carry on on way)
The number of false accidents it causes (no pram in road; swerves to hit non-existent pram: hits something else)
The number of false accidents it ignores (no pram in road: does not change course)
In short, telling me it causes 700 crashes is not necessarily meaningful. I need to know how many it avoided as well.
Tesla's Autopilot system has been involved in more than 700 crashes in the US since 2019, including 17 fatalities, far more than previously reported, according to regulators."
700 autopilot crashes since 2019. c. 7m non-autopilot crashes per year in the US, so around 30m in the same period.
Perhaps Tesla Autopilot isn't as unsafe as is being suggested...?
What we don't know is whether the crashes were *because* of the autopilot making an error or whether it was coincidental to the fatality. I have it on my Tesla but rarely use it. I still find the lane changing quite unnerving.
The stat you want is number of crashes per mile driven.
I think autopilot still comes out very badly.
Also, don't automatically believe Tesla when they say whether the car involved in an incident was under autopilot control or not. It is widely believed that if the system senses an accident is about to occur, it switches off. They can therefore say that the driver was in charge, not autopilot, even if autopilot got the car into the mess in the first place.
Which is why the data logs from crashed cars should not be downloadable just by the manufacturer; they should be downloadable by the police in case they need using as evidence. (Then there's the problem of interpreting the logs as well...)
*widely believed* !!! Hmmm, yes of course! Widely believed by all those weird obsessive Tesla haters
I have to let you know. My Tesla is the most amazing car I have ever had. Performance, road holding acceleration and of course the innovative tech; better than my numerous BMWs, Mercedes including a Merc SL500 that I have had. But sure, you carry on hating and going with the "widely believed" if it helps you lol
No. I believe the relevant authorities in the US called Tesla out over just this.
*I believe*? More equivocation. Is this belief based on some bloke at the pub who is part of the *widely believed* demographic perhaps?
Generally the relevant authorities aka regulators will ban a technology if it is proven to be unsafe. Not happened yet. Will it? I can't say, but there are millions of Tesla users using it quite safely and the data suggests that the AI based decision making is quicker and better than the average human. Is it infallible? Probably not.
I'm in the middle of cooking dinner, so cannot look up the refs.
But let's look at what happens: *) Autopilot gets itself into a muddle and heads towards a lane divider at 70MPH. *) Two seconds before impact, it turns control over to the meat in the driver's seat. *) Car crashes, killing the meat.
Whose responsibility is that? Tesla can say it is the driver's fault, as it had turned over control to the meat. What time span makes it reasonable to say that and blame the meat? Thirty seconds? Ten seconds? Five seconds? One second? And at what point does it become the manufacturer's fault?
And those timings are currently provided by the manufacturer.
I'm glad you like your Tesla. Good for you.
"and the data suggests that the AI based decision making is quicker and better than the average human."
Since you're accusing me of equivocation, can you provide links to this claim please, wrt Tesla?
The bottom line (not necessarily in that article) is that if the system was found to be unsafe on balance then risk averse regulators would ban it. They haven't.
It might be good if you actually addressed my point. At what point does it become reasonable to lame the meat, and not autopilot?
And as for regulators: this is the US we're talking about: they're not 'risk averse'. If they were, they would not allow beta-testing on the public roads.
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
Surely, the bar is only for so long as the bankruptcy order is in place. I don't think it's forever.
But on the general point - what is so especially heinous about bankruptcy that it precludes you standing for parliament? Why does it get the special mention in the Rules?
It’s like being a member of various professions. Bankruptcy will get you struck off, because you’ll be dealing with finances.
💥Chopper’s Politics Newsletter: Boris Johnson could be banned for life from Parliament
- Privileges report due in next 48 hours - MPs' vote in the middle of next week - Labour MPs might amend motion to add in a permanent ban from Commons. Johnson's team say this is not possible
Would need at least 100 Conservative MPs to vote with the Opposition for it, they would also have to risk deselection by furious Boris loyalists amongst their party Association executive and local membership
Only 40 or so Tory MPs need side with the opposition.
It would be utterly undemocratic to impose a permanent suspension on anyone.
The media reports surrounding the committee in recent days have gone completely off the deep end, from suggesting permanent bans to suspending people who merely criticise the committee. Complete banana republic stuff.
The public chooses who they elect. Boris is never going to be elected ever again. In some bizarre parallel universe where he did, that's the voters choice, and must be respected.
The public chooses, yes, but there are things which legally prevent a person serving as an MP. One of them is being bankrupt. At present this is just financially but I can see a good case for it to also mean 'morally'. In which case Boris Johnson certainly should be given a lifetime ban. I mean, how come being on your uppers gets you banned from parliament but being morally bankrupt is absolutely fine? It should be the other way around, I'd have thought.
I really hope you are joking.
Should Rishi Sunak be allowed to whip his MPs to deem Keir Starmer as "morally bankrupt"?
It's up to the voters and the voters alone to determine their own morals.
Plenty of MP's are, and have been, morally bankrupt. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, Jeremy Thorpe, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Hancock, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, John Bercow, Andrew Bridgen, and Boris Johnson. In each case, I think it should be for the voters to pass judgement.
But that isn't the case if you're financially bankrupt. It bars you. What's the logic there? Why is financial bankruptcy deemed worse (in an MP) than moral bankruptcy?
I would have thought that you as a Chartered Accountant could grasp this. One is numerically proven, the other is highly subjective.
Ok, so the comparison to 'moral' bankruptcy is just a muse. Forgetting that, the question is more about what should bar you from being an MP regardless of what the voters might think. I looked it up and there isn't much apart from being bankrupt. I'm wondering why this is? Why aren't there more disqualifiers? And why is bankruptcy on there? What's so uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt? Is it some legacy Rule that harks back to Top Hats and Counting Houses and the Corn Laws?
I don't know what's uniquely reprehensible about being bankrupt.
But it does raise an interesting question: If the only bar to being an MP (save bankruptcy, which I am putting aside as an interesting quirk for now) is the view of the voters, we need to make sure the voters have the tools to remove an MP. FPTP gives that. Not many other systems do.
Well, the obvious point abut bankrupts is: Why are they spending money standing for parliament, when they could be using that money to repay their creditors?
Since almost all Prime Ministers went to Oxford, it is unclear how possession of a degree means one of them was more intellectual than the rest.
Oxford has long been the place where we send our undesirables. The odd thought might emanate, and who can object, but this astonishing plague of bad PMs really has to end. I'm sure TSE can scrub around for some capable man (We saw Truss in action) that wants the job.
Good god. Paris has erected two skyscrapers which make the Walkie Talkie look elegant. Possibly as bad as the Big Jobbie in Edinburgh
Was the architect watching the C4 intro?
Same architect did the shitty shopping mall next to St Paul’s Cathedral.
One New Change is merely banal. It is not hideous. This thing in Paris is on a different level
Jean Nouvel in general must be one of the most overrated architects on the planet
He is utter shit, I agree. He is also responsible for the totalitarian desolation of “Euralille”, which confronts passengers aligning from the Eurostar at Lille.
He’s also responsible for this exploding steel tumour in Paris
And this pig ugly tower in Barcelona which tries to be the gherkin but just looks like a giant weird poo
He says he was inspired by his favourite flint-knapper.....
Almost an exact repeat of 1997 on voteshare except the LDs doing a bit worse, RefUK (compared to the Referendum Party and UKIP) and the Greens doing a bit better
It's a good pool for the Conservatives to fish in though, if Reform don't field a big slate.
How many miscarriages did your so-called "God" cause today?
Sunil, that is i) rude and ii) not the point
He believes in God, why not raise it?
None, God doesn't control the earth directly and hasn't done since the Fall of Adam and Eve.
Humans make their own laws, many derived from the Old Testament and killing a 32-34 year old foetus is defined even by most scientists and doctors as killing a human being
I found another angle. It really is worse than the Walkie Talkie. Much much worse
Walkie Talkie at least as some kind of symmetry to it, and it's not lost in the untidy, unholy mess that comprises today's Square Mile, being situated on Fenchurch Street.
MacMillan won a scholarship to Balliol, graduated in Classics with First Class Hons, and read Trollope in between the odd bit of decolonisation.
That’s the kind of leader that appeals to British prejudices.
I'm not sure that's right. Macmillan went to Oxford but left to fight when the war started and I don't think he ever went back to complete his degree.
He got a First in the first half of his Classics course but yes then went to fight in WW1 where all but one other of the scholars and exhibitioners at Oxford in his year were killed and so decided going back would not be the same and ultimately joined his family publishing firm
Comments
BoZo no more...
Exhibit 1 is Neil Hamilton, 1997.
Exhibit 2 is Michael Portillo and David Mellor, 1997. Granted the seats weren't as safe, but imagine a list system in London: both these characters would be up near the top of the list and extremely difficult to dislodge.
My view is that even with very safe seats it is easier to dislodge a wrong'un with FPTP than with a list system.
Of course, STV gives the voters even more control.
Britain is healing.
"Do you believe in alien abduction?"
"Do you believe that the NHS was ever the "envy of the world"?"
"Did you believe Boris Johnson's statement to the house on Partygate?"
Unless you know something we don't...
People are being hoodwinked by some of the usual players. Bigelow, he of the Skinwalker Ranch nonsense, is behind a lot of this.
The sum total of all the ‘good stuff’ videos released this year have all been explained. I get that people want to believe. I really do. But there’s nothing behind the curtain folks.
There were just four genuine intellectuals who became PM: Brown (whom you noted) Wilson, Balfour and Pitt the Younger (like Sunak, he used to amuse himself by making mathematical equations of soldiers wheeling).
Pitt was brilliant. Wilson was very successful. The others, well...
Hannan finally got his wish to be kicked out of the European Parliament a decade later, only to be elevated to the Lords alongside several other redundant MEPs!
SLAB - 30%
SNP - 35%
SCONS - 19%
This is why Starmer hasn't sealed the deal and isn't trusted or liked. Whilst he's hamstrung with these terrible policies (support for ulez, stratospheric green levies, destroying the UK's oil industry, open door immigration), he will always be vulnerable to the first party to espouse a more popular agenda, be it Nigel, or (as they did successfully before) the Tories robbing Nigel's clothes.
But let's look at what happens:
*) Autopilot gets itself into a muddle and heads towards a lane divider at 70MPH.
*) Two seconds before impact, it turns control over to the meat in the driver's seat.
*) Car crashes, killing the meat.
Whose responsibility is that? Tesla can say it is the driver's fault, as it had turned over control to the meat. What time span makes it reasonable to say that and blame the meat? Thirty seconds? Ten seconds? Five seconds? One second? And at what point does it become the manufacturer's fault?
And those timings are currently provided by the manufacturer.
I'm glad you like your Tesla. Good for you.
"and the data suggests that the AI based decision making is quicker and better than the average human."
Since you're accusing me of equivocation, can you provide links to this claim please, wrt Tesla?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Keyes,_1st_Baron_Keyes
Brown cultivated an intellectual image and maybe believed he was one, but there isn't much evidence he was particularly interested in ideas. Do any of his interventions on the constitutional question regarding Scotland show any great depth of thought?
For myself, I wouldn't really describe myself as "needing to believe" in it, but I certainly would see myself as maintaining a position of open-minded curiosity on it.
I don't think she should be appointed because its fairly obvious she has brought nothing to public service in her eight years as a SPAD.
Her parentage, friends, or otherwise have nothing to do with it.
It's been pointed out elsewhere, that she now collects a guaranteed £322 per day for her appointment, which given her youth and life expectancy, could well cost the tax payer nearly £6m (not inflation adjusted, not adjusted for any increase she may get, and not adjusted for any further payments she might receive).
Is this appointment confirmed? Because I can see it bringing the whole appointments system into serious disrepute otherwise as more and more news organisations pick it up.
Seriously, Balfour was probably the high point of intellectual politicians. He wrote philosophy books as a hobby. Quite good ones too.
Shame he wasn't much cop as PM.
Pitt the Younger was clever and very hardworking, he didn't spend a great amount of time being a very well read intellectual.
Balfour I may grant you as the extra great intellectual of former PMs
It’s kinda heartening to learn that Paris can easily throw up buildings as ugly as anything in London
@BritainElects
34m
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 44% (-)
CON: 30% (-)
LDEM: 13% (+1)
REF: 6% (+1)
GRN: 4% (-1)
via @RedfieldWilton, 11 Jun"
I only have to put it that way...
That’s the kind of leader that appeals to British prejudices.
Jean Nouvel in general must be one of the most overrated architects on the planet
Actually , scratch that, it's dreadful. French daring and experimentalism can work sometimes, but not this time.
He is also responsible for the totalitarian desolation of “Euralille”, which confronts passengers aligning from the Eurostar at Lille.
"Eastern Paris is slowly coming into focus, harder, better, faster, stronger, power more is ever after."
You don't have to work 24/7 and have no interests outside politics to be an effective PM as he proved (he also notably got a 1st in Classics not PPE, even Boris only got a 2nd in Classics)
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/bank-customers-experience-problems-with-online-mastercard-payments/ar-AA1csfc9
Cashless society advocates, please explain.
The bottom line (not necessarily in that article) is that if the system was found to be unsafe on balance then risk averse regulators would ban it. They haven't.
Tributes from world leaders including ex-prime minister and Vladimir Putin after former Italian premier dies aged 86"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/12/silvio-berlusconi-dies-86-former-italian-prime-minister/
And this pig ugly tower in Barcelona which tries to be the gherkin but just looks like a giant weird poo
Everyone hates it. A disastrous building. Lol
https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?cityID=866
- The number of true accidents it prevents (pram in road; swerve to avoid pram: carry on on way)
- The number of true accidents it causes (pram in road: swerves to hit pram)
- The number of true accidents it ignores (pram in road: does not change course)
- The number of false accidents it prevents (no pram in road; swerve to avoid pram: carry on on way)
- The number of false accidents it causes (no pram in road; swerves to hit non-existent pram: hits something else)
- The number of false accidents it ignores (no pram in road: does not change course)
In short, telling me it causes 700 crashes is not necessarily meaningful. I need to know how many it avoided as well.And as for regulators: this is the US we're talking about: they're not 'risk averse'. If they were, they would not allow beta-testing on the public roads.
Generally those who studied Classics or Greats would also be considered more intellectual than those who studied PPE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_education
I mean, he's basically "John New".
https://youtu.be/DT-eH0iC87w?t=179
Why are they spending money standing for parliament, when they could be using that money to repay their creditors?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/12/jp-morgan-settles-case-bank-profited-epstein-abuse/
JPM to pay $290m to Epstein’s victims.
Humans make their own laws, many derived from the Old Testament and killing a 32-34 year old foetus is defined even by most scientists and doctors as killing a human being