Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
"It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem."
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Just pop one in the Royal Mail van that goes round, a bit like the bank bus you get in the Highlands.
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Ah, thanks. I did wonder, but couldn't think of any. But, most of the time, most places, that'll apply. So the problem remains (and also whether FCA will even fine the bank more than 51p in cash).
Well, one was a Coutts office (meeting a friend that worked there). They had a counter for Coutts customers, but no machine.
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain [rejoin]
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
M--YHR.
Too close to neutral for Qs 2/3 for an answer/identity; elements of both.
Needs Monarchy and UK nationalism to be fully useful for modern UK politcs, though Disestablishmentarianism is a bit past its peak to be on the agenda.
Lavatory tsar is positively socialist if it means funding local authorities to provide heads in every municipal car park, high st etc. (I think it is a good idea, which probably means it is indeed socialist.)
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
"It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem."
Thank you HY!
Had Michael Howard won the 2005 general election of course he had a manifesto commitment to scrap tuition fees
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Ah, thanks. I did wonder, but couldn't think of any. But, most of the time, most places, that'll apply. So the problem remains (and also whether FCA will even fine the bank more than 51p in cash).
Well, one was a Coutts office (meeting a friend that worked there). They had a counter for Coutts customers, but no machine.
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
Struck by the way in which you need to explain very carefully (and very understandably) you didn't actually have an account there.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
"It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem."
Thank you HY!
Had Michael Howard won the 2005 general election of course he had a manifesto commitment to scrap tuition fees
Presumably you supported that and then u-turned like all of your other ideas
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
So a bank could be fined for not providing an ATM in an area where they've never had an ATM? Would that apply to all financial institutions, including the fintech banks? What about a building society that only operates in one region of the country, will it be fined for not having an ATM at the other end of the country?
I'm at a complete lose as to the new ATM rules - because we already have a centralised system Link for this purpose.
So is the plan to fine every single bank because Link has failed to do it's job?
Is it to stop cash machines being removed (which creates the race condition of last bank to pull out has to provide a service forever more)?
or is it to force banks into providing machines where 1 doesn't exist. In which case which bank is responsible for doing so?
Its another plan / campaign catchphrase with no thought to actual reality.
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Ah, thanks. I did wonder, but couldn't think of any. But, most of the time, most places, that'll apply. So the problem remains (and also whether FCA will even fine the bank more than 51p in cash).
Well, one was a Coutts office (meeting a friend that worked there). They had a counter for Coutts customers, but no machine.
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
Struck by the way in which you need to explain very carefully (and very understandably) you didn't actually have an account there.
When NatWest turned them into an ersatz Premium Account, back in the 90s, the flood of absolute wankers getting an account there… as someone else noted, they loved to wave the oversized cheque book around.
It has, to me, most of the connotations of driving round in an American stretch limo, while drinking fizzy wine from the bottle, while shouting abuse at passing strangers.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
"It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem."
Thank you HY!
Had Michael Howard won the 2005 general election of course he had a manifesto commitment to scrap tuition fees
Oh but for the butterfly effect.
Had Howard's Tories won they would have been blamed for the credit crisis. They would have lost the 2010 GE to Brown on a landslide, there would have been no Brexit, no Corbyn, probably no Johnson, and David Miliband would be 2/3 years out for his second GE campaign as Prime Minister against new LOTO, the moderate Liz Truss.
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
More costly red tape to assuage the fears of the over 70's.
From casual observation in the queue at Sainbury's, it is mostly middle-aged women paying with cash.
The wives of dodgy tradesmen?
Absolutely no idea. Otoh, I dimly recall paying in cash being advocated as a budgeting "hack" to help reduce spending.
That is a very good point. I have heard that also, a few times in the past. For some they see the real money they are spending as a control to overspending whereas a card is somehow not real.
I have mentioned here a few times the little trick I do of taking out 0% credit cards and paying off at the end of the 0% term or transferring to another 0% cards where the transfer fee is £0. At one point I racked up nearly £100k on them and invested it. You have to be able to pay it back though when needed. On a couple of occasions where I have advocated this I have been told 'I can't do that as I will just spend the money if the credit is given to me and not be able to pay it back' For me it is a means of making some free money and the convenience of having a minimum payment each month rather than a wildly fluctuating bill each month.
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Ah, thanks. I did wonder, but couldn't think of any. But, most of the time, most places, that'll apply. So the problem remains (and also whether FCA will even fine the bank more than 51p in cash).
Well, one was a Coutts office (meeting a friend that worked there). They had a counter for Coutts customers, but no machine.
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
Struck by the way in which you need to explain very carefully (and very understandably) you didn't actually have an account there.
When NatWest turned them into an ersatz Premium Account, back in the 90s, the flood of absolute wankers getting an account there… as someone else noted, they loved to wave the oversized cheque book around.
It has, to me, most of the connotations of driving round in an American stretch limo, while drinking fizzy wine from the bottle, while shouting abuse at passing strangers.
My dealings with them: when i was a slip of a young solicitor I would go to the RCJ to apply for things and then sit in their very comfortable circular window waiting for a bus back to the City. So they put little nobbles in the bottom of the window. Bastards.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Just pop one in the Royal Mail van that goes round, a bit like the bank bus you get in the Highlands.
After what happened to the subpostmasters? If I were a Hielan postie, first thing I'd do every shift is to superglue the card slot shut, and film myself doing that, and email it to my lawyer.
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
I liked this because I think it's useful to think about politics in different ways, but Myer-Briggs is a really bad model to use. Also I don't think you'd find many woke petrolheads, or vice versa, so you can probably reduce the number of dimensions.
I think Baxter's three dimensions, and the seven political tribes he derives from them, are really pretty good, and are a framework we should use to think about British politics more often.
So when we think about red wall seats and the voters in them people are often thinking about the group that Baxter labels "Somewheres". Left-wing economically, but socially conservative and patriotic.
A large number of posters on pb.com are in the group Baxter calls "Progressives" - centrist economically, but Internationalist and socially liberal.
It's easy to think of posters on pb.com who fall into the groups "Kind Young Capitalists", "Strong Right" and "Strong Left".
I wouldn't say that pb.com has many "Centrists", "Traditionalists" or "Somewheres".
We can see clearly why the pro-EU Tories have been so fundamentally defeated. They exist in an almost deserted area of political space, with very little of the British public for company, so little that no group is defined to describe them.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Ah, thanks. I did wonder, but couldn't think of any. But, most of the time, most places, that'll apply. So the problem remains (and also whether FCA will even fine the bank more than 51p in cash).
Well, one was a Coutts office (meeting a friend that worked there). They had a counter for Coutts customers, but no machine.
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
Struck by the way in which you need to explain very carefully (and very understandably) you didn't actually have an account there.
When NatWest turned them into an ersatz Premium Account, back in the 90s, the flood of absolute wankers getting an account there… as someone else noted, they loved to wave the oversized cheque book around.
It has, to me, most of the connotations of driving round in an American stretch limo, while drinking fizzy wine from the bottle, while shouting abuse at passing strangers.
My dealings with them: when i was a slip of a young solicitor I would go to the RCJ to apply for things and then sit in their very comfortable circular window waiting for a bus back to the City. So they put little nobbles in the bottom of the window. Bastards.
On cash. My better half sells vintage clothes and other stuff at a variety of markets and, occasionally, car boot sales. She has a gadget for taking card payments, but quite a lot of punters will only pay in cash - especially at car boot sales. She'd lose a fair few sales if she only took cards.
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Ah, thanks. I did wonder, but couldn't think of any. But, most of the time, most places, that'll apply. So the problem remains (and also whether FCA will even fine the bank more than 51p in cash).
Well, one was a Coutts office (meeting a friend that worked there). They had a counter for Coutts customers, but no machine.
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
Struck by the way in which you need to explain very carefully (and very understandably) you didn't actually have an account there.
When NatWest turned them into an ersatz Premium Account, back in the 90s, the flood of absolute wankers getting an account there… as someone else noted, they loved to wave the oversized cheque book around.
It has, to me, most of the connotations of driving round in an American stretch limo, while drinking fizzy wine from the bottle, while shouting abuse at passing strangers.
My dealings with them: when i was a slip of a young solicitor I would go to the RCJ to apply for things and then sit in their very comfortable circular window waiting for a bus back to the City. So they put little nobbles in the bottom of the window. Bastards.
If that was Hoares, they would have sent a butler out with a silver salver with a glass of port, probably.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
The biggest opposition to local plans and building new homes locally are the LDs not the Tories
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
"It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem."
Thank you HY!
Had Michael Howard won the 2005 general election of course he had a manifesto commitment to scrap tuition fees
Presumably you supported that and then u-turned like all of your other ideas
What unites Michael Howard, Jeremy Corbyn and Nick Clegg? They all opposed tuition fees at general election campaigns 😄.
Blair however introduced them and Cameron increased them.
Personally I would not scrap them completely but certainly have a sliding scale so economics graduates who will likely earn most pay most and humanities graduates pay least. Plus Oxford and Cambridge should be able to charge more than say Manchester Metropolitan
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
I liked this because I think it's useful to think about politics in different ways, but Myer-Briggs is a really bad model to use. Also I don't think you'd find many woke petrolheads, or vice versa, so you can probably reduce the number of dimensions.
I think Baxter's three dimensions, and the seven political tribes he derives from them, are really pretty good, and are a framework we should use to think about British politics more often.
So when we think about red wall seats and the voters in them people are often thinking about the group that Baxter labels "Somewheres". Left-wing economically, but socially conservative and patriotic.
A large number of posters on pb.com are in the group Baxter calls "Progressives" - centrist economically, but Internationalist and socially liberal.
It's easy to think of posters on pb.com who fall into the groups "Kind Young Capitalists", "Strong Right" and "Strong Left".
I wouldn't say that pb.com has many "Centrists", "Traditionalists" or "Somewheres".
We can see clearly why the pro-EU Tories have been so fundamentally defeated. They exist in an almost deserted area of political space, with very little of the British public for company, so little that no group is defined to describe them.
Actually we do have woke petrolheads on here, and we also have anti-woke environmentalists. The good thing about Myers Briggs is it creates a large number of categories, which helps when you get misfits: people who don't have predictable views on everything. The trouble with sorting people into a small number of tribes is it doesn't capture these exceptions.
Baxter doesn't really deal with opinions on foreign policy, building/nimbyism or - properly - environmentalism either. It essentially lumps climate scepticism in with social conservatism, which is often wrong.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
"It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem."
Thank you HY!
Had Michael Howard won the 2005 general election of course he had a manifesto commitment to scrap tuition fees
Presumably you supported that and then u-turned like all of your other ideas
What unites Michael Howard, Jeremy Corbyn and Nick Clegg? They all opposed tuition fees at general election campaigns 😄.
Blair however introduced them and Cameron increased them.
Personally I would not scrap them completely but certainly have a sliding scale so economics graduates who will likely earn most pay most and humanities graduates pay least. Plus Oxford and Cambridge should be able to charge more than say Manchester Metropolitan
Would love to know how you think a University would receive money to pay for staff in your world.
Also Oxford / Cambridge would probably charge the least - they already subsidize poorer students more than anyone else...
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
The triple lock makes perfect sense. Who has forgotten the political fallout of Labour increasing the OAP by just 75p pa.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
Starmer is an idiot.
The chance I vote Tory in old age is basically zero, Brexit alone was enough for your lot to lose my vote and main of those like me for good
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
The triple lock makes perfect sense. Who has forgotten Labour increasing the OAP by just 75p pa.
You are forgetting that all pensioners are rich Tories, sliding down the mountains of money from the state pension, in the 30 bedroom mansions they hoard.
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Ah, thanks. I did wonder, but couldn't think of any. But, most of the time, most places, that'll apply. So the problem remains (and also whether FCA will even fine the bank more than 51p in cash).
Well, one was a Coutts office (meeting a friend that worked there). They had a counter for Coutts customers, but no machine.
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
Struck by the way in which you need to explain very carefully (and very understandably) you didn't actually have an account there.
When NatWest turned them into an ersatz Premium Account, back in the 90s, the flood of absolute wankers getting an account there… as someone else noted, they loved to wave the oversized cheque book around.
It has, to me, most of the connotations of driving round in an American stretch limo, while drinking fizzy wine from the bottle, while shouting abuse at passing strangers.
When Barclaycard unilaterally sent me a 'Platinum' I told them where to stick it. My ego isn't so fragile that I need to show off to check-out girls.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
"It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem."
Thank you HY!
Had Michael Howard won the 2005 general election of course he had a manifesto commitment to scrap tuition fees
Presumably you supported that and then u-turned like all of your other ideas
What unites Michael Howard, Jeremy Corbyn and Nick Clegg? They all opposed tuition fees at general election campaigns 😄.
Blair however introduced them and Cameron increased them.
Personally I would not scrap them completely but certainly have a sliding scale so economics graduates who will likely earn most pay most and humanities graduates pay least. Plus Oxford and Cambridge should be able to charge more than say Manchester Metropolitan
Would love to know how you think a University would receive money to pay for staff in your world.
Also Oxford / Cambridge would probably charge the least - they already subsidize poorer students more than anyone else...
Quite easily, every course would have fees just an economics professor would likely be paid more than an English or creative arts professor.
Oxford and Cambridge can only subsidise as they have lots of endowments, they would still do that for poorer students while charging the highest fees for richer students
1) I think the advert shows Biden's mischievous sense of humour, as much as anything else.
2) Trump is beginning to look like a busted flush anyway. Polling suggests 70% of Americans think these charges show he is unfit to be president. If he is the Republican candidate and those numbers played out, it would be the heaviest defeat in terms of the popular vote they have ever suffered (although I imagine enough states will still vote for him regardless of what he does to avoid the humiliation suffered by the hapless Alf Landon in 1936).
3) That being said, if he still gets the Republican nomination despite all this, where do the Republicans go from here? They will have picked a failure, who was chiefly famous for vote rigging, deeply unpopular with the public and totally isolated from the political mainstream. Will they be able to recover under Haley or Christie to be a serious political force again, or will they go the way of the Whigs?
The polling has Trump and Biden neck and neck. Plenty of people will vote for Trump because they hate the Democrats more.
But Trump is at his ceiling. If he does insist on running at the same time as fighting umpteen serious criminal indictments I expect this to erode his numbers. It only takes a few % for the polls to start showing he cannot realistically win. Things will happen politically then. Things not to his benefit. His route to the WH is incredibly rocky. Everything has to go his way. His price is way too short imo.
45% of the voters would support a pug ape with a Republican or Democratic label, so polarised is the population. The swing vote is very small.
But decisive, and Trump's share of it will be down on where it was when he lost in 2020. Even if he gets the nomination (which I rather doubt) I can't see how he wins in November unless he and the GOP do some serious and widespread 'racketeering' on the voting process. It could happen, he could somehow make it, but it's all rather far-fetched imo. 3.6 is nuts.
I think that is reflecting more your bias than anything else. He made inroads into the Hispanic and even Black (male) vote. His support amongst white working class voters seems undiminished - look at his rallies. Sure, suburbanites have moved against him but will the future swings be the same as the past? And in all the noise about the failures re the House, it gets forgotten the GOP was ahead by 2-3% in the midterms.
So, we can't say his share of the vote will be down. It might be so but so might Biden's - if Cornel West runs for the Greens and there is a genuine third party candidate, it is easy to see Biden being more impacted than Trump.
Also, I think your statement that "I can't see how he wins in November unless he and the GOP do some serious and widespread 'racketeering' on the voting process." is probably shared in D-circles in the United States but it has serious threatening implications for democracy. What you are essentially saying is that, even Trump 'wins', it is legitimate NOT to accept him as President because there is no way he could have won legitimately. In which case, not sure how that is different from election denying...
I'm slicing it by 'committed v floaters' not by further factors like gender class race etc. I see his support amongst the latter group dribbling away as his (alleged until the verdict) criminality gains salience. When it comes to these people (who by definition aren't Biden or Dem haters) actually voting for who is to be their president very few will put their cross next to Donald Trump. This makes it hard for him to win. It's not impossible but it's unlikely.
Nevertheless I can reassure you that if I'm wrong and he were to win fair and square - ie with just with the normal egregious level of GOP gerrymandering - you won't find me claiming he's illegitimate.
I'm biased? Yes, but it's the other way. My natural inclination is to overweight the chances of something I'd hate to happen, happening. That's human nature and I am prone to it. I have to fight this when I'm in betting mode. So if anything if I say Trump is imo a lay at 3.6 what it means, adjusting out my bias, is that Trump is a *screaming* lay at 3.6.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
The triple lock makes perfect sense. Who has forgotten the political fallout of Labour increasing the OAP by just 75p pa.
Both parties are committed to the triple lock even though it is sending the benefits bill up c.20% in nominal terms over two years.
I think analysts are increasingly clear it will have to go at some stage though. Currently it is a ratchet that ends up bankrupting the country.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
Starmer is an idiot.
The chance I vote Tory in old age is basically zero, Brexit alone was enough for your lot to lose my vote and main of those like me for good
Starmer is far from an idiot and ironically nobody on here has proclaimed his polling success more than yourself
There are many pensioners who do not vote conservative, and I doubt the conservatives would expect your vote
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
Starmer is an idiot.
The chance I vote Tory in old age is basically zero, Brexit alone was enough for your lot to lose my vote and main of those like me for good
Starmer is far from an idiot and ironically nobody on here has proclaimed his polling success more than yourself
There are many pensioners who do not vote conservative, and I doubt the conservatives would expect your vote
There are many pensioners who don’t vote Conservative, but not many. They know which side their bread’s buttered.
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
I liked this because I think it's useful to think about politics in different ways, but Myer-Briggs is a really bad model to use. Also I don't think you'd find many woke petrolheads, or vice versa, so you can probably reduce the number of dimensions.
I think Baxter's three dimensions, and the seven political tribes he derives from them, are really pretty good, and are a framework we should use to think about British politics more often.
So when we think about red wall seats and the voters in them people are often thinking about the group that Baxter labels "Somewheres". Left-wing economically, but socially conservative and patriotic.
A large number of posters on pb.com are in the group Baxter calls "Progressives" - centrist economically, but Internationalist and socially liberal.
It's easy to think of posters on pb.com who fall into the groups "Kind Young Capitalists", "Strong Right" and "Strong Left".
I wouldn't say that pb.com has many "Centrists", "Traditionalists" or "Somewheres".
We can see clearly why the pro-EU Tories have been so fundamentally defeated. They exist in an almost deserted area of political space, with very little of the British public for company, so little that no group is defined to describe them.
Actually we do have woke petrolheads on here, and we also have anti-woke environmentalists. The good thing about Myers Briggs is it creates a large number of categories, which helps when you get misfits: people who don't have predictable views on everything. The trouble with sorting people into a small number of tribes is it doesn't capture these exceptions.
Baxter doesn't really deal with opinions on foreign policy, building/nimbyism or - properly - environmentalism either. It essentially lumps climate scepticism in with social conservatism, which is often wrong.
You've already had one response ignoring your forced choice instruction - one of the many weaknesses of the Myer-Briggs type of framework.
The purpose of such a clarification system is not to be able to perfectly classify every individual in the population. It's not a taxonomy. The usefulness lies in being able to accurately describe large groups of people.
So, yes, some individuals won't fit into Baxter's seven tribes, but I think they strike the right balance between having too few groups to think about politics (left and right wing) and between having so many that it becomes unwieldy (you have 64 different possible classifications).
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
The triple lock makes perfect sense. Who has forgotten the political fallout of Labour increasing the OAP by just 75p pa.
Both parties are committed to the triple lock even though it is sending the benefits bill up c.20% in nominal terms over two years.
I think analysts are increasingly clear it will have to go at some stage though. Currently it is a ratchet that ends up bankrupting the country.
It seems it may be over 8% based on wage inflation rather than the cpi rate, and it is unsustainable
The politically astute move for Sunak would be to tough it out and fly to Sydney and back in Economy class within a week. That would show people he's game for a laugh and gives a shit about sport. Because, so far, his attempts at appearing sportspilled have been incredibly awkward and synthetic.
I never get this whole thing of forcing our leaders to go economy just to show they are 'saving the public purse'. Anyone who has done a similar routine knows you would come back completely fucked. And then he'd be accused of not being with it.
He should buy an A380, fit it out in a cross between Austin Powers/Arab prince. Then really, really own it.
Even the Saudis would baulk at the costs of running a private A380!
That said, I think there are actually a couple of them out there, obviously owned by people with a lot more money than sense.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
Starmer is an idiot.
The chance I vote Tory in old age is basically zero, Brexit alone was enough for your lot to lose my vote and main of those like me for good
Starmer is far from an idiot and ironically nobody on here has proclaimed his polling success more than yourself
There are many pensioners who do not vote conservative, and I doubt the conservatives would expect your vote
There are many pensioners who don’t vote Conservative, but not many. They know which side their bread’s buttered.
As Starmer is committed as well then how is it to change ?
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
I liked this because I think it's useful to think about politics in different ways, but Myer-Briggs is a really bad model to use. Also I don't think you'd find many woke petrolheads, or vice versa, so you can probably reduce the number of dimensions.
I think Baxter's three dimensions, and the seven political tribes he derives from them, are really pretty good, and are a framework we should use to think about British politics more often.
So when we think about red wall seats and the voters in them people are often thinking about the group that Baxter labels "Somewheres". Left-wing economically, but socially conservative and patriotic.
A large number of posters on pb.com are in the group Baxter calls "Progressives" - centrist economically, but Internationalist and socially liberal.
It's easy to think of posters on pb.com who fall into the groups "Kind Young Capitalists", "Strong Right" and "Strong Left".
I wouldn't say that pb.com has many "Centrists", "Traditionalists" or "Somewheres".
We can see clearly why the pro-EU Tories have been so fundamentally defeated. They exist in an almost deserted area of political space, with very little of the British public for company, so little that no group is defined to describe them.
Actually we do have woke petrolheads on here, and we also have anti-woke environmentalists. The good thing about Myers Briggs is it creates a large number of categories, which helps when you get misfits: people who don't have predictable views on everything. The trouble with sorting people into a small number of tribes is it doesn't capture these exceptions.
Baxter doesn't really deal with opinions on foreign policy, building/nimbyism or - properly - environmentalism either. It essentially lumps climate scepticism in with social conservatism, which is often wrong.
You've already had one response ignoring your forced choice instruction - one of the many weaknesses of the Myer-Briggs type of framework.
The purpose of such a clarification system is not to be able to perfectly classify every individual in the population. It's not a taxonomy. The usefulness lies in being able to accurately describe large groups of people.
So, yes, some individuals won't fit into Baxter's seven tribes, but I think they strike the right balance between having too few groups to think about politics (left and right wing) and between having so many that it becomes unwieldy (you have 64 different possible classifications).
And I am creating a taxonomy, not attempting to describe large groups of people. What would be your 6 letters?
Saudi Arabia is known to be pushing the UK, Japan and Italy to allow it to become a full partner in the Global Combat Air Programme. As reported by @FinancialTimes, the request was confirmed by senior officials from all three GCAP member nations. https://twitter.com/ShephardNews/status/1692133345864400969
Do you count your fingers after shaking hands with MBS - or just your hands ?
Nicholas Gage observed that most Greek men were layabouts in Greece, but incredibly hard working after they immigrated to the US. I have no idea whether that is still true.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
Starmer is an idiot.
The chance I vote Tory in old age is basically zero, Brexit alone was enough for your lot to lose my vote and main of those like me for good
Starmer is far from an idiot and ironically nobody on here has proclaimed his polling success more than yourself
There are many pensioners who do not vote conservative, and I doubt the conservatives would expect your vote
There are many pensioners who don’t vote Conservative, but not many. They know which side their bread’s buttered.
As Starmer is committed as well then how is it to change ?
And I benefit from it
I consider it likely that whoever wins the next election will have reform it over the next five years.
Otherwise pension payments will simply end up crowding out all other government spending. Indeed that is already an issue.
You can’t run an economy on that basis, whatever the politics.
Everything that's wrong with the NHS summed up in a single chart:
60+ year olds being prioritised for organ transplants over working age people. Mental.
My initial thought was "Younger people can afford to wait longer because they have less chance of death from other causes, so mutatis mutandis it goes to the older person first". But then I though "Hold on. Liver failure is very serious and I imagine it would override other death causes, so that wouldn't work"
So now I just don't know.
Pause.
[runs away embarrassed]
you are simply saving more life-years, the younger your patient is. Plus the over 60s are the generation least likely to have adhered to the 7 units a month rule or whatever it now is, which is the most frequent cause of this predicament.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
The triple lock makes perfect sense. Who has forgotten the political fallout of Labour increasing the OAP by just 75p pa.
Both parties are committed to the triple lock even though it is sending the benefits bill up c.20% in nominal terms over two years.
I think analysts are increasingly clear it will have to go at some stage though. Currently it is a ratchet that ends up bankrupting the country.
It seems it may be over 8% based on wage inflation rather than the cpi rate, and it is unsustainable
The bonkers part is that you essentially have three series.
1.025^n The inflation series The wage series
& A fourth implied/politically neccesary FLAT from last time minimum value for next time.
Now leaping between all three is actually OK - the issue is if you get a sequence of say inflation 6 and 7% increases:
1.00 -> 1.07 -> 1.06*1.07 = 1.1342
and wages 5 and 8% increases
1.00 -> 1.05 -> 1.08*1.05 =1.134
The pensions sequence goes to
1.00 -> 1.07 -> 1.07*1.08 = 1.1556
So over time it outstrips both wages and prices.
A sensible implementation would be to track each sequence independently from the point of the triple lock and push the pension to whichever sequence is highest at the time. That way pensioners would never lose out to wages or prices but wouldn't be outstripping either.
@Gardenwalker is this the reform you're thinking of ?
On cash. My better half sells vintage clothes and other stuff at a variety of markets and, occasionally, car boot sales. She has a gadget for taking card payments, but quite a lot of punters will only pay in cash - especially at car boot sales. She'd lose a fair few sales if she only took cards.
I mean, if you can't even spend your ill gotten cash at a car boot sale, what is the point in even going?
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Cash machines are not pointless. They're vital. And cash represents freedom.
Russia will introduce a new history textbook in schools in occupied territories of Ukraine. It praises the so-called "special military operation" &portrays Ukraine as an ultra-terrorist state.. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1692502503936385449
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
The triple lock makes perfect sense. Who has forgotten the political fallout of Labour increasing the OAP by just 75p pa.
Both parties are committed to the triple lock even though it is sending the benefits bill up c.20% in nominal terms over two years.
I think analysts are increasingly clear it will have to go at some stage though. Currently it is a ratchet that ends up bankrupting the country.
It seems it may be over 8% based on wage inflation rather than the cpi rate, and it is unsustainable
The bonkers part is that you essentially have three series.
1.025^n The inflation series The wage series
& A fourth implied/politically neccesary FLAT from last time minimum value for next time.
Now leaping between all three is actually OK - the issue is if you get a sequence of say inflation 6 and 7% increases:
1.00 -> 1.07 -> 1.06*1.07 = 1.1342
and wages 5 and 8% increases
1.00 -> 1.05 -> 1.08*1.05 =1.134
The pensions sequence goes to
1.00 -> 1.07 -> 1.07*1.08 = 1.1556
So over time it outstrips both wages and prices.
A sensible implementation would be to track each sequence independently from the point of the triple lock and push the pension to whichever sequence is highest at the time. That way pensioners would never lose out to wages or prices but wouldn't be outstripping either.
@Gardenwalker is this the reform you're thinking of ?
No, although you’re right on how utterly bonkers it works now.
I think it will be indexed to wage growth, which is both fairer and a decent proxy for affordability, notwithstanding the pensioner:working age issue.
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
I liked this because I think it's useful to think about politics in different ways, but Myer-Briggs is a really bad model to use. Also I don't think you'd find many woke petrolheads, or vice versa, so you can probably reduce the number of dimensions.
I think Baxter's three dimensions, and the seven political tribes he derives from them, are really pretty good, and are a framework we should use to think about British politics more often.
So when we think about red wall seats and the voters in them people are often thinking about the group that Baxter labels "Somewheres". Left-wing economically, but socially conservative and patriotic.
A large number of posters on pb.com are in the group Baxter calls "Progressives" - centrist economically, but Internationalist and socially liberal.
It's easy to think of posters on pb.com who fall into the groups "Kind Young Capitalists", "Strong Right" and "Strong Left".
I wouldn't say that pb.com has many "Centrists", "Traditionalists" or "Somewheres".
We can see clearly why the pro-EU Tories have been so fundamentally defeated. They exist in an almost deserted area of political space, with very little of the British public for company, so little that no group is defined to describe them.
Actually we do have woke petrolheads on here, and we also have anti-woke environmentalists. The good thing about Myers Briggs is it creates a large number of categories, which helps when you get misfits: people who don't have predictable views on everything. The trouble with sorting people into a small number of tribes is it doesn't capture these exceptions.
Baxter doesn't really deal with opinions on foreign policy, building/nimbyism or - properly - environmentalism either. It essentially lumps climate scepticism in with social conservatism, which is often wrong.
You've already had one response ignoring your forced choice instruction - one of the many weaknesses of the Myer-Briggs type of framework.
The purpose of such a clarification system is not to be able to perfectly classify every individual in the population. It's not a taxonomy. The usefulness lies in being able to accurately describe large groups of people.
So, yes, some individuals won't fit into Baxter's seven tribes, but I think they strike the right balance between having too few groups to think about politics (left and right wing) and between having so many that it becomes unwieldy (you have 64 different possible classifications).
And I am creating a taxonomy, not attempting to describe large groups of people. What would be your 6 letters?
Oh, okay then. I'd be: SWEYHR
My caveats would be that the state can easily mess up its intervention in the market, so it ought to be careful about how it does so, and that people have a legitimate interest in influencing how infrastructure is developed in their area, so that is done in the best possible way.
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Ah, thanks. I did wonder, but couldn't think of any. But, most of the time, most places, that'll apply. So the problem remains (and also whether FCA will even fine the bank more than 51p in cash).
Well, one was a Coutts office (meeting a friend that worked there). They had a counter for Coutts customers, but no machine.
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
Especially odd seeing as £50 notes are hard to actually spend anywhere without someone pulling out an eye loupe.
True fact - until I moved to London aged 23 I had never seen a £50 note in real life (even though I'd done quite a bit of retail work).
My neighbour who is now a retired consultant, left written instructions that under no circumstances was a particular anaesthetist to be allowed anywhere near him when he had an Op. But everyone knew she was dangerous. And still practising.
1) I think the advert shows Biden's mischievous sense of humour, as much as anything else.
2) Trump is beginning to look like a busted flush anyway. Polling suggests 70% of Americans think these charges show he is unfit to be president. If he is the Republican candidate and those numbers played out, it would be the heaviest defeat in terms of the popular vote they have ever suffered (although I imagine enough states will still vote for him regardless of what he does to avoid the humiliation suffered by the hapless Alf Landon in 1936).
3) That being said, if he still gets the Republican nomination despite all this, where do the Republicans go from here? They will have picked a failure, who was chiefly famous for vote rigging, deeply unpopular with the public and totally isolated from the political mainstream. Will they be able to recover under Haley or Christie to be a serious political force again, or will they go the way of the Whigs?
The polling has Trump and Biden neck and neck. Plenty of people will vote for Trump because they hate the Democrats more.
But Trump is at his ceiling. If he does insist on running at the same time as fighting umpteen serious criminal indictments I expect this to erode his numbers. It only takes a few % for the polls to start showing he cannot realistically win. Things will happen politically then. Things not to his benefit. His route to the WH is incredibly rocky. Everything has to go his way. His price is way too short imo.
45% of the voters would support a pug ape with a Republican or Democratic label, so polarised is the population. The swing vote is very small.
But decisive, and Trump's share of it will be down on where it was when he lost in 2020. Even if he gets the nomination (which I rather doubt) I can't see how he wins in November unless he and the GOP do some serious and widespread 'racketeering' on the voting process. It could happen, he could somehow make it, but it's all rather far-fetched imo. 3.6 is nuts.
I suppose there are 2 contradictory forces in swing voters:
1. toleration of / disgust with Trump: I think many swing voters will be hardened against him after the shenanigans of 2020 2. dissatisfaction with the incumbent: last time Trump was the unpopular incumbent. Now he's the challenger again - people may have forgotten just was an ineffectual president he was
Right but 2 is mitigated by a 3 - the incumbency advantage, stick with what you know etc, most incumbents do win after all, it was quite the achievement of Trump to fail to in 2020. So, he lost then as the incumbent but can win now as the challenger with the main 2024 v 2020 delta being the election denial, the capitol riots, and a whole plethora of serious criminal charges against him? No. It fails the big picture reasonableness test for me. Course he CAN win - he's the GOP front runner as we speak and he has a chunk of the population brainwashed - but I'd be wanting triple his current price to think about backing him.
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
I liked this because I think it's useful to think about politics in different ways, but Myer-Briggs is a really bad model to use. Also I don't think you'd find many woke petrolheads, or vice versa, so you can probably reduce the number of dimensions.
I think Baxter's three dimensions, and the seven political tribes he derives from them, are really pretty good, and are a framework we should use to think about British politics more often.
So when we think about red wall seats and the voters in them people are often thinking about the group that Baxter labels "Somewheres". Left-wing economically, but socially conservative and patriotic.
A large number of posters on pb.com are in the group Baxter calls "Progressives" - centrist economically, but Internationalist and socially liberal.
It's easy to think of posters on pb.com who fall into the groups "Kind Young Capitalists", "Strong Right" and "Strong Left".
I wouldn't say that pb.com has many "Centrists", "Traditionalists" or "Somewheres".
We can see clearly why the pro-EU Tories have been so fundamentally defeated. They exist in an almost deserted area of political space, with very little of the British public for company, so little that no group is defined to describe them.
Actually we do have woke petrolheads on here, and we also have anti-woke environmentalists. The good thing about Myers Briggs is it creates a large number of categories, which helps when you get misfits: people who don't have predictable views on everything. The trouble with sorting people into a small number of tribes is it doesn't capture these exceptions.
Baxter doesn't really deal with opinions on foreign policy, building/nimbyism or - properly - environmentalism either. It essentially lumps climate scepticism in with social conservatism, which is often wrong.
Yeah I'm not fond of Baxter's groupings. The diagnostics are too focused on specific issues (particularly migration). Also the question about too many people being sent to prison is not really saying enough about your views on law and order.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
The triple lock makes perfect sense. Who has forgotten the political fallout of Labour increasing the OAP by just 75p pa.
Both parties are committed to the triple lock even though it is sending the benefits bill up c.20% in nominal terms over two years.
I think analysts are increasingly clear it will have to go at some stage though. Currently it is a ratchet that ends up bankrupting the country.
Mathematicians knew it would have to go at some stage at its inception. What took analysts so long to grasp simple maths? And more importantly when will the politicians follow suit?
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Cash machines are not pointless. They're vital. And cash represents freedom.
Unless your wallet gets nicked, in which case it represents an irretrievable loss, as my son has just discovered this morning while on holiday. At least he was able to use his phone to lock his card before it could be used; there's no locking cash though.
My neighbour who is now a retired consultant, left written instructions that under no circumstances was a particular anaesthetist to be allowed anywhere near him when he had an Op. But everyone knew she was dangerous. And still practising.
Sounds like the hospital was warned by numerous people too.
I've experienced that kind of dark humour from junior staff before, particularly when formal complaints have gone and in and been ignored. It's a coping mechanism.
My neighbour who is now a retired consultant, left written instructions that under no circumstances was a particular anaesthetist to be allowed anywhere near him when he had an Op. But everyone knew she was dangerous. And still practising.
The kidney surgeon that I managed to avoid being operated on (after he'd misdiagnosed my condition a few decades ago) was known locally as 'butcher'.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Cash machines are not pointless. They're vital. And cash represents freedom.
Unless your wallet gets nicked, in which case it represents an irretrievable loss, as my son has just discovered this morning while on holiday. At least he was able to use his phone to lock his card before it could be used; there's no locking cash though.
If you are going down that route, how many people handed over their life savings in cash to scammers?
My neighbour who is now a retired consultant, left written instructions that under no circumstances was a particular anaesthetist to be allowed anywhere near him when he had an Op. But everyone knew she was dangerous. And still practising.
Sounds like the hospital was warned by numerous people too.
I've experienced that kind of dark humour from junior staff before, particularly when formal complaints have gone and in and been ignored. It's a coping mechanism.
It is also an enormous red flag that should be investigated by any kind of quality control system. Just like the Couzens example. Some of these allegations or "jokes" will prove to be malicious or ill founded but for goodness sake have a look.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
The triple lock makes perfect sense. Who has forgotten the political fallout of Labour increasing the OAP by just 75p pa.
Both parties are committed to the triple lock even though it is sending the benefits bill up c.20% in nominal terms over two years.
I think analysts are increasingly clear it will have to go at some stage though. Currently it is a ratchet that ends up bankrupting the country.
Mathematicians knew it would have to go at some stage at its inception. What took analysts so long to grasp simple maths? And more importantly when will the politicians follow suit?
Yet another turd left in the cupboard by David Cameron as a problem for Future Britain. I genuinely believe that he is the worst prime minister of modern times*
*Truss will be the eternal asterisk in such discussions.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Tuition fees are right and appropriate, otherwise it's just another bung to the middle classes. Without them, the system would be unaffordable unless numbers were slashed - which would have other, major, knock-on effects.
However, what's not right are (1) the amount of interest charged, which should be the lower of BoEBR / CPI inflation, and (2) as you say, a housing market stacked heavily against anyone under 40 (or older in some parts of the country). Scrap most planning regulations; presume a right to develop other than in exceptional circumstances; reduce red tape to encourage more small developers; build!
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Cash machines are not pointless. They're vital. And cash represents freedom.
Unless your wallet gets nicked, in which case it represents an irretrievable loss, as my son has just discovered this morning while on holiday. At least he was able to use his phone to lock his card before it could be used; there's no locking cash though.
If you are going down that route, how many people handed over their life savings in cash to scammers?
Card/internet transactions do at least leave a digital trail, so there is some chance of restoration. With cash there is almost no chance.
Following the Met’s various disasters, I suggested at work that if anyone’s nickname is The Fraudster or The Bank Robber, that one of us should call compliance.
Instead of red tape for pointless cash machines how about doing something about tuition fees which most people will now never pay off and will still be paying into their 50s?
The Tories must go. Their priorities are helping the over 70s not anyone that actually works.
Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour
They never made the fees unaffordable as your lot have done.
They were going to, Mr Bat. Don't you remember? Labour set up a commission to review the level of their top-up fees, and promised to implement whatever the commission came up with.
Then Labour lost the general election, and the Coalition Government took over. The Tories, of course, wanted to raise top-up fees to £15,000 or thereabouts, Labour were supposedly committed to £9000. The Lib Dems, in government, held the increase down to £9000, and were blamed most unjustly by everybody for the increase.
It's an unfair world, of course, but really Labour ought to have taken the blame for all the tuition fees problem.
New Labour were wrong on tuition fees. Tories are wrong on tuition fees.
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
Didn't you say you owned a house?
I do but I am certainly the exception to the rule. Fortunately I have inheritance but mostly all of my friends will sadly never be able to afford to buy if the current trajectory continues.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
Hopefully you will be elderly yourself someday and will have worked a lifetime paying all your taxes and no doubt view things in a very different way
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
Starmer is an idiot.
The chance I vote Tory in old age is basically zero, Brexit alone was enough for your lot to lose my vote and main of those like me for good
Starmer is far from an idiot and ironically nobody on here has proclaimed his polling success more than yourself
There are many pensioners who do not vote conservative, and I doubt the conservatives would expect your vote
There are many pensioners who don’t vote Conservative, but not many. They know which side their bread’s buttered.
Also, rather a lot of elderly folk on the voting list [edit] wh don't vote don't even know there is an election on, so won't be voting conservative, or indeed anything at all. (That doesn't mean they don't get their vote made for them, admittedly: there used to be stories about Scottish council old folks' homes in the old days).
Following the Met’s various disasters, I suggested at work that if anyone’s nickname is The Fraudster or The Bank Robber, that one of us should call compliance.
Perhaps other organisations should consider this?
I used to work with a guy we called "the terrorist" but he most assuredly was not
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
I liked this because I think it's useful to think about politics in different ways, but Myer-Briggs is a really bad model to use. Also I don't think you'd find many woke petrolheads, or vice versa, so you can probably reduce the number of dimensions.
I think Baxter's three dimensions, and the seven political tribes he derives from them, are really pretty good, and are a framework we should use to think about British politics more often.
So when we think about red wall seats and the voters in them people are often thinking about the group that Baxter labels "Somewheres". Left-wing economically, but socially conservative and patriotic.
A large number of posters on pb.com are in the group Baxter calls "Progressives" - centrist economically, but Internationalist and socially liberal.
It's easy to think of posters on pb.com who fall into the groups "Kind Young Capitalists", "Strong Right" and "Strong Left".
I wouldn't say that pb.com has many "Centrists", "Traditionalists" or "Somewheres".
We can see clearly why the pro-EU Tories have been so fundamentally defeated. They exist in an almost deserted area of political space, with very little of the British public for company, so little that no group is defined to describe them.
Actually we do have woke petrolheads on here, and we also have anti-woke environmentalists. The good thing about Myers Briggs is it creates a large number of categories, which helps when you get misfits: people who don't have predictable views on everything. The trouble with sorting people into a small number of tribes is it doesn't capture these exceptions.
Baxter doesn't really deal with opinions on foreign policy, building/nimbyism or - properly - environmentalism either. It essentially lumps climate scepticism in with social conservatism, which is often wrong.
Yeah I'm not fond of Baxter's groupings. The diagnostics are too focused on specific issues (particularly migration). Also the question about too many people being sent to prison is not really saying enough about your views on law and order.
Law and order should be fertile ground for Labour I think. Exactly as you say, the Tories have for too long conflated justice policy with crime prevention policy. Sentencing is no substitute for good policing. Better and more effective policing, evidence collection, improved conviction rates, even basic follow up on property crime would all go much further to discourage offending than just lengthening prison sentences. Yet sentencing is all they bang on about.
That comes seriously close to manslaughter. Just shocking.
Gross negligence manslaughter for the later deaths, just possibly.
Whether Letby simply fooled them, or not, how do they explain this ? ...Deaths were not reported appropriately, which meant the high fatality rate could not be picked up by the wider NHS system, a manager who took over after the deaths has told the BBC..
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Ah, thanks. I did wonder, but couldn't think of any. But, most of the time, most places, that'll apply. So the problem remains (and also whether FCA will even fine the bank more than 51p in cash).
Well, one was a Coutts office (meeting a friend that worked there). They had a counter for Coutts customers, but no machine.
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
That must have annoyed the hell out of the coffee shop next door!
Not extraordinary at all. Entirely understandable from the NHS. It seems only to have been the sheer dogged persistence of the consultants which lead to an investigation and arrest.
The then management of that hospital should now likewise be charged.
Following the Met’s various disasters, I suggested at work that if anyone’s nickname is The Fraudster or The Bank Robber, that one of us should call compliance.
Perhaps other organisations should consider this?
I used to work with a guy we called "the terrorist" but he most assuredly was not
Or did he just live in a terrorist house, like all the others in the street.
A new improved political compass, in the binary letter-combo style of Myers Briggs. Covering the 6 principal faultlines in British politics and ideology (or at least on PB):
Like Myers-Briggs, a forced preference - you have to fall on one side or other rather than claiming to be in the centre or that it depends.
1. Economics, which instead of left vs right I would define as socialised vs market. The extremes on each side being freewheeling market fundamentalism and communism, but in Britain more a case of believing in more or less state intervention in the economy:
S = socialised M = market
2. Social and identity politics: traditionalist/authoritarian vs liberal. Are you woke or anti-woke? Should we topple statues of slavers? Do we need a lavatory tsar and so on.
W = woke A = anti-woke
3. Green politics: are you an eco-warrior who wants us all on our bikes, stopping drilling in the North Sea and installing heat pumps, or are you a petrolhead who upholds everyone's right to keep 3 gas guzzlers in the cul-de-sac, thinks LTNs are the spawn of the devil, and wonders if the climate crisis stuff isn't just a tad overwrought.
E = eco-warrior P = petrolhead
4. Nimby vs Yimby. Should we concrete over the green belt and build build build because the country needs infrastructure, or protect what remains of our green and pleasant land?
N = nimby Y = yimby
5. Russia and Ukraine: are you a hawk or a dove? Do you despair of keyboard toy soldiers bloodthirstily escalating until the last Ukrainian / global thermonuclear war, and understand Russia's historical concerns on NATO expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in Donbas? Or do you see Putin as a fascist thug who must be defeated to avoid greater problems down the line?
D = dove H = hawk
6. Brexit or remain. In or out?
B = Brexit R = remain
As of today I am MWEYHR, although a couple of those are marginal (S/M and N/Y).
I liked this because I think it's useful to think about politics in different ways, but Myer-Briggs is a really bad model to use. Also I don't think you'd find many woke petrolheads, or vice versa, so you can probably reduce the number of dimensions.
I think Baxter's three dimensions, and the seven political tribes he derives from them, are really pretty good, and are a framework we should use to think about British politics more often.
So when we think about red wall seats and the voters in them people are often thinking about the group that Baxter labels "Somewheres". Left-wing economically, but socially conservative and patriotic.
A large number of posters on pb.com are in the group Baxter calls "Progressives" - centrist economically, but Internationalist and socially liberal.
It's easy to think of posters on pb.com who fall into the groups "Kind Young Capitalists", "Strong Right" and "Strong Left".
I wouldn't say that pb.com has many "Centrists", "Traditionalists" or "Somewheres".
We can see clearly why the pro-EU Tories have been so fundamentally defeated. They exist in an almost deserted area of political space, with very little of the British public for company, so little that no group is defined to describe them.
Actually we do have woke petrolheads on here, and we also have anti-woke environmentalists. The good thing about Myers Briggs is it creates a large number of categories, which helps when you get misfits: people who don't have predictable views on everything. The trouble with sorting people into a small number of tribes is it doesn't capture these exceptions.
Baxter doesn't really deal with opinions on foreign policy, building/nimbyism or - properly - environmentalism either. It essentially lumps climate scepticism in with social conservatism, which is often wrong.
Yeah I'm not fond of Baxter's groupings. The diagnostics are too focused on specific issues (particularly migration). Also the question about too many people being sent to prison is not really saying enough about your views on law and order.
Law and order should be fertile ground for Labour I think. Exactly as you say, the Tories have for too long conflated justice policy with crime prevention policy. Sentencing is no substitute for good policing. Better and more effective policing, evidence collection, improved conviction rates, even basic follow up on property crime would all go much further to discourage offending than just lengthening prison sentences. Yet sentencing is all they bang on about.
This.
I don't think there's any correlation between severity of sentencing and crime rates, is there?
(Unless it's a positive correlation - the more severe the sentencing, the higher the crime rates.)
Saudi Arabia is known to be pushing the UK, Japan and Italy to allow it to become a full partner in the Global Combat Air Programme. As reported by @FinancialTimes, the request was confirmed by senior officials from all three GCAP member nations. https://twitter.com/ShephardNews/status/1692133345864400969
Do you count your fingers after shaking hands with MBS - or just your hands ?
GCAP is grossly underfunded out of all proportion to its ambition and is still a money furnace that is starting to kill off other projects such as the UK's F-35 procurement effort. Getting the Najdis in would help although they contribute less than nothing in industrial capacity.
The obvious scorpion lurking in the dunes here is if Israel decide via the US that it's not happening.
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Ah, thanks. I did wonder, but couldn't think of any. But, most of the time, most places, that'll apply. So the problem remains (and also whether FCA will even fine the bank more than 51p in cash).
Well, one was a Coutts office (meeting a friend that worked there). They had a counter for Coutts customers, but no machine.
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
Especially odd seeing as £50 notes are hard to actually spend anywhere without someone pulling out an eye loupe.
True fact - until I moved to London aged 23 I had never seen a £50 note in real life (even though I'd done quite a bit of retail work).
You are right that most people do not see them. Friends gave someone a framed Turing £50 note for an IT worker's 50th birthday. They'd not realised the Turing notes were in general circulation; they thought it was a short-lived special like Peter Rabbit 50p pieces, so bought one on ebay at a large premium.
I think that's sensible. I'm 1.2 miles from the nearest cashpoint, and exactly 3 miles from a second if that one is out of service. Should be feasible for the whole of England, perhaps some tricky cases in the Scottish Highlands.
Have you any idea of how many additional ATM's that would mean in rural Northumberland? I was living 1.5 miles from the nearest shop let alone ATM. That was 4 plus. And I was in the relatively well populated Tyne Valley.
Well banks can now be fined by the FCA if they don't provide a branch or ATM within 3 miles in rural areas
How does that work? They can simply say "not me, chum, some other bank can do it".
Some rural areas, you'd almost be lucky to have a *commercial building* to put an ATM in.
Nope the FCA can now fine any bank which shuts a branch in a market town or suburb or fails to provide an ATM in them either, no excuse
So does the fine go to the people who are the last to close an ATM in an area then?
This could lead to a rush not to be the last institution with an ATM in the area, and face being trapped doing so indefinitely.
No it goes to banks who sut branches too and who fail to provide ATMs in the area even if they don't have one now
That doesn't make sense. All bank branches have ATMs anyway so "shut a branch and don't have an ATM" is an emopty set.
I’ve been into a bank branch that didn’t have an ATM. Rare, but they occur.
Ah, thanks. I did wonder, but couldn't think of any. But, most of the time, most places, that'll apply. So the problem remains (and also whether FCA will even fine the bank more than 51p in cash).
Well, one was a Coutts office (meeting a friend that worked there). They had a counter for Coutts customers, but no machine.
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
Especially odd seeing as £50 notes are hard to actually spend anywhere without someone pulling out an eye loupe.
True fact - until I moved to London aged 23 I had never seen a £50 note in real life (even though I'd done quite a bit of retail work).
You are right that most people do not see them. Friends gave someone a framed Turing £50 note for an IT worker's 50th birthday. They'd not realised the Turing notes were in general circulation; they thought it was a short-lived special like Peter Rabbit 50p pieces, so bought one on ebay at a large premium.
What's the deal with special 50p pieces which, if you look at them on eBay, vary in asking prices from 51p to £10,000.
There is a local scandal going on at the moment about a Syrian consultant who operated at Ninewells in Dundee. He seriously and permanently maimed numerous people. Complaints about him were swept under the carpet, largely, it appears, because he was more the averagely successful at bringing research money into the hospital. Eventually he left. The Scottish Government is refusing to have an inquiry because he is abroad and beyond our reach. The fact that numerous colleagues, managers and administrators either covered up his disasters or wilfully disregarded them for years whilst more and more people were harmed is not, apparently, worth investigating.
This looks far worse and more damaging for Chester Hospital than Wayne Couzens was for the MET.
It's so bleak, but you have to applaud the consultants sticking with it for nearly three years. And Cheshire Police for picking up such a complex case and delivering a successful investigation.
Comments
Thank you HY!
Mind you, the funniest was a cash machine at Citi in Canary Wharf. That only dispensed £50 notes. I thought it symbolic of something - hubris? Idiocy? Still not entirely clear.
Lavatory tsar is positively socialist if it means funding local authorities to provide heads in every municipal car park, high st etc. (I think it is a good idea, which probably means it is indeed socialist.)
They've been in government now for 13 years, it is evident they want to saddle us with debt and not ever have us own a home whilst gifting the elderly with a triple locked pension.
Fuck the Tories.
So is the plan to fine every single bank because Link has failed to do it's job?
Is it to stop cash machines being removed (which creates the race condition of last bank to pull out has to provide a service forever more)?
or is it to force banks into providing machines where 1 doesn't exist. In which case which bank is responsible for doing so?
Its another plan / campaign catchphrase with no thought to actual reality.
It has, to me, most of the connotations of driving round in an American stretch limo, while drinking fizzy wine from the bottle, while shouting abuse at passing strangers.
Had Howard's Tories won they would have been blamed for the credit crisis. They would have lost the 2010 GE to Brown on a landslide, there would have been no Brexit, no Corbyn, probably no Johnson, and David Miliband would be 2/3 years out for his second GE campaign as Prime Minister against new LOTO, the moderate Liz Truss.
I have mentioned here a few times the little trick I do of taking out 0% credit cards and paying off at the end of the 0% term or transferring to another 0% cards where the transfer fee is £0. At one point I racked up nearly £100k on them and invested it. You have to be able to pay it back though when needed. On a couple of occasions where I have advocated this I have been told 'I can't do that as I will just spend the money if the credit is given to me and not be able to pay it back' For me it is a means of making some free money and the convenience of having a minimum payment each month rather than a wildly fluctuating bill each month.
I think Baxter's three dimensions, and the seven political tribes he derives from them, are really pretty good, and are a framework we should use to think about British politics more often.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/pol3d_2021.html
So when we think about red wall seats and the voters in them people are often thinking about the group that Baxter labels "Somewheres". Left-wing economically, but socially conservative and patriotic.
A large number of posters on pb.com are in the group Baxter calls "Progressives" - centrist economically, but Internationalist and socially liberal.
It's easy to think of posters on pb.com who fall into the groups "Kind Young Capitalists", "Strong Right" and "Strong Left".
I wouldn't say that pb.com has many "Centrists", "Traditionalists" or "Somewheres".
We can see clearly why the pro-EU Tories have been so fundamentally defeated. They exist in an almost deserted area of political space, with very little of the British public for company, so little that no group is defined to describe them.
I am still saddled with university debt and having no help from the government anywhere else. Elderly get a free ride.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/urine-deflectors-of-fleet-street
As far as the triple lock is concerned Starmer is fully on board with it so no change there then
Blair however introduced them and Cameron increased them.
Personally I would not scrap them completely but certainly have a sliding scale so economics graduates who will likely earn most pay most and humanities graduates pay least. Plus Oxford and Cambridge should be able to charge more than say Manchester Metropolitan
Baxter doesn't really deal with opinions on foreign policy, building/nimbyism or - properly - environmentalism either. It essentially lumps climate scepticism in with social conservatism, which is often wrong.
Also Oxford / Cambridge would probably charge the least - they already subsidize poorer students more than anyone else...
Never happened before in Hampshire that I've noticed. We are eight miles from RAF Odiham, and so it's usually Chinooks.
Incompressible
The chance I vote Tory in old age is basically zero, Brexit alone was enough for your lot to lose my vote and main of those like me for good
Not lurking around here, or he'd have picked up on the Ozempic stat.
Oxford and Cambridge can only subsidise as they have lots of endowments, they would still do that for poorer students while charging the highest fees for richer students
Nevertheless I can reassure you that if I'm wrong and he were to win fair and square - ie with just with the normal egregious level of GOP gerrymandering - you won't find me claiming he's illegitimate.
I'm biased? Yes, but it's the other way. My natural inclination is to overweight the chances of something I'd hate to happen, happening. That's human nature and I am prone to it. I have to fight this when I'm in betting mode. So if anything if I say Trump is imo a lay at 3.6 what it means, adjusting out my bias, is that Trump is a *screaming* lay at 3.6.
I think analysts are increasingly clear it will have to go at some stage though. Currently it is a ratchet that ends up bankrupting the country.
There are many pensioners who do not vote conservative, and I doubt the conservatives would expect your vote
The purpose of such a clarification system is not to be able to perfectly classify every individual in the population. It's not a taxonomy. The usefulness lies in being able to accurately describe large groups of people.
So, yes, some individuals won't fit into Baxter's seven tribes, but I think they strike the right balance between having too few groups to think about politics (left and right wing) and between having so many that it becomes unwieldy (you have 64 different possible classifications).
That said, I think there are actually a couple of them out there, obviously owned by people with a lot more money than sense.
And I benefit from it
But the court heard that colleagues had suspicions about Letby well over a year before hospital bosses contacted the police.
A nurse who worked at the hospital told Sky News that when "alarms would go off during the night" there would be a "phrase that people would use".
Lynsey Artell said that colleagues would ask, "I wonder if Lucy's working tonight?".
https://news.sky.com/story/nurse-lucy-letby-found-guilty-of-murdering-seven-babies-on-neonatal-unit-12919516
What would be your 6 letters?
https://twitter.com/ShephardNews/status/1692133345864400969
Do you count your fingers after shaking hands with MBS - or just your hands ?
(I probably saw that in an aside in his book, "Eleni".
https://www.amazon.com/Eleni-Nicholas-Gage/dp/0345410432/ref=sr_1_1?crid=NIW8LHO6H1M6&keywords=Eleni&qid=1692361653&s=books&sprefix=eleni,stripbooks,308&sr=1-1 )
Otherwise pension payments will simply end up crowding out all other government spending. Indeed that is already an issue.
You can’t run an economy on that basis, whatever the politics.
hic.
1.025^n
The inflation series
The wage series
& A fourth implied/politically neccesary FLAT from last time minimum value for next time.
Now leaping between all three is actually OK - the issue is if you get a sequence of say inflation 6 and 7% increases:
1.00 -> 1.07 -> 1.06*1.07 = 1.1342
and wages 5 and 8% increases
1.00 -> 1.05 -> 1.08*1.05 =1.134
The pensions sequence goes to
1.00 -> 1.07 -> 1.07*1.08 = 1.1556
So over time it outstrips both wages and prices.
A sensible implementation would be to track each sequence independently from the point of the triple lock and push the pension to whichever sequence is highest at the time. That way pensioners would never lose out to wages or prices but wouldn't be outstripping either.
@Gardenwalker is this the reform you're thinking of ?
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1692502503936385449
I think it will be indexed to wage growth, which is both fairer and a decent proxy for affordability, notwithstanding the pensioner:working age issue.
My caveats would be that the state can easily mess up its intervention in the market, so it ought to be careful about how it does so, and that people have a legitimate interest in influencing how infrastructure is developed in their area, so that is done in the best possible way.
True fact - until I moved to London aged 23 I had never seen a £50 note in real life (even though I'd done quite a bit of retail work).
I currently lean social and woke and green, but I often these attitudes come with an authoritarian bent which I find repellant.
She will, surely, get a whole life tariff.
My neighbour who is now a retired consultant, left written instructions that under no circumstances was a particular anaesthetist to be allowed anywhere near him when he had an Op. But everyone knew she was dangerous. And still practising.
I've experienced that kind of dark humour from junior staff before, particularly when formal complaints have gone and in and been ignored. It's a coping mechanism.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66120934
*Truss will be the eternal asterisk in such discussions.
However, what's not right are (1) the amount of interest charged, which should be the lower of BoEBR / CPI inflation, and (2) as you say, a housing market stacked heavily against anyone under 40 (or older in some parts of the country). Scrap most planning regulations; presume a right to develop other than in exceptional circumstances; reduce red tape to encourage more small developers; build!
Perhaps other organisations should consider this?
Which strengthens your point.
Whether Letby simply fooled them, or not, how do they explain this ?
...Deaths were not reported appropriately, which meant the high fatality rate could not be picked up by the wider NHS system, a manager who took over after the deaths has told the BBC..
Another advised against calling the police because "it would be a catastrophe for the hospital".
Cyclefree in 3...2...1...
The then management of that hospital should now likewise be charged.
I don't think there's any correlation between severity of sentencing and crime rates, is there?
(Unless it's a positive correlation - the more severe the sentencing, the higher the crime rates.)
The obvious scorpion lurking in the dunes here is if Israel decide via the US that it's not happening.
https://twitter.com/CNNThisMorning/status/1692500688058912800
Please take as read 20 posts on the matter, while I spare both me writing them or you reading them.