The SNP no longer top party in Scotland – politicalbetting.com
The SNP no longer top party in Scotland – politicalbetting.com
Above is the latest Scottish poll from R&W and as can be seen the SNP are now running neck and neck with LAB.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k43g4rSobc
Labour and the Tories have joined forces to condemn Britain to national failure. Their views are virtually indistinguishable
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2023/09/06/labour-and-tories-have-united-form-government-of-failure/ (£££)
It is not just the Corbynistas then.
No reason at all to expect they will do so, of course, but as long as the hope is there....
On topic, they should pick up at least 20 seats in Scotland, and I can't see them winning less then 100 off the Tories in England, so unlike Mike, I do think they will win an Overall Majority, quite possibly a clear one.
The present Government is the rats arse. No limit to how low it can go,
Mike, this is one of several reasons why your views about a Labour majority could be wrong.
Of course, Labour winning say 30 seats in Scotland does not alter the Cons-Lab swing dynamic but it does provide a powerful path to a Labour outright majority.
I quite agree with you.
1978/9 The Winter of Discontent was in some ways similar to now. A shambolic government, perilous economy, and disillusion with the governing party. I don't recall there being much, or any, great enthusiasm for Margaret Thatcher prior to her famous victory. In fact, quite the opposite. There was a lot of suspicion about her, particularly as a woman and whether she would be up to the job.
1997 was clearly massive enthusiasm for Tony Blair combined with disillusion at a shambolic governing party - although that shambles was in fact delivering Britain in superb economic health. Black Wednesday ironically paved the way for Britain's prosperity.
So my assessment is that this time is more like 1978/9.
And Mike's comparison with 1992 is wildly out. The circumstances bear no relation to the metrics then in the governing party, the state of the country, or the opposition. And Starmer may not be full of pizzazz but he's no Neil Kinnock (who had far too much pizzazz - see Sheffield).
The public are clear that the country is falling apart all around them. Yet the government not only does nothing, it seems to be it absolute denial that is happening. Note the RAAC scandal - Sunak insists that he increased funding as he cut it, that a lack of complaints by Starmer means there is no problem, and anyway most students won't be eaten by the shark therefore there is no shark.
A very big part of its circulation now is freebies to hotels and the like, and cheapo subscription deals pitched at the elderly.
Britons are less likely to view work as important than people in any other country surveyed. I'm kind of torn on whether this is a good thing or not, but it's certainly an interesting development.
That is. They'll take some Con/LD voters in an SNP/Lab contest. (They'd take a fair few SNP in Lab/Con/LD ones too. But there aren't any now).
Presumably the Lab voters saying "very well" meant very well at trashing the Tory Party.
I don't mind reading views that are different from my own, it's good for me, as long as they're well reasoned. But two or three years ago the Telegraph just seemed to lose it. People like Allison Pearson and Charles Moore went off the edge. And then they were joined by the Economics / Business & Money section, which used to be really good, but which also seemed to go full tonto. They had a particularly bad patch when they were still defending Trussonomics long after it was derided.
As to the charge that “both parties are the same” - it’s like fractals. At one level they look similar. At another they are different.
Both are mixed, regulated market, social democracy parties. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be a big difference between what they do with that.
If upsets people that we don’t have a Rodderick Spode style RSS or that Maomentum is in the wilderness, then I am quite glad that they are upset.
Sorry Komrades. Sir Kid Starver isn’t going to be shooting kulaks for LOLs. So fucking what?
Very little respect for that. Gove put his shoulder to the wheel.
I have a socialist friend in Yorkshire who used to read the Telegraph avidly for the journalism but those days have passed.
And that significantly changes the odds of a Labour majority and equally the chance of a large Labour majority..
Assuming they do indeed lose this next time, the Conservative Party will bounce back. I think they will have one last hopeless lurch to the right and then the sensible heads and hearts will return. By that stage Labour will be starting to fuck things up, because they always do, and there will be a wide open goal in the centre of the pitch for the Conservatives to come back through.
There is always a place for a centre-right conservative party in this country because they have traditionally been the better custodians of money: both personal and public.
It's a startling travesty that they have somehow contrived to screw that completely: messing up both the public and personal finances.
"Trust whose rebuild was inexplicably dropped from '40 new hospitals' faces ‘enforced closure’ risk due to estate problems
Risks at Doncaster 'potentially greater' than RAAC, & require an 'equally urgent response', says trust
from @HMAnderson39"
https://twitter.com/LawrenceDunhill/status/1699395255198699832?t=6uRzm9gS6Yt-6VBpErFj6g&s=19
The article is correct. 19 Tories voted against the recent shitty energy bill - that's the sum of MPs working in the interests of consumers in the House. Labout tried to amend it to be even worse for domestic energy production than it already was.
Oh, and good morning PB.
The “right” answer is to survey all the school , mitigate, secure and fix. Not to close schools. But our politicians, driven by social media, are liable to panic. There is no upside for them doing the right thing and if even one kid gets hurt their career is over. So they overreact.
And we're supposed to await school children being injured or dying before we act?
Another example of a tory with their head in the sand. And tone deaf to what's going wrong.
They are not the contractors.
What we want, apparently -
1) low inflation
2) 5% growth
3) a soaring population
4) absolutely no building or development of any kind
5) and any of 4) we manage to do needs to take 20 years and 500k pages of guff that not even the lawyers read.
Schools apparently cost more, per sqm, to build than luxury properties for the mega rich.
I’m sure this process feeds the hungry children of many lawyers, consultants and accountants. And so is worthy and untouchable.
One of the symptoms of a party that is losing it is when they deny there's even a problem ... as you can see from the last vestiges of pb tory support below (the usual suspects). Sunak has been accused of this a lot lately. He seems to think that telling everyone there isn't a problem, when there is, will bring sunny uplands.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12489463/Fears-NHS-fast-tracking-teens-waiting-list-treatment.html
Would you like his name and facebook profile so you can chat to him? PM if you do.
(Although, on a literal reading, neither of those words is true it still sums up his situation pretty well. The beauty and complexity of the English language is a marvel to behold!)
The risk escalated when a surveyed* and passed structured collapsed. This meant the existing risk model went to shit.
Until that is restored, you are ignoring the holes in the cheese lining up.
*this idea of surveying and somehow signing off a potentially failing material sounds like nonsense to me. From descriptions of the failure modes, predicting what will happen doesn’t sound plausible.
Just a thought...
The risk escalated when a surveyed* and passed structured collapsed. This meant the existing risk model went to shit.
Until that is restored, you are ignoring the holes in the cheese lining up.
*this idea of surveying and somehow signing off a potentially failing material sounds like nonsense to me. From descriptions of the failure modes, Well, to be fair, it probably *is* a reduction in the time they would have to wait.
Of course, the thing that might have helped would have been using the summer holidays to do these checks, rather than waiting until the very end of August.
It's a repeat of the thing this government always does, maybe that Britain always does. Ignore a problem, as if it can be made to go away by force of will. Then panic and whinge when that doesn't work.
https://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/23066976.remembering-aberfan-disaster-1966/
I don't know if you have kids, but if that one kid was yours would you go "well, the balance of probabilities was my kid wouldn't be the one to get hurt / die" or would you go "the government knew this was going to happen eventually, why didn't they sort it out before it got to this point?". The problem is that the government dragged their feet and so that means the risk is higher than it was, and so have to be seen to do something now or kids will start getting hurt and people can point to No 10 as the responsible party. If they had done this 4-5 years ago (or even potentially used lockdown as a time to do this, although that would have been iffy from a health and safety pov, and the supply lines being buggered meant building materials were very expensive) we wouldn't be in this mess.
I don’t think this is necessarily a recent thing. I’d guess Brits had this attitude to work since the 1980s.
Even mundane physical jobs can be rewarding if there is a sense of vocation (eg care home staff)
I think the default definition would be long hours, hard work, low pay, but I had a job like that for years and I loved it.
My least favourite job was in an office, well paid, limited responsibility.
I think the best definition a crappy job is probably one that "does not reward" the staff, whether that reward is financial, intellectual, spiritual or something else.
- is it well paid or poorly paid
- is it an interesting or fulfilling job to do
- does it come with excessive levels of pressure or stress
So the worst jobs are pointless and unfulfilling, highly stressful and poorly paid. The best are high paid, fascinating and with manageable levels of stress. David Attenborough’s job for example, or Michael Palin.
There are many problems with the current site, and a new one would be welcome, but I'm unconvinced by the replacement site they were looking at.
Meanwhile, it would be nice if the nursing staff actually looked after patients and didn't dismiss what families tell them...
I'm all for schools generally staying open. Lockdowns were dreadful for them. My son suffered through it. They were awful for the children. It wasn't the right decision because covid didn't really put children's lives at risk.
However, if there's a danger of roof collapse - and there clearly is - you can't sit children underneath them until they are made safe. It would be madness.
Graeber's position on "bullshit jobs" is similar, except he views these jobs as being pointless at the basis and instead they act as a pseudo keynsianism - people who write reports that just end up in a drawer and never read, that sort of thing. His view is this is almost like a self preservation act of capital - that if too many people with graduate educations were unemployed there would be too much unrest, so the PMC have to exist to give them work to do but most of that work is pointless, and people kinda realise that.
Then you have the more bread and butter issues - if you're working longer hours for the same pay you got 10 years ago, is your job giving you the standard of living you expected / desire? If work is supposed to be how you fund life, if you don't have enough time / money to enjoy life - what's the point of work?
That's all aside from issues with specific jobs - dealing with customers, an annoying manager / boss, all those other things. The above are what I view are the underlying dissatisfactions with work. And I don't think it should be surprising that the people of Britain are the most dissatisfied when we are one of the worst countries for work life balance, one of the earliest countries to outsource industrial work and become a service economy, and crushed unions relatively early leading to wage stagnation earlier than other countries.
It took an age to get to the carpark here at Aberdeen Airport. Not because the polis are looking for the escapee, because of the huge Offshore expo nearby. The extra security delays at the airport? Naah - the usual 'don't stop moving until you load stuff into the scanner trays.'
Everything about this government has the stench of decay and defeat about it.
It's Lab 76-79. It's Con 95-97. It's Lab 2008-10.
RIP.
What has changed is (a) the awareness that there may be unexpected collapses and (b) the risk tolerance
Wholesale closures don’t appear to be a proportional response
crappy? I’d say that affects how happy you are in a job, but not whether that job by definition is crappy.
And the Queen’s funeral. Truss will stand out to people watching that in the future like your sibling’s date to your wedding, who went out with them for 2 months but still got in all the family photos.
The cost here is disrupted education for children. That needs to be factored in vs the risk of a localised collapse.
The issue isn't that they are or are not acting on RAAC (they are, and before injuries).
The issue is the utterly shambolic way they're doing so.
This was an issue known about weeks ago, they could have made announcements weeks ago but instead it was shambolically mismanaged and done at the last possible minute.
Which as a parent bears an eerie similarity to the completely shambolic "return to school for one day, ok now we are in immediate lockdown no school tomorrow" in January 2021.
Stage 2: We say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Stage 3: We say maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
Stage 4: We say maybe there was something, but it's too late now.
Closing 100 schools disrupts the education of 100k kids. Is that a price worth paying vs a small risk of a collapse potentially hurting a kid?
On your second paragraph hindsight is a wonderful thing
Just saying!
It's not just about hindsight, it's about a government that actually plans and does things before they become a crisis. If you're constantly fire fighting then you'll lose control of a fire or two, and that is not good governance.
Zeebrugge though. Aptly involving a ship called the Herald of Free Enterprise.
When I'm solving problems, hopefully helping people or animals, everything's fine, and high pressure is good fun. Yesterday, I had a complex, urgent report to write which took 7 hours of screen time with a short break, and I felt really happy about it by the end of the day.
Our HR department worries about stress and has signed us all up for https://www.calm.com/ - I asked only half-jokingly whether we couldn't have an excite.com app for dull moments. The adrenalin that you get from productive stress is underrated.
b) everyone else is earning more than me
for any and every level of salary.
People are beaten up in relationships. Should we ban dating?
Life comes with risk. We should manage and mitigate and seek a proportionate response