Boring but good and stable – politicalbetting.com
Boring but good and stable – politicalbetting.com
We asked 2,000 people to give us one word to describe Keir Starmer.#Lab23 pic.twitter.com/Nx7pirXJ7J
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Just as lawyers make whatever argument suits their case at any moment, even if it contradicts what they said last week. That's a profession that makes prostitutes or journalists look honest by comparison. And of course great training for dishonest, weathervane politics - it's obviously no coincidence that Blair and Clinton were both lawyers.
Only the self employed get to choose their co-workers, the rest of us have to be professional and work with people that we have significant differences with.
Even his comment yesterday that this is why the party had to change, power rather than protest shows that ruthlessness. He is utterly focused on winning power and shows comparatively little interest in what to do with it. A bit like Sunak and May in that respect.
I don’t have much expectation that he will be a good PM but I am very confident that he will be our next one. We all just have to hope that he surprises on the upside.
Oddly, incompetent has been spelt correctly.
You'd think that somebody would have checked before registering the title.
Even my lifelong tory voting friend in Surrey has become very relaxed about Starmer as PM. She shrugs her shoulders and is okay with it.
And if you think about it, that's quite an achievement. To have many moderate Conservatives accepting of PM Starmer is one hell of a shift from those days under Jeremy Corbyn.
https://x.com/ldnlutonairport/status/1711932148318401003?s=61
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
People are projecting onto Starmer what they want to be true.
As for the Corbyn-Blair question, was there a point where Jez crossed the line from "stupidly left but with the bounds of plausibility" to "unambiguously unacceptably wrong"?
I'd say his response to the antisemitism report and refusal to even do a Father Jack "I'm really sorry" apology crossed a line.
One thing to remember about Starmer is, given his age, he's unlikely to want to serve more then 4-5 years as PM if he wins.
So he may be in any case a transitory PM that people still project onto all the way through his premiership.
(Remarkable to think he's only eight years younger than Blair and actually older than Cameron.)
It appears that Russia has attacked and damaged another pipeline belonging to a NATO member. It shows the increasing recklessness and desperation of the gang in the Kremlin. Apparently the same ship was in the proximity as was suspected in the last pipeline explosion.
This is an attack on a NATO member and article 5 is potentially engaged. More generally, it is yet more evidence that Russia is a terrorist state that cannot be trusted to comply with any international norms or obligations.
*Deliberate spelling
None of these suggest that this is a good starting point for a PM.
Edit and was Corbyn’s response to anti semitism any worse than inviting IRA terrorists to the Houses of Parliament?
So Raed Salah is a wonderful human being.
At the same time, all Jews are a privileged group. Therefore it is impossible to be racist against them, for a Sacred Person*
*Anyone touched by Real Socialism or is Oppressed.
I live on one of the 7 Tory held seats with a large majority in Leics that encircle the city. On current polling some of these turn improbably red. I will wait for the candidates flyers before deciding but really hard to see the seat as other than Tory hold.
Starmer looks in good health, and will do two terms I expect. The next Labour leader may not even be in Parliament yet.
Real Conspiracy Nuts (TM) deny stuff like Australia. Or the existence of Arabs in the Middle East.
All politicians need to change and adapt, but Sunak seems to rip up long-standing policies on a whim, based on a Coke fueled night with his spreadsheets.
Constraining supply like this, to protect prices, is one of the reasons that economists, since *before* Adam Smith, considered monopolies bad for the public interest.
I was in Mid Beds yesterday - poster counts 1st: Lib Dem; 2nd: Labour; 3rd: Reform - Not a single Tory poster or stake board.
https://www.haaretz.com/ty-WRITER/0000017f-da25-d42c-afff-dff7a1c10000
...His life’s work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible. En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”..
Proper RCN deny the existence of Saudi Arabia.
Instead move to a Japanese-style system where if land is zoned for housing anyone can build on it without asking any permission first from neighbours or Council or anyone else since permission has already been granted via it being in the right zone.
In the UK an oligopoly constructs identikit houses. Over there they get built a house at the time and not all uniform, as each plot can be built based on the owners demands instead of what makes life profitable/easy for the developer.
Oh and switch taxation to an LVT that taxes land the same whether its developed or not, so that anyone banking land is paying the same taxes as anyone who lives in a home.
A Palestinian state does not, solely because of the actions of Egypt and Transjordan in 1948.
The housing crisis and chronic housing shortage is the biggest crisis in this country today. For SKS to alight on this as his big idea shows he understands what is a real problem in a way Sunak and the Tories have failed to do since the modest planning reforms Boris intended were rejected.
If anything, SKS deserves criticism not because the 300k per annum target is too challenging, but that it's far too modest.
Even with 300k a year, with population growth continuing that is not going to make a dent in our housing shortage.
France has the same population as us and 13 million extra homes.
I find it bizarre that you seem unbothered as to whether it “was fake or not”! Does truth not matter any more? It was fake and I fail to see any evidence that Starmer is difficult to work for.
Harborough, Oadby and Wigston
Mid Leics
Melton and Syston
Loughborough
NW Leics
Tory Hold in
Hinckley and Bosworth
South Leicestershire
Rutland and Stamford (contains a lot of East Leics, so 8 rather than 7 seats on old boundaries)
Even these seats are surprisingly close for Labour, with Rutland and Stamford less than 5,000 Tory majority.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/bdy2023_emids_summary.html
This is why Mid Beds is interesting as a 3 way fight. Can Labour really win in true blue Shire seats, where Lib Dems are also plausible?
Personally, with the strong council presence in both Harborough and O and W, I would think LD should be a LD target.
???
Giving too many clues about what you intend to purchase, a year or more before the event, would be sub-optimal.
I'd guess there's a not unreasonable chance of getting somewhere near their objective, if they are really serious about it.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/labour-wants-to-build-1-5m-homes-but-how-green-will-they-be/ar-AA1hZQIH?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=a73257a4c65d4bb491a3a7787691098c&ei=8
The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are the next target, but will be in smaller open prisons than Gaza, isolated from each other.
Israel has systematically prevented non-violent resistance too, and marginalised the moderates on the Palestinian Authority.
It is utterly certain that removing one constraint on supply will uncover another one. We have actually got planning permissions up. Local monopolies/oligopolies is one.
What increasing housing supply requires is focus on the goal. Not focus on one part of the process.
1) Abolish duties when sizing down, based on number of bedrooms. Increase duties on second homes, and hike council tax on STLs and empty homes.
2) Adjust council tax so that detached houses pay significantly more than equivalent flats. Base it on footprint.
3) No new estates that are more than a 15 minute walk from a primary school etc. If they are, the developer must leave space and infrastructure for public services to be later built by council
4) Use the ONS map of rental percentages to identify where developers should be incentivised to built high density housing (cos it can't be as awful as what the landlords are providing): https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/maps/choropleth/housing/tenure-of-household/hh-tenure-5a/private-rented-or-lives-rent-free
I conclude from the last para that TSE is a lawyer.
Cynical, moi?
In which case, in a fire that large, there is likely to be at least one electric vehicle involved. Electric vehicle fires are a devil to put out: they may not initially burn as hot as ICE car fires, but they burn and burn, and are difficult to extinguish.
Even if an electric car did not instigate the fire, the presence of electric cars would have made the fire burn longer, and make the firefighters' jobs mire difficult.
(All AIUI, IANAE, obvs...)
There have however been a series of stories about staffers leaving the Labour Party with NDAs https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/21/top-barrister-accuses-labour-of-spin-over-ndas-gagging-ex-staff
He's staring at a humiliating loss and whatever options he picks open him to attack by one wing of the party or another, so he tries to be both stable and revolutionary. He tries to be statesmanlike and a rabble router. He tries to be tough but also cuddly.
It just confuses people.
I was just suggesting one reason you might hear little detail prior to the next election.
Unless we know why cannot read too much into it.
“So, how, just by way of example, would I delete all the WhatsApp messages?”
However they've called Sunak a snake so it evens out.
But government is also likely to partner with private developers, and if it acquires building land cheaply, has a lever to encourage their cooperation.
I would guess builders with large land banks are fairly scared of the prospect. (Something along those lines party explains their enthusiasm over the years to contribute to Conservative Party funding.)
I live in a very safe Tory seat in SW wilts, so it probably doesn’t matter who I vote for, and I respect our MP, but he won’t be getting my vote this time round.
-Poor public service productivity - every pound of taxpayers money is getting 7.5% less shit done than it did before
-Too much illegal migration, and probably legal also
-Net Zero set to cost the economy £3tn, and in world carbon emission terms, to make a negligible difference, whilst we offshore high carbon industries to coal-burning China
-The highest tax burden since the 40's
-Energy costs twice as much as it does in the USA - how can our companies possibly compete on that basis?
-Not enough dwellings, or infrastructure to go with them
-The Bank of England has gone completely tonto and is set on destroying the economy with its quantative tightening programme, following its massively inflationary quantative easing programme
I could go on obviously, but that's enough. I can see only one of those issues where SKS's Labour even plans a solution (housing), and even that is likely to involve targets and 5 year plans rather than making it easy for the industry to do its job.
For instance, there are no houses like mine on this street. But if I go three hundred metres away, I can find a couple that are identical.
More interesting is whether the LDs can finally reclaim second place - there's swathes of seats Labour could cement themselves as the main opposition which had been LD territory.
The strange thing about the public & Starmer is how he has them thinking he is honest. He was completely dishonest about Brexit - in the 2017 GE campaign saying it was “an important point of principle” that the vote be implemented, then once elected saying it was “an important point of principle” that there be a a second referendum in which he would campaign for Remain
https://x.com/asfarasdelgados/status/1633564841205174274?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
When he ran for leader he pledged to fight for FOM, he now rules it out, he also pledged to nationalise public services, end outsourcing in the NHS, increase income tax etc etc, and he has rowed back on all of those as well
Campaigned for Corbyn to be PM, called him a ‘friend’, then chucked him out of the party “he was never a friend”
Stated he wanted the Royal Family scrapped - accepted a Knighthood
Says he’s a vegetarian because he doesn’t agree with killing animals for food - eats fish.
If a wide boy did these things you’d say it was typical
It probably is down to Boris being regarded as flamboyant but untrustworthy, and people assumed it’s like a film and he must have all the opposing characteristics - SKS is dull, and people associate dullness with honesty, even if the dullard is a liar
All that said, he seems to be effective, and that’s important for a PM, whereas honesty isn’t really. They all lie. I had thought his lack of charisma would be a hindrance in a campaign against Boris, but things have changed and it doesn’t really matter now he is up against Sunak
Major Russia attack on Avdviika, with up to 8,000 soldiers. Largely blunted with massive casualties suffered it appears. One column of fighting vehicles was stopped when the lead Russian vehicle fell off a bridge into a lake. Chaos as the other vehicles tried to turn round on a narrow path. Watched by a Ukrainian artillery spotter drone....
For example, for primary schools the overwhelming issue is not distance to walk, but how to do it safely and to convince parents that it is safe for their children. It's about safe routes to schools - and problems are around dangerous (or felt-dangerous) roads near schools, parents driving all over the pavements to drop off their children ignoring children on those pavements, no respect for Crossing Wardens and so on. Obviously a "15 minute walk" criteria cannot apply in low density population areas.
The type of measures that fix this will be a total parking ban within 100m of primary schools 8:30-9:30 and 2:30-4:30, 20mph speed limits, enforcement of such, School Streets, designing housing developments for safe walking / cycling / wheeling, removing through traffic from near schools, removing unlawful anti-access barriers which exist on hundreds of thousands of footpaths, and so on. It's some principle, come policy and 25 years of sweating the detail.
(The same measures need to apply to nursery schools, child minding, local playgrounds, parks etc for the same reasons.)
I'll try and find time after breakfast to do a point by point reply.
It's not either/or.
1800 Tory majority on Electoral Calculus, it needs just a little tactical voting, but for who?
This is why the 3 way fight in Mid Beds is interesting. I am glad both Lab and LD are going for it. We need to know how things break.
If required.
But that was also true during the previous GEs, when Labour took over second place, and with national momentum it's clear people can and do vote differently. So i think they will hoover up the opposition vote more and see that in similar seats.
Expect past council vote share not GE vote share on the LD leaflets.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/oct/10/tycoons-ratcliffe-and-wolff-share-in-75m-dividend-from-mercedes-benz-f1-team