The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
ETA ah I see Londonpubman got there before me. Apologies
If the UK economy is finally beginning to decouple from the EU's, and actually perform notably better (certainly than France or Germany) then that is quite a game-changer
Lots of ifs and buts there, of course. And UK growth is, it can be argued, largely based on clinically insane levels of net migration, nontheless it will be difficult for Remoaners if this becomes a THING
Look at absolute numbers. Then look at the graph for each country, up to 2016 and then from 2016 onwards.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Do you believe that per capita purchasing power was that much higher in France than the UK before Brexit?
Yes. I’ve seen it myself. Living standards and disposable income are similar across the majority of provincial France to outer London and the Home Counties. And they had nothing like the recessionary contraction we did from the financial crisis.
I think it’s hard living in inner London to appreciate just how poor most of our country is.
And I think it is nonsense. Provincial France sounds and looks nice (nicer than many chunks of the UK), and if you have a house in, say, the Burgundy region then it will certainly feel that France is considerably richer than the UK
And yet if you go to the bainlieues around Lyon, Marseille or Paris, or in the east, then France will feel a lot poorer, and in places poorer than the UK
As for these precise figures. I am wary. What is this median household fandangle? Is it simply what it says on the tin? The median average income for every household? Then there might several explanations for a disparity
eg Single person households. Britain has many more than France, 30% of our households are single person, as aganst just 17% in France. That would surely bring down the median a fuck of a lot?
I may be missing some major detail. Am still quite stoned and listening to neo-folk
The major detail you are missing is the definition of a median, which I suggest you go look up. When you understand it, you will see that much of your comment is gibberish.
Despite being right off my nipples, I understand the definition of median
The formation of households may be different in France (I offer one reason above), leading to this curious disparity
They may be other shady statitical work afoot, that same page claims that the country with the "fifth highest median income" is..... Ireland.
Ireland??
Higher than the USA, Austria or Luxembourg, higher than Denmark, Switzerland, Australia?? Apparently so
I've been to Ireland, I've been to Switzerland. lol
Something ain't right with the data
Ireland’s GDP data are massively distorted by corporate profits. Household income shouldn’t be though. But average household size in Ireland is 2.74 people, so it’s significantly higher than the UK or France. That could account for part of the difference.
The other thing, though orangemen might disagree, is that Ireland’s Mezzogiorno - Ulster - happens to be accounted for as part of the UK.
It tells me all the data is rather dodgy, and to be handled with care
It should not be dismissed entirely, there is obviously some truth here. It *feels* right to me that France is somewhat richer than Britain now (on an average) - we were fecked by the Kredit Krunch, and we are still feeling our way back to a new model, they were less impacted. But I do not think the gulf is nearly as big as this table implies
Besides, this was not my point. It is performance in very recent years and from now on that concerns me
If Britain starts to outperform France and Germany that will turn received opinion on its head, esp on the Remainer Left. And of course this is almost inevitable, eventually, everything goes in cycles, and Britain is now significantly decoupled from the EU economy and has likely adapted to the rupture of Brexit. So we will diverge, sometimes do worse - but, yes, sometimes do better
Actually the point I was trying to make with my original reply - which I somewhat sidetracked by pointing to the absolute data - was the UK annual performance: steep rises till 2016 then flat ever since.
But using median statistics isn't the best way to make that point if the main variable is where you draw the line between the bottom 50% and the top 50%.
Our gini coefficient has stayed very stable since 2016. So there is no distortion from changes in inequality in the period.
If the UK economy is finally beginning to decouple from the EU's, and actually perform notably better (certainly than France or Germany) then that is quite a game-changer
Lots of ifs and buts there, of course. And UK growth is, it can be argued, largely based on clinically insane levels of net migration, nontheless it will be difficult for Remoaners if this becomes a THING
Look at absolute numbers. Then look at the graph for each country, up to 2016 and then from 2016 onwards.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Do you believe that per capita purchasing power was that much higher in France than the UK before Brexit?
Yes. I’ve seen it myself. Living standards and disposable income are similar across the majority of provincial France to outer London and the Home Counties. And they had nothing like the recessionary contraction we did from the financial crisis.
I think it’s hard living in inner London to appreciate just how poor most of our country is.
And I think it is nonsense. Provincial France sounds and looks nice (nicer than many chunks of the UK), and if you have a house in, say, the Burgundy region then it will certainly feel that France is considerably richer than the UK
And yet if you go to the bainlieues around Lyon, Marseille or Paris, or in the east, then France will feel a lot poorer, and in places poorer than the UK
As for these precise figures. I am wary. What is this median household fandangle? Is it simply what it says on the tin? The median average income for every household? Then there might several explanations for a disparity
eg Single person households. Britain has many more than France, 30% of our households are single person, as aganst just 17% in France. That would surely bring down the median a fuck of a lot?
I may be missing some major detail. Am still quite stoned and listening to neo-folk
The major detail you are missing is the definition of a median, which I suggest you go look up. When you understand it, you will see that much of your comment is gibberish.
Despite being right off my nipples, I understand the definition of median
The formation of households may be different in France (I offer one reason above), leading to this curious disparity
They may be other shady statitical work afoot, that same page claims that the country with the "fifth highest median income" is..... Ireland.
Ireland??
Higher than the USA, Austria or Luxembourg, higher than Denmark, Switzerland, Australia?? Apparently so
I've been to Ireland, I've been to Switzerland. lol
Something ain't right with the data
According to the ONS consumption per capita in 2019 was:
Germany 122 UK 113 France 109 Italy 99 Spain 91 Poland 79
In 2019, consumption per head in the UK, measured using actual individual consumption (AIC) per head, was equivalent to the seventh highest in the EU, equal to that of Finland and below the Netherlands and Belgium. This is according to new figures recorded by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and compiled and released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU, on 15 December 2020.
Of course wealth consumption is not the same as wealth creation and the UK does over consume.
Anecdotes about how rich or poor a country is based on personal experience are dangerous - you can find big extremes of wealth driving from one village to another across much of Yorkshire for example.
Which gives the UK, and other countries, a surprising high place on consumer spending.
UK savings rate is 17%, France is 24%. So consumption as a percentage of GDP would be 83/76 x France. UK and French GDP per capita (unlike median household income) are virtually identical, so you’d actually expect consumption to be higher than 113/109 - but that may reflect the fact more of our GDP is corporate profits of foreign headquartered companies, like in Ireland.
We could also say that home ownership is much lower in Germany than either France or the UK so that German wealth consumption gives a falsely high sense of affluence.
All that we know is that there are variations between countries and variations within countries.
Which isn't a bad thing when different places offer different opportunities and different lifestyles.
If the UK economy is finally beginning to decouple from the EU's, and actually perform notably better (certainly than France or Germany) then that is quite a game-changer
Lots of ifs and buts there, of course. And UK growth is, it can be argued, largely based on clinically insane levels of net migration, nontheless it will be difficult for Remoaners if this becomes a THING
Look at absolute numbers. Then look at the graph for each country, up to 2016 and then from 2016 onwards.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Do you believe that per capita purchasing power was that much higher in France than the UK before Brexit?
Yes. I’ve seen it myself. Living standards and disposable income are similar across the majority of provincial France to outer London and the Home Counties. And they had nothing like the recessionary contraction we did from the financial crisis.
I think it’s hard living in inner London to appreciate just how poor most of our country is.
And I think it is nonsense. Provincial France sounds and looks nice (nicer than many chunks of the UK), and if you have a house in, say, the Burgundy region then it will certainly feel that France is considerably richer than the UK
And yet if you go to the bainlieues around Lyon, Marseille or Paris, or in the east, then France will feel a lot poorer, and in places poorer than the UK
As for these precise figures. I am wary. What is this median household fandangle? Is it simply what it says on the tin? The median average income for every household? Then there might several explanations for a disparity
eg Single person households. Britain has many more than France, 30% of our households are single person, as aganst just 17% in France. That would surely bring down the median a fuck of a lot?
I may be missing some major detail. Am still quite stoned and listening to neo-folk
The major detail you are missing is the definition of a median, which I suggest you go look up. When you understand it, you will see that much of your comment is gibberish.
Despite being right off my nipples, I understand the definition of median
The formation of households may be different in France (I offer one reason above), leading to this curious disparity
They may be other shady statitical work afoot, that same page claims that the country with the "fifth highest median income" is..... Ireland.
Ireland??
Higher than the USA, Austria or Luxembourg, higher than Denmark, Switzerland, Australia?? Apparently so
I've been to Ireland, I've been to Switzerland. lol
Something ain't right with the data
If they're saying that about Ireland then it proves that the numbers are not useful for making the point that @TimS is trying to make. Using actual individual consumption, which is less subject to statistical distortions, Ireland is still below the EU average.
One of the micro-annoyances of Brexit is that Britain now gets greyed out in stat maps like this one.
Switzerland? Albania? Turkey?
They share data with Eurostat, we currently don’t (clean break etc). That will hopefully change.
If the UK economy is finally beginning to decouple from the EU's, and actually perform notably better (certainly than France or Germany) then that is quite a game-changer
Lots of ifs and buts there, of course. And UK growth is, it can be argued, largely based on clinically insane levels of net migration, nontheless it will be difficult for Remoaners if this becomes a THING
Look at absolute numbers. Then look at the graph for each country, up to 2016 and then from 2016 onwards.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Do you believe that per capita purchasing power was that much higher in France than the UK before Brexit?
Yes. I’ve seen it myself. Living standards and disposable income are similar across the majority of provincial France to outer London and the Home Counties. And they had nothing like the recessionary contraction we did from the financial crisis.
I think it’s hard living in inner London to appreciate just how poor most of our country is.
And I think it is nonsense. Provincial France sounds and looks nice (nicer than many chunks of the UK), and if you have a house in, say, the Burgundy region then it will certainly feel that France is considerably richer than the UK
And yet if you go to the bainlieues around Lyon, Marseille or Paris, or in the east, then France will feel a lot poorer, and in places poorer than the UK
As for these precise figures. I am wary. What is this median household fandangle? Is it simply what it says on the tin? The median average income for every household? Then there might several explanations for a disparity
eg Single person households. Britain has many more than France, 30% of our households are single person, as aganst just 17% in France. That would surely bring down the median a fuck of a lot?
I may be missing some major detail. Am still quite stoned and listening to neo-folk
The charts show a recovery in the UK from 2010 to 2016 following the financial crisis, so the base level in 2010 is a little suppressed. But the stats are the stats.
Are households on average larger in France than the UK? 2.18 in France, 2.4 here. So it’s not larger households. Do more households have 2 income earners in France? Quite possibly, but I don’t have the data.
Median household income in the US is $74k by the way, so they put us both in the shade. And that’s median, so despite their inequality, their unaffordable healthcare, their low life expectancy, they’re still almost twice as rich per median household than we are.
Britain has some extremely poor areas. That’s the issue. It’s why levelling up is a thing. We’re like Italy with the Mezzogiorno only our Mezzogiorno is colder and damper. Whereas London (and its banlieue) is one of the richest places in Europe.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
If the UK economy is finally beginning to decouple from the EU's, and actually perform notably better (certainly than France or Germany) then that is quite a game-changer
Lots of ifs and buts there, of course. And UK growth is, it can be argued, largely based on clinically insane levels of net migration, nontheless it will be difficult for Remoaners if this becomes a THING
Look at absolute numbers. Then look at the graph for each country, up to 2016 and then from 2016 onwards.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Do you believe that per capita purchasing power was that much higher in France than the UK before Brexit?
Yes. I’ve seen it myself. Living standards and disposable income are similar across the majority of provincial France to outer London and the Home Counties. And they had nothing like the recessionary contraction we did from the financial crisis.
I think it’s hard living in inner London to appreciate just how poor most of our country is.
And I think it is nonsense. Provincial France sounds and looks nice (nicer than many chunks of the UK), and if you have a house in, say, the Burgundy region then it will certainly feel that France is considerably richer than the UK
And yet if you go to the bainlieues around Lyon, Marseille or Paris, or in the east, then France will feel a lot poorer, and in places poorer than the UK
As for these precise figures. I am wary. What is this median household fandangle? Is it simply what it says on the tin? The median average income for every household? Then there might several explanations for a disparity
eg Single person households. Britain has many more than France, 30% of our households are single person, as aganst just 17% in France. That would surely bring down the median a fuck of a lot?
I may be missing some major detail. Am still quite stoned and listening to neo-folk
The major detail you are missing is the definition of a median, which I suggest you go look up. When you understand it, you will see that much of your comment is gibberish.
Despite being right off my nipples, I understand the definition of median
The formation of households may be different in France (I offer one reason above), leading to this curious disparity
They may be other shady statitical work afoot, that same page claims that the country with the "fifth highest median income" is..... Ireland.
Ireland??
Higher than the USA, Austria or Luxembourg, higher than Denmark, Switzerland, Australia?? Apparently so
I've been to Ireland, I've been to Switzerland. lol
Something ain't right with the data
According to the ONS consumption per capita in 2019 was:
Germany 122 UK 113 France 109 Italy 99 Spain 91 Poland 79
In 2019, consumption per head in the UK, measured using actual individual consumption (AIC) per head, was equivalent to the seventh highest in the EU, equal to that of Finland and below the Netherlands and Belgium. This is according to new figures recorded by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and compiled and released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU, on 15 December 2020.
Of course wealth consumption is not the same as wealth creation and the UK does over consume.
Anecdotes about how rich or poor a country is based on personal experience are dangerous - you can find big extremes of wealth driving from one village to another across much of Yorkshire for example.
Which gives the UK, and other countries, a surprising high place on consumer spending.
UK savings rate is 17%, France is 24%. So consumption as a percentage of GDP would be 83/76 x France. UK and French GDP per capita (unlike median household income) are virtually identical, so you’d actually expect consumption to be higher than 113/109 - but that may reflect the fact more of our GDP is corporate profits of foreign headquartered companies, like in Ireland.
We could also say that home ownership is much lower in Germany than either France or the UK so that German wealth consumption gives a falsely high sense of affluence.
All that we know is that there are variations between countries and variations within countries.
Which isn't a bad thing when different places offer different opportunities and different lifestyles.
There are lots of differences that make comparisons difficult: in Germany, for example, final salary pensions are still very common. That means that households' pension savings are not included in their numbers, while with our defined contributions, they are in the UK.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest take on Brexit, could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages and criticism of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Who’d ever have thought it?
If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.
Sunak, a disastrous couple of months rowing back on HS2, pushing for Rwanda when it should have been euthanised after the SC ruling. A great campaigner who has been absolutely spanked by useless campaigner Starmer at all three of the last PMQs.
Penny? Fight, fight, fight for your right to party. Sorry Penny you blew your chance at the Con. Conf.
Cleverly? Being taken down by his U turn on Rwanda.
Suella? Well, everything
Priti? Ditto
Kemi? An utterly disastrous BSec in post
Johnson? Not an MP, and a worse PM than Lord North.
If the UK economy is finally beginning to decouple from the EU's, and actually perform notably better (certainly than France or Germany) then that is quite a game-changer
Lots of ifs and buts there, of course. And UK growth is, it can be argued, largely based on clinically insane levels of net migration, nontheless it will be difficult for Remoaners if this becomes a THING
Look at absolute numbers. Then look at the graph for each country, up to 2016 and then from 2016 onwards.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Do you believe that per capita purchasing power was that much higher in France than the UK before Brexit?
Yes. I’ve seen it myself. Living standards and disposable income are similar across the majority of provincial France to outer London and the Home Counties. And they had nothing like the recessionary contraction we did from the financial crisis.
I think it’s hard living in inner London to appreciate just how poor most of our country is.
And I think it is nonsense. Provincial France sounds and looks nice (nicer than many chunks of the UK), and if you have a house in, say, the Burgundy region then it will certainly feel that France is considerably richer than the UK
And yet if you go to the bainlieues around Lyon, Marseille or Paris, or in the east, then France will feel a lot poorer, and in places poorer than the UK
As for these precise figures. I am wary. What is this median household fandangle? Is it simply what it says on the tin? The median average income for every household? Then there might several explanations for a disparity
eg Single person households. Britain has many more than France, 30% of our households are single person, as aganst just 17% in France. That would surely bring down the median a fuck of a lot?
I may be missing some major detail. Am still quite stoned and listening to neo-folk
The major detail you are missing is the definition of a median, which I suggest you go look up. When you understand it, you will see that much of your comment is gibberish.
Despite being right off my nipples, I understand the definition of median
The formation of households may be different in France (I offer one reason above), leading to this curious disparity
They may be other shady statitical work afoot, that same page claims that the country with the "fifth highest median income" is..... Ireland.
Ireland??
Higher than the USA, Austria or Luxembourg, higher than Denmark, Switzerland, Australia?? Apparently so
I've been to Ireland, I've been to Switzerland. lol
Something ain't right with the data
According to the ONS consumption per capita in 2019 was:
Germany 122 UK 113 France 109 Italy 99 Spain 91 Poland 79
In 2019, consumption per head in the UK, measured using actual individual consumption (AIC) per head, was equivalent to the seventh highest in the EU, equal to that of Finland and below the Netherlands and Belgium. This is according to new figures recorded by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and compiled and released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU, on 15 December 2020.
Of course wealth consumption is not the same as wealth creation and the UK does over consume.
Anecdotes about how rich or poor a country is based on personal experience are dangerous - you can find big extremes of wealth driving from one village to another across much of Yorkshire for example.
Which gives the UK, and other countries, a surprising high place on consumer spending.
UK savings rate is 17%, France is 24%. So consumption as a percentage of GDP would be 83/76 x France. UK and French GDP per capita (unlike median household income) are virtually identical, so you’d actually expect consumption to be higher than 113/109 - but that may reflect the fact more of our GDP is corporate profits of foreign headquartered companies, like in Ireland.
We could also say that home ownership is much lower in Germany than either France or the UK so that German wealth consumption gives a falsely high sense of affluence.
All that we know is that there are variations between countries and variations within countries.
Which isn't a bad thing when different places offer different opportunities and different lifestyles.
There are lots of differences that make comparisons difficult: in Germany, for example, final salary pensions are still very common. That means that households' pension savings are not included in their numbers, while with our defined contributions, they are in the UK.
On the other side of that one, Germans pay out their own post-tax money towards healthcare, whilst we on the whole do not - except for certain things like dentists, glasses and to jump queues.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest take on Brexit, could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages and criticism of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Who’d ever have thought it?
If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.
Sunak, a disastrous couple of months rowing back on HS2, pushing for Rwanda when it should have been euthanised after the SC ruling. A great campaigner who has been absolutely spanked by useless campaigner Starmer at all three of the last PMQs.
Penny? Fight, fight, fight for your right to party. Sorry Penny you blew your chance at the Con. Conf.
Cleverly? Being taken down by his U turn on Rwanda.
Suella? Well, everything
Priti? Ditto
Kemi? An utterly disastrous BSec in post
Johnson? Not an MP, and a worse PM than Lord North.
Truss. A worse PM than Johnson.
“ If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.”
I didn’t say he was making error after error or that he was unfit for office, what are you talking about?
The PB Tories are chipper on this polling evidence tonight.
For a laugh let's mix and match. Labour lowest on 40%. Con best on 29% plus Refuk best on 11% gives us a Lab to Con-Refuk tie at 40%.
Well you're all writing bollocks so why shouldn't I?
(That's not to say this time next year, Tories won't win a majority, but on current polling you are all having a giraffe!)
Clearly at the moment Keir is on track to win the biggest majority of all time but...
it hasn't happened yet.
Indeed he hasn't. I still have a Con majority of 20, but that requires some major black swans favouring the Tories. From the header they are toast.
But a year is a very long time in politics. I think we can safely say, if Labour lose in Jan 2025, it is game over, they will never be returned as an FPTP government.
From the archives, Ken Chesebro's apology letter emerges (part of his plea deal).
Not gracious and I think with forked tongue, but he's out of the game, and if necessary he can be made to testify - so perhaps puts a Cordon Sanitaire round potential Trump lies.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest take on Brexit, could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages and criticism of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Who’d ever have thought it?
If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.
Sunak, a disastrous couple of months rowing back on HS2, pushing for Rwanda when it should have been euthanised after the SC ruling. A great campaigner who has been absolutely spanked by useless campaigner Starmer at all three of the last PMQs.
Penny? Fight, fight, fight for your right to party. Sorry Penny you blew your chance at the Con. Conf.
Cleverly? Being taken down by his U turn on Rwanda.
Suella? Well, everything
Priti? Ditto
Kemi? An utterly disastrous BSec in post
Johnson? Not an MP, and a worse PM than Lord North.
Truss. A worse PM than Johnson.
“ If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.”
I didn’t say he was making error after error or that he was unfit for office, what are you talking about?
In a round about way you write something to that effect about 20 times each thread.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
I'd take Dave back if he could turn back time and not call the referendum. I live in hope that it was all a Dallas shower scene, bad dream.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest take on Brexit, could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages and criticism of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Who’d ever have thought it?
If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.
Sunak, a disastrous couple of months rowing back on HS2, pushing for Rwanda when it should have been euthanised after the SC ruling. A great campaigner who has been absolutely spanked by useless campaigner Starmer at all three of the last PMQs.
Penny? Fight, fight, fight for your right to party. Sorry Penny you blew your chance at the Con. Conf.
Cleverly? Being taken down by his U turn on Rwanda.
Suella? Well, everything
Priti? Ditto
Kemi? An utterly disastrous BSec in post
Johnson? Not an MP, and a worse PM than Lord North.
Truss. A worse PM than Johnson.
“ If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.”
I didn’t say he was making error after error or that he was unfit for office, what are you talking about?
In a round about way you write something to that effect about 20 times each thread.
You’re putting words into my mouth that I never said - I obviously don’t have much time for him, but have never said anything remotely like him being unfit for office or that he’s making any errors.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest take on Brexit, could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages and criticism of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Who’d ever have thought it?
If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.
Sunak, a disastrous couple of months rowing back on HS2, pushing for Rwanda when it should have been euthanised after the SC ruling. A great campaigner who has been absolutely spanked by useless campaigner Starmer at all three of the last PMQs.
Penny? Fight, fight, fight for your right to party. Sorry Penny you blew your chance at the Con. Conf.
Cleverly? Being taken down by his U turn on Rwanda.
Suella? Well, everything
Priti? Ditto
Kemi? An utterly disastrous BSec in post
Johnson? Not an MP, and a worse PM than Lord North.
Truss. A worse PM than Johnson.
“ If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.”
I didn’t say he was making error after error or that he was unfit for office, what are you talking about?
In a round about way you write something to that effect about 20 times each thread.
You’re putting words into my mouth that I never said - I obviously don’t have much time for him, but have never said anything remotely like him being unfit for office or that he’s making any errors.
Glad to hear it. We just have to wean you off your Johnson obsession and everything will be good.
If the UK economy is finally beginning to decouple from the EU's, and actually perform notably better (certainly than France or Germany) then that is quite a game-changer
Lots of ifs and buts there, of course. And UK growth is, it can be argued, largely based on clinically insane levels of net migration, nontheless it will be difficult for Remoaners if this becomes a THING
In the seven years to Q3 2023 the UK economy has grown by 8% while the EU27 has grown by 11% and the Euro Area by 10%. By contrast in the 10 years to Q2 2016 the UK economy grew by 15%, the EU27 by 8% and the Euro Area by 7%. We have gone from one of the strongest growing major economies in the EU to underperforming both the EU and the Euro Area. We are, it is true, currently doing better than Germany. That reflects the impact of the energy shock on them. Italy is currently doing better than Germany too. Perhaps that is because of Brexit. For sure if we start to perform much better than the EU then the narrative around Brexit will change. But that isn't happening yet, and to my mind is quite unlikely to happen.
We are now doing better than France and Germany, our near peers in the EU in terms of importance, size and population
It may be a passing phenomenon, if it is not, then it changes a lot
Italy's performance is interesting, what has gone right for them, all of a sudden? I thought they were fucked by Russian energy prices/non supply
We're doing the same as France. But we used to do better than France. Italy isn't doing that well but they are doing better than Germany. The basic story is we are doing worse than we used to and so is Germany. I would say we are doing worse because of Brexit plus Osborne austerity plus underlying productivity problems. Germany is doing worse because of energy costs plus falling behind in autos and more generally being an analogue economy in a digital age. I can sort of see how Germany gets out of its current malaise - although they will find it tough. I find it harder to see how we rescue ourselves TBH.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest take on Brexit, could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages and criticism of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Who’d ever have thought it?
If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.
Sunak, a disastrous couple of months rowing back on HS2, pushing for Rwanda when it should have been euthanised after the SC ruling. A great campaigner who has been absolutely spanked by useless campaigner Starmer at all three of the last PMQs.
Penny? Fight, fight, fight for your right to party. Sorry Penny you blew your chance at the Con. Conf.
Cleverly? Being taken down by his U turn on Rwanda.
Suella? Well, everything
Priti? Ditto
Kemi? An utterly disastrous BSec in post
Johnson? Not an MP, and a worse PM than Lord North.
Truss. A worse PM than Johnson.
“ If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.”
I didn’t say he was making error after error or that he was unfit for office, what are you talking about?
In a round about way you write something to that effect about 20 times each thread.
You’re putting words into my mouth that I never said - I obviously don’t have much time for him, but have never said anything remotely like him being unfit for office or that he’s making any errors.
Glad to hear it. We just have to wean you off your Johnson obsession and everything will be good.
The obsession (or is it a delusion?) is with those who think, against all polling and betting evidence, that the Tories wouldn’t be doing better with Boris in charge. I’m happy to stand my ground on that one
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest take on Brexit, could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages and criticism of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Who’d ever have thought it?
If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.
Sunak, a disastrous couple of months rowing back on HS2, pushing for Rwanda when it should have been euthanised after the SC ruling. A great campaigner who has been absolutely spanked by useless campaigner Starmer at all three of the last PMQs.
Penny? Fight, fight, fight for your right to party. Sorry Penny you blew your chance at the Con. Conf.
Cleverly? Being taken down by his U turn on Rwanda.
Suella? Well, everything
Priti? Ditto
Kemi? An utterly disastrous BSec in post
Johnson? Not an MP, and a worse PM than Lord North.
Truss. A worse PM than Johnson.
“ If we are looking at a Presidential style election, and you are right that Starmer is making error after error and is unfit for office, let's look at the alternatives.”
I didn’t say he was making error after error or that he was unfit for office, what are you talking about?
In a round about way you write something to that effect about 20 times each thread.
You’re putting words into my mouth that I never said - I obviously don’t have much time for him, but have never said anything remotely like him being unfit for office or that he’s making any errors.
Glad to hear it. We just have to wean you off your Johnson obsession and everything will be good.
The obsession (or is it a delusion?) is with those who think, against all polling and betting evidence, that the Tories wouldn’t be doing better with Boris in charge. I’m happy to stand my ground on that one
Who could have predicted that binning Sue Barker and co for Paddy no talent and non sports people, making it a piss poor version of Sky own show would lead to this....but anothwr £10 a year for failure.
Shocked to find that it was drugs despite all the claims to be free of them. You don't just drown in your hot tub by accident without something else being involved.
Reposting - Am now watching via YT today's blue plate special served up by latest Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry grilling.
Barrister for the Inquiry is quite good. As with other Inquiry lawyers, his manner is polite, restrained, focused, relentless.
In contrast, the solicitor for firm of law-mongers hired by the buffon's then (and now?) the PO is about as hopeless as the local yokel lawyer in "My Cousin Vinnie".
That is, crap. Wouldn't hire him to notarize a pet license, let alone furnish legal advice above AI standard.
Fairliered comment on above:
FR: The Post Office chose lawyers that would make their management look competent by comparison.
SSI - Didn't work, hell no!
It is remarkable how that solicitor (from an external legal firm hired by the PO) began confident and articulate, but within a couple of hours was reduced to a gibbering wreck who could barely understand what he was being asked.
Indeed. The Inquiry inquisitioner's technique was very interesting, and highly effective.
Kept ratcheting up the temperature from room temperature VERY slowly . . . slowly . . . until before the toad realized what was happening, he was hopping about in a pot of boiling water . . .
Giuliana's fate was obvious to anybody following the trial. Repeating the libels on the steps of the court as the jury was about to go to set the level of damages was the hubris that got him into this trouble.
His fate will be gentle though, compared to the dockside hooker treatment to be meted out to Trump in the New York civil action. That will rob him of his New York empire - and his oft-trotted out notion that he is some great business man.
Who could have predicted that binning Sue Barker and co for Paddy no talent and non sports people, making it a piss poor version of Sky own show would lead to this....but anothwr £10 a year for failure.
A BBC spokesman insisted the show was "not being cancelled - it is just not in production at the moment".
The BBC could never countenance making a show now that was essentially for blokes. Although if anyone tried to cancel Woman's Hour....
Who could have predicted that binning Sue Barker and co for Paddy no talent and non sports people, making it a piss poor version of Sky own show would lead to this....but anothwr £10 a year for failure.
A BBC spokesman insisted the show was "not being cancelled - it is just not in production at the moment".
The BBC could never countenance making a show now that was essentially for blokes. Although if anyone tried to cancel Woman's Hour....
They tried to make to more yuff, but yet again the yuff don't watch the BBC. So they pissed off the 4 million oldies who watched it for nothing. BBC management are about in touch with reality as Jacob Rees Mogg.
They managed to lose the radio rights for the cricket in India this week.
Give it another 5 years, its just going to be strictly being their only big show.
The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.
“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” are propaganda words for racism, sexism and other -isms.
Elon Musk is just as dangerous as Trump.
What's dangerous is the way that things are bundled together.
So, I have sympathy with the view that the use of racial quotas disadvantage certain groups: in particular, the way they allow rich whites and rich blacks into elite colleges, at the expense of poorer students.
On the other hand, I am incredibly nervous that decrying inclusivity is basically saying "god damn it, I should be allowed to make jokes about fudge packers."
The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.
“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” are propaganda words for racism, sexism and other -isms.
Elon Musk is just as dangerous as Trump.
What's dangerous is the way that things are bundled together.
So, I have sympathy with the view that the use of racial quotas disadvantage certain groups: in particular, the way they allow rich whites and rich blacks into elite colleges, at the expense of poorer students.
On the other hand, I am incredibly nervous that decrying inclusivity is basically saying "god damn it, I should be allowed to make jokes about fudge packers."
I think I agree. I think it's perfectly fine to argue that some of these concepts and programs have been taken too far (I might agree or disagree on individual points), or that various people/groups 'use' them unfairly, or that sometimes the rules make no sense even for the groups they are supposed to be helping.
But I think it's really dangerous to just decry the whole lot as he does in that tweet.
Who could have predicted that binning Sue Barker and co for Paddy no talent and non sports people, making it a piss poor version of Sky own show would lead to this....but anothwr £10 a year for failure.
A BBC spokesman insisted the show was "not being cancelled - it is just not in production at the moment".
The BBC could never countenance making a show now that was essentially for blokes. Although if anyone tried to cancel Woman's Hour....
They tried to make to more yuff, but yet again the yuff don't watch the BBC. So they pissed off the 4 million oldies who watched it for nothing. BBC management are about in touch with reality as Jacob Rees Mogg.
They managed to lose the radio rights for the cricket in India this week.
Give it another 5 years, its just going to be strictly being their only big show.
Following the news that the BBC is axing Question Of Sport after 53 years, here’s the famous Emlyn Hughes ‘Picture Board’ mistake from 1987.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
If only Sir Keir Starmer KC had some experience getting asked/asking some off centre questions whilst on his feet.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Who could have predicted that binning Sue Barker and co for Paddy no talent and non sports people, making it a piss poor version of Sky own show would lead to this....but anothwr £10 a year for failure.
A BBC spokesman insisted the show was "not being cancelled - it is just not in production at the moment".
The BBC could never countenance making a show now that was essentially for blokes. Although if anyone tried to cancel Woman's Hour....
They tried to make to more yuff, but yet again the yuff don't watch the BBC. So they pissed off the 4 million oldies who watched it for nothing. BBC management are about in touch with reality as Jacob Rees Mogg.
They managed to lose the radio rights for the cricket in India this week.
Give it another 5 years, its just going to be strictly being their only big show.
With the license fee being around £200 a year in to the bargain.
So even more money for a failing institution to continue to fail.
They did the same with radio 2. Got rid of older and popular broadcasters and aimed for a younger audience so losing plenty of listeners who migrate elsewhere while offering nothing to older listeners.
Perhaps if they looked at what viewers wanted instead of telling them what they should want that would be a good start.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
If only Sir Keir Starmer KC had some experience getting asked/asking some off centre questions whilst on his feet.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
IDEA
Massively increase the university places for doctors. Then send them for training to various third world countries (cheaper). Use the foreign aid budget for this.
Sell it as reparations for the Empire or something.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
If only Sir Keir Starmer KC had some experience getting asked/asking some off centre questions whilst on his feet.
How much time did he send in a courtroom? Many lawyers spend their lives working on paper.”
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
If only Sir Keir Starmer KC had some experience getting asked/asking some off centre questions whilst on his feet.
How much time did he send in a courtroom? Many lawyers spend their lives working on paper.”
Lots of time.
You don't become DPP without decent trial/court experience.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
If only Sir Keir Starmer KC had some experience getting asked/asking some off centre questions whilst on his feet.
How much time did he send in a courtroom? Many lawyers spend their lives working on paper.”
Lots of time.
You don't become DPP without decent trial/court experience.
I remember he worked pro bono on the McLibel case.
Although I have to admit, that's a case where I hoped both of them would lose.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
IDEA
Massively increase the university places for doctors. Then send them for training to various third world countries (cheaper). Use the foreign aid budget for this.
Sell it as reparations for the Empire or something.
Several flaws in that plan, not least that we don't have a very large pool of potential medical students to expand into.
A second one is that there are not lots of unused quality training opportunities at foreign medical schools.
The biggest one is that a newly qualified doctor is just the substrate. The expensive and time-consuming bit is the postgraduate training which takes 5-10 years depending on speciality. The vast majority of imported doctors come here to take advantage of what has historically been the high quality of UK postgrad training.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
I was thinking also that (a) is very much the approach Milei is taking in Buenos Aires. It will be interesting to see the effects. My guess is that they are likely to be disastrous, if only because his even more useless cronies are likely to replace them.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
IDEA
Massively increase the university places for doctors. Then send them for training to various third world countries (cheaper). Use the foreign aid budget for this.
Sell it as reparations for the Empire or something.
Several flaws in that plan, not least that we don't have a very large pool of potential medical students to expand into.
A second one is that there are not lots of unused quality training opportunities at foreign medical schools.
The biggest one is that a newly qualified doctor is just the substrate. The expensive and time-consuming bit is the postgraduate training which takes 5-10 years depending on speciality. The vast majority of imported doctors come here to take advantage of what has historically been the high quality of UK postgrad training.
The enlarged pool of medical students come from those the education system has failed. We have had class increases of 25% (in one year) for some courses at university. No one is whining that the unqualified got in.
Building teaching hospitals in developing counties seems a better use of money than funding the random “Aid and Death To The West” organisations. And would definitely do less damage to the countries concerned.
Who could have predicted that binning Sue Barker and co for Paddy no talent and non sports people, making it a piss poor version of Sky own show would lead to this....but anothwr £10 a year for failure.
A BBC spokesman insisted the show was "not being cancelled - it is just not in production at the moment".
The BBC could never countenance making a show now that was essentially for blokes. Although if anyone tried to cancel Woman's Hour....
They tried to make to more yuff, but yet again the yuff don't watch the BBC. So they pissed off the 4 million oldies who watched it for nothing. BBC management are about in touch with reality as Jacob Rees Mogg.
They managed to lose the radio rights for the cricket in India this week.
Give it another 5 years, its just going to be strictly being their only big show.
With the license fee being around £200 a year in to the bargain.
So even more money for a failing institution to continue to fail.
They did the same with radio 2. Got rid of older and popular broadcasters and aimed for a younger audience so losing plenty of listeners who migrate elsewhere while offering nothing to older listeners.
Perhaps if they looked at what viewers wanted instead of telling them what they should want that would be a good start.
I don't understand why they keep trying to lower the audience age for radio. Why not take the Ford option - they keep introducing slightly bigger cars at each model change, so that the person who had a Fiesta as a teenager stays brand loyal, except they now have a family size car, then periodically they introduce a new small car and start the process again.
They should have left radio 2 alone (and radio 1), with their massive but aging audiences, and just produced a new "radio braindead" for da youth. They would have had to kill them off in 20-30 years, but that would be some else's problem...!
Instead they trashed radio 2, sent most of the listeners to Greatest Hits, and now have no music offering for those over 30.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
That is a stunningly banal and vacuous speech. Starmer is inevitable now. The Tories have disgraced themselves and seem out of ideas. We need a change. But jeez.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
IDEA
Massively increase the university places for doctors. Then send them for training to various third world countries (cheaper). Use the foreign aid budget for this.
Sell it as reparations for the Empire or something.
Several flaws in that plan, not least that we don't have a very large pool of potential medical students to expand into.
A second one is that there are not lots of unused quality training opportunities at foreign medical schools.
The biggest one is that a newly qualified doctor is just the substrate. The expensive and time-consuming bit is the postgraduate training which takes 5-10 years depending on speciality. The vast majority of imported doctors come here to take advantage of what has historically been the high quality of UK postgrad training.
What is interesting in this connection is the surreptitious introduction of “physician associates “, who are apparently intended to reduce the load on “ proper doctors”!
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
I was thinking also that (a) is very much the approach Milei is taking in Buenos Aires. It will be interesting to see the effects. My guess is that they are likely to be disastrous, if only because his even more useless cronies are likely to replace them.
Getting rid of departments only works if you also cut the requirements too.
So getting rid of Diversity and Inclusion officers only works if you get rid of all the requirements of the Equalities acts. If you do the first without the second then you are just renaming people with some other HR label.
Similarly you can only abolish the Department of Education or Health by getting rid of those departments functions, perhaps by abolishing any overview, management or accountability above district level. There is something to be said for such radical decentralisation, but it does require a hands off approach when it becomes seriously dysfunctional in one or other district.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
I was thinking also that (a) is very much the approach Milei is taking in Buenos Aires. It will be interesting to see the effects. My guess is that they are likely to be disastrous, if only because his even more useless cronies are likely to replace them.
The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.
“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” are propaganda words for racism, sexism and other -isms.
I misread that as 'DfE must DIE' and for once in my life was willing to approve of something Musk said.
Then I considered it unlikely he would have a view on them, and read it more carefully.
Mind you, even Elon Musk would probably run the nation's education system better than Susan Acland-Hood.
Well, he wants to start a school and university, and you can imagine what a beacon of inclusivity and diversity it will be. The sons and daughters of tech bros and the influential only; plebs p*ss off!
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
IDEA
Massively increase the university places for doctors. Then send them for training to various third world countries (cheaper). Use the foreign aid budget for this.
Sell it as reparations for the Empire or something.
Several flaws in that plan, not least that we don't have a very large pool of potential medical students to expand into.
A second one is that there are not lots of unused quality training opportunities at foreign medical schools.
The biggest one is that a newly qualified doctor is just the substrate. The expensive and time-consuming bit is the postgraduate training which takes 5-10 years depending on speciality. The vast majority of imported doctors come here to take advantage of what has historically been the high quality of UK postgrad training.
The enlarged pool of medical students come from those the education system has failed. We have had class increases of 25% (in one year) for some courses at university. No one is whining that the unqualified got in.
That isn't true. There are massive dropout and expulsion rates because of effective academic dilution during the covid period.
The expensive part of a teaching hospital is not the physical structure but rather the expense of paying highly qualified professionals to teach. Motivated senior clinicians are needed, and are both expensive and in short supply. I know because I an one of them! Indeed I have been interviewing prospective medical students this week.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
Whether one considers it a vital virtue or a dogmatic danger, surely this picture more than defines - it encapsulates the very essence, perhaps even the yolk, of woke
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
IDEA
Massively increase the university places for doctors. Then send them for training to various third world countries (cheaper). Use the foreign aid budget for this.
Sell it as reparations for the Empire or something.
Several flaws in that plan, not least that we don't have a very large pool of potential medical students to expand into.
A second one is that there are not lots of unused quality training opportunities at foreign medical schools.
The biggest one is that a newly qualified doctor is just the substrate. The expensive and time-consuming bit is the postgraduate training which takes 5-10 years depending on speciality. The vast majority of imported doctors come here to take advantage of what has historically been the high quality of UK postgrad training.
What is interesting in this connection is the surreptitious introduction of “physician associates “, who are apparently intended to reduce the load on “ proper doctors”!
PA'S and other "noctors"* can be a great asset. They are widely used in America (from where we imported the idea) and also in Africa. I worked with some very good ones in Malawi. They work best by amplifying the number of people that I can see in clinic, as I shuttle between rooms with them doing the work up.
They are not suitable for autonomous practice, and require well defined roles with accountability and a clear supervisory structure to be safe.
The biggest grievance on medical twitter about them is that the PAs get the expensive training and supervision, while the medical postgraduates get shunted off to do the donkey work.
*a rather pejorative term for non-doctors doing roles previously in the medical domain such as diagnosing and treating.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
I was thinking also that (a) is very much the approach Milei is taking in Buenos Aires. It will be interesting to see the effects. My guess is that they are likely to be disastrous, if only because his even more useless cronies are likely to replace them.
Getting rid of departments only works if you also cut the requirements too.
So getting rid of Diversity and Inclusion officers only works if you get rid of all the requirements of the Equalities acts. If you do the first without the second then you are just renaming people with some other HR label.
Similarly you can only abolish the Department of Education or Health by getting rid of those departments functions, perhaps by abolishing any overview, management or accountability above district level. There is something to be said for such radical decentralisation, but it does require a hands off approach when it becomes seriously dysfunctional in one or other district.
To be fair, there are very few functions the DfE does that need to be done to provide a decent education.
It doesn't lead school inspections. It doesn't set the curriculum. It doesn't oversee exams. It doesn't do anything on HS that the HSE wouldn't do a hundred times better. It doesn't control appointments.
It does set the regulatory framework, but there are other (probably better) ways it could be done.
It also provides funding for academy schools and LEAs, but that doesn't require a whole government department particularly one which cannot do basic arithmetic.
It does create rather a lot of pointless work (including paperwork) to justify its existence.
It does officially at least manage teacher training, but that would be better managed by the unis and academy chains themselves (or indeed a monkey on a stick).
So I can see how getting rid of it could be done without much trouble.
The concern I would have is that if it was replaced by a smaller Board of Education overseeing these quangoes it would probably be run by people who were worse. Losing Acland-Hood and gaining a 25-person department run by Cummings or Freedman would be the greater of two evils.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
YES!! It’s high time we had a bit more definition from Starmer.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
There is a lot to be said for competent, professional management and disciplined delivery of public services, but that should be a bare minimum.
It is something that has been sorely lacking in recent years, and not just at Westminster. Scotland and the other devolved nations have been no better at it, indeed often even worse.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
I agree with you up to a point. Quiet competence and government in the national interest would represent a radical departure from the current lot. But it would be good if Starmer could also articulate an alternative vision for the country. He is certainly deficient in this regard - one reason why I didn't vote for him as Labour leader. I still think he will do a reasonably good job, and will probably surprise to the upside as he has a tendency to.
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
There is a lot to be said for competent, professional management and disciplined delivery of public services, but that should be a bare minimum.
It is something that has been sorely lacking in recent years, and not just at Westminster. Scotland and the other devolved nations have been no better at it, indeed often even worse.
It should be a bare minimum, Fox, but it would nevertheless be a massive improvement.
Starmer is extraordinarily lucky. No Government in my lifetime has set the bar so low in terms of sound administration.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
I was thinking also that (a) is very much the approach Milei is taking in Buenos Aires. It will be interesting to see the effects. My guess is that they are likely to be disastrous, if only because his even more useless cronies are likely to replace them.
Getting rid of departments only works if you also cut the requirements too.
So getting rid of Diversity and Inclusion officers only works if you get rid of all the requirements of the Equalities acts. If you do the first without the second then you are just renaming people with some other HR label.
Similarly you can only abolish the Department of Education or Health by getting rid of those departments functions, perhaps by abolishing any overview, management or accountability above district level. There is something to be said for such radical decentralisation, but it does require a hands off approach when it becomes seriously dysfunctional in one or other district.
To be fair, there are very few functions the DfE does that need to be done to provide a decent education.
It doesn't lead school inspections. It doesn't set the curriculum. It doesn't oversee exams. It doesn't do anything on HS that the HSE wouldn't do a hundred times better. It doesn't control appointments.
It does set the regulatory framework, but there are other (probably better) ways it could be done.
It also provides funding for academy schools and LEAs, but that doesn't require a whole government department particularly one which cannot do basic arithmetic.
It does create rather a lot of pointless work (including paperwork) to justify its existence.
It does officially at least manage teacher training, but that would be better managed by the unis and academy chains themselves (or indeed a monkey on a stick).
So I can see how getting rid of it could be done without much trouble.
The concern I would have is that if it was replaced by a smaller Board of Education overseeing these quangoes it would probably be run by people who were worse. Losing Acland-Hood and gaining a 25-person department run by Cummings or Freedman would be the greater of two evils.
The idea that we require government depts to exist to administer the requirements of the Equalities Act is fairly damning. Of us….
Give the skills of the DfE in other areas, how many schools have a KKK klavern?
Whether one considers it a vital virtue or a dogmatic danger, surely this picture more than defines - it encapsulates the very essence, perhaps even the yolk, of woke
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
It is vanishingly unlikely it won't be better than *these* Tories, at least at first.
Sunak's decisions only can't be described as completely mad because mad people are usually capable of saner decisions than Rwanda, HS2 and NI.
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
Whether one considers it a vital virtue or a dogmatic danger, surely this picture more than defines - it encapsulates the very essence, perhaps even the yolk, of woke
Really bad carpet?
The carpet is alright, but you are right that the photo is jarring. Poor composition in my view.
Angela's pink jacket is too bright for the background, and her and Keir are too far apart*. The conjunction of the symmetry of the room and positions with the asymmetry of clothing is wrong too. If Starmer was on his left knee rather than right, it would also force better hand position, giving more positive body language of unity rather than discord.
Whether one considers it a vital virtue or a dogmatic danger, surely this picture more than defines - it encapsulates the very essence, perhaps even the yolk, of woke
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
Ah. Society not government. Big or otherwise.
There's a lot to be said for it, though it depends on more people being less frazzled. And the 2010 iteration had far to heavy a load of reducing government expenditure put on it
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
[edited] Yet that is indeed effectively what a lot of our Brexiters have been saying on PB as an argument for Brexit. Brexit is about importing people from all over the world, ie from poor countries, rather than Europeans, who are just as rich or richer on average, or so we have been told by them.
Whether one considers it a vital virtue or a dogmatic danger, surely this picture more than defines - it encapsulates the very essence, perhaps even the yolk, of woke
Two white people?
That too. A gesture of solidarity would be stronger in a larger and more diverse group.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
What is your position on heritage diesels?
Steam trains cause pollution!
OO gauge is crap cos it combines 1:76 scale train bodies with 1:87 scale track!
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
What is your position on heritage diesels?
And, for inclusivity, installing overhead wiring and pantographs?
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
The Conservatives or Labour will never agree a 10 to 20 year plan for public services as they both use the ground to fight their electoral and ideological wars on. What would they be left with? social and culture wars? Tax and spend?
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
The leader of the Labour Party advocating polices in the interest of working people. The very people that the party was established to represent. Has he gone totally mad? Isn't there some woke bollocks he can wibble about instead?
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
The great hope of the left exposed in the searchlight of a simple question
That clip sums up in a nutshell why I am probably the only one on this website who thinks SKS will not win and the Tories have a fighting chance.
You can get away with such a duff answer when the electorate is not really thinking about you as next PM and hates the Government.
It’s another thing when it swings into an election campaign and then everyone is suddenly forced into having to make a choice.
Chances are SKS will get eviscerated in a campaign. Give him any slightly off centre question - ‘define working class’, ‘define a woman etc’ - and he waffles and sounds vacuous.
He’s got 2017 Theresa May vintage written all over him.
The trouble is, Sunak's got collapse of May era written all over him. Constant relaunches, reboots, podia. Tears outside number 10 can't be too far off. So it's May vs. May.
Sounds ripe for an ‘I agree with Nick’ moment.
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
Seems to be happening. Here’s Sir Keir’s latest U-turn on Brexit; could be Farage talking (apart from the Labour bit obviously)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again, this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
To be honest, this is exactly what I voted Leave for - so politicians had to make speeches like this rather than say they wished they could do something about it, but their hands were tied by FOM
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
And in return, if Brexit was about stopping the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the skilled brown and black people once a government much less rich than ours has spent public money training them, I’d have been more inclined to vote for Brexit too. (I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
Though nothing in the idea of raising domestic skills required Brexit, it has always been in the hands of domestic government.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
The only way he can "address the comprehensive failure of public services" is a) speak truth to the management structure about their massive and long-standing delivery failures - and then sack the underperformers; or b) throw a lot of money at the problem.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
Not a very effective attack line by the Tories because:
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
They were poorly run and failing during the Wilson/ Callaghan era. They were poorly run and failing during the Blair/Brown era. The idea there was some golden age of public services during previous Labour administraions is nonsense.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
I understand the negativity of the Tory message on this, but it doesn't actually match reality.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I do hope Labour have the sense to slap this as a poster on every available bill board in the country.
Sure, Tories will wail "it's not fair, Covid, GFC hangover, 'reasons', etc, etc..." but their wailing will be pointless against the power of this chart.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
What is your position on heritage diesels?
My position is flailing out of the front droplight window.
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
Not quite. I am standing for election to be a trustee of a heritage engineering & railway trust.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
What is your position on heritage diesels?
And, for inclusivity, installing overhead wiring and pantographs?
I remain to be convinced that Starmer has any clear vision of what he wants to do. He wants to do things better. Well, yes. He wants the state to deliver for people. Good luck with that. He wants people to get on. Which is rather up to them. It is so vague, so amorphous and capable of changing into anything that I don’t see a coherent agenda, a driver for change.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
There is a lot to be said for competent, professional management and disciplined delivery of public services, but that should be a bare minimum.
It is something that has been sorely lacking in recent years, and not just at Westminster. Scotland and the other devolved nations have been no better at it, indeed often even worse.
It should be a bare minimum, Fox, but it would nevertheless be a massive improvement.
Starmer is extraordinarily lucky. No Government in my lifetime has set the bar so low in terms of sound administration.
This is true. The economy is also going to slowly creak back to life during 2024. People will very gradually start to feel a little bit better off. Put it all together and if Labour does get into power, it will have to perform quite spectacularly badly for things not to be looking more positive domestically (internationally is a very different story) in four or five years than they do now. Add a further Tory lurch to the right in oppositions and you are probably looking at two terms.
However, Labour has to win the first GE and, despite the poll leads, that remains far from a done deal. Refugees on planes to Rwanda, further tax cuts and that general slow economic improvement could yet salvage the Tories. I'd hate that, of course, but I can see some tiny silver lining in that it may mean the further Tory lurch to the right is avoided.
Comments
Perhaps ‘I agree with Nigel’ this time? Perish the thought.
ETA ah I see Londonpubman got there before me. Apologies
We could also say that home ownership is much lower in Germany than either France or the UK so that German wealth consumption gives a falsely high sense of affluence.
All that we know is that there are variations between countries and variations within countries.
Which isn't a bad thing when different places offer different opportunities and different lifestyles.
Nominal GDP is not the same as quality of life.
For a laugh let's mix and match. Labour lowest on 40%. Con best on 29% plus Refuk best on 11% gives us a Lab to Con-Refuk tie at 40%.
Well you're all writing bollocks so why shouldn't I?
(That's not to say this time next year, Tories won't win a majority, but on current polling you are all having a giraffe!)
“ Brexit was a vote for lower immigration – of course it was […] If, in short, you want lower migration and higher wages […] Then I say again,
this is what a changed Labour Party will deliver”
On the Tories
“ every time they run-up against a choice between raising skills and working conditions or issuing more visas, they choose the higher migration option. And that’s not an accident, it’s who they are”
https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/keir-starmers-speech-in-buckinghamshire/
Mass immigration means low wages, and a damning critique of politicians who give out jobs to foreigners. Whoever would have thought it?
it hasn't happened yet.
Do his lawyers get their fees before any damages are paid? What is the order of precedence?
I believe that to appeal this he will have to pay a stonking chunk as a bond. Does that mean no appeal?
He's not poor but I don't think he has the best part of $200m.
Sunak, a disastrous couple of months rowing back on HS2, pushing for Rwanda when it should have been euthanised after the SC ruling. A great campaigner who has been absolutely spanked by useless campaigner Starmer at all three of the last PMQs.
Penny? Fight, fight, fight for your right to party. Sorry Penny you blew your chance at the Con. Conf.
Cleverly? Being taken down by his U turn on Rwanda.
Suella? Well, everything
Priti? Ditto
Kemi? An utterly disastrous BSec in post
Johnson? Not an MP, and a worse PM than Lord North.
Truss. A worse PM than Johnson.
Better PM Starmer and the UK out of the EU than PM Cameron and us still in it
I didn’t say he was making error after error or that he was unfit for office, what are you talking about?
But a year is a very long time in politics. I think we can safely say, if Labour lose in Jan 2025, it is game over, they will never be returned as an FPTP government.
Not gracious and I think with forked tongue, but he's out of the game, and if necessary he can be made to testify - so perhaps puts a Cordon Sanitaire round potential Trump lies.
https://twitter.com/OxfordClarion/status/1735801135988953293
https://x.com/pmqskeir/status/1735794619118449124?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67731546
Who could have predicted that binning Sue Barker and co for Paddy no talent and non sports people, making it a piss poor version of Sky own show would lead to this....but anothwr £10 a year for failure.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67734397
Shocked to find that it was drugs despite all the claims to be free of them. You don't just drown in your hot tub by accident without something else being involved.
Kept ratcheting up the temperature from room temperature VERY slowly . . . slowly . . . until before the toad realized what was happening, he was hopping about in a pot of boiling water . . .
You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone out here, including Republicans, who would disagree.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEK9oK02D1M&ab_channel=theclashVEVO
Giuliana's fate was obvious to anybody following the trial. Repeating the libels on the steps of the court as the jury was about to go to set the level of damages was the hubris that got him into this trouble.
His fate will be gentle though, compared to the dockside hooker treatment to be meted out to Trump in the New York civil action. That will rob him of his New York empire - and his oft-trotted out notion that he is some great business man.
And then there's the criminal cases.
The BBC could never countenance making a show now that was essentially for blokes. Although if anyone tried to cancel Woman's Hour....
They managed to lose the radio rights for the cricket in India this week.
Give it another 5 years, its just going to be strictly being their only big show.
DEI must DIE.
The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.
“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” are propaganda words for racism, sexism and other -isms.
So, I have sympathy with the view that the use of racial quotas disadvantage certain groups: in particular, the way they allow rich whites and rich blacks into elite colleges, at the expense of poorer students.
On the other hand, I am incredibly nervous that decrying inclusivity is basically saying "god damn it, I should be allowed to make jokes about fudge packers."
But I think it's really dangerous to just decry the whole lot as he does in that tweet.
An utterly unmissable show back then.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1735787893497438551
the neocolonialist practice of nicking all the
skilled brown and black people once a
government much less rich than ours has
spent public money training them, I’d have
been more inclined to vote for Brexit too.
(I realise this is far from the actual purpose of Brexit, but doesn’t sound a million miles from what SKS is saying in the speech).
So even more money for a failing institution to continue to fail.
They did the same with radio 2. Got rid of older and popular broadcasters and aimed for a younger audience so losing plenty of listeners who migrate elsewhere while offering nothing to older listeners.
Perhaps if they looked at what viewers wanted instead of telling them what they should want that would be a good start.
Then I considered it unlikely he would have a view on them, and read it more carefully.
Mind you, even Elon Musk would probably run the nation's education system better than Susan Acland-Hood.
Massively increase the university places for doctors. Then send them for training to various third world countries (cheaper). Use the foreign aid budget for this.
Sell it as reparations for the Empire or something.
Brexit has been a distraction from addressing the problems of this nation, not the solution to the problem.
Starmers speech is interesting and gives some idea of how he plans to campaign. Not gimmicks like the Rwanda groundnut scheme, but addressing the comprehensive failure of public services.
You don't become DPP without decent trial/court experience.
Although I have to admit, that's a case where I hoped both of them would lose.
Labour, owned by the unions, will ALWAYS go route b). So the question is - are they lying when they say they will address the comprehensive failures, or lying when they say they won't significantly put up taxes in order to throw a lot of money at the problem.
Probably both. Starmer will raise taxes but not turn around public services.
A second one is that there are not lots of unused quality training opportunities at foreign medical schools.
The biggest one is that a newly qualified doctor is just the substrate. The expensive and time-consuming bit is the postgraduate training which takes 5-10 years depending on speciality. The vast majority of imported doctors come here to take advantage of what has historically been the high quality of UK postgrad training.
1) the "useless management structures" have been devised and run by Conservatives over the last 13 years.
2) the argument accepts that public services are failing.
Why would anyone want to continue with this government's policy on public services which we all agree now are poorly run and failing?
Building teaching hospitals in developing counties seems a better use of money than funding the random “Aid and Death To The West” organisations. And would definitely do less damage to the countries concerned.
They should have left radio 2 alone (and radio 1), with their massive but aging audiences, and just produced a new "radio braindead" for da youth. They would have had to kill them off in 20-30 years, but that would be some else's problem...!
Instead they trashed radio 2, sent most of the listeners to Greatest Hits, and now have no music offering for those over 30.
So getting rid of Diversity and Inclusion officers only works if you get rid of all the requirements of the Equalities acts. If you do the first without the second then you are just renaming people with some other HR label.
Similarly you can only abolish the Department of Education or Health by getting rid of those departments functions, perhaps by abolishing any overview, management or accountability above district level. There is something to be said for such radical decentralisation, but it does require a hands off approach when it becomes seriously dysfunctional in one or other district.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/14/tech/elon-musk-funding-new-austin-school/index.html
The expensive part of a teaching hospital is not the physical structure but rather the expense of paying highly qualified professionals to teach. Motivated senior clinicians are needed, and are both expensive and in short supply. I know because I an one of them! Indeed I have been interviewing prospective medical students this week.
I really hope that I am wrong. I really and genuinely hope that he surprises us on the upside. God knows the country needs an improvement.
Whether one considers it a vital virtue or a dogmatic danger, surely this picture more than defines - it encapsulates the very essence, perhaps even the yolk, of woke
They are not suitable for autonomous practice, and require well defined roles with accountability and a clear supervisory structure to be safe.
The biggest grievance on medical twitter about them is that the PAs get the expensive training and supervision, while the medical postgraduates get shunted off to do the donkey work.
*a rather pejorative term for non-doctors doing roles previously in the medical domain such as diagnosing and treating.
It doesn't lead school inspections. It doesn't set the curriculum. It doesn't oversee exams. It doesn't do anything on HS that the HSE wouldn't do a hundred times better. It doesn't control appointments.
It does set the regulatory framework, but there are other (probably better) ways it could be done.
It also provides funding for academy schools and LEAs, but that doesn't require a whole government department particularly one which cannot do basic arithmetic.
It does create rather a lot of pointless work (including paperwork) to justify its existence.
It does officially at least manage teacher training, but that would be better managed by the unis and academy chains themselves (or indeed a monkey on a stick).
So I can see how getting rid of it could be done without much trouble.
The concern I would have is that if it was replaced by a smaller Board of Education overseeing these quangoes it would probably be run by people who were worse. Losing Acland-Hood and gaining a 25-person department run by Cummings or Freedman would be the greater of two evils.
It is something that has been sorely lacking in recent years, and not just at Westminster. Scotland and the other devolved nations have been no better at it, indeed often even worse.
If not I'm afraid you don't qualify.
Starmer is extraordinarily lucky. No Government in my lifetime has set the bar so low in terms of sound administration.
Give the skills of the DfE in other areas, how many schools have a KKK klavern?
A good time to start a political career is at the nadir of a parties fortunes, as that is when the recovery starts.
I think that I wouldn't be successful in politics. My views are too idiosyncratic for party politics.
What this country needs is the Conservatives and Labour working together on a 10 or 20 year programme for public services. One that would survive a change in administration, where there would be a great political price to be paid if one party or the other tried to backslide. One that would take difficult decisons and follow through on them.
There should be a common aim to deliver this, because any government is going to struggle to provide services that don't massively disappoint. Waiting lists won't notably imporve under a new Labour government. The bare minimum will be all that gets delivered, without any advance on the level of service. There isn't funding available, there aren't the trained staff. Labour is deeply dishonest to suggets otherwise.
A Labour government will spend its term tinkering, to very little effect. But hey, it will be better than the Tories. (Spoiler: it won't....)
Sunak's decisions only can't be described as completely mad because mad people are usually capable of saner decisions than Rwanda, HS2 and NI.
The graph of public satisfaction is pretty much the inverse, with satisfaction with the NHS peaking at 70% in 2010 and now down in the twenties.
I had a couple of informal preliminary interviews, and then had to go in front of their Nominations Committee - which was tough - after which I had a 2-hour 1:1 meeting with the CEO. They approved my application last week.
I've just written my election statement, and now have to speak at the AGM in February where I will hopefully be elected by the members.
There are 3,000 of them. Hopefully, they won't all turn up!
Mr. Royale, if you win, will that make you the Member of PB for Steampunk?
Angela's pink jacket is too bright for the background, and her and Keir are too far apart*. The conjunction of the symmetry of the room and positions with the asymmetry of clothing is wrong too. If Starmer was on his left knee rather than right, it would also force better hand position, giving more positive body language of unity rather than discord.
* perhaps forced by covid social distancing.
There's a lot to be said for it, though it depends on more people being less frazzled. And the 2010 iteration had far to heavy a load of reducing government expenditure put on it
Good luck.
OO gauge is crap cos it combines 1:76 scale train bodies with 1:87 scale track!
Sure, Tories will wail "it's not fair, Covid, GFC hangover, 'reasons', etc, etc..." but their wailing will be pointless against the power of this chart.
My Lords!
However, Labour has to win the first GE and, despite the poll leads, that remains far from a done deal. Refugees on planes to Rwanda, further tax cuts and that general slow economic improvement could yet salvage the Tories. I'd hate that, of course, but I can see some tiny silver lining in that it may mean the further Tory lurch to the right is avoided.