I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
It may well be another messaging platform but the odds of a 2005 platform looking the Apple messaging platform from circa 2018 onwards, well I have my doubts.
Your doubts might be valid but it's an odd thing to fake given the risks of techies pulling the fake apart not to mention libel litigation.
I suspect it's real but I cannot pretend to know why it looks like it does.
Also note, if it has been altered to look like it's a modern system, then it's perfectly possible that there might have been other interactions and replies that have been left out. Whereas that image gives the impression there wasn't.
*Unless* they're old messages that have been imported, it's dodgy.
It should not be noted that the messages were not from Clarke, but from someone Jones says was his best friend. Even if they were best friends, I wouldn't want to be held responsible for things my friends say!
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Facebook was founded in 2004 - so that could work - but Facebook Messenger not until 2011, I think?
Here’s the other screenshot. Perhaps existing conversations got imported into Messenger.
That does not look like Messenger to me, imported or otherwise. That still looks like iMessage.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Facebook was founded in 2004 - so that could work - but Facebook Messenger not until 2011, I think?
Here’s the other screenshot. Perhaps existing conversations got imported into Messenger.
That does not look like Messenger to me, imported or otherwise. That still looks like iMessage.
Note the Facebook logo on the avatars…
I can see the Facebook label at the top. But the whole thing doesn't look like what I remember of the early days of Facebook. Admittedly, I wasn't on it at the very start.
At least in this weeks PMQs, Starmer finally resisted pointing out he was a DPP putting terrorists away.
Was he a DPP putting terrorists away? I thought his father was a toolmaker
I think today Starmer used what Rishi was doing in 2008 for the first time, rather than merely threaten to use it, Trump style.
My view of Starmer is changing to someone who’s a bit of a bruiser, can take it and no qualms to dish it.
Good I hope Starmer realizes what he’s dealing with and gives Sunak both barrels . Time to get down and dirty. The spineless gimp needs to bugger off back to California .
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Facebook was founded in 2004 - so that could work - but Facebook Messenger not until 2011, I think?
Here’s the other screenshot. Perhaps existing conversations got imported into Messenger.
My Facebook messenger displays the dates in a different format, so 12 June 2023 not 12/06/2023. Not sure if you can change it but doesn’t look like FB Messenger.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
7/10 for at least the effort.
And it’s not entirely untrue.
But he has no strategy or foresight. The marbles episode was foolish. Cancelling HS2 up north (and then having your party in London campaigning that potholes were being mended with the savings) was foolish. This whole Rwanda nonsense is foolish.
And he should have understood that his USP, after three PMs increasingly inadequate in their different ways, was being the sensible, moderate, practical guy who would restore us to sensible politics. That was his mission, but he buckled at the first hurdle and is now doing all this nutty stuff, trashing his own brand.
He’s made errors of course. I’m not claiming he’s a great prime monster - he clearly isn’t. I am merely saying he is a decent middling PM who just happens to be in power when times are as tough as most of us can remember - literally war and plague are stalking the globe
And he has inherited an awful lot of shite policies from prior PMs of all stripes. Migration is a massive issue - but not of his doing. Post Covid health issues are also huge - not his fault
Anyway he’ll be gone this year. And then we will have Starmer’s boring nasal tones explaining why nothing is getting especially better, and he’ll be doing it with extra loads of Wokeness
He will be unpopular after a year and likely loathed after two or three
Your initial post consists of a lot of points that might have seemed valid to me at one time, but they're not borne out by the way events have developed. Sunak being incorruptibly rich for example - I have made that very point. Yet, there is a repeated theme of the personal enrichment of the Sunaks occurring as a result of policy decisions taken by Sunak. That may all be perfectly above board, but it's there. Perhaps one can never be too rich.
As for his USP, the 'dull' managerialism - we live in challenging times requiring significant changes instigated by a determined Government. Truss understood that for all her faults. Rishi's inaction in the face of the COL crisis amounts to an attack on living standards. He seems satisfied to do some twiddling and have a few 'wedge issues', but overall to lie back and accept 'the new normal' and its devastating impact on the public.
He's just really bad at the rough politics side of things. I guess because he's never really had to do it. Became an MP in a safe seat in 2015. Chancellor barely 4 years later. Has never actually won a contest a leadership election. His entire political career spent during a time when the right was in the ascendant.
Every modern PM bar Major had spent time in opposition, and he had been an MP for 11 years and had to work his way up through cabinets with some pretty big beasts.
You can see it in the assumption that he can play the same old Tory, UKIP-lite, 'will of the people' tunes and think it will work as that's Britain for evermore and worked in 2016 and 19. When the country is changing, because his party's failings have made it change. A savvier politician, one who'd known defeat and who had to work at it and needed a strong antenna to rise, would get that.
Sunak never had to, so he doesn't have that knack and ruthlessness others developed, and it shows.
You could contrast to Starmer, who entered parliament the same year, is similarly managerial in tone and high achieving- albeit older. But has been hardened by Labour's defeats into a more ruthless character who has had to spend time understanding why Labour has lost elections and how that might change.
O/T I have signed up for 3 free months of Apple TV on the back of Mrs P's new iPhone offer, principally to watch Masters of the Air.
Is there anything else on AppleTV I should take a look at?
No but the BBC is currently plugging its 2012 series Jet! When Britain Ruled the Skies Series which celebrates an unlikely story of outstanding British aviation achievement at a time of national austerity, the breathtaking planes that were built and the remarkable men who flew them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b01m85vv/jet-when-britain-ruled-the-skies
Episode 1. Military Marvels How Britain led the world into the jet age with a new generation of fighters and bombers.
Episode 2. The Shape of Things to Come A look at how, by 1960, the UK's passenger airline industry was the largest in the world.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Facebook was founded in 2004 - so that could work - but Facebook Messenger not until 2011, I think?
Here’s the other screenshot. Perhaps existing conversations got imported into Messenger.
My Facebook messenger displays the dates in a different format, so 12 June 2023 not 12/06/2023. Not sure if you can change it but doesn’t look like FB Messenger.
I suspect it is real, I don't see any way that Jones would think he could get away with presenting a falsified conversation with a real, living person. It's very unpleasant. I am slightly intrigued as to what he was being sarcastic about however. I suspect that there may have been some ribbing the other way on Jone's part - nothing deserving the response, but something that perhaps he felt didn't add to his point.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
7/10 for at least the effort.
And it’s not entirely untrue.
But he has no strategy or foresight. The marbles episode was foolish. Cancelling HS2 up north (and then having your party in London campaigning that potholes were being mended with the savings) was foolish. This whole Rwanda nonsense is foolish.
And he should have understood that his USP, after three PMs increasingly inadequate in their different ways, was being the sensible, moderate, practical guy who would restore us to sensible politics. That was his mission, but he buckled at the first hurdle and is now doing all this nutty stuff, trashing his own brand.
He’s made errors of course. I’m not claiming he’s a great prime monster - he clearly isn’t. I am merely saying he is a decent middling PM who just happens to be in power when times are as tough as most of us can remember - literally war and plague are stalking the globe
And he has inherited an awful lot of shite policies from prior PMs of all stripes. Migration is a massive issue - but not of his doing. Post Covid health issues are also huge - not his fault
Anyway he’ll be gone this year. And then we will have Starmer’s boring nasal tones explaining why nothing is getting especially better, and he’ll be doing it with extra loads of Wokeness
He will be unpopular after a year and likely loathed after two or three
Your initial post consists of a lot of points that might have seemed valid to me at one time, but they're not borne out by the way events have developed. Sunak being incorruptibly rich for example - I have made that very point. Yet, there is a repeated theme of the personal enrichment of the Sunaks occurring as a result of policy decisions taken by Sunak. That may all be perfectly above board, but it's there. Perhaps one can never be too rich.
As for his USP, the 'dull' managerialism - we live in challenging times requiring significant changes instigated by a determined Government. Truss understood that for all her faults. Rishi's inaction in the face of the COL crisis amounts to an attack on living standards. He seems satisfied to do some twiddling and have a few 'wedge issues', but overall to lie back and accept 'the new normal' and its devastating impact on the public.
He's just really bad at the rough politics side of things. I guess because he's never really had to do it. Became an MP in a safe seat in 2015. Chancellor barely 4 years later. Has never actually won a contest a leadership election. His entire political career spent during a time when the right was in the ascendant.
Every modern PM bar Major had spent time in opposition, and he had been an MP for 11 years and had to work his way up through cabinets with some pretty big beasts.
You can see it in the assumption that he can play the same old Tory, UKIP-lite, 'will of the people' tunes and think it will work as that's Britain for evermore and worked in 2016 and 19. When the country is changing, because his party's failings have made it change. A savvier politician, one who'd known defeat and who had to work at it and needed a strong antenna to rise, would get that.
Sunak never had to, so he doesn't have that knack and ruthlessness others developed, and it shows.
You could contrast to Starmer, who entered parliament the same year, is similarly managerial in tone and high achieving- albeit older. But has been hardened by Labour's defeats into a more ruthless character who has had to spend time understanding why Labour has lost elections and how that might change.
Isn't it pretty much every PM, never mind every 'modern' PM? Even William Pitt the Younger did.
In fact the only PMs I can think of other than Major and Sunak who never sat on the opposition benches before becoming PM are Henry Addington and the Duke of Wellington.
(Major of course had quite an apprenticeship in local government too.)
O/T I have signed up for 3 free months of Apple TV on the back of Mrs P's new iPhone offer, principally to watch Masters of the Air.
Is there anything else on AppleTV I should take a look at?
No but the BBC is currently plugging its 2012 series Jet! When Britain Ruled the Skies Series which celebrates an unlikely story of outstanding British aviation achievement at a time of national austerity, the breathtaking planes that were built and the remarkable men who flew them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b01m85vv/jet-when-britain-ruled-the-skies
Episode 1. Military Marvels How Britain led the world into the jet age with a new generation of fighters and bombers.
Episode 2. The Shape of Things to Come A look at how, by 1960, the UK's passenger airline industry was the largest in the world.
Hmmm... I think that was first broadcast in 2012.
I think so too, which is why I wrote it.
Goddammit - I missed that!
Saw the mention of Jets, thought it sounded familiar, so dived into the BBC site to emerge triumphant with the discovery that it was first broadcast in August 2012!
Could have saved myself the trouble by reading your post properly. Soz!
O/T I have signed up for 3 free months of Apple TV on the back of Mrs P's new iPhone offer, principally to watch Masters of the Air.
Is there anything else on AppleTV I should take a look at?
No but the BBC is currently plugging its 2012 series Jet! When Britain Ruled the Skies Series which celebrates an unlikely story of outstanding British aviation achievement at a time of national austerity, the breathtaking planes that were built and the remarkable men who flew them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b01m85vv/jet-when-britain-ruled-the-skies
Episode 1. Military Marvels How Britain led the world into the jet age with a new generation of fighters and bombers.
Episode 2. The Shape of Things to Come A look at how, by 1960, the UK's passenger airline industry was the largest in the world.
Hmmm... I think that was first broadcast in 2012.
I think so too, which is why I wrote it.
Goddammit - I missed that!
Saw the mention of Jets, thought it sounded familiar, so dived into the BBC site to emerge triumphant with the discovery that it was first broadcast in August 2012!
Could have saved myself the trouble by reading your post properly. Soz!
From memory it was very good and was, I think, based on a very good book I've got somewhere.
Mention grammar schools (and Mrs Thatcher's role in closing so many,)
That tops my suggestion. Like pineapple on a pizza.
Don't be silly. If you *really* want to distract a thread, we have two crowning options:
1) Religion
2) Cash.
3) Sad git all alone in a far away country taking a photo of his drink, on a table, in some nondescript hotel, owners of which have paid him to write nice things about it.
Mention grammar schools (and Mrs Thatcher's role in closing so many,)
That tops my suggestion. Like pineapple on a pizza.
Don't be silly. If you *really* want to distract a thread, we have two crowning options:
1) Religion
2) Cash.
3) Sad git all alone in a far away country taking a photo of his drink, on a table, in some nondescript hotel, owners of which have paid him to write nice things about it.
O/T I have signed up for 3 free months of Apple TV on the back of Mrs P's new iPhone offer, principally to watch Masters of the Air.
Is there anything else on AppleTV I should take a look at?
No but the BBC is currently plugging its 2012 series Jet! When Britain Ruled the Skies Series which celebrates an unlikely story of outstanding British aviation achievement at a time of national austerity, the breathtaking planes that were built and the remarkable men who flew them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b01m85vv/jet-when-britain-ruled-the-skies
Episode 1. Military Marvels How Britain led the world into the jet age with a new generation of fighters and bombers.
Episode 2. The Shape of Things to Come A look at how, by 1960, the UK's passenger airline industry was the largest in the world.
Hmmm... I think that was first broadcast in 2012.
I think so too, which is why I wrote it.
Goddammit - I missed that!
Saw the mention of Jets, thought it sounded familiar, so dived into the BBC site to emerge triumphant with the discovery that it was first broadcast in August 2012!
Could have saved myself the trouble by reading your post properly. Soz!
From memory it was very good and was, I think, based on a very good book I've got somewhere.
I did see it and it was good. Once is enough though.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Facebook was founded in 2004 - so that could work - but Facebook Messenger not until 2011, I think?
Here’s the other screenshot. Perhaps existing conversations got imported into Messenger.
That does not look like Messenger to me, imported or otherwise. That still looks like iMessage.
Edit - TBF, it probably isn't important. It just looks odd, especially since Jones must have kept these messages for 19 years - why?
They’ll be kept by Facebook. Jones wouldn’t have had to do anything special to retain them.
Although it should be remembered much of the Jewish Establishment is on board with the proposals, criticisms include:-
She hit the table in frustration as she told the MPs the idea of a learning centre was almost an insult: "What are we learning now that we haven't learned in 80 years? We shouldn't kill each other? Good idea".
She also feared the memorial would overshadow the nearby Buxton slavery memorial.
Martin Stern - who was arrested by the Nazis aged five - said the proposed site for the learning centre was "far too big for the little park and far too small for the purpose.".
Crossbench peer Baroness Deech, who had family members killed in the Holocaust, objected to the memorial being built so close to a children's playground and a cafe.
"How can one have a cafe - selling coke and crisps - by a memorial of people who starved to death. I can not think of anything more tin-eared."
Mr Stern also suggested the site "intended to counteract antisemitism will in fact increase it.
"People will say 'look at the Jews - they push themselves to the front'."
His concerns were echoed by another survivor - Joanna Millan - who worried about the amount of money being spent on the project.
She feared people would ask: "Why is all this money being spent on Jews - what about our hospitals?"
Several of the witnesses proposed the Imperial War Museum, less than a mile from Parliament, as an alternative site big enough to accommodate a learning centre.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Facebook was founded in 2004 - so that could work - but Facebook Messenger not until 2011, I think?
Here’s the other screenshot. Perhaps existing conversations got imported into Messenger.
My Facebook messenger displays the dates in a different format, so 12 June 2023 not 12/06/2023. Not sure if you can change it but doesn’t look like FB Messenger.
I have messages in my FB Messenger archive that date back to 2007 & their dates are in the 12/06/2023 format. I guess FB imported old messages into the Messenger “brand” ?
(Weirdly, some Messenger groups have dates in the 12/06/2023 format & some in the 12 June 2023 format. No idea why they would be different.)
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
7/10 for at least the effort.
And it’s not entirely untrue.
But he has no strategy or foresight. The marbles episode was foolish. Cancelling HS2 up north (and then having your party in London campaigning that potholes were being mended with the savings) was foolish. This whole Rwanda nonsense is foolish.
And he should have understood that his USP, after three PMs increasingly inadequate in their different ways, was being the sensible, moderate, practical guy who would restore us to sensible politics. That was his mission, but he buckled at the first hurdle and is now doing all this nutty stuff, trashing his own brand.
He’s made errors of course. I’m not claiming he’s a great prime monster - he clearly isn’t. I am merely saying he is a decent middling PM who just happens to be in power when times are as tough as most of us can remember - literally war and plague are stalking the globe
And he has inherited an awful lot of shite policies from prior PMs of all stripes. Migration is a massive issue - but not of his doing. Post Covid health issues are also huge - not his fault
Anyway he’ll be gone this year. And then we will have Starmer’s boring nasal tones explaining why nothing is getting especially better, and he’ll be doing it with extra loads of Wokeness
He will be unpopular after a year and likely loathed after two or three
Your initial post consists of a lot of points that might have seemed valid to me at one time, but they're not borne out by the way events have developed. Sunak being incorruptibly rich for example - I have made that very point. Yet, there is a repeated theme of the personal enrichment of the Sunaks occurring as a result of policy decisions taken by Sunak. That may all be perfectly above board, but it's there. Perhaps one can never be too rich.
As for his USP, the 'dull' managerialism - we live in challenging times requiring significant changes instigated by a determined Government. Truss understood that for all her faults. Rishi's inaction in the face of the COL crisis amounts to an attack on living standards. He seems satisfied to do some twiddling and have a few 'wedge issues', but overall to lie back and accept 'the new normal' and its devastating impact on the public.
He's just really bad at the rough politics side of things. I guess because he's never really had to do it. Became an MP in a safe seat in 2015. Chancellor barely 4 years later. Has never actually won a contest a leadership election. His entire political career spent during a time when the right was in the ascendant.
Every modern PM bar Major had spent time in opposition, and he had been an MP for 11 years and had to work his way up through cabinets with some pretty big beasts.
You can see it in the assumption that he can play the same old Tory, UKIP-lite, 'will of the people' tunes and think it will work as that's Britain for evermore and worked in 2016 and 19. When the country is changing, because his party's failings have made it change. A savvier politician, one who'd known defeat and who had to work at it and needed a strong antenna to rise, would get that.
Sunak never had to, so he doesn't have that knack and ruthlessness others developed, and it shows.
You could contrast to Starmer, who entered parliament the same year, is similarly managerial in tone and high achieving- albeit older. But has been hardened by Labour's defeats into a more ruthless character who has had to spend time understanding why Labour has lost elections and how that might change.
I rarely give "Like"s but this deserved it.
One of Sunak's problems is, unlike Major, who followed a single Prime Minister and was trying to get his own mandate, he is following four other Conservative Prime Ministers and has to carry their baggage along with his own as well as 14 and a half years (as it will be in November) of Conservative-led Government.
It might be "time for a change" on its own would have put Labour in a strong position but as with 1992-97, the way the Conservatives have comported themselves while in Government will contribute hugely to their own defeat. It won't just be the public kicking Sunak, it's a public kicking in the consituencies for the entire Conservative Party.
That said, once the kicking has happened, the slate will to an extent be wiped clean. True, no one will give the Conservative Party a moment's thought for three or four years after the defeat but the time will come when those disillusioned or disappointed with Starmer will start looking elsewhere.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
7/10 for at least the effort.
And it’s not entirely untrue.
But he has no strategy or foresight. The marbles episode was foolish. Cancelling HS2 up north (and then having your party in London campaigning that potholes were being mended with the savings) was foolish. This whole Rwanda nonsense is foolish.
And he should have understood that his USP, after three PMs increasingly inadequate in their different ways, was being the sensible, moderate, practical guy who would restore us to sensible politics. That was his mission, but he buckled at the first hurdle and is now doing all this nutty stuff, trashing his own brand.
He’s made errors of course. I’m not claiming he’s a great prime monster - he clearly isn’t. I am merely saying he is a decent middling PM who just happens to be in power when times are as tough as most of us can remember - literally war and plague are stalking the globe
And he has inherited an awful lot of shite policies from prior PMs of all stripes. Migration is a massive issue - but not of his doing. Post Covid health issues are also huge - not his fault
Anyway he’ll be gone this year. And then we will have Starmer’s boring nasal tones explaining why nothing is getting especially better, and he’ll be doing it with extra loads of Wokeness
He will be unpopular after a year and likely loathed after two or three
Your initial post consists of a lot of points that might have seemed valid to me at one time, but they're not borne out by the way events have developed. Sunak being incorruptibly rich for example - I have made that very point. Yet, there is a repeated theme of the personal enrichment of the Sunaks occurring as a result of policy decisions taken by Sunak. That may all be perfectly above board, but it's there. Perhaps one can never be too rich.
As for his USP, the 'dull' managerialism - we live in challenging times requiring significant changes instigated by a determined Government. Truss understood that for all her faults. Rishi's inaction in the face of the COL crisis amounts to an attack on living standards. He seems satisfied to do some twiddling and have a few 'wedge issues', but overall to lie back and accept 'the new normal' and its devastating impact on the public.
He's just really bad at the rough politics side of things. I guess because he's never really had to do it. Became an MP in a safe seat in 2015. Chancellor barely 4 years later. Has never actually won a contest a leadership election. His entire political career spent during a time when the right was in the ascendant.
Every modern PM bar Major had spent time in opposition, and he had been an MP for 11 years and had to work his way up through cabinets with some pretty big beasts.
You can see it in the assumption that he can play the same old Tory, UKIP-lite, 'will of the people' tunes and think it will work as that's Britain for evermore and worked in 2016 and 19. When the country is changing, because his party's failings have made it change. A savvier politician, one who'd known defeat and who had to work at it and needed a strong antenna to rise, would get that.
Sunak never had to, so he doesn't have that knack and ruthlessness others developed, and it shows.
You could contrast to Starmer, who entered parliament the same year, is similarly managerial in tone and high achieving- albeit older. But has been hardened by Labour's defeats into a more ruthless character who has had to spend time understanding why Labour has lost elections and how that might change.
I can see why you think that way, but on my opinion, his failure is not to use that language, but not to follow it up with action.
Right, away from the laptop now. Trying to cut my screen time a bit so back to Barchester - I'm halfway through Barchester Towers - very good - things not looking too good for Slope.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
7/10 for at least the effort.
And it’s not entirely untrue.
But he has no strategy or foresight. The marbles episode was foolish. Cancelling HS2 up north (and then having your party in London campaigning that potholes were being mended with the savings) was foolish. This whole Rwanda nonsense is foolish.
And he should have understood that his USP, after three PMs increasingly inadequate in their different ways, was being the sensible, moderate, practical guy who would restore us to sensible politics. That was his mission, but he buckled at the first hurdle and is now doing all this nutty stuff, trashing his own brand.
He’s made errors of course. I’m not claiming he’s a great prime monster - he clearly isn’t. I am merely saying he is a decent middling PM who just happens to be in power when times are as tough as most of us can remember - literally war and plague are stalking the globe
And he has inherited an awful lot of shite policies from prior PMs of all stripes. Migration is a massive issue - but not of his doing. Post Covid health issues are also huge - not his fault
Anyway he’ll be gone this year. And then we will have Starmer’s boring nasal tones explaining why nothing is getting especially better, and he’ll be doing it with extra loads of Wokeness
He will be unpopular after a year and likely loathed after two or three
Your initial post consists of a lot of points that might have seemed valid to me at one time, but they're not borne out by the way events have developed. Sunak being incorruptibly rich for example - I have made that very point. Yet, there is a repeated theme of the personal enrichment of the Sunaks occurring as a result of policy decisions taken by Sunak. That may all be perfectly above board, but it's there. Perhaps one can never be too rich.
As for his USP, the 'dull' managerialism - we live in challenging times requiring significant changes instigated by a determined Government. Truss understood that for all her faults. Rishi's inaction in the face of the COL crisis amounts to an attack on living standards. He seems satisfied to do some twiddling and have a few 'wedge issues', but overall to lie back and accept 'the new normal' and its devastating impact on the public.
He's just really bad at the rough politics side of things. I guess because he's never really had to do it. Became an MP in a safe seat in 2015. Chancellor barely 4 years later. Has never actually won a contest a leadership election. His entire political career spent during a time when the right was in the ascendant.
Every modern PM bar Major had spent time in opposition, and he had been an MP for 11 years and had to work his way up through cabinets with some pretty big beasts.
You can see it in the assumption that he can play the same old Tory, UKIP-lite, 'will of the people' tunes and think it will work as that's Britain for evermore and worked in 2016 and 19. When the country is changing, because his party's failings have made it change. A savvier politician, one who'd known defeat and who had to work at it and needed a strong antenna to rise, would get that.
Sunak never had to, so he doesn't have that knack and ruthlessness others developed, and it shows.
You could contrast to Starmer, who entered parliament the same year, is similarly managerial in tone and high achieving- albeit older. But has been hardened by Labour's defeats into a more ruthless character who has had to spend time understanding why Labour has lost elections and how that might change.
Isn't it pretty much every PM, never mind every 'modern' PM? Even William Pitt the Younger did.
In fact the only PMs I can think of other than Major and Sunak who never sat on the opposition benches before becoming PM are Henry Addington and the Duke of Wellington.
(Major of course had quite an apprenticeship in local government too.)
It would not surprise! I said modern in part as did not want to look it up, and otherwise because it is difficult to compare different times.
Oh and of course Truss hadn't either (although more experienced), but that rather proves the point! Truss and Sunak are part of a political generation in which the Tories have been in the ascendant and with that has looked evermore to the right.
As a result, neither ever really learned the more difficult political skills nor gained the judgment required to deal with the situations they arrived in.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
7/10 for at least the effort.
And it’s not entirely untrue.
But he has no strategy or foresight. The marbles episode was foolish. Cancelling HS2 up north (and then having your party in London campaigning that potholes were being mended with the savings) was foolish. This whole Rwanda nonsense is foolish.
And he should have understood that his USP, after three PMs increasingly inadequate in their different ways, was being the sensible, moderate, practical guy who would restore us to sensible politics. That was his mission, but he buckled at the first hurdle and is now doing all this nutty stuff, trashing his own brand.
He’s made errors of course. I’m not claiming he’s a great prime monster - he clearly isn’t. I am merely saying he is a decent middling PM who just happens to be in power when times are as tough as most of us can remember - literally war and plague are stalking the globe
And he has inherited an awful lot of shite policies from prior PMs of all stripes. Migration is a massive issue - but not of his doing. Post Covid health issues are also huge - not his fault
Anyway he’ll be gone this year. And then we will have Starmer’s boring nasal tones explaining why nothing is getting especially better, and he’ll be doing it with extra loads of Wokeness
He will be unpopular after a year and likely loathed after two or three
Your initial post consists of a lot of points that might have seemed valid to me at one time, but they're not borne out by the way events have developed. Sunak being incorruptibly rich for example - I have made that very point. Yet, there is a repeated theme of the personal enrichment of the Sunaks occurring as a result of policy decisions taken by Sunak. That may all be perfectly above board, but it's there. Perhaps one can never be too rich.
As for his USP, the 'dull' managerialism - we live in challenging times requiring significant changes instigated by a determined Government. Truss understood that for all her faults. Rishi's inaction in the face of the COL crisis amounts to an attack on living standards. He seems satisfied to do some twiddling and have a few 'wedge issues', but overall to lie back and accept 'the new normal' and its devastating impact on the public.
He's just really bad at the rough politics side of things. I guess because he's never really had to do it. Became an MP in a safe seat in 2015. Chancellor barely 4 years later. Has never actually won a contest a leadership election. His entire political career spent during a time when the right was in the ascendant.
Every modern PM bar Major had spent time in opposition, and he had been an MP for 11 years and had to work his way up through cabinets with some pretty big beasts.
You can see it in the assumption that he can play the same old Tory, UKIP-lite, 'will of the people' tunes and think it will work as that's Britain for evermore and worked in 2016 and 19. When the country is changing, because his party's failings have made it change. A savvier politician, one who'd known defeat and who had to work at it and needed a strong antenna to rise, would get that.
Sunak never had to, so he doesn't have that knack and ruthlessness others developed, and it shows.
You could contrast to Starmer, who entered parliament the same year, is similarly managerial in tone and high achieving- albeit older. But has been hardened by Labour's defeats into a more ruthless character who has had to spend time understanding why Labour has lost elections and how that might change.
Isn't it pretty much every PM, never mind every 'modern' PM? Even William Pitt the Younger did.
In fact the only PMs I can think of other than Major and Sunak who never sat on the opposition benches before becoming PM are Henry Addington and the Duke of Wellington.
(Major of course had quite an apprenticeship in local government too.)
It would not surprise! I said modern in part as did not want to look it up, and otherwise because it is difficult to compare different times.
Oh and of course Truss hadn't either (although more experienced), but that rather proves the point! Truss and Sunak are part of a political generation in which the Tories have been in the ascendant and with that has looked evermore to the right.
As a result, neither ever really learned the more difficult political skills nor gained the judgment required to deal with the situations they arrived in.
I keep forgetting Truss.
It's as though this big green thing has blotted her out of my mind. Looks like a lettuce.
I think some of what passes for politics is just juvenile and I'm not sure the politicians who do it are aware how childish and unprofessional it makes them look.
Clarke had it yesterday with his "someone the PM really looks up to" comment, as if that was somehow clever- rather than making him sound about 14 years old - and even Cameron didn't bowl me over with his John Bercow joke: "I'm not happy.", "Well, which one are you then?"
These playground personal insults don't reflect well on anyone and wouldn't be tolerated elsewhere either.
Although it should be remembered much of the Jewish Establishment is on board with the proposals, criticisms include:-
She hit the table in frustration as she told the MPs the idea of a learning centre was almost an insult: "What are we learning now that we haven't learned in 80 years? We shouldn't kill each other? Good idea".
She also feared the memorial would overshadow the nearby Buxton slavery memorial.
Martin Stern - who was arrested by the Nazis aged five - said the proposed site for the learning centre was "far too big for the little park and far too small for the purpose.".
Crossbench peer Baroness Deech, who had family members killed in the Holocaust, objected to the memorial being built so close to a children's playground and a cafe.
"How can one have a cafe - selling coke and crisps - by a memorial of people who starved to death. I can not think of anything more tin-eared."
Mr Stern also suggested the site "intended to counteract antisemitism will in fact increase it.
"People will say 'look at the Jews - they push themselves to the front'."
His concerns were echoed by another survivor - Joanna Millan - who worried about the amount of money being spent on the project.
She feared people would ask: "Why is all this money being spent on Jews - what about our hospitals?"
Several of the witnesses proposed the Imperial War Museum, less than a mile from Parliament, as an alternative site big enough to accommodate a learning centre.
I have a great admiration for Lasker-Walfisch. She was on a repeat of a programme about Holocaust survivors in the UK a couple of nights ago, an unflinching, unsentimental old bird. Her sitting on a piece of the Berlin Holocaust monument smoking a fag shortly before or after addressing the Bundestag recounting how she used to hate Germans but had managed to move on from that was the best possible response to the Nazis.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
Who knows. But the problem with faking something like a screenshot is that it throws what he's saying into doubt.
Unless he's managed to upload old messages onto the new system?
(I lost a load of old SMS messages I'd kept for years when an old phone went wrong. I also lost all my WhatsApp stuff at the same time...)
Had an Inquiry asked for your WhatsApp messages? That’s when a lot of politicians have, er, lost their messages.
Carl Jackson is now apparently leading a busy full time job as Chief of Staff to Mark Pritchard, MP for the Wrekin.
How do you manage to be full time as 'chief of staff' for a fairly undistinguished backbench MP?
He handles the covert Machynlleth-Birmingham smuggling of live wrekins across the England/Wales border. It requires a combination of rare cunning, physical force, and the ability to pronounce the word "Machynlleth". Few are up to the task.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
Those look like Facebook messages rather than iMessage / SMS to me
Mention grammar schools (and Mrs Thatcher's role in closing so many,)
That tops my suggestion. Like pineapple on a pizza.
Don't be silly. If you *really* want to distract a thread, we have two crowning options:
1) Religion
2) Cash.
3) Sad git all alone in a far away country taking a photo of his drink, on a table, in some nondescript hotel, owners of which have paid him to write nice things about it.
Carl Jackson is now apparently leading a busy full time job as Chief of Staff to Mark Pritchard, MP for the Wrekin.
How do you manage to be full time as 'chief of staff' for a fairly undistinguished backbench MP?
He handles the covert Machynlleth-Birmingham smuggling of live wrekins across the England/Wales border. It requires a combination of rare cunning, physical force, and the ability to pronounce the word "Machynlleth". Few are up to the task.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
7/10 for at least the effort.
And it’s not entirely untrue.
But he has no strategy or foresight. The marbles episode was foolish. Cancelling HS2 up north (and then having your party in London campaigning that potholes were being mended with the savings) was foolish. This whole Rwanda nonsense is foolish.
And he should have understood that his USP, after three PMs increasingly inadequate in their different ways, was being the sensible, moderate, practical guy who would restore us to sensible politics. That was his mission, but he buckled at the first hurdle and is now doing all this nutty stuff, trashing his own brand.
He’s made errors of course. I’m not claiming he’s a great prime monster - he clearly isn’t. I am merely saying he is a decent middling PM who just happens to be in power when times are as tough as most of us can remember - literally war and plague are stalking the globe
And he has inherited an awful lot of shite policies from prior PMs of all stripes. Migration is a massive issue - but not of his doing. Post Covid health issues are also huge - not his fault
Anyway he’ll be gone this year. And then we will have Starmer’s boring nasal tones explaining why nothing is getting especially better, and he’ll be doing it with extra loads of Wokeness
He will be unpopular after a year and likely loathed after two or three
Your initial post consists of a lot of points that might have seemed valid to me at one time, but they're not borne out by the way events have developed. Sunak being incorruptibly rich for example - I have made that very point. Yet, there is a repeated theme of the personal enrichment of the Sunaks occurring as a result of policy decisions taken by Sunak. That may all be perfectly above board, but it's there. Perhaps one can never be too rich.
As for his USP, the 'dull' managerialism - we live in challenging times requiring significant changes instigated by a determined Government. Truss understood that for all her faults. Rishi's inaction in the face of the COL crisis amounts to an attack on living standards. He seems satisfied to do some twiddling and have a few 'wedge issues', but overall to lie back and accept 'the new normal' and its devastating impact on the public.
He's just really bad at the rough politics side of things. I guess because he's never really had to do it. Became an MP in a safe seat in 2015. Chancellor barely 4 years later. Has never actually won a contest a leadership election. His entire political career spent during a time when the right was in the ascendant.
Every modern PM bar Major had spent time in opposition, and he had been an MP for 11 years and had to work his way up through cabinets with some pretty big beasts.
You can see it in the assumption that he can play the same old Tory, UKIP-lite, 'will of the people' tunes and think it will work as that's Britain for evermore and worked in 2016 and 19. When the country is changing, because his party's failings have made it change. A savvier politician, one who'd known defeat and who had to work at it and needed a strong antenna to rise, would get that.
Sunak never had to, so he doesn't have that knack and ruthlessness others developed, and it shows.
You could contrast to Starmer, who entered parliament the same year, is similarly managerial in tone and high achieving- albeit older. But has been hardened by Labour's defeats into a more ruthless character who has had to spend time understanding why Labour has lost elections and how that might change.
Isn't it pretty much every PM, never mind every 'modern' PM? Even William Pitt the Younger did.
In fact the only PMs I can think of other than Major and Sunak who never sat on the opposition benches before becoming PM are Henry Addington and the Duke of Wellington.
(Major of course had quite an apprenticeship in local government too.)
It would not surprise! I said modern in part as did not want to look it up, and otherwise because it is difficult to compare different times.
Oh and of course Truss hadn't either (although more experienced), but that rather proves the point! Truss and Sunak are part of a political generation in which the Tories have been in the ascendant and with that has looked evermore to the right.
As a result, neither ever really learned the more difficult political skills nor gained the judgment required to deal with the situations they arrived in.
Though even Truss had experience of electoral failure on the way up. Some failed bids to be a Greenwich councillor, followed by four years on the opposition benches there and some unsucessful but plucky attempts as a Conservative candidate before she got a safe seat.
Whilst her plans may have been mad and the attempts at implementation hopelessly unsubtle, she was actually pretty good at the human decency angle, which is one of the reasons she beat Rishi.
You know that "tell me about a time you struggled/failed" interview question? Prior to 2022, it's not clear that Sunak had anything to answer that. Hence his problems now.
I think some of what passes for politics is just juvenile and I'm not sure the politicians who do it are aware how childish and unprofessional it makes them look.
Clarke had it yesterday with his "someone the PM really looks up to" comment, as if that was somehow clever- rather than making him sound about 14 years old - and even Cameron didn't bowl me over with his John Bercow joke: "I'm not happy.", "Well, which one are you then?"
These playground personal insults don't reflect well on anyone and wouldn't be tolerated elsewhere either.
Politicians need to grow up.
It wasn't Cameron's joke, he just recounted it. It was Simon Burns's, and it made me laugh. Should I be ashamed?
Mention grammar schools (and Mrs Thatcher's role in closing so many,)
That tops my suggestion. Like pineapple on a pizza.
Don't be silly. If you *really* want to distract a thread, we have two crowning options:
1) Religion
2) Cash.
3) Sad git all alone in a far away country taking a photo of his drink, on a table, in some nondescript hotel, owners of which have paid him to write nice things about it.
I think some of what passes for politics is just juvenile and I'm not sure the politicians who do it are aware how childish and unprofessional it makes them look.
Clarke had it yesterday with his "someone the PM really looks up to" comment, as if that was somehow clever- rather than making him sound about 14 years old - and even Cameron didn't bowl me over with his John Bercow joke: "I'm not happy.", "Well, which one are you then?"
These playground personal insults don't reflect well on anyone and wouldn't be tolerated elsewhere either.
Politicians need to grow up.
He doesn't want to grow up any further. He already looks like a young church steeple.
Mention grammar schools (and Mrs Thatcher's role in closing so many,)
That tops my suggestion. Like pineapple on a pizza.
Don't be silly. If you *really* want to distract a thread, we have two crowning options:
1) Religion
2) Cash.
3) Sad git all alone in a far away country taking a photo of his drink, on a table, in some nondescript hotel, owners of which have paid him to write nice things about it.
To distract him, you go with three things:
1) AI
2) The Lab Leak Theory
3) The merits of Newent and Wick.
Yes, he went all the way to Wick and didn't go to see Pulteneytown. Or won't admit to it.
Carl Jackson is now apparently leading a busy full time job as Chief of Staff to Mark Pritchard, MP for the Wrekin.
How do you manage to be full time as 'chief of staff' for a fairly undistinguished backbench MP?
He handles the covert Machynlleth-Birmingham smuggling of live wrekins across the England/Wales border. It requires a combination of rare cunning, physical force, and the ability to pronounce the word "Machynlleth". Few are up to the task.
Wrekin wrangling. An almost vanished skill.
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves; The gale, it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
Scottish officials 'froze' at start of Covid pandemic - academic
Early warnings about coronavirus were not listened to as senior Scottish government officials "froze", the UK Covid Inquiry has heard.
Prof Mark Woolhouse, a member of the Scottish Government COVID-19 Advisory Group, also claimed hundreds of people may have died after being told not to "bother" the NHS.
He told the inquiry people were misled about how the crisis would unfold.
And he said orders to stay at home and cease outdoor activity were not needed.
The Scottish government has said it is committed to responding to the inquiry.
NH Primary Day After - still awaiting results in Republican primary from ten towns.
Including effing Effingham.
I only follow US politics peripherally.
The final numbers from the New Hampshire Primary seem to be 54-43 to Trump which on the surface seems convincing though the delegate count is only 12-9 in favour of the former President.
The last polls I saw were about right on the Trump vote but Haley was in the mid-30s so finished well and I suspect was closing on Trump at the end.
South Carolina does something different - 29 delegates go to the winner while the remaining 21 are split between the seven congressional districts with each giving the winner in the district three delegates. Trump won all 50 in 2016 despite polling barely a third of the vote. Could Haley in her home state win any of the congressional districts and prevent a Trump wipeout?
She will need to see some polling making her competitive sooner rather than later. In 2016, Trump won because the Rubio and Cruz votes neutralised each other but this time there's no spoiler. If Haley can be seen to be closing the gap to sub 20 points and then to sub 10 in the final week she has a chance.
Although it should be remembered much of the Jewish Establishment is on board with the proposals, criticisms include:-
She hit the table in frustration as she told the MPs the idea of a learning centre was almost an insult: "What are we learning now that we haven't learned in 80 years? We shouldn't kill each other? Good idea".
She also feared the memorial would overshadow the nearby Buxton slavery memorial.
Martin Stern - who was arrested by the Nazis aged five - said the proposed site for the learning centre was "far too big for the little park and far too small for the purpose.".
Crossbench peer Baroness Deech, who had family members killed in the Holocaust, objected to the memorial being built so close to a children's playground and a cafe.
"How can one have a cafe - selling coke and crisps - by a memorial of people who starved to death. I can not think of anything more tin-eared."
Mr Stern also suggested the site "intended to counteract antisemitism will in fact increase it.
"People will say 'look at the Jews - they push themselves to the front'."
His concerns were echoed by another survivor - Joanna Millan - who worried about the amount of money being spent on the project.
She feared people would ask: "Why is all this money being spent on Jews - what about our hospitals?"
Several of the witnesses proposed the Imperial War Museum, less than a mile from Parliament, as an alternative site big enough to accommodate a learning centre.
I have a great admiration for Lasker-Walfisch. She was on a repeat of a programme about Holocaust survivors in the UK a couple of nights ago, an unflinching, unsentimental old bird. Her sitting on a piece of the Berlin Holocaust monument smoking a fag shortly before or after addressing the Bundestag recounting how she used to hate Germans but had managed to move on from that was the best possible response to the Nazis.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
Those look like Facebook messages rather than iMessage / SMS to me
Yes & Facebook keeps messages back to the dawn of time unless you delete them. The only wrinkle here is that FB only opened up to UK universities in October 2005 so the dates are tight, but could work. Owen would have to have kept access to his university email address in order to be on Facebook, or gained access some other way but that’s not impossible - I have a vague recollection that Oxford would forward your university email to a new address for a while after graduating, which would have been sufficient.
Although it should be remembered much of the Jewish Establishment is on board with the proposals, criticisms include:-
She hit the table in frustration as she told the MPs the idea of a learning centre was almost an insult: "What are we learning now that we haven't learned in 80 years? We shouldn't kill each other? Good idea".
She also feared the memorial would overshadow the nearby Buxton slavery memorial.
Martin Stern - who was arrested by the Nazis aged five - said the proposed site for the learning centre was "far too big for the little park and far too small for the purpose.".
Crossbench peer Baroness Deech, who had family members killed in the Holocaust, objected to the memorial being built so close to a children's playground and a cafe.
"How can one have a cafe - selling coke and crisps - by a memorial of people who starved to death. I can not think of anything more tin-eared."
Mr Stern also suggested the site "intended to counteract antisemitism will in fact increase it.
"People will say 'look at the Jews - they push themselves to the front'."
His concerns were echoed by another survivor - Joanna Millan - who worried about the amount of money being spent on the project.
She feared people would ask: "Why is all this money being spent on Jews - what about our hospitals?"
Several of the witnesses proposed the Imperial War Museum, less than a mile from Parliament, as an alternative site big enough to accommodate a learning centre.
I have a great admiration for Lasker-Walfisch. She was on a repeat of a programme about Holocaust survivors in the UK a couple of nights ago, an unflinching, unsentimental old bird. Her sitting on a piece of the Berlin Holocaust monument smoking a fag shortly before or after addressing the Bundestag recounting how she used to hate Germans but had managed to move on from that was the best possible response to the Nazis.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
Those look like Facebook messages rather than iMessage / SMS to me
Yes & Facebook keeps messages back to the dawn of time unless you delete them. The only wrinkle here is that FB only opened up to UK universities in October 2005 so the dates are tight, but could work. Owen would have to have kept access to his university email address in order to be on Facebook, or gained access some other way but that’s not impossible - I have a vague recollection that Oxford would forward your university email to a new address for a while after graduating, which would have been sufficient.
I don't think he'd need to have access to the old email address. As long as there was continuity with the original account then they'd still be there under his current login.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
Those look like Facebook messages rather than iMessage / SMS to me
Yes & Facebook keeps messages back to the dawn of time unless you delete them. The only wrinkle here is that FB only opened up to UK universities in October 2005 so the dates are tight, but could work. Owen would have to have kept access to his university email address in order to be on Facebook, or gained access some other way but that’s not impossible - I have a vague recollection that Oxford would forward your university email to a new address for a while after graduating, which would have been sufficient.
I don't think he'd need to have access to the old email address. As long as there was continuity with the original account then they'd still be there under his current login.
The point is, he'd graduated by the time these messages were sent. So he would have needed access to his uni account to set up an account.
Hearing a YouGov poll is going to be released tonight showing
1) Labour lead the Tories by 24% nationally
2) Labour lead the Tories by 34% in the top 150 marginals
How on Earth does the Maths work on that? Labour must be going backwards in Inner London and Liverpool at some rate of knots. And the Tories must be close to 100 % on the East Coast.
Hearing a YouGov poll is going to be released tonight showing
1) Labour lead the Tories by 24% nationally
2) Labour lead the Tories by 34% in the top 150 marginals
How on Earth does the Maths work on that? Labour must be going backwards in Inner London and Liverpool at some rate of knots. And the Tories must be close to 100 % on the East Coast.
A mixture of Labour benefitting from tactical voting in the marginals and Labour shedding some votes in safe seats to the Greens/hard left?
Hearing a YouGov poll is going to be released tonight showing
1) Labour lead the Tories by 24% nationally
2) Labour lead the Tories by 34% in the top 150 marginals
How on Earth does the Maths work on that? Labour must be going backwards in Inner London and Liverpool at some rate of knots. And the Tories must be close to 100 % on the East Coast.
Perhaps they asked A Certain Poster in one marginal 71,000 times his views on Keir Starmer?
Hearing a YouGov poll is going to be released tonight showing
1) Labour lead the Tories by 24% nationally
2) Labour lead the Tories by 34% in the top 150 marginals
Organic YouGov or a YouGov that's been through the Telegraph's processing?
But a big swing, amplified in the marginals, that could lead to an utter massacre.
Just thinking about the maths here. If Labour is leading nationally by over 20% then that already implies a huge majority and all marginals falling easily, so I think you’d expect the lead to be higher in marginals on a uniform swing. These are seats that would be Labour held if both parties had equal seats.
The Tory lead in 2019 was much bigger nationally than the lead in marginals, which is why they were marginal. Apply the same starting point now to a uniform swing and you get a result like this.
So I don’t think it actually necessarily shows differential swing.
Hearing a YouGov poll is going to be released tonight showing
1) Labour lead the Tories by 24% nationally
2) Labour lead the Tories by 34% in the top 150 marginals
How on Earth does the Maths work on that? Labour must be going backwards in Inner London and Liverpool at some rate of knots. And the Tories must be close to 100 % on the East Coast.
A mixture of Labour benefitting from tactical voting in the marginals and Labour shedding some votes in safe seats to the Greens/hard left?
Or is it a ceiling effect? In some inner cities it would be hard to swing further to Labour.
Hearing a YouGov poll is going to be released tonight showing
1) Labour lead the Tories by 24% nationally
2) Labour lead the Tories by 34% in the top 150 marginals
How on Earth does the Maths work on that? Labour must be going backwards in Inner London and Liverpool at some rate of knots. And the Tories must be close to 100 % on the East Coast.
Labour 'underperforming' somewhat in its safest inner-city seats, the odd anomaly, stickier red wall seats and in Tory-Lib Dem battlegrounds, but giving the Tories a shellacking elsewhere. Plus Scotland.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
Those look like Facebook messages rather than iMessage / SMS to me
Yes & Facebook keeps messages back to the dawn of time unless you delete them. The only wrinkle here is that FB only opened up to UK universities in October 2005 so the dates are tight, but could work. Owen would have to have kept access to his university email address in order to be on Facebook, or gained access some other way but that’s not impossible - I have a vague recollection that Oxford would forward your university email to a new address for a while after graduating, which would have been sufficient.
I don't think he'd need to have access to the old email address. As long as there was continuity with the original account then they'd still be there under his current login.
There wouldn’t be an original FB account, that’s the point - Facebook only opened up to UK universities in October 2005, after Owen graduated from Oxford. If you were in the UK that was your only way onto Facebook at the time. You couldn’t create a Facebook account without a UK university email address.
It would have been possible to get a Facebook account earlier if you had access to a US university email address & if you still had access to your @ox.ac.uk email address (eg if it had been set up to forward email to another address) after graduating you could use that from October 2005.
Hearing a YouGov poll is going to be released tonight showing
1) Labour lead the Tories by 24% nationally
2) Labour lead the Tories by 34% in the top 150 marginals
How on Earth does the Maths work on that? Labour must be going backwards in Inner London and Liverpool at some rate of knots. And the Tories must be close to 100 % on the East Coast.
Labour 'underperforming' somewhat in its safest inner-city seats, the odd anomaly, stickier red wall seats and in Tory-Lib Dem battlegrounds, but giving the Tories a shellacking elsewhere. Plus Scotland.
See my post: this isn’t necessarily showing differential swing.
Hearing a YouGov poll is going to be released tonight showing
1) Labour lead the Tories by 24% nationally
2) Labour lead the Tories by 34% in the top 150 marginals
How on Earth does the Maths work on that? Labour must be going backwards in Inner London and Liverpool at some rate of knots. And the Tories must be close to 100 % on the East Coast.
A mixture of Labour benefitting from tactical voting in the marginals and Labour shedding some votes in safe seats to the Greens/hard left?
Or is it a ceiling effect? In some inner cities it would be hard to swing further to Labour.
John Curtis talked about this in his podcast. There are more votes for Labour to win outside its safe seats. So the swing is bigger.
In NH Democratic primary, besides 10 small towns that have yet to report any results, there are over 12,500 unprocessed write-in votes. Meaning that they've yet to be scrutinized to see just who(m) the voter wrote in.
Note that of the Democratic write-ins processed so far, 90% were for Joe Biden.
On that basis, am forecasting final result to be somewhere in vicinity of
Joe Biden 65% Dean Philips 20% Marianne Williamson 4% other candidates on ballot 4% other (not JB) write-ins 7%
Further note total Democratic turnout appears to be between 120-125k (NH SOS pre-primary forecast = 88k)
In contrast, total Republican turnout is coming in around 325k (NH SOS forecast 322k).
So final total NH 2024 primary turnout = 450k or thereabouts, compared with 459k in 2020, and 542k in 2016.
Just watched PMQ for the first time in months. What a shambles.
SKS & Rishi both came across as tin-eared with their knockabout at PMQs, and even their tributes to the King and Kate seemed rather late when the news had been dominated by the conviction of the Nottingham killer of the students and school caretaker, the murders of the young girls and their aunt in Norfolk, and continued mayhem in the Middle East.
ETA not to mention half the country being battered by Storm Isha and the other half by Storm Jocelyn and the third half by both.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
Those look like Facebook messages rather than iMessage / SMS to me
Yes & Facebook keeps messages back to the dawn of time unless you delete them. The only wrinkle here is that FB only opened up to UK universities in October 2005 so the dates are tight, but could work. Owen would have to have kept access to his university email address in order to be on Facebook, or gained access some other way but that’s not impossible - I have a vague recollection that Oxford would forward your university email to a new address for a while after graduating, which would have been sufficient.
I don't think he'd need to have access to the old email address. As long as there was continuity with the original account then they'd still be there under his current login.
More to the point he named and tagged the sender. If he wasn’t confident he could prove they were genuine he’s not so stupid as to post them. Jones has become insufferable but he’s not an idiot.
Also, as a point of fact, Jones stayed on at Univ to do an Mst in US Politics from 2005-2007. FB rolled out to U.K. universities in late 2005 while he was a postgraduate at Oxford. You can change your login email once you graduate. So these are legit.
Although it should be remembered much of the Jewish Establishment is on board with the proposals, criticisms include:-
She hit the table in frustration as she told the MPs the idea of a learning centre was almost an insult: "What are we learning now that we haven't learned in 80 years? We shouldn't kill each other? Good idea".
She also feared the memorial would overshadow the nearby Buxton slavery memorial.
Martin Stern - who was arrested by the Nazis aged five - said the proposed site for the learning centre was "far too big for the little park and far too small for the purpose.".
Crossbench peer Baroness Deech, who had family members killed in the Holocaust, objected to the memorial being built so close to a children's playground and a cafe.
"How can one have a cafe - selling coke and crisps - by a memorial of people who starved to death. I can not think of anything more tin-eared."
Mr Stern also suggested the site "intended to counteract antisemitism will in fact increase it.
"People will say 'look at the Jews - they push themselves to the front'."
His concerns were echoed by another survivor - Joanna Millan - who worried about the amount of money being spent on the project.
She feared people would ask: "Why is all this money being spent on Jews - what about our hospitals?"
Several of the witnesses proposed the Imperial War Museum, less than a mile from Parliament, as an alternative site big enough to accommodate a learning centre.
I have a great admiration for Lasker-Walfisch. She was on a repeat of a programme about Holocaust survivors in the UK a couple of nights ago, an unflinching, unsentimental old bird. Her sitting on a piece of the Berlin Holocaust monument smoking a fag shortly before or after addressing the Bundestag recounting how she used to hate Germans but had managed to move on from that was the best possible response to the Nazis.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
Those look like Facebook messages rather than iMessage / SMS to me
Yes & Facebook keeps messages back to the dawn of time unless you delete them. The only wrinkle here is that FB only opened up to UK universities in October 2005 so the dates are tight, but could work. Owen would have to have kept access to his university email address in order to be on Facebook, or gained access some other way but that’s not impossible - I have a vague recollection that Oxford would forward your university email to a new address for a while after graduating, which would have been sufficient.
I don't think he'd need to have access to the old email address. As long as there was continuity with the original account then they'd still be there under his current login.
There wouldn’t be an original FB account, that’s the point - Facebook only opened up to UK universities in October 2005, after Owen graduated from Oxford. If you were in the UK that was your only way onto Facebook at the time. You couldn’t create a Facebook account without a UK university email address.
It would have been possible to get a Facebook account earlier if you had access to a US university email address & if you still had access to your @ox.ac.uk email address (eg if it had been set up to forward email to another address) after graduating you could use that from October 2005.
@Phil - He did a postgrad degree at Oxford from 2005-2007. An Mst in US history specifically.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
Those look like Facebook messages rather than iMessage / SMS to me
Yes & Facebook keeps messages back to the dawn of time unless you delete them. The only wrinkle here is that FB only opened up to UK universities in October 2005 so the dates are tight, but could work. Owen would have to have kept access to his university email address in order to be on Facebook, or gained access some other way but that’s not impossible - I have a vague recollection that Oxford would forward your university email to a new address for a while after graduating, which would have been sufficient.
I don't think he'd need to have access to the old email address. As long as there was continuity with the original account then they'd still be there under his current login.
There wouldn’t be an original FB account, that’s the point - Facebook only opened up to UK universities in October 2005, after Owen graduated from Oxford. If you were in the UK that was your only way onto Facebook at the time. You couldn’t create a Facebook account without a UK university email address.
It would have been possible to get a Facebook account earlier if you had access to a US university email address & if you still had access to your @ox.ac.uk email address (eg if it had been set up to forward email to another address) after graduating you could use that from October 2005.
So what? The whole affair seems pointless. Lefty hack had a row 20 years ago with someone who might or might not have known the tall bloke who used to be Rishi's mate.
Although it should be remembered much of the Jewish Establishment is on board with the proposals, criticisms include:-
She hit the table in frustration as she told the MPs the idea of a learning centre was almost an insult: "What are we learning now that we haven't learned in 80 years? We shouldn't kill each other? Good idea".
She also feared the memorial would overshadow the nearby Buxton slavery memorial.
Martin Stern - who was arrested by the Nazis aged five - said the proposed site for the learning centre was "far too big for the little park and far too small for the purpose.".
Crossbench peer Baroness Deech, who had family members killed in the Holocaust, objected to the memorial being built so close to a children's playground and a cafe.
"How can one have a cafe - selling coke and crisps - by a memorial of people who starved to death. I can not think of anything more tin-eared."
Mr Stern also suggested the site "intended to counteract antisemitism will in fact increase it.
"People will say 'look at the Jews - they push themselves to the front'."
His concerns were echoed by another survivor - Joanna Millan - who worried about the amount of money being spent on the project.
She feared people would ask: "Why is all this money being spent on Jews - what about our hospitals?"
Several of the witnesses proposed the Imperial War Museum, less than a mile from Parliament, as an alternative site big enough to accommodate a learning centre.
I have a great admiration for Lasker-Walfisch. She was on a repeat of a programme about Holocaust survivors in the UK a couple of nights ago, an unflinching, unsentimental old bird. Her sitting on a piece of the Berlin Holocaust monument smoking a fag shortly before or after addressing the Bundestag recounting how she used to hate Germans but had managed to move on from that was the best possible response to the Nazis.
Let’s apply uniform swing to the 2019 result. In that election the Tories got 43.6% to Labour’s 32.1% (incredible to think that was only 4 years ago). That’s a lead of 11.5%.
If you took the top 100 most marginal seats in both directions (say 50 most marginal Labour held and 50 most marginal Tory held) you’d expect the Tory lead to be roughly zero. So with a UNS of 18% which is what this poll shows, that would have Labour leading by 36% in those constituencies now against 24% nationally.
Now, we know the Yougov didn’t take the 100 most marginal for either party in that way. It took the 150 most marginal Tory held seats. So we’d expect the gap to be smaller than 36%. But almost certainly not as small as 24%. We could work this out if we knew what the average Tory lead in those seats in 2019 was. Perhaps Yougov will share this.
So perhaps some differential swing because of the statistical impossibility of UNS in vast Labour majorities like my local seat in Lewisham and some tactical voting. But much of the difference probably explained by the maths above.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
Just make it affordable.
If I want to get from London to Manchester tomorrow for 9 o'clock, it's £224.70 for a standard single. Another £234.70 to add a return after 6pm.
That's a gobsmacking four hundred and sixty quid I'd be out if, say, someone rang me now and asked me to pop up to their office to talk about some new business (yes, I know there's Teams et al, but sometimes people want to, I dunno, actually meet you in person before hiring you).
Round trip in my car, petrol probably about seventy quid.
It's a 400 mile round trip.
That's a good £200 including petrol, insurance, maintenance, depreciation and so on.
Even if you go with the Treasury's parsimonious allowance it's £190.
Not including any parking fees. Not including having to drive for seven or eight hours (and even for that, add the toll on the M6 Toll).
I agree with you it should be cheaper. Much cheaper. But driving isn't quite so ridiculously a cheaper option when you weigh it all up.
Train travel is insanely expensive in the UK, I entirely agree with that
When I take trains abroad in countries with roughly similar wealth-levels as the UK the price of a train ticket is often a third of that in the UK. How do they manage it? Where have we gone wrong?
You can often save a lot of money by splitting tickets, but it's a bit of a faff to do so.
I find Trainline is pretty good at splitting the tickets and getting you a cheaper fare.
Unfortunatement, they charge booking fees!
Yes, but the thing is — you can use their recommendations for splitting tickets, and then book the tickets yourself, so you don't have to pay the commission. Obviously takes a bit longer.
Comments
*Unless* they're old messages that have been imported, it's dodgy.
It should not be noted that the messages were not from Clarke, but from someone Jones says was his best friend. Even if they were best friends, I wouldn't want to be held responsible for things my friends say!
Oh, sorry, you mean Jackson?
Well, same applies really.
"Anyway, I turned up at university with a really one dimensional, crude, caricatured view of what Tory activists would be like.
In the case of those I met at university, turned out I was guilty of humanising them too much!"
https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1750148083457921052
It's a little worrying that he felt anybody he might meet needs 'humanising'. Might say more about him than them...
The New Look is either going to be good or shit. Ditto Palm Royale.
Every modern PM bar Major had spent time in opposition, and he had been an MP for 11 years and had to work his way up through cabinets with some pretty big beasts.
You can see it in the assumption that he can play the same old Tory, UKIP-lite, 'will of the people' tunes and think it will work as that's Britain for evermore and worked in 2016 and 19. When the country is changing, because his party's failings have made it change. A savvier politician, one who'd known defeat and who had to work at it and needed a strong antenna to rise, would get that.
Sunak never had to, so he doesn't have that knack and ruthlessness others developed, and it shows.
You could contrast to Starmer, who entered parliament the same year, is similarly managerial in tone and high achieving- albeit older. But has been hardened by Labour's defeats into a more ruthless character who has had to spend time understanding why Labour has lost elections and how that might change.
Gary Lineker.
Might as well get my money's worth out of the free subscription.
In fact the only PMs I can think of other than Major and Sunak who never sat on the opposition benches before becoming PM are Henry Addington and the Duke of Wellington.
(Major of course had quite an apprenticeship in local government too.)
But it's another one of those occasions when you think that Westminster seems like a retirement home for student politics.
1) Religion
2) Cash.
Saw the mention of Jets, thought it sounded familiar, so dived into the BBC site to emerge triumphant with the discovery that it was first broadcast in August 2012!
Could have saved myself the trouble by reading your post properly. Soz!
1) AI
2) The Lab Leak Theory
3) The merits of Newent and Wick.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68085242
Although it should be remembered much of the Jewish Establishment is on board with the proposals, criticisms include:-
She hit the table in frustration as she told the MPs the idea of a learning centre was almost an insult: "What are we learning now that we haven't learned in 80 years? We shouldn't kill each other? Good idea".
She also feared the memorial would overshadow the nearby Buxton slavery memorial.
Martin Stern - who was arrested by the Nazis aged five - said the proposed site for the learning centre was "far too big for the little park and far too small for the purpose.".
Crossbench peer Baroness Deech, who had family members killed in the Holocaust, objected to the memorial being built so close to a children's playground and a cafe.
"How can one have a cafe - selling coke and crisps - by a memorial of people who starved to death. I can not think of anything more tin-eared."
Mr Stern also suggested the site "intended to counteract antisemitism will in fact increase it.
"People will say 'look at the Jews - they push themselves to the front'."
His concerns were echoed by another survivor - Joanna Millan - who worried about the amount of money being spent on the project.
She feared people would ask: "Why is all this money being spent on Jews - what about our hospitals?"
Several of the witnesses proposed the Imperial War Museum, less than a mile from Parliament, as an alternative site big enough to accommodate a learning centre.
(Weirdly, some Messenger groups have dates in the 12/06/2023 format & some in the 12 June 2023 format. No idea why they would be different.)
One of Sunak's problems is, unlike Major, who followed a single Prime Minister and was trying to get his own mandate, he is following four other Conservative Prime Ministers and has to carry their baggage along with his own as well as 14 and a half years (as it will be in November) of Conservative-led Government.
It might be "time for a change" on its own would have put Labour in a strong position but as with 1992-97, the way the Conservatives have comported themselves while in Government will contribute hugely to their own defeat. It won't just be the public kicking Sunak, it's a public kicking in the consituencies for the entire Conservative Party.
That said, once the kicking has happened, the slate will to an extent be wiped clean. True, no one will give the Conservative Party a moment's thought for three or four years after the defeat but the time will come when those disillusioned or disappointed with Starmer will start looking elsewhere.
How do you manage to be full time as 'chief of staff' for a fairly undistinguished backbench MP?
Oh and of course Truss hadn't either (although more experienced), but that rather proves the point! Truss and Sunak are part of a political generation in which the Tories have been in the ascendant and with that has looked evermore to the right.
As a result, neither ever really learned the more difficult political skills nor gained the judgment required to deal with the situations they arrived in.
It's as though this big green thing has blotted her out of my mind. Looks like a lettuce.
Clarke had it yesterday with his "someone the PM really looks up to" comment, as if that was somehow clever- rather than making him sound about 14 years old - and even Cameron didn't bowl me over with his John Bercow joke: "I'm not happy.", "Well, which one are you then?"
These playground personal insults don't reflect well on anyone and wouldn't be tolerated elsewhere either.
Politicians need to grow up.
https://x.com/gregabbott_tx/status/1750235544951349275
My statement on Texas’ constitutional right to self-defense.
Whilst her plans may have been mad and the attempts at implementation hopelessly unsubtle, she was actually pretty good at the human decency angle, which is one of the reasons she beat Rishi.
You know that "tell me about a time you struggled/failed" interview question? Prior to 2022, it's not clear that Sunak had anything to answer that. Hence his problems now.
Including effing Effingham.
Again, has he thought through the precedent he's trying to set?
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-68083152
Scottish officials 'froze' at start of Covid pandemic - academic
Early warnings about coronavirus were not listened to as senior Scottish government officials "froze", the UK Covid Inquiry has heard.
Prof Mark Woolhouse, a member of the Scottish Government COVID-19 Advisory Group, also claimed hundreds of people may have died after being told not to "bother" the NHS.
He told the inquiry people were misled about how the crisis would unfold.
And he said orders to stay at home and cease outdoor activity were not needed.
The Scottish government has said it is committed to responding to the inquiry.
Oh, incidentally:
Civil War | Official Trailer HD | A24: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDyQxtg0V2w
Release date is April 12, 2024. It's...probably going to do well.
The final numbers from the New Hampshire Primary seem to be 54-43 to Trump which on the surface seems convincing though the delegate count is only 12-9 in favour of the former President.
The last polls I saw were about right on the Trump vote but Haley was in the mid-30s so finished well and I suspect was closing on Trump at the end.
South Carolina does something different - 29 delegates go to the winner while the remaining 21 are split between the seven congressional districts with each giving the winner in the district three delegates. Trump won all 50 in 2016 despite polling barely a third of the vote. Could Haley in her home state win any of the congressional districts and prevent a Trump wipeout?
She will need to see some polling making her competitive sooner rather than later. In 2016, Trump won because the Rubio and Cruz votes neutralised each other but this time there's no spoiler. If Haley can be seen to be closing the gap to sub 20 points and then to sub 10 in the final week she has a chance.
Ciggy, glass of gin, stout tweeds and a rather 'well, f**k it all, dahling' attitude.
1) Labour lead the Tories by 24% nationally
2) Labour lead the Tories by 34% in the top 150 marginals
What a shambles.
Labour must be going backwards in Inner London and Liverpool at some rate of knots. And the Tories must be close to 100 % on the East Coast.
But a big swing, amplified in the marginals, that could lead to an utter massacre.
The Tory lead in 2019 was much bigger nationally than the lead in marginals, which is why they were marginal. Apply the same starting point now to a uniform swing and you get a result like this.
So I don’t think it actually necessarily shows differential swing.
It would have been possible to get a Facebook account earlier if you had access to a US university email address & if you still had access to your @ox.ac.uk email address (eg if it had been set up to forward email to another address) after graduating you could use that from October 2005.
Note that of the Democratic write-ins processed so far, 90% were for Joe Biden.
On that basis, am forecasting final result to be somewhere in vicinity of
Joe Biden 65%
Dean Philips 20%
Marianne Williamson 4%
other candidates on ballot 4%
other (not JB) write-ins 7%
Further note total Democratic turnout appears to be between 120-125k (NH SOS pre-primary forecast = 88k)
In contrast, total Republican turnout is coming in around 325k (NH SOS forecast 322k).
So final total NH 2024 primary turnout = 450k or thereabouts, compared with 459k in 2020, and 542k in 2016.
ETA not to mention half the country being battered by Storm Isha and the other half by Storm Jocelyn and the third half by both.
but he’s not an idiot.
Also, as a point of fact, Jones stayed on at Univ to do an Mst in US Politics from 2005-2007. FB rolled out to U.K. universities in late 2005 while he was a postgraduate at Oxford. You can change your login email once you graduate. So these are legit.
If you took the top 100 most marginal seats in both directions (say 50 most marginal Labour held and 50 most marginal Tory held) you’d expect the Tory lead to be roughly zero. So with a UNS of 18% which is what this poll shows, that would have Labour leading by 36% in those constituencies now against 24% nationally.
Now, we know the Yougov didn’t take the 100 most marginal for either party in that way. It took the 150 most marginal Tory held seats. So we’d expect the gap to be smaller than 36%. But almost certainly not as small as 24%. We could work this out if we knew what the average Tory lead in those seats in 2019 was. Perhaps Yougov will share this.
So perhaps some differential swing because of the statistical impossibility of UNS in vast Labour majorities like my local seat in Lewisham and some tactical voting. But much of the difference probably explained by the maths above.