Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
Apples. Vegan. Oranges. Vegan. Bananas. Vegan.
Never offer people a piece of fruit.
Yeah, but that's not what it is, is it?
No-one mind fruit and salad. Or beans. That's just part of a healthy balanced diet.
Vegan is "plant-based" wank as a main meal - and i use that term very loosely- with such horrors as tofu and it's almost always disgusting. Sometimes, it's downright fraudulent: like trying to pass off a slice of cauliflower as a steak, and causing abject misery in the process.
Some vegan food is totally unhealthy. Full of artificial shite. And some is just awful.
Best to eat vegetables that are just being vegetables. Pulses that are just being pulses. But quorn is a decent meat substitute.
Yes, and do you now see why people might object to a vegan menu being enforced on them on that basis?
I would be disappointed if that was all that was on offer.
I think a mix of vegan and vegetarian is perfectly acceptable to a mixed audience. I would focus on the cheese and pickle sandwiches in such circumstances.
If anyone thinks I'm going to eat humus they can bugger off.
Full disclosure: This evening I have adopted the "if you are away from home it doesn't count" approach and had a mixed grill.
Middle Eastern humus is gorgeous. Especially Israeli humus.
The stuff you get in this country admittedly tastes like damp cardboard, which is why I'll only eat it when I'm in the Middle East.
Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
Apples. Vegan. Oranges. Vegan. Bananas. Vegan.
Never offer people a piece of fruit.
Yeah, but that's not what it is, is it?
No-one mind fruit and salad. Or beans. That's just part of a healthy balanced diet.
Vegan is "plant-based" wank as a main meal - and i use that term very loosely- with such horrors as tofu and it's almost always disgusting. Sometimes, it's downright fraudulent: like trying to pass off a slice of cauliflower as a steak, and causing abject misery in the process.
It has no tofu and is a main meal. Another is a pasta, spinach and mushroom pasta bake.
I love meat: I had a bacon and sausage breakfast baguette this morning before my swim (that *may* have been a mistake...). But it's totally ridiculous to say that vegan main meals are disgusting. They *can* be, but they can also be virtually indistinguishable from vegetarian, or even ones with small amounts of meat.
(*) If I can be bothered to use vegan cheese.
Mushroom risotto has a bad name, as it's the go to veggy/vegan dish on a thousand menus, and is rarely good.
Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
Now come come, who doesn't relish a delicious nut roast? 😆
Seriously, if someone told me I'd developed a weird allergy to eating meat and fish and would have to get by as a vegetarian then I think I could come to terms with that. Eggs and dairy - vital ingredients in baked goods that are actually edible - are probably more important in my case. But veganism? Yes, the mere word invokes images of puritanical misery.
Casino has clearly never tasted my lentil bake, which is delicious. There again, so is my tarragon chicken.
I could get by as a vegan if I had to, but it's something I would never choose. It's just too much hard work if you want to eat well.
Same here. Of our regular dinner recipes we have about half a dozen which happen to be vegan but we have 20-30 which are vegetarian, and as many again which involve meat or fish.
Yeah, I'd struggle to go vegan. Or even veggie, probably. Veggie 5-6 days per week would be fine (and we routinely do 3-4, I'd guess) but I like fish, in particular, too much. And most of our veggie meals are not vegan.
Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
Apples. Vegan. Oranges. Vegan. Bananas. Vegan.
Never offer people a piece of fruit.
Yeah, but that's not what it is, is it?
No-one mind fruit and salad. Or beans. That's just part of a healthy balanced diet.
Vegan is "plant-based" wank as a main meal - and i use that term very loosely- with such horrors as tofu and it's almost always disgusting. Sometimes, it's downright fraudulent: like trying to pass off a slice of cauliflower as a steak, and causing abject misery in the process.
It has no tofu and is a main meal. Another is a pasta, spinach and mushroom pasta bake.
I love meat: I had a bacon and sausage breakfast baguette this morning before my swim (that *may* have been a mistake...). But it's totally ridiculous to say that vegan main meals are disgusting. They *can* be, but they can also be virtually indistinguishable from vegetarian, or even ones with small amounts of meat.
(*) If I can be bothered to use vegan cheese.
Mushroom risotto has a bad name, as it's the go to veggy/vegan dish on a thousand menus, and is rarely good.
Yes of course I do whilst you want pro genocide #TelAvivKeith to win
Mainly because like you he is a Tory
You want Labour to lose... and who to win?
NOM with progressives holding the balance of power.
That's an interesting description of the DUP.
Greens LDs SNP was what I was thinking.
The SNP aren't progressive, they're for whatever argument and thing they believe will get them one inch closer to independence. Even when, as in the case of policies friendly to the oil extraction industry, this means being both for and against the same thing at the same time.
The Lib Dems aren't progressive either. Their primary purpose is to accumulate seats in the Home Counties by out-Torying the Tories with wealthy homeowners (primarily through being staunch Nimbies.)
The Greens are also Nimbies, but I imagine the manifesto will nonetheless also contain things to tempt you. The bad news, of course, is that there's only one of them, and likely to be either zero or one after the election, so that doesn't help much.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
Yes, you are part of a proud tradition of PBer who doesn’t like food. We get it!
The polls are only going one way and I would venture to suggest Starmer's decision to scrap the 28 billion (£140 billion over 5 years) has been accepted as a wise decision and may indicate not everyone has a devotion to net zero
I see no way back for the conservatives and would prefer a May election but I just cannot see anything other than an Oct/ November one
It would be good to see it all over with, but I still think Rishi will hang on until the last minute!
No, because to do so would mean an election campaign that spanned the Christmas holidays - and the fury of the electorate. Autumn most likely I think.
Are we going astronomical autumn?
The winter solstice is December 21 this year.
The start of winter is odd. I think it is 21 Dec. Met office says 1 Dec. Ordinary conversation seems to align it to anytime from 1st November.
Met Office accepts 21 Dec is the standard definition of it, but uses 1 Dec for statistical convenience.
The Badenoch show rumbles on with grim fascination in the Commons. She now says "full of lies" refers to three claims made by Henry Staunton, recent Post Office Chair.
1. That she didn't apologise to him for finding out about his sacking from a journalist. This should be easy to check: Is there an s apology in the transcript of the conversation that she is about to be made public? 2. That she told him "someone has to take the rap". The absence of of such a statement in the transcript doesn't necessarily mean she didn't say it. 3. That he was told to slow down compensation claims. She has no way of knowing whether anyone said this to him or not.
On her claim that he was sacked for misconduct, this appears to be allegations of bullying rather than an actual finding of misconduct. We should find out if she mentioned any of this in the transcript She had a long list of other complaints about him but these weren't misconduct.
It doesn't appear she's in a stronger legal position after her statement than before.
It does sound a bit hit the law/hit the facts/hit the table, and Kemi B has moved on to stage 3.
Though given that she won't resign voluntarily, and Rishi is in far too weak a position to sack her unwillingly, it doesn't matter all that much.
I wonder also if Staunton has a claim of breach of confidentiality against Badenoch as many of her claims don't appear to address the points he made and there was no legal requirement on her to make these statements.
He's certainly not taking it lying down...
This is Henry Staunton’s reply to Kemi Badenoch.
Firstly, with regard to the comment made to Mr Staunton by the senior civil servant to the effect that he was to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims and on spend on the Horizon replacement so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability. Mr Staunton stands by this comment which he recorded at the time in a file note which he emailed to himself and to colleagues and which is therefore traceable on the Post Office Server...
Staunton doesn't need to prove it, the presumed fact he made a note at the time is at least corroboration. Badenoch on the other hand needs to prove that he didn't hear this plus a whole bunch of other claims she made to support her case that his account of the meeting was fabricated. She also needs to prove he was dismissed for misconduct - which doesn't appear to be the case. All of this is self inflicted. She could have stuck to a bland "We're the ones delivering the compensation, why bother with a useless ex-chairman?".
Badenoch is profoundly, and fascinatingly stupid, in addition to being uber-aggressive
So how would you have responded in her position?
And where is the evidence of her being uber aggressive? Forthright yes. You wouldn't be playing on a black female stereotype would you?
I literally quoted what I would have said in her position.
Badenoch has an advantage Staunton, Davey, Starmer etc don't have. She can pay the postmasters.
I'm not sure you have. If a former government employee goes off and does a dishonest* interview with the media are you really saying the government shouldn't really respond because he's entitled to confidentiality. That hardly seems fair.
*Hypothetically speaking. It has yet to be determined.
Discredited Zuonist John Ware doing another propaganda piece for Israel on Panorama
That would be the same John Ware who successfully brought legal proceedings against the Labour Party for making exactly those sort of allegations. That John Ware?
FPT: viewcode asked: "So Initiative 200 (affirmative action bad) passed, but Initiative 1000 (affirmative action good!) then passed, but Referendum 88 (Initiative 1000 bad!) then passed. Presumably this means that Initiative 200 is still in effect?"
Right. The leaders of Referendum 88 were not prominent polticians, but ordinary citizens. The most prominent were often Japanese-Americans.
But I will repeat that I think it nearly certain that parts of the state government have found ways to get around our civil rights laws.
Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
Now come come, who doesn't relish a delicious nut roast? 😆
Seriously, if someone told me I'd developed a weird allergy to eating meat and fish and would have to get by as a vegetarian then I think I could come to terms with that. Eggs and dairy - vital ingredients in baked goods that are actually edible - are probably more important in my case. But veganism? Yes, the mere word invokes images of puritanical misery.
Casino has clearly never tasted my lentil bake, which is delicious. There again, so is my tarragon chicken.
I could get by as a vegan if I had to, but it's something I would never choose. It's just too much hard work if you want to eat well.
Same here. Of our regular dinner recipes we have about half a dozen which happen to be vegan but we have 20-30 which are vegetarian, and as many again which involve meat or fish.
Yeah, I'd struggle to go vegan. Or even veggie, probably. Veggie 5-6 days per week would be fine (and we routinely do 3-4, I'd guess) but I like fish, in particular, too much. And most of our veggie meals are not vegan.
I would find vegan almost impossible, but could do vegetarian: plenty of my favourite meals (like Spanish omelette) are vegetarian.
Mushroom risotto - fwiw - is often awful. But then again, a lot of risotto is very poorly made.
On the other hand, one of the greatest dishes I have ever eaten was a staggeringly good Risotto Primavera. My mouth still waters to think of it. (I also suspect it was vegan, but neither know nor care.)
Edit to add: as no-one is making me, I shan't actually be going vegetarian.
Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
I’m a passionate meat eater but there’s plenty of good vegan food (it’s just rarer). I once had an all-vegan working lunch and it was exceptional. You just need to get out more.
I attended a vegan wedding. The food was spectacular, it must be said. Better than most weddings I've been to, probably better than mine, which had a fairly traditional meat and veg main, nicely done, but good rather than spectacular. The one that topped it, probably, was a BBQ on a beach that included meat, but probably three quarters of the dishes were veggie.
I have also attended a vegan wedding. It was spectacular, as was the food. But the level of drunkenness - oh my. Never seen anything like it (and I was included). No lining of the stomach, you see.
Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
Apples. Vegan. Oranges. Vegan. Bananas. Vegan.
Never offer people a piece of fruit.
Yeah, but that's not what it is, is it?
No-one mind fruit and salad. Or beans. That's just part of a healthy balanced diet.
Vegan is "plant-based" wank as a main meal - and i use that term very loosely- with such horrors as tofu and it's almost always disgusting. Sometimes, it's downright fraudulent: like trying to pass off a slice of cauliflower as a steak, and causing abject misery in the process.
Some vegan food is totally unhealthy. Full of artificial shite. And some is just awful.
Best to eat vegetables that are just being vegetables. Pulses that are just being pulses. But quorn is a decent meat substitute.
Yes, and do you now see why people might object to a vegan menu being enforced on them on that basis?
I would be disappointed if that was all that was on offer.
I think a mix of vegan and vegetarian is perfectly acceptable to a mixed audience. I would focus on the cheese and pickle sandwiches in such circumstances.
If anyone thinks I'm going to eat humus they can bugger off.
Full disclosure: This evening I have adopted the "if you are away from home it doesn't count" approach and had a mixed grill.
Discredited Zuonist John Ware doing another propaganda piece for Israel on Panorama
That would be the same John Ware who successfully brought legal proceedings against the Labour Party for making exactly those sort of allegations. That John Ware?
The one who made the fake Antisemitism documentary with lots of errors in it yes. The legal proceedings didn't take it to court as Labour's pro Zionist wing decided to settle despite legal advice saying it would likely win
Better late than never but it should have been done years ago
Controls on holiday lets may or may not be a good idea but is it a Conservative policy or desperate, cones hotline-level brainstorming?
ETA how did we get here? The country's screwed every which way, nothing works, nothing can be built, everything costs too much and yet our political masters come up with holiday lets while Labour's big announcement is it will ban fox hunting (again).
"Modern British politics consists in not building anything, banning stuff, telling people off, and calling anyone you disagree with evil/a racist/unworthy of holding an opinion."
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
I find it pretty inexplicable. For most buffets people want simple, known options, to appeal to as broad a range of potential eaters as possible. So why is there seemingly a thriving industry of catering choices which are the equivalent of an artist indulging their creativity?
Discredited Zuonist John Ware doing another propaganda piece for Israel on Panorama
That would be the same John Ware who successfully brought legal proceedings against the Labour Party for making exactly those sort of allegations. That John Ware?
The one who made the fake Antisemitism documentary with lots of errors in it yes. The legal proceedings didn't take it to court as Labour's pro Zionist wing decided to settle despite legal advice saying it would likely win
So, on behalf of the owners of this site, you’re willing to bet on (a) the existence and (b) the accuracy of said advice. Brave.
Do you think he’s being overly nasty to Hamas tonight? Incredible you can make a judgment some 9 minutes into the programme. Where do you think he gets it wrong?
Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
Apples. Vegan. Oranges. Vegan. Bananas. Vegan.
Never offer people a piece of fruit.
Yeah, but that's not what it is, is it?
No-one mind fruit and salad. Or beans. That's just part of a healthy balanced diet.
Vegan is "plant-based" wank as a main meal - and i use that term very loosely- with such horrors as tofu and it's almost always disgusting. Sometimes, it's downright fraudulent: like trying to pass off a slice of cauliflower as a steak, and causing abject misery in the process.
Some vegan food is totally unhealthy. Full of artificial shite. And some is just awful.
Best to eat vegetables that are just being vegetables. Pulses that are just being pulses. But quorn is a decent meat substitute.
Yes, and do you now see why people might object to a vegan menu being enforced on them on that basis?
I would be disappointed if that was all that was on offer.
I think a mix of vegan and vegetarian is perfectly acceptable to a mixed audience. I would focus on the cheese and pickle sandwiches in such circumstances.
If anyone thinks I'm going to eat humus they can bugger off.
Full disclosure: This evening I have adopted the "if you are away from home it doesn't count" approach and had a mixed grill.
Hummus is nice! Love me some taramasalata and hummus with flat bread.
(My kids now make excellent flat bread. If only they would tidy the kitchen afterwards...)
Better late than never but it should have been done years ago
Controls on holiday lets may or may not be a good idea but is it a Conservative policy or desperate, cones hotline-level brainstorming?
ETA how did we get here? The country's screwed every which way, nothing works, nothing can be built, everything costs too much and yet our political masters come up with holiday lets while Labour's big announcement is it will ban fox hunting (again).
"Modern British politics consists in not building anything, banning stuff, telling people off, and calling anyone you disagree with evil/a racist/unworthy of holding an opinion."
Discredited Zuonist John Ware doing another propaganda piece for Israel on Panorama
That would be the same John Ware who successfully brought legal proceedings against the Labour Party for making exactly those sort of allegations. That John Ware?
The one who made the fake Antisemitism documentary with lots of errors in it yes. The legal proceedings didn't take it to court as Labour's pro Zionist wing decided to settle despite legal advice saying it would likely win
So, on behalf of the owners of this site, you’re willing to bet on (a) the existence and (b) the accuracy of said advice. Brave.
Do you think he’s being overly nasty to Hamas tonight? Incredible you can make a judgment some 9 minutes into the programme. Where do you think he gets it wrong?
No idea on the first one
I am not watching tonight as its bound to be a hatchet job.
The Badenoch show rumbles on with grim fascination in the Commons. She now says "full of lies" refers to three claims made by Henry Staunton, recent Post Office Chair.
1. That she didn't apologise to him for finding out about his sacking from a journalist. This should be easy to check: Is there an s apology in the transcript of the conversation that she is about to be made public? 2. That she told him "someone has to take the rap". The absence of of such a statement in the transcript doesn't necessarily mean she didn't say it. 3. That he was told to slow down compensation claims. She has no way of knowing whether anyone said this to him or not.
On her claim that he was sacked for misconduct, this appears to be allegations of bullying rather than an actual finding of misconduct. We should find out if she mentioned any of this in the transcript She had a long list of other complaints about him but these weren't misconduct.
It doesn't appear she's in a stronger legal position after her statement than before.
It does sound a bit hit the law/hit the facts/hit the table, and Kemi B has moved on to stage 3.
Though given that she won't resign voluntarily, and Rishi is in far too weak a position to sack her unwillingly, it doesn't matter all that much.
I wonder also if Staunton has a claim of breach of confidentiality against Badenoch as many of her claims don't appear to address the points he made and there was no legal requirement on her to make these statements.
He's certainly not taking it lying down...
This is Henry Staunton’s reply to Kemi Badenoch.
Firstly, with regard to the comment made to Mr Staunton by the senior civil servant to the effect that he was to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims and on spend on the Horizon replacement so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability. Mr Staunton stands by this comment which he recorded at the time in a file note which he emailed to himself and to colleagues and which is therefore traceable on the Post Office Server...
Staunton doesn't need to prove it, the presumed fact he made a note at the time is at least corroboration. Badenoch on the other hand needs to prove that he didn't hear this plus a whole bunch of other claims she made to support her case that his account of the meeting was fabricated. She also needs to prove he was dismissed for misconduct - which doesn't appear to be the case. All of this is self inflicted. She could have stuck to a bland "We're the ones delivering the compensation, why bother with a useless ex-chairman?".
Badenoch is profoundly, and fascinatingly stupid, in addition to being uber-aggressive
So how would you have responded in her position?
And where is the evidence of her being uber aggressive? Forthright yes. You wouldn't be playing on a black female stereotype would you?
I literally quoted what I would have said in her position.
Badenoch has an advantage Staunton, Davey, Starmer etc don't have. She can pay the postmasters.
I'm not sure you have. If a former government employee goes off and does a dishonest* interview with the media are you really saying the government shouldn't really respond because he's entitled to confidentiality. That hardly seems fair.
*Hypothetically speaking. It has yet to be determined.
What I would not do is make broad and public claims of dishonesty and misconduct against a former colleague whom I dismissed, that I would struggle to stand up, and which are slam dunks for a defamation suit if I don't.
That's because I'm not as stupid as Badenoch. None of this is of any interest except this is a betting site and Badenoch is heir apparent for next Tory leader
Discredited Zuonist John Ware doing another propaganda piece for Israel on Panorama
That would be the same John Ware who successfully brought legal proceedings against the Labour Party for making exactly those sort of allegations. That John Ware?
The one who made the fake Antisemitism documentary with lots of errors in it yes. The legal proceedings didn't take it to court as Labour's pro Zionist wing decided to settle despite legal advice saying it would likely win
So, on behalf of the owners of this site, you’re willing to bet on (a) the existence and (b) the accuracy of said advice. Brave.
Do you think he’s being overly nasty to Hamas tonight? Incredible you can make a judgment some 9 minutes into the programme. Where do you think he gets it wrong?
No idea on the first one
I am not watching tonight as its bound to be a hatchet job.
Indeed. How dare he or anyone else dare besmirch the otherwise spotless reputation of (checks notes)…Hamas…
Even in the wake of last week’s disastrous byelections, [Sunak’s] leadership seems secure, for the simple reason that nobody vying for the crown wants to seize it this side of the general election.
A good defence relies on making hard choices. Dig in against the Liberal Democrats in the “blue wall”, and stand accused of abandoning the new voters won over by Boris Johnson in 2019. Focus on boxing in the threat of Reform UK, and risk losing more voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, the parties actually positioned to take Conservative seats.
Then there’s timing….there are good reasons why a May election would suit the party. Coinciding with the local elections would not only probably save hundreds of Tory councillors, but also ensure that even activists unenthused by Sunak would be out anyway, fighting for their own seats.
[But Tories] are really gearing up for the almighty row that awaits if and when the Conservatives return to opposition. At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Sunak does not really have a place in that battle. Not merely because it will only take place after an election defeat, but because he doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. There isn’t a Sunakism…the prime minister’s Treasury-minded managerialism will depart with him.
Until then, he has the thankless task of trying to salvage the best result possible in an extremely difficult election – a task that depends on forcing hard choices on a party that has proved congenitally incapable of confronting them. Again, no wonder there’s fresh talk of an election in May.
The Badenoch show rumbles on with grim fascination in the Commons. She now says "full of lies" refers to three claims made by Henry Staunton, recent Post Office Chair.
1. That she didn't apologise to him for finding out about his sacking from a journalist. This should be easy to check: Is there an s apology in the transcript of the conversation that she is about to be made public? 2. That she told him "someone has to take the rap". The absence of of such a statement in the transcript doesn't necessarily mean she didn't say it. 3. That he was told to slow down compensation claims. She has no way of knowing whether anyone said this to him or not.
On her claim that he was sacked for misconduct, this appears to be allegations of bullying rather than an actual finding of misconduct. We should find out if she mentioned any of this in the transcript She had a long list of other complaints about him but these weren't misconduct.
It doesn't appear she's in a stronger legal position after her statement than before.
It does sound a bit hit the law/hit the facts/hit the table, and Kemi B has moved on to stage 3.
Though given that she won't resign voluntarily, and Rishi is in far too weak a position to sack her unwillingly, it doesn't matter all that much.
I wonder also if Staunton has a claim of breach of confidentiality against Badenoch as many of her claims don't appear to address the points he made and there was no legal requirement on her to make these statements.
He's certainly not taking it lying down...
This is Henry Staunton’s reply to Kemi Badenoch.
Firstly, with regard to the comment made to Mr Staunton by the senior civil servant to the effect that he was to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims and on spend on the Horizon replacement so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability. Mr Staunton stands by this comment which he recorded at the time in a file note which he emailed to himself and to colleagues and which is therefore traceable on the Post Office Server...
Staunton doesn't need to prove it, the presumed fact he made a note at the time is at least corroboration. Badenoch on the other hand needs to prove that he didn't hear this plus a whole bunch of other claims she made to support her case that his account of the meeting was fabricated. She also needs to prove he was dismissed for misconduct - which doesn't appear to be the case. All of this is self inflicted. She could have stuck to a bland "We're the ones delivering the compensation, why bother with a useless ex-chairman?".
Badenoch is profoundly, and fascinatingly stupid, in addition to being uber-aggressive
So how would you have responded in her position?
And where is the evidence of her being uber aggressive? Forthright yes. You wouldn't be playing on a black female stereotype would you?
I literally quoted what I would have said in her position.
Badenoch has an advantage Staunton, Davey, Starmer etc don't have. She can pay the postmasters.
I'm not sure you have. If a former government employee goes off and does a dishonest* interview with the media are you really saying the government shouldn't really respond because he's entitled to confidentiality. That hardly seems fair.
*Hypothetically speaking. It has yet to be determined.
What I would not do is make broad and public claims of dishonesty and misconduct against a former colleague whom I dismissed, that I would struggle to stand up, and which are slam dunks for a defamation suit if I don't.
That's because I'm not as stupid as Badenoch. None of this is of any interest except this is a betting site and Badenoch is heir apparent for next Tory leader
I still reckon the next Tory leader won't be someone who is still a minister come the election.
They'll want a clean break, and as much on the right as possible, who will tell them the public really want those things which is why they voted for Keir Starmer for some reason.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
Yes, you are part of a proud tradition of PBer who doesn’t like food. We get it!
I do like food. Good, honest, straightforward food. No pretentious crap. Not ruining something decent by covering it in something awful.
On topic, the picture is rather complicated by boundary changes. Kingswood, contested last week, is split three ways for example. The Mid-Beds MP is standing in the new seat of Hitchin (a town that isn't even in Bedfordshire although other parts of the constituency are). Tiverton & Honiton's new MP will lose the former town, and Somerton & Frome's the latter. Etc.
Overall, if it is a 1997-style result, I suspect rather few if any will be regained. 1997 was also complicated by boundary changes, but I think only Christchurch was won back, narrowly... and (from memory) it was the third safest Tory seat in the UK in 1992. Clearly, they often do get won back - but the governing party often isn't staring down the barrel of a terrible result as we get into General Election year.
I'll be amazed if the Tories don't retake North Shropshire. Even in 1906 they retook that (having lost it in a by-election in 1904).
The others, it depends on many factors. I can actually foresee them retaking quite a number - but then, I'm bearish on a Labour majority.
Not really sure how much a by-election and subsequent election over a century ago really tells us about North Shropshire.
I mean, it was a fairly safe seat and they'll hope to get it back. But because it's been safe for a long while, the infrastructure isn't really there as they've not really been in a fight, and Helen Morgan is pretty effective as MP. The local elections will tell us quite a lot - Shropshire is a unitary last up in 2021 (deferred from 2020) so it'll be the first set since the by-election.
The Badenoch show rumbles on with grim fascination in the Commons. She now says "full of lies" refers to three claims made by Henry Staunton, recent Post Office Chair.
1. That she didn't apologise to him for finding out about his sacking from a journalist. This should be easy to check: Is there an s apology in the transcript of the conversation that she is about to be made public? 2. That she told him "someone has to take the rap". The absence of of such a statement in the transcript doesn't necessarily mean she didn't say it. 3. That he was told to slow down compensation claims. She has no way of knowing whether anyone said this to him or not.
On her claim that he was sacked for misconduct, this appears to be allegations of bullying rather than an actual finding of misconduct. We should find out if she mentioned any of this in the transcript She had a long list of other complaints about him but these weren't misconduct.
It doesn't appear she's in a stronger legal position after her statement than before.
It does sound a bit hit the law/hit the facts/hit the table, and Kemi B has moved on to stage 3.
Though given that she won't resign voluntarily, and Rishi is in far too weak a position to sack her unwillingly, it doesn't matter all that much.
I wonder also if Staunton has a claim of breach of confidentiality against Badenoch as many of her claims don't appear to address the points he made and there was no legal requirement on her to make these statements.
He's certainly not taking it lying down...
This is Henry Staunton’s reply to Kemi Badenoch.
Firstly, with regard to the comment made to Mr Staunton by the senior civil servant to the effect that he was to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims and on spend on the Horizon replacement so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability. Mr Staunton stands by this comment which he recorded at the time in a file note which he emailed to himself and to colleagues and which is therefore traceable on the Post Office Server...
Staunton doesn't need to prove it, the presumed fact he made a note at the time is at least corroboration. Badenoch on the other hand needs to prove that he didn't hear this plus a whole bunch of other claims she made to support her case that his account of the meeting was fabricated. She also needs to prove he was dismissed for misconduct - which doesn't appear to be the case. All of this is self inflicted. She could have stuck to a bland "We're the ones delivering the compensation, why bother with a useless ex-chairman?".
Badenoch is profoundly, and fascinatingly stupid, in addition to being uber-aggressive
So how would you have responded in her position?
And where is the evidence of her being uber aggressive? Forthright yes. You wouldn't be playing on a black female stereotype would you?
I literally quoted what I would have said in her position.
Badenoch has an advantage Staunton, Davey, Starmer etc don't have. She can pay the postmasters.
I'm not sure you have. If a former government employee goes off and does a dishonest* interview with the media are you really saying the government shouldn't really respond because he's entitled to confidentiality. That hardly seems fair.
*Hypothetically speaking. It has yet to be determined.
What I would not do is make broad and public claims of dishonesty and misconduct against a former colleague whom I dismissed, that I would struggle to stand up, and which are slam dunks for a defamation suit if I don't.
That's because I'm not as stupid as Badenoch. None of this is of any interest except this is a betting site and Badenoch is heir apparent for next Tory leader
We will see. However your determination to believe Badenoch is stupid feels agenda driven. Why?
JUST IN: former Post Office chairman, Henry Staunton, has just released a statement standing by his accusations over the #postoffice. He describes “an astonishing series of claims” made by the Business Secretary.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
I find it pretty inexplicable. For most buffets people want simple, known options, to appeal to as broad a range of potential eaters as possible. So why is there seemingly a thriving industry of catering choices which are the equivalent of an artist indulging their creativity?
I beg to demur, a bit. Certain things work well in "posh" buffets. Meat on skewers is usually good. Those little round chillis filled with cream cheese are OK. Mini onion bhajis, mini quiches, no complaint. The worst are the weird veggie wraps, the massive great sub-style sandwiches, and any attempt at Chinese spring rolls or prawn toast.
@RedfieldWilton Joint-lowest % of Conservative 2019 voters to say they'd vote Conservative since Sunak became PM.
Westminster VI, 2019 Conservatives (18 Feb):
Conservative 44% (–) Labour 20% (-1) Reform UK 18% (-1) Other 5% (–) Don't Know 13% (+2)
Changes +/- 11 Feb
Expect drift to don't know and then to Con before GE 2024
I see we are back to certain PBers overanalysing hypothetical polling from an undefined point in the future.
BJO fans please explain.
"Overanalysing hypothetical polling from an undefined point in the future" is not a bug, it's a feature, put in long words, of guessing political outcomes that have not yet happened (definition of political betting).
At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Discredited Zuonist John Ware doing another propaganda piece for Israel on Panorama
That would be the same John Ware who successfully brought legal proceedings against the Labour Party for making exactly those sort of allegations. That John Ware?
The one who made the fake Antisemitism documentary with lots of errors in it yes. The legal proceedings didn't take it to court as Labour's pro Zionist wing decided to settle despite legal advice saying it would likely win
So, on behalf of the owners of this site, you’re willing to bet on (a) the existence and (b) the accuracy of said advice. Brave.
Do you think he’s being overly nasty to Hamas tonight? Incredible you can make a judgment some 9 minutes into the programme. Where do you think he gets it wrong?
No idea on the first one
I am not watching tonight as its bound to be a hatchet job.
Indeed. How dare he or anyone else dare besmirch the otherwise spotless reputation of (checks notes)…Hamas…
At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
The next General Election study book should be a rollocking read. I'm working my way through them, and 2001 is coming up, and doesn't seem likely to be interesting.
Better late than never but it should have been done years ago
Controls on holiday lets may or may not be a good idea but is it a Conservative policy or desperate, cones hotline-level brainstorming?
ETA how did we get here? The country's screwed every which way, nothing works, nothing can be built, everything costs too much and yet our political masters come up with holiday lets while Labour's big announcement is it will ban fox hunting (again).
"Modern British politics consists in not building anything, banning stuff, telling people off, and calling anyone you disagree with evil/a racist/unworthy of holding an opinion."
Even in the wake of last week’s disastrous byelections, [Sunak’s] leadership seems secure, for the simple reason that nobody vying for the crown wants to seize it this side of the general election.
A good defence relies on making hard choices. Dig in against the Liberal Democrats in the “blue wall”, and stand accused of abandoning the new voters won over by Boris Johnson in 2019. Focus on boxing in the threat of Reform UK, and risk losing more voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, the parties actually positioned to take Conservative seats.
Then there’s timing….there are good reasons why a May election would suit the party. Coinciding with the local elections would not only probably save hundreds of Tory councillors, but also ensure that even activists unenthused by Sunak would be out anyway, fighting for their own seats.
[But Tories] are really gearing up for the almighty row that awaits if and when the Conservatives return to opposition. At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Sunak does not really have a place in that battle. Not merely because it will only take place after an election defeat, but because he doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. There isn’t a Sunakism…the prime minister’s Treasury-minded managerialism will depart with him.
Until then, he has the thankless task of trying to salvage the best result possible in an extremely difficult election – a task that depends on forcing hard choices on a party that has proved congenitally incapable of confronting them. Again, no wonder there’s fresh talk of an election in May.
Interesting. Looks like a general election in May really could be in the works.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
Yes, you are part of a proud tradition of PBer who doesn’t like food. We get it!
I do like food. Good, honest, straightforward food. No pretentious crap. Not ruining something decent by covering it in something awful.
Aka sauce, dressing or seasoning. Aka food.
You are in good company on here: lots of fussy eaters on PB.
They are allowing the deconstruction of the Enlightenment - to appease Islam and to satisfy some moronic desire for an equity which cannot happen and is not even achievable, all so they can feel “good”
Thankfully I can flee the UK as this madness burns slow then fast, corroding away everything of moral value
However, I pity my descendants who will have to try and salvage…. Something
One aspect of that is interesting to me.
I'd say you are rather idolising "the enlightenment", which has its own problems - some irrationality and some confusion being two of them.
But now we are now not far off post-Enlightenment, and you may need to adjust your paradigm.
Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
Apples. Vegan. Oranges. Vegan. Bananas. Vegan.
Never offer people a piece of fruit.
Yeah, but that's not what it is, is it?
No-one mind fruit and salad. Or beans. That's just part of a healthy balanced diet.
Vegan is "plant-based" wank as a main meal - and i use that term very loosely- with such horrors as tofu and it's almost always disgusting. Sometimes, it's downright fraudulent: like trying to pass off a slice of cauliflower as a steak, and causing abject misery in the process.
Some vegan food is totally unhealthy. Full of artificial shite. And some is just awful.
Best to eat vegetables that are just being vegetables. Pulses that are just being pulses. But quorn is a decent meat substitute.
Yes, and do you now see why people might object to a vegan menu being enforced on them on that basis?
I would be disappointed if that was all that was on offer.
I think a mix of vegan and vegetarian is perfectly acceptable to a mixed audience. I would focus on the cheese and pickle sandwiches in such circumstances.
If anyone thinks I'm going to eat humus they can bugger off.
Full disclosure: This evening I have adopted the "if you are away from home it doesn't count" approach and had a mixed grill.
Hummus is nice! Love me some taramasalata and hummus with flat bread.
(My kids now make excellent flat bread. If only they would tidy the kitchen afterwards...)
If that was on offer, I'd just be eating the flat bread.
Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
Apples. Vegan. Oranges. Vegan. Bananas. Vegan.
Never offer people a piece of fruit.
Yeah, but that's not what it is, is it?
No-one mind fruit and salad. Or beans. That's just part of a healthy balanced diet.
Vegan is "plant-based" wank as a main meal - and i use that term very loosely- with such horrors as tofu and it's almost always disgusting. Sometimes, it's downright fraudulent: like trying to pass off a slice of cauliflower as a steak, and causing abject misery in the process.
Some vegan food is totally unhealthy. Full of artificial shite. And some is just awful.
Best to eat vegetables that are just being vegetables. Pulses that are just being pulses. But quorn is a decent meat substitute.
Yes, and do you now see why people might object to a vegan menu being enforced on them on that basis?
I would be disappointed if that was all that was on offer.
I think a mix of vegan and vegetarian is perfectly acceptable to a mixed audience. I would focus on the cheese and pickle sandwiches in such circumstances.
If anyone thinks I'm going to eat humus they can bugger off.
Full disclosure: This evening I have adopted the "if you are away from home it doesn't count" approach and had a mixed grill.
Hummus is nice! Love me some taramasalata and hummus with flat bread.
(My kids now make excellent flat bread. If only they would tidy the kitchen afterwards...)
If that was on offer, I'd just be eating the flat bread.
Even in the wake of last week’s disastrous byelections, [Sunak’s] leadership seems secure, for the simple reason that nobody vying for the crown wants to seize it this side of the general election.
A good defence relies on making hard choices. Dig in against the Liberal Democrats in the “blue wall”, and stand accused of abandoning the new voters won over by Boris Johnson in 2019. Focus on boxing in the threat of Reform UK, and risk losing more voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, the parties actually positioned to take Conservative seats.
Then there’s timing….there are good reasons why a May election would suit the party. Coinciding with the local elections would not only probably save hundreds of Tory councillors, but also ensure that even activists unenthused by Sunak would be out anyway, fighting for their own seats.
[But Tories] are really gearing up for the almighty row that awaits if and when the Conservatives return to opposition. At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Sunak does not really have a place in that battle. Not merely because it will only take place after an election defeat, but because he doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. There isn’t a Sunakism…the prime minister’s Treasury-minded managerialism will depart with him.
Until then, he has the thankless task of trying to salvage the best result possible in an extremely difficult election – a task that depends on forcing hard choices on a party that has proved congenitally incapable of confronting them. Again, no wonder there’s fresh talk of an election in May.
Interesting. Looks like a general election in May really could be in the works.
The country certainly needs it.
I have been saying 2 May on here all year and I am sticking with it 👍
"I don't think he's right as a prime minister. Full stop."
Conservative Party donor Lady McAlpine says she would have "real trouble" voting Tory at a general election under Rishi Sunak's leadership.
I saw that interview. She's mad as a box of frogs. Enthusiastically quoting Nadine's book.
Perhaps she should stand herself, she sounds like she'd be in with a shout - some of the most popular people among Tories thesedays seem like they are either not Tories at all (eg Farage) or people who dislike the current iteration so much they'd vote against them.
At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
To ask the question is to know the answer...
Actually, looking back over the last 14 years there is one way in which the party has managed to move the country in a much more conservative direction. NHS waiting lists. As sure a bellwether of conservative direction as any.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
I find it pretty inexplicable. For most buffets people want simple, known options, to appeal to as broad a range of potential eaters as possible. So why is there seemingly a thriving industry of catering choices which are the equivalent of an artist indulging their creativity?
I beg to demur, a bit. Certain things work well in "posh" buffets. Meat on skewers is usually good. Those little round chillis filled with cream cheese are OK. Mini onion bhajis, mini quiches, no complaint. The worst are the weird veggie wraps, the massive great sub-style sandwiches, and any attempt at Chinese spring rolls or prawn toast.
In fairness most my ire is reserved for overly fancy sandwiches when I just want some ham and cheese damnit!
The Badenoch show rumbles on with grim fascination in the Commons. She now says "full of lies" refers to three claims made by Henry Staunton, recent Post Office Chair.
1. That she didn't apologise to him for finding out about his sacking from a journalist. This should be easy to check: Is there an s apology in the transcript of the conversation that she is about to be made public? 2. That she told him "someone has to take the rap". The absence of of such a statement in the transcript doesn't necessarily mean she didn't say it. 3. That he was told to slow down compensation claims. She has no way of knowing whether anyone said this to him or not.
On her claim that he was sacked for misconduct, this appears to be allegations of bullying rather than an actual finding of misconduct. We should find out if she mentioned any of this in the transcript She had a long list of other complaints about him but these weren't misconduct.
It doesn't appear she's in a stronger legal position after her statement than before.
It does sound a bit hit the law/hit the facts/hit the table, and Kemi B has moved on to stage 3.
Though given that she won't resign voluntarily, and Rishi is in far too weak a position to sack her unwillingly, it doesn't matter all that much.
I wonder also if Staunton has a claim of breach of confidentiality against Badenoch as many of her claims don't appear to address the points he made and there was no legal requirement on her to make these statements.
He's certainly not taking it lying down...
This is Henry Staunton’s reply to Kemi Badenoch.
Firstly, with regard to the comment made to Mr Staunton by the senior civil servant to the effect that he was to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims and on spend on the Horizon replacement so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability. Mr Staunton stands by this comment which he recorded at the time in a file note which he emailed to himself and to colleagues and which is therefore traceable on the Post Office Server...
Staunton doesn't need to prove it, the presumed fact he made a note at the time is at least corroboration. Badenoch on the other hand needs to prove that he didn't hear this plus a whole bunch of other claims she made to support her case that his account of the meeting was fabricated. She also needs to prove he was dismissed for misconduct - which doesn't appear to be the case. All of this is self inflicted. She could have stuck to a bland "We're the ones delivering the compensation, why bother with a useless ex-chairman?".
Badenoch is profoundly, and fascinatingly stupid, in addition to being uber-aggressive
So how would you have responded in her position?
And where is the evidence of her being uber aggressive? Forthright yes. You wouldn't be playing on a black female stereotype would you?
I literally quoted what I would have said in her position.
Badenoch has an advantage Staunton, Davey, Starmer etc don't have. She can pay the postmasters.
I'm not sure you have. If a former government employee goes off and does a dishonest* interview with the media are you really saying the government shouldn't really respond because he's entitled to confidentiality. That hardly seems fair.
*Hypothetically speaking. It has yet to be determined.
What I would not do is make broad and public claims of dishonesty and misconduct against a former colleague whom I dismissed, that I would struggle to stand up, and which are slam dunks for a defamation suit if I don't.
That's because I'm not as stupid as Badenoch. None of this is of any interest except this is a betting site and Badenoch is heir apparent for next Tory leader
I still reckon the next Tory leader won't be someone who is still a minister come the election.
They'll want a clean break, and as much on the right as possible, who will tell them the public really want those things which is why they voted for Keir Starmer for some reason.
Are you by any chance suggesting #Priti4Leader ???
At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
To ask the question is to know the answer...
Actually, looking back over the last 14 years there is one way in which the party has managed to move the country in a much more conservative direction. NHS waiting lists. As sure a bellwether of conservative direction as any.
They've also transferred wealth from the have nots to the haves at a frenetic rate.
Even in the wake of last week’s disastrous byelections, [Sunak’s] leadership seems secure, for the simple reason that nobody vying for the crown wants to seize it this side of the general election.
A good defence relies on making hard choices. Dig in against the Liberal Democrats in the “blue wall”, and stand accused of abandoning the new voters won over by Boris Johnson in 2019. Focus on boxing in the threat of Reform UK, and risk losing more voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, the parties actually positioned to take Conservative seats.
Then there’s timing….there are good reasons why a May election would suit the party. Coinciding with the local elections would not only probably save hundreds of Tory councillors, but also ensure that even activists unenthused by Sunak would be out anyway, fighting for their own seats.
[But Tories] are really gearing up for the almighty row that awaits if and when the Conservatives return to opposition. At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Sunak does not really have a place in that battle. Not merely because it will only take place after an election defeat, but because he doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. There isn’t a Sunakism…the prime minister’s Treasury-minded managerialism will depart with him.
Until then, he has the thankless task of trying to salvage the best result possible in an extremely difficult election – a task that depends on forcing hard choices on a party that has proved congenitally incapable of confronting them. Again, no wonder there’s fresh talk of an election in May.
Interesting. Looks like a general election in May really could be in the works.
The country certainly needs it.
Was thinking about this today, what does Sunny Boy have to lose? For three months of the difference between May and October, Parliament is in recess anyway. Then it’s conference, which will be a nightmare.
Go in May and he could be sat on a beach earning ten per cent.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
I find it pretty inexplicable. For most buffets people want simple, known options, to appeal to as broad a range of potential eaters as possible. So why is there seemingly a thriving industry of catering choices which are the equivalent of an artist indulging their creativity?
I beg to demur, a bit. Certain things work well in "posh" buffets. Meat on skewers is usually good. Those little round chillis filled with cream cheese are OK. Mini onion bhajis, mini quiches, no complaint. The worst are the weird veggie wraps, the massive great sub-style sandwiches, and any attempt at Chinese spring rolls or prawn toast.
Geography matters. In the rural far NW of England if going to a buffet, don't eat the day before or plan to eat the day after and don't stint on the sausage rolls, which are elysium on a plate. There will be no food that can't be clearly identified by an elderly sheep farmer.
JUST IN: former Post Office chairman, Henry Staunton, has just released a statement standing by his accusations over the #postoffice. He describes “an astonishing series of claims” made by the Business Secretary.
This twist in the timeline where a government minister is busy spending their days arguing with the head postie is, I admit, a surprise even given recent history.
We just need some undercover journalists to discover he's secretly been smuggling Chinese pork and Euro-Cheese in and out of the country in some sort of weird VAT fraud to really seal the deal.
At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
To ask the question is to know the answer...
Actually, looking back over the last 14 years there is one way in which the party has managed to move the country in a much more conservative direction. NHS waiting lists.
Also by moving toward voting for a 60 year old lawyer to be PM. It just feels very conservative and traditional, even if it is actually pretty old for a PM.
The Badenoch show rumbles on with grim fascination in the Commons. She now says "full of lies" refers to three claims made by Henry Staunton, recent Post Office Chair.
1. That she didn't apologise to him for finding out about his sacking from a journalist. This should be easy to check: Is there an s apology in the transcript of the conversation that she is about to be made public? 2. That she told him "someone has to take the rap". The absence of of such a statement in the transcript doesn't necessarily mean she didn't say it. 3. That he was told to slow down compensation claims. She has no way of knowing whether anyone said this to him or not.
On her claim that he was sacked for misconduct, this appears to be allegations of bullying rather than an actual finding of misconduct. We should find out if she mentioned any of this in the transcript She had a long list of other complaints about him but these weren't misconduct.
It doesn't appear she's in a stronger legal position after her statement than before.
It does sound a bit hit the law/hit the facts/hit the table, and Kemi B has moved on to stage 3.
Though given that she won't resign voluntarily, and Rishi is in far too weak a position to sack her unwillingly, it doesn't matter all that much.
I wonder also if Staunton has a claim of breach of confidentiality against Badenoch as many of her claims don't appear to address the points he made and there was no legal requirement on her to make these statements.
He's certainly not taking it lying down...
This is Henry Staunton’s reply to Kemi Badenoch.
Firstly, with regard to the comment made to Mr Staunton by the senior civil servant to the effect that he was to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims and on spend on the Horizon replacement so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability. Mr Staunton stands by this comment which he recorded at the time in a file note which he emailed to himself and to colleagues and which is therefore traceable on the Post Office Server...
Staunton doesn't need to prove it, the presumed fact he made a note at the time is at least corroboration. Badenoch on the other hand needs to prove that he didn't hear this plus a whole bunch of other claims she made to support her case that his account of the meeting was fabricated. She also needs to prove he was dismissed for misconduct - which doesn't appear to be the case. All of this is self inflicted. She could have stuck to a bland "We're the ones delivering the compensation, why bother with a useless ex-chairman?".
Badenoch is profoundly, and fascinatingly stupid, in addition to being uber-aggressive
So how would you have responded in her position?
And where is the evidence of her being uber aggressive? Forthright yes. You wouldn't be playing on a black female stereotype would you?
I literally quoted what I would have said in her position.
Badenoch has an advantage Staunton, Davey, Starmer etc don't have. She can pay the postmasters.
I'm not sure you have. If a former government employee goes off and does a dishonest* interview with the media are you really saying the government shouldn't really respond because he's entitled to confidentiality. That hardly seems fair.
*Hypothetically speaking. It has yet to be determined.
What I would not do is make broad and public claims of dishonesty and misconduct against a former colleague whom I dismissed, that I would struggle to stand up, and which are slam dunks for a defamation suit if I don't.
That's because I'm not as stupid as Badenoch. None of this is of any interest except this is a betting site and Badenoch is heir apparent for next Tory leader
I still reckon the next Tory leader won't be someone who is still a minister come the election.
They'll want a clean break, and as much on the right as possible, who will tell them the public really want those things which is why they voted for Keir Starmer for some reason.
Are you by any chance suggesting #Priti4Leader ???
I feel like she had a good shot, but she seems to have been a bit too quiet since leaving Cabinet.
JUST IN: former Post Office chairman, Henry Staunton, has just released a statement standing by his accusations over the #postoffice. He describes “an astonishing series of claims” made by the Business Secretary.
This twist in the timeline where a government minister is busy spending their days arguing with the head postie is, I admit, a surprise even given recent history.
We just need some undercover journalists to discover he's secretly been smuggling Chinese pork and Euro-Cheese in and out of the country in some sort of weird VAT fraud to really seal the deal.
Whatever else happens, people won't be able to accuse Kemi Badenoch of silence on the issue anymore.
The Badenoch show rumbles on with grim fascination in the Commons. She now says "full of lies" refers to three claims made by Henry Staunton, recent Post Office Chair.
1. That she didn't apologise to him for finding out about his sacking from a journalist. This should be easy to check: Is there an s apology in the transcript of the conversation that she is about to be made public? 2. That she told him "someone has to take the rap". The absence of of such a statement in the transcript doesn't necessarily mean she didn't say it. 3. That he was told to slow down compensation claims. She has no way of knowing whether anyone said this to him or not.
On her claim that he was sacked for misconduct, this appears to be allegations of bullying rather than an actual finding of misconduct. We should find out if she mentioned any of this in the transcript She had a long list of other complaints about him but these weren't misconduct.
It doesn't appear she's in a stronger legal position after her statement than before.
It does sound a bit hit the law/hit the facts/hit the table, and Kemi B has moved on to stage 3.
Though given that she won't resign voluntarily, and Rishi is in far too weak a position to sack her unwillingly, it doesn't matter all that much.
I wonder also if Staunton has a claim of breach of confidentiality against Badenoch as many of her claims don't appear to address the points he made and there was no legal requirement on her to make these statements.
He's certainly not taking it lying down...
This is Henry Staunton’s reply to Kemi Badenoch.
Firstly, with regard to the comment made to Mr Staunton by the senior civil servant to the effect that he was to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims and on spend on the Horizon replacement so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability. Mr Staunton stands by this comment which he recorded at the time in a file note which he emailed to himself and to colleagues and which is therefore traceable on the Post Office Server...
Staunton doesn't need to prove it, the presumed fact he made a note at the time is at least corroboration. Badenoch on the other hand needs to prove that he didn't hear this plus a whole bunch of other claims she made to support her case that his account of the meeting was fabricated. She also needs to prove he was dismissed for misconduct - which doesn't appear to be the case. All of this is self inflicted. She could have stuck to a bland "We're the ones delivering the compensation, why bother with a useless ex-chairman?".
Badenoch is profoundly, and fascinatingly stupid, in addition to being uber-aggressive
So how would you have responded in her position?
And where is the evidence of her being uber aggressive? Forthright yes. You wouldn't be playing on a black female stereotype would you?
I literally quoted what I would have said in her position.
Badenoch has an advantage Staunton, Davey, Starmer etc don't have. She can pay the postmasters.
I'm not sure you have. If a former government employee goes off and does a dishonest* interview with the media are you really saying the government shouldn't really respond because he's entitled to confidentiality. That hardly seems fair.
*Hypothetically speaking. It has yet to be determined.
What I would not do is make broad and public claims of dishonesty and misconduct against a former colleague whom I dismissed, that I would struggle to stand up, and which are slam dunks for a defamation suit if I don't.
That's because I'm not as stupid as Badenoch. None of this is of any interest except this is a betting site and Badenoch is heir apparent for next Tory leader
I still reckon the next Tory leader won't be someone who is still a minister come the election.
They'll want a clean break, and as much on the right as possible, who will tell them the public really want those things which is why they voted for Keir Starmer for some reason.
Yeah, I've been thinking something similar..
Miriam Cates is unlikely to hold her seat, otherwise she'd be an obvious pick. No price available for John Hayes - but he might be worth a look if he gets added. There's a tenner available for Danny Kruger at 59/1 on Betfair... hmm. Maybe?
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
Yes, you are part of a proud tradition of PBer who doesn’t like food. We get it!
I do like food. Good, honest, straightforward food. No pretentious crap. Not ruining something decent by covering it in something awful.
Even in the wake of last week’s disastrous byelections, [Sunak’s] leadership seems secure, for the simple reason that nobody vying for the crown wants to seize it this side of the general election.
A good defence relies on making hard choices. Dig in against the Liberal Democrats in the “blue wall”, and stand accused of abandoning the new voters won over by Boris Johnson in 2019. Focus on boxing in the threat of Reform UK, and risk losing more voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, the parties actually positioned to take Conservative seats.
Then there’s timing….there are good reasons why a May election would suit the party. Coinciding with the local elections would not only probably save hundreds of Tory councillors, but also ensure that even activists unenthused by Sunak would be out anyway, fighting for their own seats.
[But Tories] are really gearing up for the almighty row that awaits if and when the Conservatives return to opposition. At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Sunak does not really have a place in that battle. Not merely because it will only take place after an election defeat, but because he doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. There isn’t a Sunakism…the prime minister’s Treasury-minded managerialism will depart with him.
Until then, he has the thankless task of trying to salvage the best result possible in an extremely difficult election – a task that depends on forcing hard choices on a party that has proved congenitally incapable of confronting them. Again, no wonder there’s fresh talk of an election in May.
Interesting. Looks like a general election in May really could be in the works.
The country certainly needs it.
Was thinking about this today, what does Sunny Boy have to lose? For three months of the difference between May and October, Parliament is in recess anyway. Then it’s conference, which will be a nightmare.
Go in May and he could be sat on a beach earning ten per cent.
Going in October means he will have been PM for just on 2 years. He's set for more wealth regardless, and any reassessment of his positive qualities and reputation will not be in the short or medium term, so focusing on his stats and tenure may appeal.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
Yes, you are part of a proud tradition of PBer who doesn’t like food. We get it!
I found out a friend of mine in her late teens hadn't heard of Branston pickle the other day. I asked her what did she put in her cheese and pickle sandwich then and got another blank look.
They are allowing the deconstruction of the Enlightenment - to appease Islam and to satisfy some moronic desire for an equity which cannot happen and is not even achievable, all so they can feel “good”
Thankfully I can flee the UK as this madness burns slow then fast, corroding away everything of moral value
However, I pity my descendants who will have to try and salvage…. Something
One aspect of that is interesting to me.
I'd say you are rather idolising "the enlightenment", which has its own problems - some irrationality and some confusion being two of them.
But now we are now not far off post-Enlightenment, and you may need to adjust your paradigm.
The Enlightenment was the greatest thing to ever happen to humanity and there should be more focus on it in general.
Even in the wake of last week’s disastrous byelections, [Sunak’s] leadership seems secure, for the simple reason that nobody vying for the crown wants to seize it this side of the general election.
A good defence relies on making hard choices. Dig in against the Liberal Democrats in the “blue wall”, and stand accused of abandoning the new voters won over by Boris Johnson in 2019. Focus on boxing in the threat of Reform UK, and risk losing more voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, the parties actually positioned to take Conservative seats.
Then there’s timing….there are good reasons why a May election would suit the party. Coinciding with the local elections would not only probably save hundreds of Tory councillors, but also ensure that even activists unenthused by Sunak would be out anyway, fighting for their own seats.
[But Tories] are really gearing up for the almighty row that awaits if and when the Conservatives return to opposition. At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Sunak does not really have a place in that battle. Not merely because it will only take place after an election defeat, but because he doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. There isn’t a Sunakism…the prime minister’s Treasury-minded managerialism will depart with him.
Until then, he has the thankless task of trying to salvage the best result possible in an extremely difficult election – a task that depends on forcing hard choices on a party that has proved congenitally incapable of confronting them. Again, no wonder there’s fresh talk of an election in May.
Interesting. Looks like a general election in May really could be in the works.
The country certainly needs it.
Was thinking about this today, what does Sunny Boy have to lose? For three months of the difference between May and October, Parliament is in recess anyway. Then it’s conference, which will be a nightmare.
Go in May and he could be sat on a beach earning ten per cent.
If it is we will know soon - legally 25/26 March but actually sooner. I still think he will, despite the obvious difficulties, go for September, steering clear of POTUS ructions and party conferences.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
Yes, you are part of a proud tradition of PBer who doesn’t like food. We get it!
I do like food. Good, honest, straightforward food. No pretentious crap. Not ruining something decent by covering it in something awful.
Aka sauce, dressing or seasoning. Aka food.
You are in good company on here: lots of fussy eaters on PB.
Sauce comes in a bottle with a picture of the Big Ben clocktower on the front.
Dressing = Sarson's vinegar.
Seasoning = salt.
Let's just recall that I was the bloke with three types of balsamic in the cupboard. And nowt to sprinkle on the fish and chips.
Labour accused him of having been disciplined by the BBC and having invented material to feed his personal Islamophobia. The first was demonstrably not true and the second was not provable - but to to put it mildly, if one of your allegations is demonstrated false, it leaves you with something of a credibility gap in fighting a libel suit.
Another person who claimed Ware had invented material to harm Labour in 'Is Labour Anti-Semitic,' Labour blogger and activist Paddy French, had such a weak case that he didn't even bother to turn up to court to defend himself. (He later claimed the court was rigged against him. Not at all a person with issues.)
So just to be clear - our resident not at all a racist is talking bullshit.
Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
Apples. Vegan. Oranges. Vegan. Bananas. Vegan.
Never offer people a piece of fruit.
Yeah, but that's not what it is, is it?
No-one mind fruit and salad. Or beans. That's just part of a healthy balanced diet.
Vegan is "plant-based" wank as a main meal - and i use that term very loosely- with such horrors as tofu and it's almost always disgusting. Sometimes, it's downright fraudulent: like trying to pass off a slice of cauliflower as a steak, and causing abject misery in the process.
Some vegan food is totally unhealthy. Full of artificial shite. And some is just awful.
Best to eat vegetables that are just being vegetables. Pulses that are just being pulses. But quorn is a decent meat substitute.
Yes, and do you now see why people might object to a vegan menu being enforced on them on that basis?
I would be disappointed if that was all that was on offer.
I think a mix of vegan and vegetarian is perfectly acceptable to a mixed audience. I would focus on the cheese and pickle sandwiches in such circumstances.
If anyone thinks I'm going to eat humus they can bugger off.
Full disclosure: This evening I have adopted the "if you are away from home it doesn't count" approach and had a mixed grill.
Hummus is nice! Love me some taramasalata and hummus with flat bread.
(My kids now make excellent flat bread. If only they would tidy the kitchen afterwards...)
It was only recently (as in the past few years) I discovered (or rather - was told) that you don't put olive oil in your hummus when you make it - it's put over the top once you serve it.
Even in the wake of last week’s disastrous byelections, [Sunak’s] leadership seems secure, for the simple reason that nobody vying for the crown wants to seize it this side of the general election.
A good defence relies on making hard choices. Dig in against the Liberal Democrats in the “blue wall”, and stand accused of abandoning the new voters won over by Boris Johnson in 2019. Focus on boxing in the threat of Reform UK, and risk losing more voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, the parties actually positioned to take Conservative seats.
Then there’s timing….there are good reasons why a May election would suit the party. Coinciding with the local elections would not only probably save hundreds of Tory councillors, but also ensure that even activists unenthused by Sunak would be out anyway, fighting for their own seats.
[But Tories] are really gearing up for the almighty row that awaits if and when the Conservatives return to opposition. At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Sunak does not really have a place in that battle. Not merely because it will only take place after an election defeat, but because he doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. There isn’t a Sunakism…the prime minister’s Treasury-minded managerialism will depart with him.
Until then, he has the thankless task of trying to salvage the best result possible in an extremely difficult election – a task that depends on forcing hard choices on a party that has proved congenitally incapable of confronting them. Again, no wonder there’s fresh talk of an election in May.
Interesting. Looks like a general election in May really could be in the works.
The country certainly needs it.
Was thinking about this today, what does Sunny Boy have to lose? For three months of the difference between May and October, Parliament is in recess anyway. Then it’s conference, which will be a nightmare.
Go in May and he could be sat on a beach earning ten per cent.
The vast quantity of leaflets that the Conservatives have pushed through our letterbox recently is much more what you'd expect for a May election than a November one.
Admittedly, it doesn't help that they don't seem to understand their own boundary changes and so we're currently getting leaflets for two constituencies at once.
The Badenoch show rumbles on with grim fascination in the Commons. She now says "full of lies" refers to three claims made by Henry Staunton, recent Post Office Chair.
1. That she didn't apologise to him for finding out about his sacking from a journalist. This should be easy to check: Is there an s apology in the transcript of the conversation that she is about to be made public? 2. That she told him "someone has to take the rap". The absence of of such a statement in the transcript doesn't necessarily mean she didn't say it. 3. That he was told to slow down compensation claims. She has no way of knowing whether anyone said this to him or not.
On her claim that he was sacked for misconduct, this appears to be allegations of bullying rather than an actual finding of misconduct. We should find out if she mentioned any of this in the transcript She had a long list of other complaints about him but these weren't misconduct.
It doesn't appear she's in a stronger legal position after her statement than before.
It does sound a bit hit the law/hit the facts/hit the table, and Kemi B has moved on to stage 3.
Though given that she won't resign voluntarily, and Rishi is in far too weak a position to sack her unwillingly, it doesn't matter all that much.
I wonder also if Staunton has a claim of breach of confidentiality against Badenoch as many of her claims don't appear to address the points he made and there was no legal requirement on her to make these statements.
He's certainly not taking it lying down...
This is Henry Staunton’s reply to Kemi Badenoch.
Firstly, with regard to the comment made to Mr Staunton by the senior civil servant to the effect that he was to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims and on spend on the Horizon replacement so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability. Mr Staunton stands by this comment which he recorded at the time in a file note which he emailed to himself and to colleagues and which is therefore traceable on the Post Office Server...
Staunton doesn't need to prove it, the presumed fact he made a note at the time is at least corroboration. Badenoch on the other hand needs to prove that he didn't hear this plus a whole bunch of other claims she made to support her case that his account of the meeting was fabricated. She also needs to prove he was dismissed for misconduct - which doesn't appear to be the case. All of this is self inflicted. She could have stuck to a bland "We're the ones delivering the compensation, why bother with a useless ex-chairman?".
Badenoch is profoundly, and fascinatingly stupid, in addition to being uber-aggressive
So how would you have responded in her position?
And where is the evidence of her being uber aggressive? Forthright yes. You wouldn't be playing on a black female stereotype would you?
I literally quoted what I would have said in her position.
Badenoch has an advantage Staunton, Davey, Starmer etc don't have. She can pay the postmasters.
I'm not sure you have. If a former government employee goes off and does a dishonest* interview with the media are you really saying the government shouldn't really respond because he's entitled to confidentiality. That hardly seems fair.
*Hypothetically speaking. It has yet to be determined.
What I would not do is make broad and public claims of dishonesty and misconduct against a former colleague whom I dismissed, that I would struggle to stand up, and which are slam dunks for a defamation suit if I don't.
That's because I'm not as stupid as Badenoch. None of this is of any interest except this is a betting site and Badenoch is heir apparent for next Tory leader
I still reckon the next Tory leader won't be someone who is still a minister come the election.
They'll want a clean break, and as much on the right as possible, who will tell them the public really want those things which is why they voted for Keir Starmer for some reason.
Yeah, I've been thinking something similar..
Miriam Cates is unlikely to hold her seat, otherwise she'd be an obvious pick. No price available for John Hayes - but he might be worth a look if he gets added. There's a tenner available for Danny Kruger at 59/1 on Betfair... hmm. Maybe?
He's really trying hard. Don't really see the appeal myself, but I would not be surprised if he threw his hat in the ring.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
Yes, you are part of a proud tradition of PBer who doesn’t like food. We get it!
I found out a friend of mine in her late teens hadn't heard of Branston pickle the other day. I asked her what did she put in her cheese and pickle sandwich then and got another blank look.
I blame Sunak.
Obviously the old style chat up lines don't work any more. I blame supermarket own label branding.
BTW Stilton on white sliced bread, nothing added except butter, is wonderful.
Even in the wake of last week’s disastrous byelections, [Sunak’s] leadership seems secure, for the simple reason that nobody vying for the crown wants to seize it this side of the general election.
A good defence relies on making hard choices. Dig in against the Liberal Democrats in the “blue wall”, and stand accused of abandoning the new voters won over by Boris Johnson in 2019. Focus on boxing in the threat of Reform UK, and risk losing more voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, the parties actually positioned to take Conservative seats.
Then there’s timing….there are good reasons why a May election would suit the party. Coinciding with the local elections would not only probably save hundreds of Tory councillors, but also ensure that even activists unenthused by Sunak would be out anyway, fighting for their own seats.
[But Tories] are really gearing up for the almighty row that awaits if and when the Conservatives return to opposition. At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Sunak does not really have a place in that battle. Not merely because it will only take place after an election defeat, but because he doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. There isn’t a Sunakism…the prime minister’s Treasury-minded managerialism will depart with him.
Until then, he has the thankless task of trying to salvage the best result possible in an extremely difficult election – a task that depends on forcing hard choices on a party that has proved congenitally incapable of confronting them. Again, no wonder there’s fresh talk of an election in May.
Interesting. Looks like a general election in May really could be in the works.
The country certainly needs it.
Was thinking about this today, what does Sunny Boy have to lose? For three months of the difference between May and October, Parliament is in recess anyway. Then it’s conference, which will be a nightmare.
Go in May and he could be sat on a beach earning ten per cent.
The vast quantity of leaflets that the Conservatives have pushed through our letterbox recently is much more what you'd expect for a May election than a November one.
Admittedly, it doesn't help that they don't seem to understand their own boundary changes and so we're currently getting leaflets for two constituencies at once.
Perhaps the idea is for a Shuting solution:
Multiple votes. More votes given to the wealthiest, the oldest, etc.
Will it be May or will it be October? I think Mr Sunak can surprise us all and go for mid-August or December 25. Don't rule out October 31 either. Mr Sunak is nothing if not a blue-sky thinker...
Even in the wake of last week’s disastrous byelections, [Sunak’s] leadership seems secure, for the simple reason that nobody vying for the crown wants to seize it this side of the general election.
A good defence relies on making hard choices. Dig in against the Liberal Democrats in the “blue wall”, and stand accused of abandoning the new voters won over by Boris Johnson in 2019. Focus on boxing in the threat of Reform UK, and risk losing more voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, the parties actually positioned to take Conservative seats.
Then there’s timing….there are good reasons why a May election would suit the party. Coinciding with the local elections would not only probably save hundreds of Tory councillors, but also ensure that even activists unenthused by Sunak would be out anyway, fighting for their own seats.
[But Tories] are really gearing up for the almighty row that awaits if and when the Conservatives return to opposition. At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Sunak does not really have a place in that battle. Not merely because it will only take place after an election defeat, but because he doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. There isn’t a Sunakism…the prime minister’s Treasury-minded managerialism will depart with him.
Until then, he has the thankless task of trying to salvage the best result possible in an extremely difficult election – a task that depends on forcing hard choices on a party that has proved congenitally incapable of confronting them. Again, no wonder there’s fresh talk of an election in May.
Interesting. Looks like a general election in May really could be in the works.
The country certainly needs it.
Was thinking about this today, what does Sunny Boy have to lose? For three months of the difference between May and October, Parliament is in recess anyway. Then it’s conference, which will be a nightmare.
Go in May and he could be sat on a beach earning ten per cent.
Now that you've said that - I am finding the idea of the Autumn Tory pre-election conference hilarious.
Even in the wake of last week’s disastrous byelections, [Sunak’s] leadership seems secure, for the simple reason that nobody vying for the crown wants to seize it this side of the general election.
A good defence relies on making hard choices. Dig in against the Liberal Democrats in the “blue wall”, and stand accused of abandoning the new voters won over by Boris Johnson in 2019. Focus on boxing in the threat of Reform UK, and risk losing more voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, the parties actually positioned to take Conservative seats.
Then there’s timing….there are good reasons why a May election would suit the party. Coinciding with the local elections would not only probably save hundreds of Tory councillors, but also ensure that even activists unenthused by Sunak would be out anyway, fighting for their own seats.
[But Tories] are really gearing up for the almighty row that awaits if and when the Conservatives return to opposition. At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Sunak does not really have a place in that battle. Not merely because it will only take place after an election defeat, but because he doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. There isn’t a Sunakism…the prime minister’s Treasury-minded managerialism will depart with him.
Until then, he has the thankless task of trying to salvage the best result possible in an extremely difficult election – a task that depends on forcing hard choices on a party that has proved congenitally incapable of confronting them. Again, no wonder there’s fresh talk of an election in May.
Interesting. Looks like a general election in May really could be in the works.
The country certainly needs it.
Was thinking about this today, what does Sunny Boy have to lose? For three months of the difference between May and October, Parliament is in recess anyway. Then it’s conference, which will be a nightmare.
Go in May and he could be sat on a beach earning ten per cent.
Now that you've said that - I am finding the idea of the Autumn Tory pre-election conference hilarious.
They are allowing the deconstruction of the Enlightenment - to appease Islam and to satisfy some moronic desire for an equity which cannot happen and is not even achievable, all so they can feel “good”
Thankfully I can flee the UK as this madness burns slow then fast, corroding away everything of moral value
However, I pity my descendants who will have to try and salvage…. Something
One aspect of that is interesting to me.
I'd say you are rather idolising "the enlightenment", which has its own problems - some irrationality and some confusion being two of them.
But now we are now not far off post-Enlightenment, and you may need to adjust your paradigm.
The Enlightenment was the greatest thing to ever happen to humanity and there should be more focus on it in general.
Will it be May or will it be October? I think Mr Sunak can surprise us all and go for mid-August or December 25. Don't rule out October 31 either. Mr Sunak is nothing if not a blue-sky thinker...
Christmas would work if we assume younger people are more likely to travel to older relatives than the other way round.
Will it be May or will it be October? I think Mr Sunak can surprise us all and go for mid-August or December 25. Don't rule out October 31 either. Mr Sunak is nothing if not a blue-sky thinker...
Will it be May or will it be October? I think Mr Sunak can surprise us all and go for mid-August or December 25. Don't rule out October 31 either. Mr Sunak is nothing if not a blue-sky thinker...
They'd have the perfect three-word slogan: "Trick or treat?"
The Badenoch show rumbles on with grim fascination in the Commons. She now says "full of lies" refers to three claims made by Henry Staunton, recent Post Office Chair.
1. That she didn't apologise to him for finding out about his sacking from a journalist. This should be easy to check: Is there an s apology in the transcript of the conversation that she is about to be made public? 2. That she told him "someone has to take the rap". The absence of of such a statement in the transcript doesn't necessarily mean she didn't say it. 3. That he was told to slow down compensation claims. She has no way of knowing whether anyone said this to him or not.
On her claim that he was sacked for misconduct, this appears to be allegations of bullying rather than an actual finding of misconduct. We should find out if she mentioned any of this in the transcript She had a long list of other complaints about him but these weren't misconduct.
It doesn't appear she's in a stronger legal position after her statement than before.
It does sound a bit hit the law/hit the facts/hit the table, and Kemi B has moved on to stage 3.
Though given that she won't resign voluntarily, and Rishi is in far too weak a position to sack her unwillingly, it doesn't matter all that much.
I wonder also if Staunton has a claim of breach of confidentiality against Badenoch as many of her claims don't appear to address the points he made and there was no legal requirement on her to make these statements.
He's certainly not taking it lying down...
This is Henry Staunton’s reply to Kemi Badenoch.
Firstly, with regard to the comment made to Mr Staunton by the senior civil servant to the effect that he was to stall on compensation payments to Horizon victims and on spend on the Horizon replacement so the government could “limp into the election” with the lowest possible financial liability. Mr Staunton stands by this comment which he recorded at the time in a file note which he emailed to himself and to colleagues and which is therefore traceable on the Post Office Server...
Staunton doesn't need to prove it, the presumed fact he made a note at the time is at least corroboration. Badenoch on the other hand needs to prove that he didn't hear this plus a whole bunch of other claims she made to support her case that his account of the meeting was fabricated. She also needs to prove he was dismissed for misconduct - which doesn't appear to be the case. All of this is self inflicted. She could have stuck to a bland "We're the ones delivering the compensation, why bother with a useless ex-chairman?".
Badenoch is profoundly, and fascinatingly stupid, in addition to being uber-aggressive
So how would you have responded in her position?
And where is the evidence of her being uber aggressive? Forthright yes. You wouldn't be playing on a black female stereotype would you?
I literally quoted what I would have said in her position.
Badenoch has an advantage Staunton, Davey, Starmer etc don't have. She can pay the postmasters.
I'm not sure you have. If a former government employee goes off and does a dishonest* interview with the media are you really saying the government shouldn't really respond because he's entitled to confidentiality. That hardly seems fair.
*Hypothetically speaking. It has yet to be determined.
What I would not do is make broad and public claims of dishonesty and misconduct against a former colleague whom I dismissed, that I would struggle to stand up, and which are slam dunks for a defamation suit if I don't.
That's because I'm not as stupid as Badenoch. None of this is of any interest except this is a betting site and Badenoch is heir apparent for next Tory leader
We will see. However your determination to believe Badenoch is stupid feels agenda driven. Why?
Maybe can overdo stupid. Badenoch is extraordinarily aggressive however and doesn't seem to stop to think. Whatever. It's noteworthy none of her minister colleagues have rallied to her side, which might suggest she'll struggle to get past the MP vote and on the shortlist for next leader.
Off-topic, just seen that I got tagged as a lefty/Labour stooge a few days back. I've voted Lab at a GE once, out of six I've voted in. The same number of times I've voted Conservative in a GE. I will most likely make it 2/7 (for Lab, not Con!) at the next GE, but more a tactical than a conviction vote.
The mistake CR makes (possibly, I haven't fully untangled whether CR started it) is that I'm 'woke', not particularly left. Where 'woke' is used as a synonym for socially liberal.
Woke doesn't mean anything.
How is being a vegan woke?
Woke does mean something, just not the same to everyone. A bit like porn. How do you define porn? Different people get off on different things. Woke is different for different people.
In general things described as woke are not bad in themselves, but there can be unintended consequences.
For instance, you might decide that not enough women are involved in x industry. You might then start only recruiting women to make up the deficit. Is this fair? proportionate? You might be organising an event and insist on vegan only catering, to accommodate vegans, ignoring the fact that most people are not vegan and would prefer a choice.
You might even get hung up on whether a woman can have a penis.
Gonna stop you on the catering issue - I work in an office where about 25% of us are veggie or vegan. We had to stop ordering meat options because the meat eaters would eat the veggie / vegan options but we obviously couldn't eat the meaty options, so we were left hungry and we would have leftovers.
Woke is just "political correctness gone mad" which is just "loony lefties" again. Got to remember the original "loony left" usage was to attack local councils who were advocating for, shock horror, treating queer people like human beings and, gasp, catering to ethnic minorities in their communities. It's always been the same thing - if you argue for equitable treatment of people typically considered the out groups, people who benefit from the inequitable treatment complain and try and make you out as a weirdo.
On the food. Clearly if people are going hungry then a mistake has been made, but I don't think that means you have to order zero meat options. Surely there's a middle ground where there is a choice for those who might want to eat meat, but not so much that non-meat eaters are lefty without - though I'm speaking here as one of those omnivores who tends to avoid meat in a buffet situation, not knowing where it is from, or how long it has been waiting there.
As to woke generally, there is a lot which is simply this generation's treating people with respect, but there is an element, perhaps a product of the way in which people get riled up online, of being uncompromising, impatient, and, ironically, rude about it.
It's as though people forget that it might well be a new idea for other people, that it often takes people a while to get used to new ideas, and a bit of open-hearted patience and the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.
Taking this back to the food example, if a 3:1 meat: no-meat order didn't work, why not try 1:1, or 1:3, before leaping straight away to no meat at all?
I don't understand why the meat thing is such an issue. When catering at a work do having only veggie / vegan options allows for a typically cheaper option that has (in my experience at least) less waste (and of course the impact of waste is different for meat products and non-meat products), and also means the actual vegetarians and vegans get enough food, rather than having to share the stuff they can eat with people who will also eat stuff (and leave behind stuff) we can't eat. It's not exclusionary - no one is unable to eat non-meat options. Meat is not an essential - there is no right to meat in every food option. It was also agreed by everyone, meat eaters and not.
It does seem a daft hoo-haa about office snacks FFS. Who cares? If you want a good dinner, go out to dinner.
I care greatly about the arrogance of someone else who has an ideology who presumes to pick on my behalf what I can and can't eat.
Well every caterer does that! I’ve been to umpteen work events where the food chosen for me has been inedible. Nothing to do with whether it’s vegan or otherwise.
Rule of thumb: The posher the buffet, the less edible the food. Cheese and pickle in sliced white - perfect. Little fussy things filled with some sort of gunk - yuck!
Yes, you are part of a proud tradition of PBer who doesn’t like food. We get it!
I found out a friend of mine in her late teens hadn't heard of Branston pickle the other day. I asked her what did she put in her cheese and pickle sandwich then and got another blank look.
I blame Sunak.
She probably replaces the cheese with crushed avocado. And replaces the pickle with crushed avocado.
Why anyone would choose to eat that shite is another mystery to me.
Labour accused him of having been disciplined by the BBC and having invented material to feed his personal Islamophobia. The first was demonstrably not true and the second was not provable - but to to put it mildly, if one of your allegations is demonstrated false, it leaves you with something of a credibility gap in fighting a libel suit.
Another person who claimed Ware had invented material to harm Labour in 'Is Labour Anti-Semitic,' Labour blogger and activist Paddy French, had such a weak case that he didn't even bother to turn up to court to defend himself. (He later claimed the court was rigged against him. Not at all a person with issues.)
So just to be clear - our resident not at all a racist is talking bullshit.
For those who actually bothered to watch the programme - rather than dismiss anything that says "Hamas are very, very bad" - it was fairly informative and evenhanded in putting blood on Netanyahu and Hamas and their backers' hands. Effectively accusing the former of a catastrophic failure to tackle Hamas' financing at route years ago and collapsing them - knowing that their presence and ideology made a Palestinian state a bit of a non-starter.
I wonder how much money the average person has spent on smartphones since they were introduced in 2007.
I can answer that one for Apple iPhones (not Smartphones) which were the thing introduced in 2007, along with more gullible customers. 'Smartphones' in concept were probably the Nokia Communicator from 1996.
For iPhones, the site below have the price every year for each model from 2007 to 2021, and an average price iPhone each year added up to £9133 by 2021, so probably ~£11-12000 by 2024. That's ignoring inflation and interest. https://repairoutlet.co.uk/blogs/news/the-changing-costs-of-apple-iphones
Nobody likes that shit. Even vegans look at it with sadness.
Apples. Vegan. Oranges. Vegan. Bananas. Vegan.
Never offer people a piece of fruit.
Yeah, but that's not what it is, is it?
No-one mind fruit and salad. Or beans. That's just part of a healthy balanced diet.
Vegan is "plant-based" wank as a main meal - and i use that term very loosely- with such horrors as tofu and it's almost always disgusting. Sometimes, it's downright fraudulent: like trying to pass off a slice of cauliflower as a steak, and causing abject misery in the process.
Some vegan food is totally unhealthy. Full of artificial shite. And some is just awful.
Best to eat vegetables that are just being vegetables. Pulses that are just being pulses. But quorn is a decent meat substitute.
Yes, and do you now see why people might object to a vegan menu being enforced on them on that basis?
I would be disappointed if that was all that was on offer.
I think a mix of vegan and vegetarian is perfectly acceptable to a mixed audience. I would focus on the cheese and pickle sandwiches in such circumstances.
If anyone thinks I'm going to eat humus they can bugger off.
Full disclosure: This evening I have adopted the "if you are away from home it doesn't count" approach and had a mixed grill.
Middle Eastern humus is gorgeous. Especially Israeli humus.
The stuff you get in this country admittedly tastes like damp cardboard, which is why I'll only eat it when I'm in the Middle East.
Do they also have falafel that don't have the taste and texture of sawdust?
I wonder how much money the average person has spent on smartphones since they were introduced in 2007.
I can answer that one for Apple iPhones (not Smartphones) which were the thing introduced in 2007, along with more gullible customers. 'Smartphones' in concept were probably the Nokia Communicator from 1996.
For iPhones, the site below have the price every year for each model from 2007 to 2021, and an average price iPhone each year added up to £9133 by 2021, so probably ~£11-12000 by 2024. That's ignoring inflation and interest. https://repairoutlet.co.uk/blogs/news/the-changing-costs-of-apple-iphones
Do you know how much money Google makes in advertising from each user every year?
I wonder how much money the average person has spent on smartphones since they were introduced in 2007.
I can answer that one for Apple iPhones (not Smartphones) which were the thing introduced in 2007, along with more gullible customers. 'Smartphones' in concept were probably the Nokia Communicator from 1996.
For iPhones, the site below have the price every year for each model from 2007 to 2021, and an average price iPhone each year added up to £9133 by 2021, so probably ~£11-12000 by 2024. That's ignoring inflation and interest. https://repairoutlet.co.uk/blogs/news/the-changing-costs-of-apple-iphones
Do you know how much money Google makes in advertising from each user every year?
$300.
Think about that for a second.
Yep - sounds about right, subject to:
1 - The revenue comes from the advertiser, not the customer. 2 - The definition of a user sounds quite elastic.
Will it be May or will it be October? I think Mr Sunak can surprise us all and go for mid-August or December 25. Don't rule out October 31 either. Mr Sunak is nothing if not a blue-sky thinker...
Comments
The stuff you get in this country admittedly tastes like damp cardboard, which is why I'll only eat it when I'm in the Middle East.
Mine is great.
The Lib Dems aren't progressive either. Their primary purpose is to accumulate seats in the Home Counties by out-Torying the Tories with wealthy homeowners (primarily through being staunch Nimbies.)
The Greens are also Nimbies, but I imagine the manifesto will nonetheless also contain things to tempt you. The bad news, of course, is that there's only one of them, and likely to be either zero or one after the election, so that doesn't help much.
And we're all PB non-Tories now, comrade!
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/seasons/winter/when-does-winter-start
*Hypothetically speaking. It has yet to be determined.
Slingback is a thing isn't it
Is there any chance a tax cutting budget and a vicious anti SKS press attack line will bring you back on board?
Also being an anti Zionist is a protected Characteristic Anti Zuonist not so much
Mushroom risotto - fwiw - is often awful. But then again, a lot of risotto is very poorly made.
On the other hand, one of the greatest dishes I have ever eaten was a staggeringly good Risotto Primavera. My mouth still waters to think of it. (I also suspect it was vegan, but neither know nor care.)
Edit to add: as no-one is making me, I shan't actually be going vegetarian.
- @AaronBastani, Twitter, 10:31 pm, 12 Jun 2023, see https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/1668370528044761088
Do you think he’s being overly nasty to Hamas tonight? Incredible you can make a judgment some 9 minutes into the programme. Where do you think he gets it wrong?
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/slingback-shoe-trend-fashion-spring-summer-2017-best-buy-a7645071.html
(My kids now make excellent flat bread. If only they would tidy the kitchen afterwards...)
I am not watching tonight as its bound to be a hatchet job.
That's because I'm not as stupid as Badenoch. None of this is of any interest except this is a betting site and Badenoch is heir apparent for next Tory leader
"I don't think he's right as a prime minister. Full stop."
Conservative Party donor Lady McAlpine says she would have "real trouble" voting Tory at a general election under Rishi Sunak's leadership.
Even in the wake of last week’s disastrous byelections, [Sunak’s] leadership seems secure, for the simple reason that nobody vying for the crown wants to seize it this side of the general election.
A good defence relies on making hard choices. Dig in against the Liberal Democrats in the “blue wall”, and stand accused of abandoning the new voters won over by Boris Johnson in 2019. Focus on boxing in the threat of Reform UK, and risk losing more voters to Labour and the Lib Dems, the parties actually positioned to take Conservative seats.
Then there’s timing….there are good reasons why a May election would suit the party. Coinciding with the local elections would not only probably save hundreds of Tory councillors, but also ensure that even activists unenthused by Sunak would be out anyway, fighting for their own seats.
[But Tories] are really gearing up for the almighty row that awaits if and when the Conservatives return to opposition. At its heart will be two related questions. First: how did the Tories manage to go from a historic landslide to what is shaping up to be a historic rout in a single parliament? Second: how did the party manage to spend nearly 15 years in office without managing to do much, beyond Brexit, to move the country in a more conservative direction?
Sunak does not really have a place in that battle. Not merely because it will only take place after an election defeat, but because he doesn’t have an ideological dog in the fight. There isn’t a Sunakism…the prime minister’s Treasury-minded managerialism will depart with him.
Until then, he has the thankless task of trying to salvage the best result possible in an extremely difficult election – a task that depends on forcing hard choices on a party that has proved congenitally incapable of confronting them. Again, no wonder there’s fresh talk of an election in May.
They'll want a clean break, and as much on the right as possible, who will tell them the public really want those things which is why they voted for Keir Starmer for some reason.
Haven't had one of those since the Good Old Days of Disraeli (1865-68).
@JackW of course would remember it well...
I mean, it was a fairly safe seat and they'll hope to get it back. But because it's been safe for a long while, the infrastructure isn't really there as they've not really been in a fight, and Helen Morgan is pretty effective as MP. The local elections will tell us quite a lot - Shropshire is a unitary last up in 2021 (deferred from 2020) so it'll be the first set since the by-election.
JUST IN: former Post Office chairman, Henry Staunton, has just released a statement standing by his accusations over the #postoffice. He describes “an astonishing series of claims” made by the Business Secretary.
Gary and Mason having a punch up
Whoever they are
The country certainly needs it.
You are in good company on here: lots of fussy eaters on PB.
I'd say you are rather idolising "the enlightenment", which has its own problems - some irrationality and some confusion being two of them.
But now we are now not far off post-Enlightenment, and you may need to adjust your paradigm.
What sort of notifications could be annoying Rishi Sunak so much…🤔
https://x.com/UKLabour/status/1759671981392232818?s=20
Go in May and he could be sat on a beach earning ten per cent.
We just need some undercover journalists to discover he's secretly been smuggling Chinese pork and Euro-Cheese in and out of the country in some sort of weird VAT fraud to really seal the deal.
Miriam Cates is unlikely to hold her seat, otherwise she'd be an obvious pick. No price available for John Hayes - but he might be worth a look if he gets added. There's a tenner available for Danny Kruger at 59/1 on Betfair... hmm. Maybe?
I blame Sunak.
Dressing = Sarson's vinegar.
Seasoning = salt.
Let's just recall that I was the bloke with three types of balsamic in the cupboard. And nowt to sprinkle on the fish and chips.
Labour accused him of having been disciplined by the BBC and having invented material to feed his personal Islamophobia. The first was demonstrably not true and the second was not provable - but to to put it mildly, if one of your allegations is demonstrated false, it leaves you with something of a credibility gap in fighting a libel suit.
Another person who claimed Ware had invented material to harm Labour in 'Is Labour Anti-Semitic,' Labour blogger and activist Paddy French, had such a weak case that he didn't even bother to turn up to court to defend himself. (He later claimed the court was rigged against him. Not at all a person with issues.)
So just to be clear - our resident not at all a racist is talking bullshit.
I felt I'd been living a lie.
Admittedly, it doesn't help that they don't seem to understand their own boundary changes and so we're currently getting leaflets for two constituencies at once.
BTW Stilton on white sliced bread, nothing added except butter, is wonderful.
Multiple votes. More votes given to the wealthiest, the oldest, etc.
Why anyone would choose to eat that shite is another mystery to me.
For iPhones, the site below have the price every year for each model from 2007 to 2021, and an average price iPhone each year added up to £9133 by 2021, so probably ~£11-12000 by 2024. That's ignoring inflation and interest.
https://repairoutlet.co.uk/blogs/news/the-changing-costs-of-apple-iphones
$300.
Think about that for a second.
1 - The revenue comes from the advertiser, not the customer.
2 - The definition of a user sounds quite elastic.
Ad revenue in 2022 is quoted as $237.8bn, which at $300 average would imply 800 million "users".
https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/
I think the services I get from Google are probably worth that much to me.
January 9th would work really well