You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
Why don't you come off the fence about Keir and tell us what you really mean,
STOP THIS BULLYING
no need to shout, it was a joke, based on his pathological hatred of SKS.
I think he was joking too, but I thought your remark quite funny.
It's not pathological hatred: I just strongly dislike his politics, think people have simply forgotten what a Labour government is like, and I don't particularly like him as an individual either.
His refusal to speak to Rosie Duffield and her snubbing at his Kent campaign launch (despite being one of the nicest MPs in politics, and one of the key success stories there) being but one example.
I don't actually know how anyone could 'hate' SKS (*). He's so vanilla and boring he makes Major look lively and energetic. There's no reason to hate him, so far. But there's also little to go Yay! about either. He comes across as grey and boring.
Which might just be what the country needs atm after the least three. Having said that, May was fairly grey...
(*) Unless they know him and have a personal grudge because he once stole a Laughing Cow at morning break...
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
The reduction in pre school numbers is going to be the problem here - that 2% gross margin is highlighting to me different issues that you are choosing to ignore...
You can't ignore the impact of your policy, although you'd like to do so.
It's the difference between the school surviving a bad year, and not surviving at all.
A 20% price shock is significant and reshapes the market.
If you have a 2% margin - it only requires a family or 2 moving out of the area and there is a problem.
Basically all I'm seeing is a badly managed school blaming other people for their issues...
Yep absolutely. A lot of private schools, especially the smaller ones, have been close to the wire for a few years. In large part because this Conservative Gov’t screwed the economy as well as external factors such as Putin's war in Ukraine (which Biden and Boris partly greenlit but that’s another story).
Lifting VAT exemption may be the final nail for these small schools but it is only the final nail following many prior.
@LOS_Fisher NEW: Sunak’s pledge to reintroduce compulsory UK national service, including assigning up to 30,000 18-year-olds to the military, was rejected *this week* by one of *his own defence ministers*
Defence personnel minister Andrew Murrison warned of a hit to morale, headcount and resources if “potentially unwilling national service recruits” were introduced alongside Britain’s professional armed forces
Why don't you come off the fence about Keir and tell us what you really mean,
STOP THIS BULLYING
no need to shout, it was a joke, based on his pathological hatred of SKS.
I think he was joking too, but I thought your remark quite funny.
It's not pathological hatred: I just strongly dislike his politics, think people have simply forgotten what a Labour government is like, and I don't particularly like him as an individual either.
His refusal to speak to Rosie Duffield and her snubbing at his Kent campaign launch (despite being one of the nicest MPs in politics, and one of the key success stories there) being but one example.
I don't actually know how anyone could 'hate' SKS (*). He's so vanilla and boring he makes Major look lively and energetic. There's no reason to hate him, so far. But there's also little to go Yay! about either. He comes across as grey and boring.
Which might just be what the country needs atm after the least three. Having said that, May was fairly grey...
(*) Unless they know him and have a personal grudge because he once stole a Laughing Cow at morning break...
A sort-of summary of the Sunday Times piece today on him but it’s worth reading. He’s quite enigmatic.
That's not a wealth fund, that's is a centrised PFI scheme.
Wealth funds take excess capital, invest it in business all around the world to make a return and distribute some of the profits to people of the country. This is take bankers money and spend it on things the private sector wouldn't fund if it was a business and of course they will want a return for that investment. No wonder the bankers are keen.
Austerity Reeves is a bit of a thicko on economics
Yesterday she said in the Daily Mail today that:
Economic growth only comes from businesses: big, medium and small. Government's role is to give them the stability they need to invest and to remove the barriers to make it harder to do business. That's the model to grow the economy I believe in – and it's the only one that works.
I seriously doubt that Milton Friedman, in one of his most deluded moments, would have said anything so stupid.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
The problem with Corbyn is that he's never been on the right side of history; except when he opposed the Iraq War, Apartheid in South Africa, Poll Tax, supported miners strike, protested austerity, voted against tuition fees, stood up for Kurds/Palestinians, warned PFI would be an expensive disaster, warned against privatisation of water and rail would be a disaster.
Always wrong. Prsumably the good people of Islington North will realise the Private Health CEO is the way to go
Could you just give me a quick list of all the British politicians who were in favor of apartheid in South Africa? Just so I can understand how he stood alone against the consensus.
We now know the 2024-25 Premier League. Currently it contains 6 teams with stadiums in Conservative seats and 14 teams with stadia in Labour seats. Labour's targets are:
AFC Bournemouth, Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood MP, Majority of 8,806 (17.9%) Chelsea FC AND Fulham FC, Chelsea and Fulham, Greg Hands MP, Majority of 11,241 (24.0%) Ipswich Town FC, Ipswich, Tom Hunt MP, Majority of 5,479 (11.0%) Nottingham Forest FC, Rushcliffe, Ruth Edwards MP, Majority of 7,643 (12.6%) Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, Wolverhampton South West, Stuart Anderson MP, Majority of 1,661 (4.0%)
A real chance of a clean sweep before the season starts...
Inside Starmer’s plan to use private finance to boost Britain’s infrastructure
According to industry sources, the party has drawn up plans to increase private-sector financing and streamline the planning system for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs). I'll believe the latter part when I see it - it should be a given that really big stuff should not be able to be held up so much, even if the trade off is allowing more hurdles for smaller scale stuff at local level.
But private sector financing is a pretty broad description, haven't we had issues arising from that?
Its a total joke proven to be a total failure where heads the taxpayer loses and tails the private sector rakes it in with no real risk
By the way, I know I'm weeks behind the news agenda here, but is it OK for the Foreign Secretary to write a public letter to the PM attacking the PM's policy (that happens not to be within his remit)?
What happened to collective cabinet responsibility? What happened to using the channels that DC undoubtedly has to offer Sunak the dubious benefit of his advice behind closed doors? Is this not a flagrant breach of protocol and convention? Braverman was sacked for writing an unapproved newspaper article - that provoked melt-downs here, but it didn't call on the PM to reverse a planned policy. I've seen nothing about Dave's intervention, so is it just OK now?
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
Ah, we're into the anyone who opposes Starmer must be mad or bad phase, I see.
The problem with Corbyn is that he's never been on the right side of history; except when he opposed the Iraq War, Apartheid in South Africa, Poll Tax, supported miners strike, protested austerity, voted against tuition fees, stood up for Kurds/Palestinians, warned PFI would be an expensive disaster, warned against privatisation of water and rail would be a disaster.
Always wrong. Prsumably the good people of Islington North will realise the Private Health CEO is the way to go
Could you just give me a quick list of all the British politicians who were in favor of apartheid in South Africa? Just so I can understand how he stood alone against the consensus.
Being British politicians, they would have been in favour of it, not in favor of it.
I haven’t really paid attention to Schoolgate on here and I’m not going to start now, particularly as it seems to be getting very personal which isn’t good.
But generally I don’t see why private schools should be VAT exempt or benefit from charitable status as many (most) do.
They are businesses and if you wish to use their services you are fully entitled to do so. And pay VAT.
No, they are not businesses: they are charities and make no profit for anyone.
But then, you've admitted you haven't paid it any attention. As you see it it's a Labour policy and that means it must be defended.
The problem with Corbyn is that he's never been on the right side of history; except when he opposed the Iraq War, Apartheid in South Africa, Poll Tax, supported miners strike, protested austerity, voted against tuition fees, stood up for Kurds/Palestinians, warned PFI would be an expensive disaster, warned against privatisation of water and rail would be a disaster.
Always wrong. Prsumably the good people of Islington North will realise the Private Health CEO is the way to go
Could you just give me a quick list of all the British politicians who were in favor of apartheid in South Africa? Just so I can understand how he stood alone against the consensus.
Being British politicians, they would have been in favour of it, not in favor of it.
Margaret Thatcher considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist.
That's not a wealth fund, that's is a centrised PFI scheme.
Wealth funds take excess capital, invest it in business all around the world to make a return and distribute some of the profits to people of the country. This is take bankers money and spend it on things the private sector wouldn't fund if it was a business and of course they will want a return for that investment. No wonder the bankers are keen.
Austerity Reeves is a bit of a thicko on economics
Yesterday she said in the Daily Mail today that:
Economic growth only comes from businesses: big, medium and small. Government's role is to give them the stability they need to invest and to remove the barriers to make it harder to do business. That's the model to grow the economy I believe in – and it's the only one that works.
I seriously doubt that Milton Friedman, in one of his most deluded moments, would have said anything so stupid.
Erm. That’s basic good economics. She’s presumably pointing out that instability from Government is what businesses hate. You know, the kind of shenanigans meted out by Liz Truss.
You’re the first person I’ve ever heard describe her that way. Which doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It’s just, erm, ‘unusual.’ What are your qualifications in economics if I may ask? You know, that enable you to describe her as ‘a bit of a thicko on economics’? You have a postgrad degree in economics? A doctorate on the subject, perhaps? Please supply the links to your peer-reviewed publications on the topic.
For reference, Reeves went to New College Oxford and the London School of Economics before working at the Bank of England and HBOS. Economists I’ve heard rate her very highly.
Inside Starmer’s plan to use private finance to boost Britain’s infrastructure
According to industry sources, the party has drawn up plans to increase private-sector financing and streamline the planning system for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs). I'll believe the latter part when I see it - it should be a given that really big stuff should not be able to be held up so much, even if the trade off is allowing more hurdles for smaller scale stuff at local level.
But private sector financing is a pretty broad description, haven't we had issues arising from that?
Its a total joke proven to be a total failure where heads the taxpayer loses and tails the private sector rakes it in with no real risk
Not always. The financial risk of cost overruns at Hinkley Point C is, under the contract, covered by EDF themselves.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
Ah, we're into the anyone who opposes Starmer must be mad or bad phase, I see.
Nope, it's just your apoplectic rage that makes you appear insane. Starmer will be no great shakes, but he'll be a thousand times better than the current clown show.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
That's not a wealth fund, that's is a centrised PFI scheme.
Wealth funds take excess capital, invest it in business all around the world to make a return and distribute some of the profits to people of the country. This is take bankers money and spend it on things the private sector wouldn't fund if it was a business and of course they will want a return for that investment. No wonder the bankers are keen.
Though the national debt is essentially funded by the markets, so is also not entirely dissimilar to a very large private finance scheme.
The problem with Corbyn is that he's never been on the right side of history; except when he opposed the Iraq War, Apartheid in South Africa, Poll Tax, supported miners strike, protested austerity, voted against tuition fees, stood up for Kurds/Palestinians, warned PFI would be an expensive disaster, warned against privatisation of water and rail would be a disaster.
Always wrong. Prsumably the good people of Islington North will realise the Private Health CEO is the way to go
Could you just give me a quick list of all the British politicians who were in favor of apartheid in South Africa? Just so I can understand how he stood alone against the consensus.
Being British politicians, they would have been in favour of it, not in favor of it.
I see what you did there.
The world is not going to end if we stop putting a “u” in words ending “our”. Worse things have happened to languages.
I haven’t really paid attention to Schoolgate on here and I’m not going to start now, particularly as it seems to be getting very personal which isn’t good.
But generally I don’t see why private schools should be VAT exempt or benefit from charitable status as many (most) do.
They are businesses and if you wish to use their services you are fully entitled to do so. And pay VAT.
No, they are not businesses: they are charities and make no profit for anyone.
But then, you've admitted you haven't paid it any attention. As you see it it's a Labour policy and that means it must be defended.
No you’re confused.
I didn’t say I haven’t paid ‘any’ attention to the VAT on schools policy. Nor indeed to education generally.
I said I haven’t paid attention to your particular situation and nor do I intend to.
Inside Starmer’s plan to use private finance to boost Britain’s infrastructure
According to industry sources, the party has drawn up plans to increase private-sector financing and streamline the planning system for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs). I'll believe the latter part when I see it - it should be a given that really big stuff should not be able to be held up so much, even if the trade off is allowing more hurdles for smaller scale stuff at local level.
But private sector financing is a pretty broad description, haven't we had issues arising from that?
Its a total joke proven to be a total failure where heads the taxpayer loses and tails the private sector rakes it in with no real risk
Not always. The financial risk of cost overruns at Hinkley Point C is, under the contract, covered by EDF themselves.
While that may be true, EDF is completely insulated against future changes in the price of electricity. Indeed, it even has an inflation escalator in there.
I still find the Corbyn years a little inexplicable. I get that people were looking for something different and Corbyn definitely offered that, and he had a kind of unassuming manner which I can see being appealing, but the level of fervour from his supporters was astonishing when he was just saying the same things he'd been saying since the 1980s (which was part of his pitch). It's not as though what he was offering was new, it had been offered before by others in the party.
As I've said a part of me would like to see him win for the humour value, but if he loses it's a bit of a grubby end, kicked out of the party he was part of his whole life and without even much following within it as the MPs will be so grateful to Starmer for returning them to power.
In 2015 Labour lost despite bending over backwards to appease the Tory press and not scare the delicate little flowers of Middle England with any traces of 'class war' or 'socialism'. It stung very badly and the reaction was more emotional than rational:
"Ok, so we mind our Ps and Qs, pull our punches, hide what we think, grovel to the Murdochs of this world, pander to social conservatives and apolitical apathetics, compromise with privilege and vested interests, and after all of that we get kicked in the head and the Tories win again. Well fuck this for a game of soldiers. Let's grow a pair and live our best authentic life. The papers can say what they like. People can vote for us or not. We'll have our self-respect."
That's how it was in the party. That's how it felt. That's why Jez happened.
That's definitely true - though it was a mistaken reaction - Miliband hardly bent over backwards to appease the Tory press, he and Balls just desperately tried to split the difference when public opinion still thought Lab had overspent in government.
You'd also add anger at Iraq (and a lack of appreciation as to how someone like Corbyn's opposition to it differs from, say Robin Cook's), and the far left being marginalised so long that the massive problems with their politics were no longer appreciated by a lot of people.
You had to be quite a close watcher of left-wing politics to be aware of the details of Corbyn and his fellow travellers' views and why they really didn't meet the 'kinder, gentler' billing.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Government has been chaotic, so it's easy to pin any chaos in the country onto that. Fairly or not. It's not policies that'll fix it, it'll be a nice long stretch in opposition where they can AGREE on what kind of party they really are.
That's not a wealth fund, that's is a centrised PFI scheme.
Wealth funds take excess capital, invest it in business all around the world to make a return and distribute some of the profits to people of the country. This is take bankers money and spend it on things the private sector wouldn't fund if it was a business and of course they will want a return for that investment. No wonder the bankers are keen.
Though the national debt is essentially funded by the markets, so is also not entirely dissimilar to a very large private finance scheme.
PFI in theory isn't awful. It is should be equivalent of government taking out a mortgage and the private sector take the risk on overruns etc.
The problem is governemts / civil servants / local authorities are terrible at negotiating the contracts and get absolutely bent over and screwed like a new artist signing for a big record label.
My bigger issue is the proposal is nothing like Norway's wealth fund.
I hope today is not indicative of the next 5.5. weeks on here or it’s going to become very tedious.
Please can the partisan campaigners tone it down and be a bit less personal so the rest of us can get on with using our heads, or occasionally hearts, to make well-informed bets?*
* Not a case of pot, kettle, black. I’m not a Labour stooge and envisage a lot of mistakes ahead. I’m also not massively energised by Keir Starmer to be honest.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (too many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
Hang on.
That wasn't Truss's remedy. Truss's remedy was - genuinely - a return to the 1970s. I always thought that people like Corbyn should have been overjoyed at her prospectus. More spending, less taxes, growth will pay for itself!
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Actually both. The Tories were obsessed with Brexit, and their desire for a hard, damaging Brexit, keeping themselves busy while people could see that everything else was going to pot. Johnson offered to get it done, and people fell for it thinking that just maybe the Tories might then concentrate on the shedload of problems our benighted country is facing. But they haven’t, not then, and not now.
We now know the 2024-25 Premier League. Currently it contains 6 teams with stadiums in Conservative seats and 14 teams with stadia in Labour seats. Labour's targets are:
AFC Bournemouth, Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood MP, Majority of 8,806 (17.9%) Chelsea FC AND Fulham FC, Chelsea and Fulham, Greg Hands MP, Majority of 11,241 (24.0%) Ipswich Town FC, Ipswich, Tom Hunt MP, Majority of 5,479 (11.0%) Nottingham Forest FC, Rushcliffe, Ruth Edwards MP, Majority of 7,643 (12.6%) Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, Wolverhampton South West, Stuart Anderson MP, Majority of 1,661 (4.0%)
A real chance of a clean sweep before the season starts...
If there's a cleansweep, how far down the football pyramid will you have to go to get to a Tory held stadium? Wycombe? Bromley?
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (too many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
Hang on.
That wasn't Truss's remedy. Truss's remedy was - genuinely - a return to the 1970s. I always thought that people like Corbyn should have been overjoyed at her prospectus. More spending, less taxes, growth will pay for itself!
I was referring to the idea that all the Tories need is to finally turn away from being so lefty. It's quite silly when you think of it, but in any case ignore the real reasons for present distress, which aren't policy related in my view.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
Ah, we're into the anyone who opposes Starmer must be mad or bad phase, I see.
Nope, it's just your apoplectic rage that makes you appear insane. Starmer will be no great shakes, but he'll be a thousand times better than the current clown show.
What rage I have is down to the very real and personal impact his policies are already having on me and my family.
The rest of your post is simply projection, and a failure of imagination.
You're not immune either and insidious little posts like this are real keepers that I'll enjoy rolling out and reminding you of when he comes for you.
I still find the Corbyn years a little inexplicable. I get that people were looking for something different and Corbyn definitely offered that, and he had a kind of unassuming manner which I can see being appealing, but the level of fervour from his supporters was astonishing when he was just saying the same things he'd been saying since the 1980s (which was part of his pitch). It's not as though what he was offering was new, it had been offered before by others in the party.
As I've said a part of me would like to see him win for the humour value, but if he loses it's a bit of a grubby end, kicked out of the party he was part of his whole life and without even much following within it as the MPs will be so grateful to Starmer for returning them to power.
In 2015 Labour lost despite bending over backwards to appease the Tory press and not scare the delicate little flowers of Middle England with any traces of 'class war' or 'socialism'. It stung very badly and the reaction was more emotional than rational:
"Ok, so we mind our Ps and Qs, pull our punches, hide what we think, grovel to the Murdochs of this world, pander to social conservatives and apolitical apathetics, compromise with privilege and vested interests, and after all of that we get kicked in the head and the Tories win again. Well fuck this for a game of soldiers. Let's grow a pair and live our best authentic life. The papers can say what they like. People can vote for us or not. We'll have our self-respect."
That's how it was in the party. That's how it felt. That's why Jez happened.
One of the reasons Labour ‘lost’ in 2015, despite gaining a seat or two from the Tories was that Cameron et al went hard after the Coalition partners who had kept them in power for five years. The biggest ‘winners’ against Labour were of course the SNP. But you wouldn’t expect the Conservatives to be grateful to the SNP,
I haven’t really paid attention to Schoolgate on here and I’m not going to start now, particularly as it seems to be getting very personal which isn’t good.
But generally I don’t see why private schools should be VAT exempt or benefit from charitable status as many (most) do.
They are businesses and if you wish to use their services you are fully entitled to do so. And pay VAT.
No, they are not businesses: they are charities and make no profit for anyone.
But then, you've admitted you haven't paid it any attention. As you see it it's a Labour policy and that means it must be defended.
No you’re confused.
I didn’t say I haven’t paid ‘any’ attention to the VAT on schools policy. Nor indeed to education generally.
I said I haven’t paid attention to your particular situation and nor do I intend to.
The problem with Corbyn is that he's never been on the right side of history; except when he opposed the Iraq War, Apartheid in South Africa, Poll Tax, supported miners strike, protested austerity, voted against tuition fees, stood up for Kurds/Palestinians, warned PFI would be an expensive disaster, warned against privatisation of water and rail would be a disaster.
Always wrong. Prsumably the good people of Islington North will realise the Private Health CEO is the way to go
Could you just give me a quick list of all the British politicians who were in favor of apartheid in South Africa? Just so I can understand how he stood alone against the consensus.
Being British politicians, they would have been in favour of it, not in favor of it.
I see what you did there.
The world is not going to end if we stop putting a “u” in words ending “our”. Worse things have happened to languages.
We're not going to stop, but I am aware that RCS lives and works in the USA, so it was a lighthearted dig. Might I suggest a cup of tea or a walk in the garden? Or perhaps you'd prefer a can of soda and a walk in the yard?
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Actually both. The Tories were obsessed with Brexit, and their desire for a hard, damaging Brexit, keeping themselves busy while people could see that everything else was going to pot. Johnson offered to get it done, and people fell for it thinking that just maybe the Tories might then concentrate on the shedload of problems our benighted country is facing. But they haven’t, not then, and not now.
Yeah, ok, Brexit IS a policy area I would point to as providing a political headwind. It's turned around from a tailwind. Boris harnessed it effectively in 2019, but it's turned around. And, of course, it was Brexit that was another source of the internal divisions. But that's back to party management again.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Actually both. The Tories were obsessed with Brexit, and their desire for a hard, damaging Brexit, keeping themselves busy while people could see that everything else was going to pot. Johnson offered to get it done, and people fell for it thinking that just maybe the Tories might then concentrate on the shedload of problems our benighted country is facing. But they haven’t, not then, and not now.
I think the cronyism and sweetheart deals for mates has hit the Tory reputation too.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
He's upset about a child's school closing - as I hope you would be too, if it happened to one of your kids' schools (*). It's an upsetting thing to have happen, and the reaction on here has been tantamount to "You're lying!!!"
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (too many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
Hang on.
That wasn't Truss's remedy. Truss's remedy was - genuinely - a return to the 1970s. I always thought that people like Corbyn should have been overjoyed at her prospectus. More spending, less taxes, growth will pay for itself!
I must have missed your fulminations against Rishi Sunak's uncosted furlough scheme. Perhaps the time difference.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (too many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
Hang on.
That wasn't Truss's remedy. Truss's remedy was - genuinely - a return to the 1970s. I always thought that people like Corbyn should have been overjoyed at her prospectus. More spending, less taxes, growth will pay for itself!
Were you alive in the 70s RCS? I don't remember cutting the top rate of tax to 40% being high on the agenda. Truss's shambles owes nothing to the 70s, it was a neolib wankfest gone mad.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
He's upset about a child's school closing - as I hope you would be too, if it happened to one of your kids' schools (*). It's an upsetting thing to have happen, and the reaction on here has been tantamount to "You're lying!!!"
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
Have a little compassion for someone who's upset.
(*) Assuming you have some.
No the reaction on here is that the economics were screaming this school is on its last legs financially - but Labour’s VAT policy is a lovely excuse that is being used because it sounds better than the economics no longer stack up
We now know the 2024-25 Premier League. Currently it contains 6 teams with stadiums in Conservative seats and 14 teams with stadia in Labour seats. Labour's targets are:
AFC Bournemouth, Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood MP, Majority of 8,806 (17.9%) Chelsea FC AND Fulham FC, Chelsea and Fulham, Greg Hands MP, Majority of 11,241 (24.0%) Ipswich Town FC, Ipswich, Tom Hunt MP, Majority of 5,479 (11.0%) Nottingham Forest FC, Rushcliffe, Ruth Edwards MP, Majority of 7,643 (12.6%) Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, Wolverhampton South West, Stuart Anderson MP, Majority of 1,661 (4.0%)
A real chance of a clean sweep before the season starts...
If there's a cleansweep, how far down the football pyramid will you have to go to get to a Tory held stadium? Wycombe? Bromley?
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Actually both. The Tories were obsessed with Brexit, and their desire for a hard, damaging Brexit, keeping themselves busy while people could see that everything else was going to pot. Johnson offered to get it done, and people fell for it thinking that just maybe the Tories might then concentrate on the shedload of problems our benighted country is facing. But they haven’t, not then, and not now.
I think the cronyism and sweetheart deals for mates has hit the Tory reputation too.
People don't like being ripped off.
"Hi Rishi, it's Michelle from Mone Military Uniforms."
We now know the 2024-25 Premier League. Currently it contains 6 teams with stadiums in Conservative seats and 14 teams with stadia in Labour seats. Labour's targets are:
AFC Bournemouth, Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood MP, Majority of 8,806 (17.9%) Chelsea FC AND Fulham FC, Chelsea and Fulham, Greg Hands MP, Majority of 11,241 (24.0%) Ipswich Town FC, Ipswich, Tom Hunt MP, Majority of 5,479 (11.0%) Nottingham Forest FC, Rushcliffe, Ruth Edwards MP, Majority of 7,643 (12.6%) Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, Wolverhampton South West, Stuart Anderson MP, Majority of 1,661 (4.0%)
A real chance of a clean sweep before the season starts...
If there's a cleansweep, how far down the football pyramid will you have to go to get to a Tory held stadium? Wycombe? Bromley?
Mansfield?
That would be some realignment, Labour winning Chelsea & Fulham but not claiming Mansfield.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
He's upset about a child's school closing - as I hope you would be too, if it happened to one of your kids' schools (*). It's an upsetting thing to have happen, and the reaction on here has been tantamount to "You're lying!!!"
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
Have a little compassion for someone who's upset.
(*) Assuming you have some.
No the reaction on here is that the economics were screaming this school is on its last legs financially - but Labour’s VAT policy is a lovely excuse that is being used because it sounds better than the economics no longer stack up
As stated before, I disagree. The scenario he explained does make sense (whether it's right or not is a different matter..). The prospect of the tax was the straw that broke the camel's back. Yes, the school was probably struggling - but it's perfectly feasible for the fear of this to (say) have stopped some parents from enrolling their kids for the next academic year.
Will you be saying this about every school that closes if Labour bring in this policy?
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
He's upset about a child's school closing - as I hope you would be too, if it happened to one of your kids' schools (*). It's an upsetting thing to have happen, and the reaction on here has been tantamount to "You're lying!!!"
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
Have a little compassion for someone who's upset.
(*) Assuming you have some.
No the reaction on here is that the economics were screaming this school is on its last legs financially - but Labour’s VAT policy is a lovely excuse that is being used because it sounds better than the economics no longer stack up
So you think that a 20% increase will have no effect on enrollment? Of course people are going to be put off, and have already been put off.
Can’t see it happening today. Should have started half an hour ago, but there’s still Biblical rain and they stopped letting the crowd in.
That’s the single largest one-day annual ticketed crowd anywhere in the world, around 400,000 people who are going to be rather disappointed if told to come back tomorrow!
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Ok, so you, not known for your right-wing sympathies, agree fundamentally with Tory policies over the past 14 years, just that they were doing it all in a very annoying ill-disciplined Toryish way. Do we need more evidence that few actual Tory policies have been pursued over the era, or shall we stop there?
The problem with Corbyn is that he's never been on the right side of history; except when he opposed the Iraq War, Apartheid in South Africa, Poll Tax, supported miners strike, protested austerity, voted against tuition fees, stood up for Kurds/Palestinians, warned PFI would be an expensive disaster, warned against privatisation of water and rail would be a disaster.
Always wrong. Prsumably the good people of Islington North will realise the Private Health CEO is the way to go
Could you just give me a quick list of all the British politicians who were in favor of apartheid in South Africa? Just so I can understand how he stood alone against the consensus.
Being British politicians, they would have been in favour of it, not in favor of it.
I see what you did there.
The world is not going to end if we stop putting a “u” in words ending “our”. Worse things have happened to languages.
We're not going to stop, but I am aware that RCS lives and works in the USA, so it was a lighthearted dig. Might I suggest a cup of tea or a walk in the garden? Or perhaps you'd prefer a can of soda and a walk in the yard?
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
The pushback I'm getting is because absolutely no-one wants to hear anything negative about Keir Starmer and our prospective new Labour government.
The only pushback you’ve so far listed is that the private school which was likely to be closing soon is blaming Labour’s VAT change which won’t even be implemented to 2025/6/6
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
He's upset about a child's school closing - as I hope you would be too, if it happened to one of your kids' schools (*). It's an upsetting thing to have happen, and the reaction on here has been tantamount to "You're lying!!!"
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
Have a little compassion for someone who's upset.
(*) Assuming you have some.
No the reaction on here is that the economics were screaming this school is on its last legs financially - but Labour’s VAT policy is a lovely excuse that is being used because it sounds better than the economics no longer stack up
So you think that a 20% increase will have no effect on enrollment? Of course people are going to be put off, and have already been put off.
Cant they cancel their Netflix subscription and lay off the Avocados?
The problem with Corbyn is that he's never been on the right side of history; except when he opposed the Iraq War, Apartheid in South Africa, Poll Tax, supported miners strike, protested austerity, voted against tuition fees, stood up for Kurds/Palestinians, warned PFI would be an expensive disaster, warned against privatisation of water and rail would be a disaster.
Always wrong. Prsumably the good people of Islington North will realise the Private Health CEO is the way to go
Could you just give me a quick list of all the British politicians who were in favor of apartheid in South Africa? Just so I can understand how he stood alone against the consensus.
Being British politicians, they would have been in favour of it, not in favor of it.
I see what you did there.
The world is not going to end if we stop putting a “u” in words ending “our”. Worse things have happened to languages.
The problem with Corbyn is that he's never been on the right side of history; except when he opposed the Iraq War, Apartheid in South Africa, Poll Tax, supported miners strike, protested austerity, voted against tuition fees, stood up for Kurds/Palestinians, warned PFI would be an expensive disaster, warned against privatisation of water and rail would be a disaster.
Always wrong. Prsumably the good people of Islington North will realise the Private Health CEO is the way to go
Could you just give me a quick list of all the British politicians who were in favor of apartheid in South Africa? Just so I can understand how he stood alone against the consensus.
Being British politicians, they would have been in favour of it, not in favor of it.
I see what you did there.
The world is not going to end if we stop putting a “u” in words ending “our”. Worse things have happened to languages.
I’d fight pretty hard for sulphur rather than sulfur. And don’t get me started on aluminium.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
He's upset about a child's school closing - as I hope you would be too, if it happened to one of your kids' schools (*). It's an upsetting thing to have happen, and the reaction on here has been tantamount to "You're lying!!!"
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
Have a little compassion for someone who's upset.
(*) Assuming you have some.
No the reaction on here is that the economics were screaming this school is on its last legs financially - but Labour’s VAT policy is a lovely excuse that is being used because it sounds better than the economics no longer stack up
So you think that a 20% increase will have no effect on enrollment? Of course people are going to be put off, and have already been put off.
Nope I think the school was closing and have found an excuse which can be spun into something that isn’t “sorry it’s our fault but”.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
He's upset about a child's school closing - as I hope you would be too, if it happened to one of your kids' schools (*). It's an upsetting thing to have happen, and the reaction on here has been tantamount to "You're lying!!!"
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
Have a little compassion for someone who's upset.
(*) Assuming you have some.
No the reaction on here is that the economics were screaming this school is on its last legs financially - but Labour’s VAT policy is a lovely excuse that is being used because it sounds better than the economics no longer stack up
So, just so I fully understand your position here, you're saying that in a market increasing all prices by 20% all at once will have no impact on consumer behaviour and institutional viability?
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
He's upset about a child's school closing - as I hope you would be too, if it happened to one of your kids' schools (*). It's an upsetting thing to have happen, and the reaction on here has been tantamount to "You're lying!!!"
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
Have a little compassion for someone who's upset.
(*) Assuming you have some.
I don't really want to comment on Casino's position individually (other than to express sympathy for what must be a right pain for his family).
I'm with @malcolmg - this is a place where disagreements are sometimes rambunctious and that's good.
But (speaking as someone who spends their weekdays with teenagers) compassion for someone who has upset is very different from excusing someone who lashes out at others when they're upset. The latter perpetuates a problem, the former can end it.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
The pushback I'm getting is because absolutely no-one wants to hear anything negative about Keir Starmer and our prospective new Labour government.
The only pushback you’ve so far listed is that the private school which was likely to be closing soon is blaming Labour’s VAT change which won’t even be implemented to 2025/6/6
(Sighs theatrically).
If you were a parent, wanting the best for your kids. you might want to send them to a good private school. You might not be rich, and might have to scrimp and save to send them. Knowing that there might be a large increase in fees ahead might stop you sending them - after all, no-one wants to swap their kids' schools unnecessarily.
A 20% increase in fees might make the difference between sending a kid to the school or not - and it may only take a few parents not sending their kids to push the school to the edge.
So it may be the *fear* of the tax, both by the parents and the school, that has caused this.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
Ah, we're into the anyone who opposes Starmer must be mad or bad phase, I see.
Nope, it's just your apoplectic rage that makes you appear insane. Starmer will be no great shakes, but he'll be a thousand times better than the current clown show.
What rage I have is down to the very real and personal impact his policies are already having on me and my family.
The rest of your post is simply projection, and a failure of imagination.
You're not immune either and insidious little posts like this are real keepers that I'll enjoy rolling out and reminding you of when he comes for you.
The problem with Corbyn is that he's never been on the right side of history; except when he opposed the Iraq War, Apartheid in South Africa, Poll Tax, supported miners strike, protested austerity, voted against tuition fees, stood up for Kurds/Palestinians, warned PFI would be an expensive disaster, warned against privatisation of water and rail would be a disaster.
Always wrong. Prsumably the good people of Islington North will realise the Private Health CEO is the way to go
Could you just give me a quick list of all the British politicians who were in favor of apartheid in South Africa? Just so I can understand how he stood alone against the consensus.
Being British politicians, they would have been in favour of it, not in favor of it.
I see what you did there.
The world is not going to end if we stop putting a “u” in words ending “our”. Worse things have happened to languages.
The problem with Corbyn is that he's never been on the right side of history; except when he opposed the Iraq War, Apartheid in South Africa, Poll Tax, supported miners strike, protested austerity, voted against tuition fees, stood up for Kurds/Palestinians, warned PFI would be an expensive disaster, warned against privatisation of water and rail would be a disaster.
Always wrong. Prsumably the good people of Islington North will realise the Private Health CEO is the way to go
Could you just give me a quick list of all the British politicians who were in favor of apartheid in South Africa? Just so I can understand how he stood alone against the consensus.
Being British politicians, they would have been in favour of it, not in favor of it.
I see what you did there.
The world is not going to end if we stop putting a “u” in words ending “our”. Worse things have happened to languages.
I’d fight pretty hard for sulphur rather than sulfur. And don’t get me started on aluminium.
IUPAC ruled on sulfur and aluminium which was fair enough but then the Americans reneged on the deal so sod them I'm with you in the barricades for sulphur.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Ok, so you, not known for your right-wing sympathies, agree fundamentally with Tory policies over the past 14 years, just that they were doing it all in a very annoying ill-disciplined Toryish way. Do we need more evidence that few actual Tory policies have been pursued over the era, or shall we stop there?
A lot of this isn't logical or rational: it's just anger at behaviour.
Which is why Labour could so easily confuse all the votes for them as a real mandate for their policy platform, whatever that turns out to be.
That's not a wealth fund, that's is a centrised PFI scheme.
Wealth funds take excess capital, invest it in business all around the world to make a return and distribute some of the profits to people of the country. This is take bankers money and spend it on things the private sector wouldn't fund if it was a business and of course they will want a return for that investment. No wonder the bankers are keen.
How would that be any cheaper than simply issuing more government debt?
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
He's upset about a child's school closing - as I hope you would be too, if it happened to one of your kids' schools (*). It's an upsetting thing to have happen, and the reaction on here has been tantamount to "You're lying!!!"
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
Have a little compassion for someone who's upset.
(*) Assuming you have some.
No the reaction on here is that the economics were screaming this school is on its last legs financially - but Labour’s VAT policy is a lovely excuse that is being used because it sounds better than the economics no longer stack up
So, just so I fully understand your position here, you're saying that in a market increasing all prices by 20% all at once will have no impact on consumer behaviour and institutional viability?
No I’m saying the school was closing anyway (sorry but everything says that was the case).
Vat is completely irrelevant in your case but will be over the next couple of years…
The problem with Corbyn is that he's never been on the right side of history; except when he opposed the Iraq War, Apartheid in South Africa, Poll Tax, supported miners strike, protested austerity, voted against tuition fees, stood up for Kurds/Palestinians, warned PFI would be an expensive disaster, warned against privatisation of water and rail would be a disaster.
Always wrong. Prsumably the good people of Islington North will realise the Private Health CEO is the way to go
Could you just give me a quick list of all the British politicians who were in favor of apartheid in South Africa? Just so I can understand how he stood alone against the consensus.
Being British politicians, they would have been in favour of it, not in favor of it.
I see what you did there.
The world is not going to end if we stop putting a “u” in words ending “our”. Worse things have happened to languages.
We're not going to stop, but I am aware that RCS lives and works in the USA, so it was a lighthearted dig. Might I suggest a cup of tea or a walk in the garden? Or perhaps you'd prefer a can of soda and a walk in the yard?
Fair. I need to chill. Apologies
I haven’t followed this but well played you sir. Takes a lot to have the grace, decency, and good nature to post that. Applause.
Things can get heated, especially during an election campaign and if you have a vested interest in something as CR does with his children it seems. It’s also very easy to get riled, or allow oneself to, and quickly things escalate out of all proportion.
We all need to chill sometimes.
Stepping back and having a walk and / or a cuppa is a great idea.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
The pushback I'm getting is because absolutely no-one wants to hear anything negative about Keir Starmer and our prospective new Labour government.
The only pushback you’ve so far listed is that the private school which was likely to be closing soon is blaming Labour’s VAT change which won’t even be implemented to 2025/6/6
(Sighs theatrically).
If you were a parent, wanting the best for your kids. you might want to send them to a good private school. You might not be rich, and might have to scrimp and save to send them. Knowing that there might be a large increase in fees ahead might stop you sending them - after all, no-one wants to swap their kids' schools unnecessarily.
A 20% increase in fees might make the difference between sending a kid to the school or not - and it may only take a few parents not sending their kids to push the school to the edge.
So it may be the *fear* of the tax, both by the parents and the school, that has caused this.
Or it may well be them being financially squeezed by the end of the fix on their mortgages.
There are many reasons that the financial viability of this school is affected by changes in the cost of living.
Fortunately for CR Alton is a pleasant market town in one of the most prosperous parts of the country with several state schools rated very highly. Its not exactly an inner city sink school area.
It's always sad when kids have to shift schools for no fault of their own, but also sad that universities go bust because of sudden changes to rules on visas. Governments shift policy all the time.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (too many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
Hang on.
That wasn't Truss's remedy. Truss's remedy was - genuinely - a return to the 1970s. I always thought that people like Corbyn should have been overjoyed at her prospectus. More spending, less taxes, growth will pay for itself!
I was referring to the idea that all the Tories need is to finally turn away from being so lefty. It's quite silly when you think of it, but in any case ignore the real reasons for present distress, which aren't policy related in my view.
Individual Tories can be as left wing as they like, I just don't see why they're in the Tory Party, which has a right wing membership, supporter base, and public policy platform. In the cause of public confidence in democracy, surely it would be better to be elected to Labour or the Lib Dems, rather than be elected as Tories and behave and vote as Lib Dems once elected. Or if they're instinctively left wing but don't like getting too close to actual working class people, why not form a social democracy party, and rally people to the cause of dull competence? It is the parasitical nature of this group within the Tory Party that's the root of it's problems - let the Tory Party succeed or fail because on its own policies, not because it was performatively right wing but a statist mess in practice.
That's not a wealth fund, that's is a centrised PFI scheme.
Wealth funds take excess capital, invest it in business all around the world to make a return and distribute some of the profits to people of the country. This is take bankers money and spend it on things the private sector wouldn't fund if it was a business and of course they will want a return for that investment. No wonder the bankers are keen.
How would that be any cheaper than simply issuing more government debt?
The same reason Gordon Brown got addicted to PFI-ing everything. You can treat it as non-government debt and so its off the books for headline figures.
Its been spun as an investment fund. We haven't seen all the details, but there is no way the bankers are going to lump in mega billions into such a fund, that is dedicated to funding stuff the private sector won't, without being guaranteed very favourable return on that initial money.
As I say that isn't how Norway or those big Middle Eastern ones work. They ring fence the tax revenue from oil / gas, go out and invest in private businesses, to make a return over long term, which they socialise the returns by spending the profits on the people of the country.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Ok, so you, not known for your right-wing sympathies, agree fundamentally with Tory policies over the past 14 years, just that they were doing it all in a very annoying ill-disciplined Toryish way. Do we need more evidence that few actual Tory policies have been pursued over the era, or shall we stop there?
Mmmm, I'm known for my visceral hatred of this Conservative Party, but I'm not averse to the kinds of policies some Tories are in favour of. I like the free market. Capitalism works. I was defending these liberal ideas on the previous thread, 10:15am if you give a shit. My policy standpoint is compatible with some schools of conservatism. But not THIS Conservative Party. The Tories used to be quite good at this. But I hate their nativist spasm in recent years. That's why I hate this Conservative Party. But it's not my feelings we're talking about, really. It's about why I think the public have turned on them. And it's not the same reasons I personally would give. I wish people did care more about robustly defending internationalist, liberal principles.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
He's upset about a child's school closing - as I hope you would be too, if it happened to one of your kids' schools (*). It's an upsetting thing to have happen, and the reaction on here has been tantamount to "You're lying!!!"
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
Have a little compassion for someone who's upset.
(*) Assuming you have some.
I don't really want to comment on Casino's position individually (other than to express sympathy for what must be a right pain for his family).
I'm with @malcolmg - this is a place where disagreements are sometimes rambunctious and that's good.
But (speaking as someone who spends their weekdays with teenagers) compassion for someone who has upset is very different from excusing someone who lashes out at others when they're upset. The latter perpetuates a problem, the former can end it.
I agree. However: IMV the lashing out occurred *after* people essentially accused CR of being untruthful.
As it happens, I have an anecdote. My son was recently quite ill. When he was released from hospital, I wrote a post stating how good the NHS had been. For the next few days, I was tired, concerned and emotional. A while later, I felt a certain poster was being deliberately cruel to me. I decided not to respond.
A few days later, with my son improving, I read back the thread and realised my reaction had been out of order, and I was glad I ignored the post and had not responded.
So there are perhaps three lessons: 1) Remember that getting angry might be *your* problem, not the person you are getting angry towards; 2) If you are tired, emotional or upset, perhaps don't post - and especially don't argue. It won't help. 3) You may not know what someone on t'Internet has going on in their personal lives. Try to be kind, and detect the signs that someone is genuinely stressed or upset.
(And yes, I fail at these at times as well. Too often, sadly...)
They may pretend otherwise to be shielded under charitable status but they are very, very, definitely run as businesses.
In that they are run in the interests of shareholders and distribute profits to them?
Yep. They have to operate as profit-making organisations and so have a very keen regard for performance. Their customers require it: ‘customers' is probably more appropriate than shareholders or stakeholders. The distribution is more through re-investment so that they can continue to attract customers over other competitors.
It’s increasingly global too. Look at the way some of the UK ones have been investing in overseas markets.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Ok, so you, not known for your right-wing sympathies, agree fundamentally with Tory policies over the past 14 years, just that they were doing it all in a very annoying ill-disciplined Toryish way. Do we need more evidence that few actual Tory policies have been pursued over the era, or shall we stop there?
A lot of this isn't logical or rational: it's just anger at behaviour.
Which is why Labour could so easily confuse all the votes for them as a real mandate for their policy platform, whatever that turns out to be.
I don't agree with Farooq's verdict on why the Tories are unpopular. Politics is a bread and butter issue. Peoples' standards of living have dropped and the Tories have done SFA about it, nor do they promise to do so. Yes, the issues he mentions haven't helped, but they're side issues. Labour aren't promising much better on col, so they're not popular either.
@LOS_Fisher NEW: Sunak’s pledge to reintroduce compulsory UK national service, including assigning up to 30,000 18-year-olds to the military, was rejected *this week* by one of *his own defence ministers*
Defence personnel minister Andrew Murrison warned of a hit to morale, headcount and resources if “potentially unwilling national service recruits” were introduced alongside Britain’s professional armed forces
We now know the 2024-25 Premier League. Currently it contains 6 teams with stadiums in Conservative seats and 14 teams with stadia in Labour seats. Labour's targets are:
AFC Bournemouth, Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood MP, Majority of 8,806 (17.9%) Chelsea FC AND Fulham FC, Chelsea and Fulham, Greg Hands MP, Majority of 11,241 (24.0%) Ipswich Town FC, Ipswich, Tom Hunt MP, Majority of 5,479 (11.0%) Nottingham Forest FC, Rushcliffe, Ruth Edwards MP, Majority of 7,643 (12.6%) Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, Wolverhampton South West, Stuart Anderson MP, Majority of 1,661 (4.0%)
A real chance of a clean sweep before the season starts...
If there's a cleansweep, how far down the football pyramid will you have to go to get to a Tory held stadium? Wycombe? Bromley?
I haven’t really paid attention to Schoolgate on here and I’m not going to start now, particularly as it seems to be getting very personal which isn’t good.
But generally I don’t see why private schools should be VAT exempt or benefit from charitable status as many (most) do.
They are businesses and if you wish to use their services you are fully entitled to do so. And pay VAT.
No, they are not businesses: they are charities and make no profit for anyone.
But then, you've admitted you haven't paid it any attention. As you see it it's a Labour policy and that means it must be defended.
In the ordinary understanding people have of 'charity' a school could only be one if its admissions policy was unrelated to ability to pay. I have no problem with independent schools at all, but many of them (not all) are no more charities than Harrods.
Another bit of a giveaway is that they tend to pay teachers above rather than below the market rate.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Ok, so you, not known for your right-wing sympathies, agree fundamentally with Tory policies over the past 14 years, just that they were doing it all in a very annoying ill-disciplined Toryish way. Do we need more evidence that few actual Tory policies have been pursued over the era, or shall we stop there?
A lot of this isn't logical or rational: it's just anger at behaviour.
Which is why Labour could so easily confuse all the votes for them as a real mandate for their policy platform, whatever that turns out to be.
I don't agree with Farooq's verdict on why the Tories are unpopular. Politics is a bread and butter issue. Peoples' standards of living have dropped and the Tories have done SFA about it, nor do they promise to do so. Yes, the issues he mentions haven't helped, but they're side issues. Labour aren't promising much better on col, so they're not popular either.
It is also just gravity. After 14 years they are out of ideas and it is time for a change.
What this shows is Labour will win more put of desire to remove the Conservatives from office than any enthusiasm for Starmer. He is not Blair 1997 who was seen almost as the new Messiah such was the polling enthusiasm for him and New Labour at the time.
So yes if Starmer's government doesn't keep inflation under control, get interest rates down, reduce immigration and the boats and raises taxes and faces strikes it too could soon become unpopular
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (too many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
Hang on.
That wasn't Truss's remedy. Truss's remedy was - genuinely - a return to the 1970s. I always thought that people like Corbyn should have been overjoyed at her prospectus. More spending, less taxes, growth will pay for itself!
I was referring to the idea that all the Tories need is to finally turn away from being so lefty. It's quite silly when you think of it, but in any case ignore the real reasons for present distress, which aren't policy related in my view.
Individual Tories can be as left wing as they like, I just don't see why they're in the Tory Party, which has a right wing membership, supporter base, and public policy platform. In the cause of public confidence in democracy, surely it would be better to be elected to Labour or the Lib Dems, rather than be elected as Tories and behave and vote as Lib Dems once elected. Or if they're instinctively left wing but don't like getting too close to actual working class people, why not form a social democracy party, and rally people to the cause of dull competence? It is the parasitical nature of this group within the Tory Party that's the root of it's problems - let the Tory Party succeed or fail because on its own policies, not because it was performatively right wing but a statist mess in practice.
It's slightly HYUFDy of you to talk in terms of ideological purity within a party, which isn't a compliment. But anyway, it's not their fault. It's the nature of FPTP. It strongly encourages entryism. You see the same with the hard left in Labour, the nativist right in the Tories, social conservatism v social progressives in the SNP, and so on. These factions can't get on within a single party, so they squabble internally and try to coup each other. That's not good for the country. FPTP would give us smaller parties whose coalitions could align more fluidly without it being a huge crisis.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
The pushback I'm getting is because absolutely no-one wants to hear anything negative about Keir Starmer and our prospective new Labour government.
The only pushback you’ve so far listed is that the private school which was likely to be closing soon is blaming Labour’s VAT change which won’t even be implemented to 2025/6/6
(Sighs theatrically).
If you were a parent, wanting the best for your kids. you might want to send them to a good private school. You might not be rich, and might have to scrimp and save to send them. Knowing that there might be a large increase in fees ahead might stop you sending them - after all, no-one wants to swap their kids' schools unnecessarily.
A 20% increase in fees might make the difference between sending a kid to the school or not - and it may only take a few parents not sending their kids to push the school to the edge.
So it may be the *fear* of the tax, both by the parents and the school, that has caused this.
Or it may well be them being financially squeezed by the end of the fix on their mortgages.
There are many reasons that the financial viability of this school is affected by changes in the cost of living.
Fortunately for CR Alton is a pleasant market town in one of the most prosperous parts of the country with several state schools rated very highly. Its not exactly an inner city sink school area.
It's always sad when kids have to shift schools for no fault of their own, but also sad that universities go bust because of sudden changes to rules on visas. Governments shift policy all the time.
Shit happens. The SNP wrecked my retirement plans when they abolished the right to buy. At the time, my son was living in a 2-bedroom council flat. I was (still am) alone in a 3-bedroom terrace with a garden. The plan was to buy the council flat and then swap. Ten years on, my son and his wife and daughter are renting a 2-bedroom housing association flat with little prospect of getting on the housing ladder.
What this shows is Labour will win more put of desire to remove the Conservatives from office than any enthusiasm for Starmer. He is not Blair 1997 who was seen almost as the new Messiah such was the pollikg enthusiasm for him and New Labour at the time.
So yes if Starmer's government doesn't keep inflation under control, get interest rates down, reduce immigration and the boats and raises taxes and faces strikes it too could soon become unpopular
Not again, shall we post up the all the headlines that say Blair wasn't the Messiah and this all came after?
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
The pushback I'm getting is because absolutely no-one wants to hear anything negative about Keir Starmer and our prospective new Labour government.
Isn't the pushback more about not seeing the bigger picture? I'm sure it's sad that this school has financial problems. But we're talking about a change to tax policy that affects a group of the most privileged people in the country, one that many other private schools and parents will negotiate, and which will allow more money to be spent on the education of the 93% of kids who don't have the privilege of private schooling.
It's always possible to pick sad stories of those on the wrong end of a policy. And it's not like Tories have given a jot about the misery they've inflicted on far less privileged people over the past 14 years. But I guess the kids Tory policies pushed into poverty deserved it, unlike Tarquin and Jocasta - who might now have to mix with the hoi polloi. For shame.
We now know the 2024-25 Premier League. Currently it contains 6 teams with stadiums in Conservative seats and 14 teams with stadia in Labour seats. Labour's targets are:
AFC Bournemouth, Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood MP, Majority of 8,806 (17.9%) Chelsea FC AND Fulham FC, Chelsea and Fulham, Greg Hands MP, Majority of 11,241 (24.0%) Ipswich Town FC, Ipswich, Tom Hunt MP, Majority of 5,479 (11.0%) Nottingham Forest FC, Rushcliffe, Ruth Edwards MP, Majority of 7,643 (12.6%) Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, Wolverhampton South West, Stuart Anderson MP, Majority of 1,661 (4.0%)
A real chance of a clean sweep before the season starts...
If there's a cleansweep, how far down the football pyramid will you have to go to get to a Tory held stadium? Wycombe? Bromley?
Wycombe and Bromley both projected to go Labour on Electoral Calculus, just sayin'.
In fact I can't find any stadium in the Premiership or English Football league that will remain Tory under EC's current projection. The LibDems will have a few but not the Tories unless I am mistaken.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Ok, so you, not known for your right-wing sympathies, agree fundamentally with Tory policies over the past 14 years, just that they were doing it all in a very annoying ill-disciplined Toryish way. Do we need more evidence that few actual Tory policies have been pursued over the era, or shall we stop there?
A lot of this isn't logical or rational: it's just anger at behaviour.
Which is why Labour could so easily confuse all the votes for them as a real mandate for their policy platform, whatever that turns out to be.
I don't agree with Farooq's verdict on why the Tories are unpopular. Politics is a bread and butter issue. Peoples' standards of living have dropped and the Tories have done SFA about it, nor do they promise to do so. Yes, the issues he mentions haven't helped, but they're side issues. Labour aren't promising much better on col, so they're not popular either.
It is also just gravity. After 14 years they are out of ideas and it is time for a change.
I am afraid there I also disagree. I am profoundly uncomfortable with throwing up of hands and saying "It's the other lot's turn." That's not democratic - I don't know what it is. It's quasi-hereditary.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (too many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
Hang on.
That wasn't Truss's remedy. Truss's remedy was - genuinely - a return to the 1970s. I always thought that people like Corbyn should have been overjoyed at her prospectus. More spending, less taxes, growth will pay for itself!
I was referring to the idea that all the Tories need is to finally turn away from being so lefty. It's quite silly when you think of it, but in any case ignore the real reasons for present distress, which aren't policy related in my view.
Individual Tories can be as left wing as they like, I just don't see why they're in the Tory Party, which has a right wing membership, supporter base, and public policy platform. In the cause of public confidence in democracy, surely it would be better to be elected to Labour or the Lib Dems, rather than be elected as Tories and behave and vote as Lib Dems once elected. Or if they're instinctively left wing but don't like getting too close to actual working class people, why not form a social democracy party, and rally people to the cause of dull competence? It is the parasitical nature of this group within the Tory Party that's the root of it's problems - let the Tory Party succeed or fail because on its own policies, not because it was performatively right wing but a statist mess in practice.
Of course leftwingers in Labour equally think Blairites should join the Tories or LDs
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
He's upset about a child's school closing - as I hope you would be too, if it happened to one of your kids' schools (*). It's an upsetting thing to have happen, and the reaction on here has been tantamount to "You're lying!!!"
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
Have a little compassion for someone who's upset.
(*) Assuming you have some.
I don't really want to comment on Casino's position individually (other than to express sympathy for what must be a right pain for his family).
I'm with @malcolmg - this is a place where disagreements are sometimes rambunctious and that's good.
But (speaking as someone who spends their weekdays with teenagers) compassion for someone who has upset is very different from excusing someone who lashes out at others when they're upset. The latter perpetuates a problem, the former can end it.
I agree. However: IMV the lashing out occurred *after* people essentially accused CR of being untruthful.
As it happens, I have an anecdote. My son was recently quite ill. When he was released from hospital, I wrote a post stating how good the NHS had been. For the next few days, I was tired, concerned and emotional. A while later, I felt a certain poster was being deliberately cruel to me. I decided not to respond.
A few days later, with my son improving, I read back the thread and realised my reaction had been out of order, and I was glad I ignored the post and had not responded.
So there are perhaps three lessons: 1) Remember that getting angry might be *your* problem, not the person you are getting angry towards; 2) If you are tired, emotional or upset, perhaps don't post - and especially don't argue. It won't help. 3) You may not know what someone on t'Internet has going on in their personal lives. Try to be kind, and detect the signs that someone is genuinely stressed or upset.
(And yes, I fail at these at times as well. Too often, sadly...)
Sympathies for your son. Glad to hear he's improving. I'm a minnow in here and don't always read comments, I missed your post at the time.
I two-thirds agree with your substantive point. Points (1) and (2) are bang on imv. But I think (3) creates sanitised, dull discussions where brusque frankness, pushing into rudeness/attacking, allows for a much healthier debate. I think it fits in with a commitment to free speech.
At a basic level, if you're any of what you list in (2), posting on an anonymous internet forum is your call. I don't think others should self-censor in order to protect you.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
He gets pushback because he's a hell-crazed loon who's "willing to wade through blood" to stop Starmer destroying his children.
Ah, we're into the anyone who opposes Starmer must be mad or bad phase, I see.
Nope, it's just your apoplectic rage that makes you appear insane. Starmer will be no great shakes, but he'll be a thousand times better than the current clown show.
I want to avoid getting drawn into the personal issues but there have been some good posts about the pain which must be felt if this is your own children who are going to suffer.
But what I do feel duty bound to point out is that @Casino_Royale has been utterly vile towards me, regularly and repeatedly. A really, really, nasty campaign of ongoing hatred, bullying, and attempted vilification. This very morning, even though I had not once mentioned his school situation, he declared that I was the subject of derision and basically that I’m ignored by everyone on this site. Neither of which is correct, so far as I can be sure, but it’s a pretty shitty thing to post.
From what I’ve seen I do feel sorry for his children in this school situation. But I’m afraid that doesn’t mean CR is a nice person. Or, to be much more charitable, that he’s behaving like a nice person.
I’ll leave it right there. Have a good evening everyone. Some more opinion polls perhaps?
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
The pushback I'm getting is because absolutely no-one wants to hear anything negative about Keir Starmer and our prospective new Labour government.
Isn't the pushback more about not seeing the bigger picture? I'm sure it's sad that this school has financial problems. But we're talking about a change to tax policy that affects a group of the most privileged people in the country, one that many other private schools and parents will negotiate, and which will allow more money to be spent on the education of the 93% of kids who don't have the privilege of private schooling.
It's always possible to pick sad stories of those on the wrong end of a policy. And it's not like Tories have given a jot about the misery they've inflicted on far less privileged people over the past 14 years. But I guess the kids Tory policies pushed into poverty deserved it, unlike Tarquin and Jocasta - who might now have to mix with the hoi polloi. For shame.
Spot on. I must have missed the posts where Casino was complaining about the bedroom tax, or the shameful practice of routinely disallowing disability benefits at review in the hope the recipients haven't got the wherewithal to appeal.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (too many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
Hang on.
That wasn't Truss's remedy. Truss's remedy was - genuinely - a return to the 1970s. I always thought that people like Corbyn should have been overjoyed at her prospectus. More spending, less taxes, growth will pay for itself!
I was referring to the idea that all the Tories need is to finally turn away from being so lefty. It's quite silly when you think of it, but in any case ignore the real reasons for present distress, which aren't policy related in my view.
Individual Tories can be as left wing as they like, I just don't see why they're in the Tory Party, which has a right wing membership, supporter base, and public policy platform. In the cause of public confidence in democracy, surely it would be better to be elected to Labour or the Lib Dems, rather than be elected as Tories and behave and vote as Lib Dems once elected. Or if they're instinctively left wing but don't like getting too close to actual working class people, why not form a social democracy party, and rally people to the cause of dull competence? It is the parasitical nature of this group within the Tory Party that's the root of it's problems - let the Tory Party succeed or fail because on its own policies, not because it was performatively right wing but a statist mess in practice.
As we all, I think, understand, there is an excellent argument for breaking both the Conservative and Labour parties into two or three pieces on ideological grounds, but it won't happen because of the electoral system - and if those parties attempt to become purer by purging the members from their own opposite wing, the risk is that they also shed the corresponding bloc of voters and find it impossible to win a Parliamentary majority.
Or, to put it more succinctly, parties that wander far from the centre of public opinion don't typically win elections. It happened to the Tories when they became self-indulgent post-1997, and it happened to Labour in 2019. So, you're either lumbered with the soft centre right or you turn into Ukip. Sorry.
Besides, there is almost no demand for a low tax, small state party left in this country. There's enormous demand for a cakeist, huge state paid for by everybody but me party - the Johnson voter coalition was built upon it - but I doubt that's what you're after.
For the Conservatives to lose to him... that means the public must really hate the Tories.
And they do. And a lot of it is utterly self-inflicted.
To return to Casino's school problem for a moment (sorry), if we accept the premise that the school is closing "because Labour are going to win", then the blame for that falls squarely on
BoZo Truss Richi
Casino should be focusing his righteous anger on those cretins for screwing the pooch so completely
I think this is one you're struggling with as the reality of a Labour government comes into focus somewhere deep in the annals of your mind, so instead you're trying to fingerpoint to what you're comfortable fingerpointing toward instead.
The school operated on just a 2% gross margin last year. A 20% demand shock (everyone knows Labour is going to win) has led to a significant drop in the pupil roll for next year and that's been enough to put it into administration.
That wouldn't have happened were it not for Labour's VAT on private schools policy. It's killed it off.
If it helps, I think the scenario you present is all too plausible. I'm sorry that it's happened, and for the parents, pupils and teachers affected.
The pushback you're getting on this is interesting.
The pushback I'm getting is because absolutely no-one wants to hear anything negative about Keir Starmer and our prospective new Labour government.
The only pushback you’ve so far listed is that the private school which was likely to be closing soon is blaming Labour’s VAT change which won’t even be implemented to 2025/6/6
(Sighs theatrically).
If you were a parent, wanting the best for your kids. you might want to send them to a good private school. You might not be rich, and might have to scrimp and save to send them. Knowing that there might be a large increase in fees ahead might stop you sending them - after all, no-one wants to swap their kids' schools unnecessarily.
A 20% increase in fees might make the difference between sending a kid to the school or not - and it may only take a few parents not sending their kids to push the school to the edge.
So it may be the *fear* of the tax, both by the parents and the school, that has caused this.
At 18k per annum fees, 20% extra is £46,800 extra per child over the course of their education. Two children and that's not far shy of a hundred grand.
Once you're into that territory, it may make more sense to spend that cash on moving to a house in a better state school catchment area (thus depriving a student who might have gone to a good state school of a place). Plus, as an investment in capital, you can sell the house on. Win-win.
You could also send the kids to state school and pay for 2 years of private tuition between 16 and 18 to maximise their chances of doing well at A levels and getting into a good uni. Average cost of tuition = £23 per hour, so £460 per month for 20 hours of tuition. Cost over two years per child, £11040. Vs cost of 13 years of private education at £21600k per annum being £280k per child. As others have noted, it may now be better to stick 10k aside for them every year so they can afford a house in their 20s.
For parents currently on the margins of being able to afford private education, in the midst of a cost of living crisis, and future work uncertain (AI revolution and all that) I reckon a lot will be considering this route over and above private schools.
And the more parents that go this route, the more private schools will close. And the greater the cost / burden will be on the state.
My guess is we will see a lot of private schools close over the next decade. Which means this policy a) won't bring in nearly as much as is expected (and may be negative for the taxpayer), b) will crowd out areas with 'good' schools and distort the housing market further, and c) won't have the desired effect on reducing inequality, as the proper poshos will still send their kids to the more famous public schools, creating an even smaller elite cadre and reducing access to an important avenue of middle class social mobility.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (too many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
Hang on.
That wasn't Truss's remedy. Truss's remedy was - genuinely - a return to the 1970s. I always thought that people like Corbyn should have been overjoyed at her prospectus. More spending, less taxes, growth will pay for itself!
I was referring to the idea that all the Tories need is to finally turn away from being so lefty. It's quite silly when you think of it, but in any case ignore the real reasons for present distress, which aren't policy related in my view.
Individual Tories can be as left wing as they like, I just don't see why they're in the Tory Party, which has a right wing membership, supporter base, and public policy platform. In the cause of public confidence in democracy, surely it would be better to be elected to Labour or the Lib Dems, rather than be elected as Tories and behave and vote as Lib Dems once elected. Or if they're instinctively left wing but don't like getting too close to actual working class people, why not form a social democracy party, and rally people to the cause of dull competence? It is the parasitical nature of this group within the Tory Party that's the root of it's problems - let the Tory Party succeed or fail because on its own policies, not because it was performatively right wing but a statist mess in practice.
Of course leftwingers in Labour equally think Blairites should join the Tories or LDs
They may well be right (not the Tories please) - but not being aligned with Labour, I don't see it as my problem.
That's not a wealth fund, that's is a centrised PFI scheme.
Wealth funds take excess capital, invest it in business all around the world to make a return and distribute some of the profits to people of the country. This is take bankers money and spend it on things the private sector wouldn't fund if it was a business and of course they will want a return for that investment. No wonder the bankers are keen.
How would that be any cheaper than simply issuing more government debt?
The same reason Gordon Brown got addicted to PFI-ing everything. You can treat it as non-government debt and so its off the books for headline figures.
Its been spun as an investment fund. We haven't seen all the details, but there is no way the bankers are going to lump in mega billions into such a fund, that is dedicated to funding stuff the private sector won't, without being guaranteed very favourable return on that initial money.
As I say that isn't how Norway or those big Middle Eastern ones work. They ring fence the tax revenue from oil / gas, go out and invest in private businesses, to make a return over long term, which they socialise the returns by spending the profits on the people of the country.
Well hopefully journalists will learn the difference between net debt, net financial liabilities, and net worth very quickly.
As for Labour them spending presumably billions of pounds more of our money in order to fudge some figures is as good a reason to vote for any other party as a sensible person should need.
What this shows is Labour will win more put of desire to remove the Conservatives from office than any enthusiasm for Starmer. He is not Blair 1997 who was seen almost as the new Messiah such was the polling enthusiasm for him and New Labour at the time.
I totally agree but that may be a reflection of just how much hatred there is towards the Conservatives. Leader ratings would back up my assessment. People aren’t focused on a New Messiah because they’re more interested at the moment on kicking the people who put them through such a mess these past recent years.
FWIW, I’m extremely glad he’s not a Tony Blair. I don’t want that kind of leader right now. I just want sensible, steady, competence. Give us 5 years of stability pleeeeeaaaase!
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Ok, so you, not known for your right-wing sympathies, agree fundamentally with Tory policies over the past 14 years, just that they were doing it all in a very annoying ill-disciplined Toryish way. Do we need more evidence that few actual Tory policies have been pursued over the era, or shall we stop there?
A lot of this isn't logical or rational: it's just anger at behaviour.
Which is why Labour could so easily confuse all the votes for them as a real mandate for their policy platform, whatever that turns out to be.
I don't agree with Farooq's verdict on why the Tories are unpopular. Politics is a bread and butter issue. Peoples' standards of living have dropped and the Tories have done SFA about it, nor do they promise to do so. Yes, the issues he mentions haven't helped, but they're side issues. Labour aren't promising much better on col, so they're not popular either.
It is also just gravity. After 14 years they are out of ideas and it is time for a change.
I am afraid there I also disagree. I am profoundly uncomfortable with throwing up of hands and saying "It's the other lot's turn." That's not democratic - I don't know what it is. It's quasi-hereditary.
I'll tell you what it is: it's facing the facts. The Tories are out of ideas. On their record of the past 14 years they deserve to be dropped in the dustbin of history.
Half the people still voting for them do so out of habit. My father-in-law is a case in point - voted Conservative his whole life and at 93 he's not going to change. But the party he voted for as a young man is a world away from today's shambles.
30,000? so selective then, not the 600,000 or so attaining 18 in any given year?
Since the policy was only invented yesterday, we don't have much in the way of detail. The plan is for most of the put-upon eighteen year olds to be used as straightforward forced Labour, plugging gaps in various public services. I don't know if the intention is to use the military conscripts as slaves as well, or offer indentured servitude on the minimum wage.
I haven’t really paid attention to Schoolgate on here and I’m not going to start now, particularly as it seems to be getting very personal which isn’t good.
But generally I don’t see why private schools should be VAT exempt or benefit from charitable status as many (most) do.
They are businesses and if you wish to use their services you are fully entitled to do so. And pay VAT.
No, they are not businesses: they are charities and make no profit for anyone.
But then, you've admitted you haven't paid it any attention. As you see it it's a Labour policy and that means it must be defended.
In the ordinary understanding people have of 'charity' a school could only be one if its admissions policy was unrelated to ability to pay. I have no problem with independent schools at all, but many of them (not all) are no more charities than Harrods.
Another bit of a giveaway is that they tend to pay teachers above rather than below the market rate.
Incorrect. Most private schools pay less on average than the state sector. They also mostly do not have TPS now.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (to many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
You're diagnosing too much red-in-tooth -and-claw-Toryism, when we have the highest tax burden since World War II? Ok ducks.
No, actually, my diagnosis is that the Conservatives have lost the public because of standards of behaviour and infighting. Starting with the scandals where Boris tried to get his mates off the hook, and the Covid rules-dodging events. The internecine war that broke out led to a further sense that those in power are venal and selfish rather than interested in good governance. By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
Ok, so you, not known for your right-wing sympathies, agree fundamentally with Tory policies over the past 14 years, just that they were doing it all in a very annoying ill-disciplined Toryish way. Do we need more evidence that few actual Tory policies have been pursued over the era, or shall we stop there?
A lot of this isn't logical or rational: it's just anger at behaviour.
Which is why Labour could so easily confuse all the votes for them as a real mandate for their policy platform, whatever that turns out to be.
I don't agree with Farooq's verdict on why the Tories are unpopular. Politics is a bread and butter issue. Peoples' standards of living have dropped and the Tories have done SFA about it, nor do they promise to do so. Yes, the issues he mentions haven't helped, but they're side issues. Labour aren't promising much better on col, so they're not popular either.
It is also just gravity. After 14 years they are out of ideas and it is time for a change.
I am afraid there I also disagree. I am profoundly uncomfortable with throwing up of hands and saying "It's the other lot's turn." That's not democratic - I don't know what it is. It's quasi-hereditary.
But we differ because I am neither “lot”. I’ve voted for both and, all other things being equal, I reckon alternating sets of about eight years works best.
You'll agree if you agree, but Patrick Flynn in the Speccie sums up Sunak's national service policy very eloquently:
His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.
Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.
That's why it won't work in a nutshell. Sunak is an insider of Britain's broken system of a social democratic consensus to his core, as is Starmer. That leaves zero room for manoeuvre, because as Truss found, genuinely breaking the consensus is going to be fought tooth and nail. So we're left with common sense tsars, flights to Rwanda that will never happen, and increasing restrictions on civil liberties gussied up as patriotic interventions on behalf of our beleaguered bobbies. The consensus will let you have any policy, as long as it's what they sort of wanted anyway.
And people are getting wise to it. That's why they don't like particularly like Starmer, and why they won't trust Sunak.
Doctor LuckyGuy is in
Background: 14 years of Conservative rule Symptoms: (too many to list here: see attached Appendices I to XXVI) Diagnosis: TOO MUCH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Prescription: More leeches! Another lurch to the right
Hang on.
That wasn't Truss's remedy. Truss's remedy was - genuinely - a return to the 1970s. I always thought that people like Corbyn should have been overjoyed at her prospectus. More spending, less taxes, growth will pay for itself!
I was referring to the idea that all the Tories need is to finally turn away from being so lefty. It's quite silly when you think of it, but in any case ignore the real reasons for present distress, which aren't policy related in my view.
Individual Tories can be as left wing as they like, I just don't see why they're in the Tory Party, which has a right wing membership, supporter base, and public policy platform. In the cause of public confidence in democracy, surely it would be better to be elected to Labour or the Lib Dems, rather than be elected as Tories and behave and vote as Lib Dems once elected. Or if they're instinctively left wing but don't like getting too close to actual working class people, why not form a social democracy party, and rally people to the cause of dull competence? It is the parasitical nature of this group within the Tory Party that's the root of it's problems - let the Tory Party succeed or fail because on its own policies, not because it was performatively right wing but a statist mess in practice.
As we all, I think, understand, there is an excellent argument for breaking both the Conservative and Labour parties into two or three pieces on ideological grounds, but it won't happen because of the electoral system - and if those parties attempt to become purer by purging the members from their own opposite wing, the risk is that they also shed the corresponding bloc of voters and find it impossible to win a Parliamentary majority.
Or, to put it more succinctly, parties that wander far from the centre of public opinion don't typically win elections. It happened to the Tories when they became self-indulgent post-1997, and it happened to Labour in 2019. So, you're either lumbered with the soft centre right or you turn into Ukip. Sorry.
Besides, there is almost no demand for a low tax, small state party left in this country. There's enormous demand for a cakeist, huge state paid for by everybody but me party - the Johnson voter coalition was built upon it - but I doubt that's what you're after.
The 'centre' is a complete fantasy though. Our political 'centre' demands that we spend £4.5 TRILLION (Civitas report) on Net Zero. In the full knowledge that it will just drive all emission-creating businesses to dirty coal burning India and China. There is no objective assessment whereby that can be seen as a moderate idea. It is a profoundly radical and unprecedented idea. The centrist agenda demands conformity simply because the ideas are weak and if a big party decides to go seriously off the reservation, it is likely to bring the whole thing down.
Comments
Which might just be what the country needs atm after the least three. Having said that, May was fairly grey...
(*) Unless they know him and have a personal grudge because he once stole a Laughing Cow at morning break...
Lifting VAT exemption may be the final nail for these small schools but it is only the final nail following many prior.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-politics-prime-minister-labour-7dbz3cq0j
(£££ sadly)
Yesterday she said in the Daily Mail today that:
Economic growth only comes from businesses: big, medium and small. Government's role is to give them the stability they need to invest and to remove the barriers to make it harder to do business. That's the model to grow the economy I believe in – and it's the only one that works.
I seriously doubt that Milton Friedman, in one of his most deluded moments, would have said anything so stupid.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5117ev8n7xo
"Six passengers and six crew members reported injuries - of these, eight people have been taken to hospital"
AFC Bournemouth, Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood MP, Majority of 8,806 (17.9%)
Chelsea FC AND Fulham FC, Chelsea and Fulham, Greg Hands MP, Majority of 11,241 (24.0%)
Ipswich Town FC, Ipswich, Tom Hunt MP, Majority of 5,479 (11.0%)
Nottingham Forest FC, Rushcliffe, Ruth Edwards MP, Majority of 7,643 (12.6%)
Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, Wolverhampton South West, Stuart Anderson MP, Majority of 1,661 (4.0%)
A real chance of a clean sweep before the season starts...
What happened to collective cabinet responsibility? What happened to using the channels that DC undoubtedly has to offer Sunak the dubious benefit of his advice behind closed doors? Is this not a flagrant breach of protocol and convention? Braverman was sacked for writing an unapproved newspaper article - that provoked melt-downs here, but it didn't call on the PM to reverse a planned policy. I've seen nothing about Dave's intervention, so is it just OK now?
But then, you've admitted you haven't paid it any attention. As you see it it's a Labour policy and that means it must be defended.
You’re the first person I’ve ever heard describe her that way. Which doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It’s just, erm, ‘unusual.’ What are your qualifications in economics if I may ask? You know, that enable you to describe her as ‘a bit of a thicko on economics’? You have a postgrad degree in economics? A doctorate on the subject, perhaps? Please supply the links to your peer-reviewed publications on the topic.
For reference, Reeves went to New College Oxford and the London School of Economics before working at the Bank of England and HBOS. Economists I’ve heard rate her very highly.
By the time you get to the economic shockwave of Truss's leadership -- don't argue, there was clearly an adverse impact -- you've got an internal Conservative Party narrative to hang economic distress onto, especially as Sunak warned of exactly this. And so we have a third PM in quick succession, who has also been dogged with threats of 1922 Committee coups.
It's not so much policy that's been the driver of public disdain, but behaviour and style.
The world is not going to end if we stop putting a “u” in words ending “our”. Worse things have happened to languages.
I didn’t say I haven’t paid ‘any’ attention to the VAT on schools policy. Nor indeed to education generally.
I said I haven’t paid attention to your particular situation and nor do I intend to.
See the difference? Good.
You'd also add anger at Iraq (and a lack of appreciation as to how someone like Corbyn's opposition to it differs from, say Robin Cook's), and the far left being marginalised so long that the massive problems with their politics were no longer appreciated by a lot of people.
You had to be quite a close watcher of left-wing politics to be aware of the details of Corbyn and his fellow travellers' views and why they really didn't meet the 'kinder, gentler' billing.
It's not policies that'll fix it, it'll be a nice long stretch in opposition where they can AGREE on what kind of party they really are.
The problem is governemts / civil servants / local authorities are terrible at negotiating the contracts and get absolutely bent over and screwed like a new artist signing for a big record label.
My bigger issue is the proposal is nothing like Norway's wealth fund.
Please can the partisan campaigners tone it down and be a bit less personal so the rest of us can get on with using our heads, or occasionally hearts, to make well-informed bets?*
* Not a case of pot, kettle, black. I’m not a Labour stooge and envisage a lot of mistakes ahead. I’m also not massively energised by Keir Starmer to be honest.
https://x.com/Ruben_DXT/status/1794774797563658552/photo/1
https://x.com/Autosport_Old/status/1794774743272620377
They may pretend otherwise to be shielded under charitable status but they are very, very, definitely run as businesses.
That wasn't Truss's remedy. Truss's remedy was - genuinely - a return to the 1970s. I always thought that people like Corbyn should have been overjoyed at her prospectus. More spending, less taxes, growth will pay for itself!
The rest of your post is simply projection, and a failure of imagination.
You're not immune either and insidious little posts like this are real keepers that I'll enjoy rolling out and reminding you of when he comes for you.
But you wouldn’t expect the Conservatives to be grateful to the SNP,
PSL objective blog on numbers, taking no view on politics is up. BLUF - the numbers don't add up - it will cost billions more. /1
https://x.com/pinstripedline/status/1794736576410620048
I was sceptical about the £2.5bn figure.
And, of course, it was Brexit that was another source of the internal divisions. But that's back to party management again.
People don't like being ripped off.
CR goes over the top at times - as well all do. But the reaction to him over this has been over the top as well.
Have a little compassion for someone who's upset.
(*) Assuming you have some.
https://x.com/carryonkeith/status/1794649417246781805
Will you be saying this about every school that closes if Labour bring in this policy?
That’s the single largest one-day annual ticketed crowd anywhere in the world, around 400,000 people who are going to be rather disappointed if told to come back tomorrow!
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errr them
I'm with @malcolmg - this is a place where disagreements are sometimes rambunctious and that's good.
But (speaking as someone who spends their weekdays with teenagers) compassion for someone who has upset is very different from excusing someone who lashes out at others when they're upset. The latter perpetuates a problem, the former can end it.
If you were a parent, wanting the best for your kids. you might want to send them to a good private school. You might not be rich, and might have to scrimp and save to send them. Knowing that there might be a large increase in fees ahead might stop you sending them - after all, no-one wants to swap their kids' schools unnecessarily.
A 20% increase in fees might make the difference between sending a kid to the school or not - and it may only take a few parents not sending their kids to push the school to the edge.
So it may be the *fear* of the tax, both by the parents and the school, that has caused this.
Which is why Labour could so easily confuse all the votes for them as a real mandate for their policy platform, whatever that turns out to be.
Vat is completely irrelevant in your case but will be over the next couple of years…
Things can get heated, especially during an election campaign and if you have a vested interest in something as CR does with his children it seems. It’s also very easy to get riled, or allow oneself to, and quickly things escalate out of all proportion.
We all need to chill sometimes.
Stepping back and having a walk and / or a cuppa is a great idea.
xx
There are many reasons that the financial viability of this school is affected by changes in the cost of living.
Fortunately for CR Alton is a pleasant market town in one of the most prosperous parts of the country with several state schools rated very highly. Its not exactly an inner city sink school area.
It's always sad when kids have to shift schools for no fault of their own, but also sad that universities go bust because of sudden changes to rules on visas. Governments shift policy all the time.
Its been spun as an investment fund. We haven't seen all the details, but there is no way the bankers are going to lump in mega billions into such a fund, that is dedicated to funding stuff the private sector won't, without being guaranteed very favourable return on that initial money.
As I say that isn't how Norway or those big Middle Eastern ones work. They ring fence the tax revenue from oil / gas, go out and invest in private businesses, to make a return over long term, which they socialise the returns by spending the profits on the people of the country.
I was defending these liberal ideas on the previous thread, 10:15am if you give a shit. My policy standpoint is compatible with some schools of conservatism. But not THIS Conservative Party. The Tories used to be quite good at this. But I hate their nativist spasm in recent years. That's why I hate this Conservative Party. But it's not my feelings we're talking about, really. It's about why I think the public have turned on them. And it's not the same reasons I personally would give. I wish people did care more about robustly defending internationalist, liberal principles.
As it happens, I have an anecdote. My son was recently quite ill. When he was released from hospital, I wrote a post stating how good the NHS had been. For the next few days, I was tired, concerned and emotional. A while later, I felt a certain poster was being deliberately cruel to me. I decided not to respond.
A few days later, with my son improving, I read back the thread and realised my reaction had been out of order, and I was glad I ignored the post and had not responded.
So there are perhaps three lessons:
1) Remember that getting angry might be *your* problem, not the person you are getting angry towards;
2) If you are tired, emotional or upset, perhaps don't post - and especially don't argue. It won't help.
3) You may not know what someone on t'Internet has going on in their personal lives. Try to be kind, and detect the signs that someone is genuinely stressed or upset.
(And yes, I fail at these at times as well. Too often, sadly...)
It’s increasingly global too. Look at the way some of the UK ones have been investing in overseas markets.
It may or may not be a bad idea, but this sort of twitter smart arsery is awful.
Another bit of a giveaway is that they tend to pay teachers above rather than below the market rate.
So yes if Starmer's government doesn't keep inflation under control, get interest rates down, reduce immigration and the boats and raises taxes and faces strikes it too could soon become unpopular
The plan was to buy the council flat and then swap.
Ten years on, my son and his wife and daughter are renting a 2-bedroom housing association flat with little prospect of getting on the housing ladder.
It's always possible to pick sad stories of those on the wrong end of a policy. And it's not like Tories have given a jot about the misery they've inflicted on far less privileged people over the past 14 years. But I guess the kids Tory policies pushed into poverty deserved it, unlike Tarquin and Jocasta - who might now have to mix with the hoi polloi. For shame.
In fact I can't find any stadium in the Premiership or English Football league that will remain Tory under EC's current projection. The LibDems will have a few but not the Tories unless I am mistaken.
I two-thirds agree with your substantive point. Points (1) and (2) are bang on imv. But I think (3) creates sanitised, dull discussions where brusque frankness, pushing into rudeness/attacking, allows for a much healthier debate. I think it fits in with a commitment to free speech.
At a basic level, if you're any of what you list in (2), posting on an anonymous internet forum is your call. I don't think others should self-censor in order to protect you.
But what I do feel duty bound to point out is that @Casino_Royale has been utterly vile towards me, regularly and repeatedly. A really, really, nasty campaign of ongoing hatred, bullying, and attempted vilification. This very morning, even though I had not once mentioned his school situation, he declared that I was the subject of derision and basically that I’m ignored by everyone on this site. Neither of which is correct, so far as I can be sure, but it’s a pretty shitty thing to post.
From what I’ve seen I do feel sorry for his children in this school situation. But I’m afraid that doesn’t mean CR is a nice person. Or, to be much more charitable, that he’s behaving like a nice person.
I’ll leave it right there. Have a good evening everyone. Some more opinion polls perhaps?
Or, to put it more succinctly, parties that wander far from the centre of public opinion don't typically win elections. It happened to the Tories when they became self-indulgent post-1997, and it happened to Labour in 2019. So, you're either lumbered with the soft centre right or you turn into Ukip. Sorry.
Besides, there is almost no demand for a low tax, small state party left in this country. There's enormous demand for a cakeist, huge state paid for by everybody but me party - the Johnson voter coalition was built upon it - but I doubt that's what you're after.
Once you're into that territory, it may make more sense to spend that cash on moving to a house in a better state school catchment area (thus depriving a student who might have gone to a good state school of a place). Plus, as an investment in capital, you can sell the house on. Win-win.
You could also send the kids to state school and pay for 2 years of private tuition between 16 and 18 to maximise their chances of doing well at A levels and getting into a good uni. Average cost of tuition = £23 per hour, so £460 per month for 20 hours of tuition. Cost over two years per child, £11040. Vs cost of 13 years of private education at £21600k per annum being £280k per child. As others have noted, it may now be better to stick 10k aside for them every year so they can afford a house in their 20s.
For parents currently on the margins of being able to afford private education, in the midst of a cost of living crisis, and future work uncertain (AI revolution and all that) I reckon a lot will be considering this route over and above private schools.
And the more parents that go this route, the more private schools will close. And the greater the cost / burden will be on the state.
My guess is we will see a lot of private schools close over the next decade. Which means this policy a) won't bring in nearly as much as is expected (and may be negative for the taxpayer), b) will crowd out areas with 'good' schools and distort the housing market further, and c) won't have the desired effect on reducing inequality, as the proper poshos will still send their kids to the more famous public schools, creating an even smaller elite cadre and reducing access to an important avenue of middle class social mobility.
As for Labour them spending presumably billions of pounds more of our money in order to fudge some figures is as good a reason to vote for any other party as a sensible person should need.
FWIW, I’m extremely glad he’s not a Tony Blair. I don’t want that kind of leader right now. I just want sensible, steady, competence. Give us 5 years of stability pleeeeeaaaase!
Half the people still voting for them do so out of habit. My father-in-law is a case in point - voted Conservative his whole life and at 93 he's not going to change. But the party he voted for as a young man is a world away from today's shambles.
Some information here:
https://www.connaughteducation.com/pay-scales/
Unless we're talking Eton, Clifton, Roedean etc who won't be noticeably affected by this policy despite being the ones we should be targeting.