Labour announce crackdown on off road motorbikes. Didn't realise the fines were only £100.
That's interesting. And quite difficult to do truly effectively. Many police forces run an operation called Operation Endurance addressing it (or half addressing it) in different ways. In Notts they hand out bits of paper with advice to illegal trail-bikers. Cardiff and Cleveland are two forces which are better.
It plays very much into the barriers on paths I am sometimes on about, in that the justification for anti-wheelchair barriers is always "but the motorbikes" - as if that justifies discrimination. I coined a concept of "Schrodinger's ASBO Motorcyclist", which most of the time only exists in the mind of the barrier-defender.
What happens is that something is whacked in because it *looks* like an answer to an alleged problem, created in part by 3 decades of police advice at planning stage on cellular disconnected developments after experience of chasing youths in places like Blackbird Leys and the Meadows in Nottingham. Councillors like it because it is a very public, cheap sticky plaster to please noisy voters.
Then it becomes part of the mental furniture, and a difficult assumption to dig out. Often a problem that did not exist is now believed to exist but is prevented by the cosmetic intervention.
It's a complex area to argue, that I might submit a header about one weekend.
Linked issues are too-easy creation of PSPOs with no real evidence needed and the resulting abuse of harmless people (eg disabled cyclists / elderly) by Council Officers, policing (as Lab are picking up on) including wider use of Tactical Contact, and better regulation needed of some supply chains - lithium batteries being one of them, e-motorcycles such as Surrons being another, and delivery riders being a third.
For my issues I need a clear distinction in the public between pedal-cycles and the electric mopeds / motorcycles idiots like IDS and Lord Hogan-Howe are wandering around branding as 'e-bikes' ridden by 'killer cyclists'.
I don't think they will be able to nail the Conservatives with this beyond another strand of crass incompetence, but it will help Lab retain votes from people like me, and disabled / mobility aid users, and maybe also from wavering Tory/Reform if they can make a good argument that they can address ASB.
As usual, the problem is a tiny percentage. Bit like the twat “walkers” I saw in Cornwall, whom seemed to take delight in opening a farm gate and not closing it behind you. 1 in a hundred, but that is how you get stiles.
Two recent things - there’s a lady near me who rides a tricycle because of balance problems. Well known and liked locally for her fierce independence. Walking up to the GP, watched as she repeatedly tried to get over the bumps to slow cars down. Despite her reputation for disdain in help, I nearly ventured over, but she made it over the bloody thing, unaided, in the end.
The other - Just yesterday, was shouted at because I was riding my bike at slow walking speed - by some of the e-bike motorcycle brigade. The reason I was going slow - a pedestrianised area, full of pedestrians. Slamming through at 20 would have been uncivilised.
If you read the social media - there is a small, hard core group of scramble bike and quad bike riders who believe in their solemn, God given right to plough up the countryside.
So either campaigning will continue as before next week, or Sunak will be somewhat less visible, meaning that some of the unsourced reports abd rumours of this weekend will have been right.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Mel Stride did a top job on Skye, pushing the "Tories are cutting your taxes" lie. Trevor Philips then puts up the graphic showing that average taxes are £13k higher than in 2019.
Stride then agrees that taxes have gone up. And goes back to saying that taxes have gone down.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he is free take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
In a presidential campaign, hiding the president seems, suboptimal...
The Americans are about to have a good go at it.
By hiding Trump in jail?
They’re going to hide Biden in his basement again, and do their best to hide Trump in jail.
200m choices, and you go with these two again?
I know you're doing the Biden basement stuff as a comedy thing but they are extremely not hiding him in his basement. You can see his schedule, it's absolutely mental. https://rollcall.com/factbase/biden/topic/calendar/
I don't get the flying back to the States tonight only to return on Wednesday bit.
My god. I was all bubbly and jovial. And then I got a cab to Maidan square and now I am standing in front of THIS and there are women either side of me weeping. Every flag is a fallen Ukrainian soldier
This is just one part of it. The flags go on and on. Quite close to blubbing myself.
We cannot let them lose!
Slava ukraini
What a journey, from someone who started out as Putin's little cheerleader.
Yes, quite a journey. I’ve actually come to Ukraine - twice. I’ve been to Lviv and chernivtsi, Kyiv and Odessa. I’ve heard bombs fall on the castle of Kamanets podolski’y. I saw a chunk of missile fall on my own street in Odessa. I watched and heard the ack ack over the Potemkin steps as Putin’s drones came in - two nights ago
I’ve seen Ukrainians in crutches, I’ve met Ukrainian draft dodgers, I’ve talked to Ukrainians who have lost ALL their schoolfriends, and now I’m standing in front of the memorial to 200,000 dead Ukrainians in maidan square listening to the widows crying and in all that time you’ve been pootling around fucking Norway with your stupid little dog
Btw I have your photo. I gave the 500 wotsits to a volunteer by the flags. Natalia. She lost her nephew in the war last year - shot in cold blood by Russians
If you want to see the photo now you’ll have to get special dispensation from the mods - I don’t want to get banned for over-photo-ing
Setup an account on Flickr or similar. Post the photos there. Then put a link in your post.
Farooq: How many Reform > Con seats? eek: time of first Tory win (based on the time the words - and XYZ (the Tory candidate) is the winner) Stuartinromford: First seat to declare a Conservative win. IanB2: in how many seats will Labour come third (or lower) SandyRentool: Narrowest winning vote margin in any constituency. Ghedebrav: Number of party leaders standing who win a seat TimS: Largest seat majority to be overturned LostPassword: Number of Conservative lost deposits
I need to go to the supermarket and head over to Fraserburgh for a Wimpy milkshake. If anyone has a question to add to the list please include @Farooq so I'm less likely to miss it. Or if someone wants to periodically gather any new questions together into a list, that would be great too.
@Farooq Number of political parties represented in the new Parliament.
Counting Sinn Fein or not?
14 if 'Independants' count as 1 and including SF
Not counting independents or the Speaker.
Speaking of independents, I saw my first election posters up. Both for Corbyn!
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he is free take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
In a presidential campaign, hiding the president seems, suboptimal...
The Americans are about to have a good go at it.
By hiding Trump in jail?
They’re going to hide Biden in his basement again, and do their best to hide Trump in jail.
200m choices, and you go with these two again?
I know you're doing the Biden basement stuff as a comedy thing but they are extremely not hiding him in his basement. You can see his schedule, it's absolutely mental. https://rollcall.com/factbase/biden/topic/calendar/
Yes, it was a reference to the 2020 election when, thanks to a pandemic, the campaigning was mostly done online.
The schedule of any political leader or head of state is totally mental, with various planes, trains, and automobiles everywhere.
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
It's unfortunate we won't get to see the results of the Covid inquiry until much later, but I think there will be a couple of stern words said about preparedness and the speed of response. It was very, very clear by February that the government needed to do something but Boris delayed for ideological reasons. He downplayed the severity, setting the wrong tone. These failures cost lives and I expect the report will say as much. This cultural blinkeredness continued, of course, through to the Downing Street parties. Further, I also think "eat out to help out" will attract some criticism for pushing up cases and for damaging the health messaging.
The preparedness thing will be a blame spread across many more people, of course.
The purpose here is to detail the potential mistakes, because your assessment of "ok" is probably correct, but you only gave positive examples. It we're going to add narrative to that judgement, we need to talk about the bad as well as the good.
I give them something of a pass on that, not because it was handled well, but because it's unclear anyone else would have done massively better on that. A 'perfect' response might significantly have altered the course of the UK pandemic, but given the infectivity of the virus, a bit better management wouldn't have done so.
The real failures IMO were the huge amounts of money blown on failing to transition quickly from expensive and slow PCR 'track and trace' policy to lateral flow tests; on were clearly corrupt contracts for PPE; and on fraudulent loans and the failure to recover significant amounts.
We'd still be financially stretched, but we might be anywhere between 50 and 100 £bn better off.
“Clearly corrupt”? Citation needed. A massive slur on thousands of hard working civil servants who did their best to implement an imperfect solution at speed, and a very naive view on how much influence politicians can have over that much procurement.
Labour announce crackdown on off road motorbikes. Didn't realise the fines were only £100.
That's interesting. And quite difficult to do truly effectively. Many police forces run an operation called Operation Endurance addressing it (or half addressing it) in different ways. In Notts they hand out bits of paper with advice to illegal trail-bikers. Cardiff and Cleveland are two forces which are better.
It plays very much into the barriers on paths I am sometimes on about, in that the justification for anti-wheelchair barriers is always "but the motorbikes" - as if that justifies discrimination. I coined a concept of "Schrodinger's ASBO Motorcyclist", which most of the time only exists in the mind of the barrier-defender.
What happens is that something is whacked in because it *looks* like an answer to an alleged problem, created in part by 3 decades of police advice at planning stage on cellular disconnected developments after experience of chasing youths in places like Blackbird Leys and the Meadows in Nottingham. Councillors like it because it is a very public, cheap sticky plaster to please noisy voters.
Then it becomes part of the mental furniture, and a difficult assumption to dig out. Often a problem that did not exist is now believed to exist but is prevented by the cosmetic intervention.
It's a complex area to argue, that I might submit a header about one weekend.
Linked issues are too-easy creation of PSPOs with no real evidence needed and the resulting abuse of harmless people (eg disabled cyclists / elderly) by Council Officers, policing (as Lab are picking up on) including wider use of Tactical Contact, and better regulation needed of some supply chains - lithium batteries being one of them, e-motorcycles such as Surrons being another, and delivery riders being a third.
For my issues I need a clear distinction in the public between pedal-cycles and the electric mopeds / motorcycles idiots like IDS and Lord Hogan-Howe are wandering around branding as 'e-bikes' ridden by 'killer cyclists'.
I don't think they will be able to nail the Conservatives with this beyond another strand of crass incompetence, but it will help Lab retain votes from people like me, and disabled / mobility aid users, and maybe also from wavering Tory/Reform if they can make a good argument that they can address ASB.
As usual, the problem is a tiny percentage. Bit like the twat “walkers” I saw in Cornwall, whom seemed to take delight in opening a farm gate and not closing it behind you. 1 in a hundred, but that is how you get stiles.
Two recent things - there’s a lady near me who rides a tricycle because of balance problems. Well known and liked locally for her fierce independence. Walking up to the GP, watched as she repeatedly tried to get over the bumps to slow cars down. Despite her reputation for disdain in help, I nearly ventured over, but she made it over the bloody thing, unaided, in the end.
The other - Just yesterday, was shouted at because I was riding my bike at slow walking speed - by some of the e-bike motorcycle brigade. The reason I was going slow - a pedestrianised area, full of pedestrians. Slamming through at 20 would have been uncivilised.
If you read the social media - there is a small, hard core group of scramble bike and quad bike riders who believe in their solemn, God given right to plough up the countryside.
I think the Labour policy is particularly targetted at those who believe it is their God given right to drive in excess of the speed limit up and down main roads and around estates at all hours with no helmets, number plates or insurance.
Seemingly the SDP are standing in my seat. Any views on them?
Economically left centre, socially conservative, eurosceptic. I'd consider them. On the downside they are supported by Cleese, Rod Liddle and Patrick O'Flynn
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes as only some wealth can be taken out of the country, other wealth can't.
If you mean taxing stocks and shares etc, then absolutely that's a bloody stupid idea and that will result in capital flight.
If you mean taxing land ownership and saying those who own a portion of this countries land need to pay a portion of this countries running costs (whether they be British or live abroad), then that's entirely possible and can't result in capital flight.
Oh yes it can. Land is a stock of capital because it has value. That value arises from its scarcity, we are not making any more of it, and the uses to which it can be put which can generate a return but it is also a reflection of demand.
At the moment much of our land, from Scottish estates to London flats is held by foreigners to whom we have sold it to finance our trade deficit. If we make it less attractive they may well sell up, collapsing the value of that land. The land is still here but it will be worth a lot less and those who finance their businesses through securities over it will be in breach of their banking covenants.
There really isn't anything like a free lunch.
Government has to tax *something*. There's no such thing as a free Government.
Yes - but the corollary is true. There is no free tax. There is a belief in certain quarters that there’s easily taxable money, just sitting there in piles.
Tax it and it will move.
For example, the non-dom status stuff is about people who have considerable assets and income from other countries. If you remove the non-dom system, they will go back to all the games about being in the country x days a year etc. The original idea of the non-dom system was to encourage people in that situation on-shore, so that they are economically active in the UK and paying tax on *those* activities.
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
It's unfortunate we won't get to see the results of the Covid inquiry until much later, but I think there will be a couple of stern words said about preparedness and the speed of response. It was very, very clear by February that the government needed to do something but Boris delayed for ideological reasons. He downplayed the severity, setting the wrong tone. These failures cost lives and I expect the report will say as much. This cultural blinkeredness continued, of course, through to the Downing Street parties. Further, I also think "eat out to help out" will attract some criticism for pushing up cases and for damaging the health messaging.
The preparedness thing will be a blame spread across many more people, of course.
The purpose here is to detail the potential mistakes, because your assessment of "ok" is probably correct, but you only gave positive examples. It we're going to add narrative to that judgement, we need to talk about the bad as well as the good.
I give them something of a pass on that, not because it was handled well, but because it's unclear anyone else would have done massively better on that. A 'perfect' response might significantly have altered the course of the UK pandemic, but given the infectivity of the virus, a bit better management wouldn't have done so.
The real failures IMO were the huge amounts of money blown on failing to transition quickly from expensive and slow PCR 'track and trace' policy to lateral flow tests; on were clearly corrupt contracts for PPE; and on fraudulent loans and the failure to recover significant amounts.
We'd still be financially stretched, but we might be anywhere between 50 and 100 £bn better off.
I do wonder on scope for a judicial enquiry into graft around the supply of PPE and the related VIP supply lane, and whether significant monies can be recovered.
The thirty odd billion blown on track and trace (fairly clearly futile quite early into the program) can't be recovered.
If we learn nothing else from the enquiry, it should be how to run cost effective disease surveillance. And have domestic capacity for producing cheap lateral flow tests (which we also greatly overpaid for).
Seemingly the SDP are standing in my seat. Any views on them?
Someone posted on them the other day; they’re kind of Continuity-Continuity-SDP kind of socially conservative big state-ish. Somewhere between Farage and Galloway.
Seemingly the SDP are standing in my seat. Any views on them?
Someone posted on them the other day; they’re kind of Continuity-Continuity-SDP kind of socially conservative big state-ish. Somewhere between Farage and Galloway.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he takes a back seat in the campaign with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
I don’t think that works . Hiding away will get media attention and I think that would be worse for the Tories.
I think he'd be wise to stop actively courting attention, though.
No more whizz-bang announcements, no stunts, end the presidential approach... and, most of all, try to get ITV to pull the D-day interview due to be broadcast on Wednesday.
But he should still talk to the press pack at campaign events in battleground constituencies, ideally prioritising local and regional media where possible. The whole cabinet should attend the manifesto launch. Probable leadership contenders should be encouraged to do the morning broadcast round, rather than Sunak loyalists.
There is no way of getting ITV to pull the interview that doesn’t generate even more negative publicity than the interview itself.
Seemingly the SDP are standing in my seat. Any views on them?
Someone posted on them the other day; they’re kind of Continuity-Continuity-SDP kind of socially conservative big state-ish. Somewhere between Farage and Galloway.
Labour announce crackdown on off road motorbikes. Didn't realise the fines were only £100.
The £100 number is a bit of a red herring imo, and a Daily Mail dog whistle, as is "noisy off road" motorbikes - they are already going.
That is a PCN that would be handed out by a Council Enforcement Officer or BID (Business Improvement District) clipboard warrior in a peaked cap.
The far bigger issue is around policing priorities; Labour seem to have a decent grasp of this with bringing police back into neighbourhoods. That also needs thoughtful and effective use of PCSOs and things like Operation Parksafe, which is about ASB by people blocking / damaging pavements, pedestrian drop kerbs, schools, zebras and so on.
Police already have the power to seize for no insurance, just as they do for cars, under RTA1988.
Under Section 165A of the Road Traffic Act 1988, police have the power to seize any vehicle being driven without the owner of valid insurance. It's not a scenario that unfolds only in movies or TV shows. ... When the police suspect you're driving without insurance, they'll first verify this using the Motor Insurance Database. If confirmed, they'll issue a fixed penalty notice, a fine of £300, and six penalty points on your driving license. In some cases, they might choose to report you to the court where the penalties can be even more severe. https://www.insurancefactory.co.uk/news/July-2023/Caught-Without-Insurance-Here-s-What-Happens-When
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
It's unfortunate we won't get to see the results of the Covid inquiry until much later, but I think there will be a couple of stern words said about preparedness and the speed of response. It was very, very clear by February that the government needed to do something but Boris delayed for ideological reasons. He downplayed the severity, setting the wrong tone. These failures cost lives and I expect the report will say as much. This cultural blinkeredness continued, of course, through to the Downing Street parties. Further, I also think "eat out to help out" will attract some criticism for pushing up cases and for damaging the health messaging.
The preparedness thing will be a blame spread across many more people, of course.
The purpose here is to detail the potential mistakes, because your assessment of "ok" is probably correct, but you only gave positive examples. It we're going to add narrative to that judgement, we need to talk about the bad as well as the good.
I give them something of a pass on that, not because it was handled well, but because it's unclear anyone else would have done massively better on that. A 'perfect' response might significantly have altered the course of the UK pandemic, but given the infectivity of the virus, a bit better management wouldn't have done so.
The real failures IMO were the huge amounts of money blown on failing to transition quickly from expensive and slow PCR 'track and trace' policy to lateral flow tests; on were clearly corrupt contracts for PPE; and on fraudulent loans and the failure to recover significant amounts.
We'd still be financially stretched, but we might be anywhere between 50 and 100 £bn better off.
“Clearly corrupt”? Citation needed. A massive slur on thousands of hard working civil servants who did their best to implement an imperfect solution at speed, and a very naive view on how much influence politicians can have over that much procurement.
Those who want to hammer the Tories on "clearly corrupt" PPE contracts seem to have been zapped with a Men In Black memory eraser - of when Labour were saying the Government should have entered into a bunch of PPE contracts that, er, did not stand up to a moment's scrutiny.
You can guarantee failure to provide PPE would have been an ongoing theme in this election, if the Government had left the NHS without masks and gowns.
One can well imagine the cabinet meetings, where “Does anyone know anyone who knows anyone who can get hold of this stuff?” was said.
Another party in government would have done exactly the same, and IIRC at the time there were a lot of Labour figures pitching their own ‘preferred suppliers’ to the government.
That said, those suppliers who who were paid and didn’t deliver should be harried to make amends, and any politician who took an unusual payment from any supplier should also be investigated.
Seemingly the SDP are standing in my seat. Any views on them?
Economically left centre, socially conservative, eurosceptic. I'd consider them. On the downside they are supported by Cleese, Rod Liddle and Patrick O'Flynn
It's taken them 34 years to rebuild from the disaster of the 1990 Bootle by election (May) where they got 155 votes, 250 behind the Loonies and David Owen threw in the towel. To get back to a few councillors and standing 122, plus getting more than 'buttons' in the London mayoral (2% is respectable for a fringe party) is tenacious
Labour announce crackdown on off road motorbikes. Didn't realise the fines were only £100.
That's interesting. And quite difficult to do truly effectively. Many police forces run an operation called Operation Endurance addressing it (or half addressing it) in different ways. In Notts they hand out bits of paper with advice to illegal trail-bikers. Cardiff and Cleveland are two forces which are better.
It plays very much into the barriers on paths I am sometimes on about, in that the justification for anti-wheelchair barriers is always "but the motorbikes" - as if that justifies discrimination. I coined a concept of "Schrodinger's ASBO Motorcyclist", which most of the time only exists in the mind of the barrier-defender.
What happens is that something is whacked in because it *looks* like an answer to an alleged problem, created in part by 3 decades of police advice at planning stage on cellular disconnected developments after experience of chasing youths in places like Blackbird Leys and the Meadows in Nottingham. Councillors like it because it is a very public, cheap sticky plaster to please noisy voters.
Then it becomes part of the mental furniture, and a difficult assumption to dig out. Often a problem that did not exist is now believed to exist but is prevented by the cosmetic intervention.
It's a complex area to argue, that I might submit a header about one weekend.
Linked issues are too-easy creation of PSPOs with no real evidence needed and the resulting abuse of harmless people (eg disabled cyclists / elderly) by Council Officers, policing (as Lab are picking up on) including wider use of Tactical Contact, and better regulation needed of some supply chains - lithium batteries being one of them, e-motorcycles such as Surrons being another, and delivery riders being a third.
For my issues I need a clear distinction in the public between pedal-cycles and the electric mopeds / motorcycles idiots like IDS and Lord Hogan-Howe are wandering around branding as 'e-bikes' ridden by 'killer cyclists'.
I don't think they will be able to nail the Conservatives with this beyond another strand of crass incompetence, but it will help Lab retain votes from people like me, and disabled / mobility aid users, and maybe also from wavering Tory/Reform if they can make a good argument that they can address ASB.
As usual, the problem is a tiny percentage. Bit like the twat “walkers” I saw in Cornwall, whom seemed to take delight in opening a farm gate and not closing it behind you. 1 in a hundred, but that is how you get stiles.
Two recent things - there’s a lady near me who rides a tricycle because of balance problems. Well known and liked locally for her fierce independence. Walking up to the GP, watched as she repeatedly tried to get over the bumps to slow cars down. Despite her reputation for disdain in help, I nearly ventured over, but she made it over the bloody thing, unaided, in the end.
The other - Just yesterday, was shouted at because I was riding my bike at slow walking speed - by some of the e-bike motorcycle brigade. The reason I was going slow - a pedestrianised area, full of pedestrians. Slamming through at 20 would have been uncivilised.
If you read the social media - there is a small, hard core group of scramble bike and quad bike riders who believe in their solemn, God given right to plough up the countryside.
I think the Labour policy is particularly targetted at those who believe it is their God given right to drive in excess of the speed limit up and down main roads and around estates at all hours with no helmets, number plates or insurance.
Btw I have your photo. I gave the 500 wotsits to a volunteer by the flags. Natalia. She lost her nephew in the war last year - shot in cold blood by Russians
If you want to see the photo now you’ll have to get special dispensation from the mods - I don’t want to get banned for over-photo-ing
Setup an account on Flickr or similar. Post the photos there. Then put a link in your post.
Use the Imgur account you set up for that 'under fire' vid
Seemingly the SDP are standing in my seat. Any views on them?
Someone posted on them the other day; they’re kind of Continuity-Continuity-SDP kind of socially conservative big state-ish. Somewhere between Farage and Galloway.
The fact that they have a pact with Reform tells you all you need to know.
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
It's unfortunate we won't get to see the results of the Covid inquiry until much later, but I think there will be a couple of stern words said about preparedness and the speed of response. It was very, very clear by February that the government needed to do something but Boris delayed for ideological reasons. He downplayed the severity, setting the wrong tone. These failures cost lives and I expect the report will say as much. This cultural blinkeredness continued, of course, through to the Downing Street parties. Further, I also think "eat out to help out" will attract some criticism for pushing up cases and for damaging the health messaging.
The preparedness thing will be a blame spread across many more people, of course.
The purpose here is to detail the potential mistakes, because your assessment of "ok" is probably correct, but you only gave positive examples. It we're going to add narrative to that judgement, we need to talk about the bad as well as the good.
I give them something of a pass on that, not because it was handled well, but because it's unclear anyone else would have done massively better on that. A 'perfect' response might significantly have altered the course of the UK pandemic, but given the infectivity of the virus, a bit better management wouldn't have done so.
The real failures IMO were the huge amounts of money blown on failing to transition quickly from expensive and slow PCR 'track and trace' policy to lateral flow tests; on were clearly corrupt contracts for PPE; and on fraudulent loans and the failure to recover significant amounts.
We'd still be financially stretched, but we might be anywhere between 50 and 100 £bn better off.
“Clearly corrupt”? Citation needed. A massive slur on thousands of hard working civil servants who did their best to implement an imperfect solution at speed, and a very naive view on how much influence politicians can have over that much procurement.
Those who want to hammer the Tories on "clearly corrupt" PPE contracts seem to have been zapped with a Men In Black memory eraser - of when Labour were saying the Government should have entered into a bunch of PPE contracts that, er, did not stand up to a moment's scrutiny.
You can guarantee failure to provide PPE would have been an ongoing theme in this election, if the Government had left the NHS without masks and gowns.
Everyone may have been calling for the NHS to be equipped with appropriate PPE, although I don't think anyone except Johnson's Cabinet had in mind contracts for friends and family to be paid up front by the NHS for PPE ordered from AliExpress with a 900% margin.
Labour announce crackdown on off road motorbikes. Didn't realise the fines were only £100.
That's interesting. And quite difficult to do.
It plays very much into the barriers on paths I am sometimes on about, in that the justification for anti-wheelchair barriers is always "but the motorbikes" - as if that justifies discrimination. I coined a concept of "Schrodinger's ASBO Motorcyclist", which most of the time only exists in the mind of the barrier-defender.
What happens is that something is whacked in because it *looks* like an answer to an alleged problem, created in part by 3 decades of police advice at planning stage on cellular disconnected developments after experience of chasing youths in places like Blackbird Leys and the Meadows in Nottingham. Councillors like it because it is a very public, cheap sticky plaster to please noisy voters.
Then it becomes part of the mental furniture, and a difficult assumption to dig out. Often a problem that did not exist is now believed to exist but is prevented by the cosmetic intervention.
It's a complex area to argue, that I might submit a header about one weekend.
Linked issues are too-easy creation of PSPOs with no real evidence needed and the resulting abuse of harmless people (eg disabled cyclists / elderly) by Council Officers, policing (as Lab are picking up on) including wider use of Tactical Contact, and better regulation needed of some supply chains - lithium batteries being one of them, e-motorcycles such as Suttons being another.
I don't think they will be able to nail the Conservatives with this beyond another strand of crass incompetence, but it will help Lab retain votes from people like me, and disabled / mobility aid users, and maybe also from wavering Tory/Reform if they can make a good argument that they can address ASB.
I got mugged by a sustrans lady on a cycle track the other day who said they are making a big push to improve recumbent and wheelchair access to their network.
So either campaigning will continue as before next week, or Sunak will be somewhat less visible, meaning that some of the unsourced reports abd rumours of this weekend will have been right.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Mel Stride did a top job on Skye, pushing the "Tories are cutting your taxes" lie. Trevor Philips then puts up the graphic showing that average taxes are £13k higher than in 2019.
Stride then agrees that taxes have gone up. And goes back to saying that taxes have gone down.
Is he touring all the Hebridean islands? Ambitious to target those contituencies at this point in the campaign. Should have taken Johnson with him. Would have made a good Journal. 😀
My god. I was all bubbly and jovial. And then I got a cab to Maidan square and now I am standing in front of THIS and there are women either side of me weeping. Every flag is a fallen Ukrainian soldier
This is just one part of it. The flags go on and on. Quite close to blubbing myself.
We cannot let them lose!
Slava ukraini
What a journey, from someone who started out as Putin's little cheerleader.
Yes, quite a journey. I’ve actually come to Ukraine - twice. I’ve been to Lviv and chernivtsi, Kyiv and Odessa. I’ve heard bombs fall on the castle of Kamanets podolski’y. I saw a chunk of missile fall on my own street in Odessa. I watched and heard the ack ack over the Potemkin steps as Putin’s drones came in - two nights ago
I’ve seen Ukrainians in crutches, I’ve met Ukrainian draft dodgers, I’ve talked to Ukrainians who have lost ALL their schoolfriends, and now I’m standing in front of the memorial to 200,000 dead Ukrainians in maidan square listening to the widows crying and in all that time you’ve been pootling around fucking Norway with your stupid little dog
p.s. Has @IanB2 even been to Norway? Let alone with his dog?
Maybe you shouldn’t assume you’re the only one on this forum who has (allegedly) been into a war zone, conflict area, or indeed extreme danger?
Labour announce crackdown on off road motorbikes. Didn't realise the fines were only £100.
That's interesting. And quite difficult to do.
It plays very much into the barriers on paths I am sometimes on about, in that the justification for anti-wheelchair barriers is always "but the motorbikes" - as if that justifies discrimination. I coined a concept of "Schrodinger's ASBO Motorcyclist", which most of the time only exists in the mind of the barrier-defender.
What happens is that something is whacked in because it *looks* like an answer to an alleged problem, created in part by 3 decades of police advice at planning stage on cellular disconnected developments after experience of chasing youths in places like Blackbird Leys and the Meadows in Nottingham. Councillors like it because it is a very public, cheap sticky plaster to please noisy voters.
Then it becomes part of the mental furniture, and a difficult assumption to dig out. Often a problem that did not exist is now believed to exist but is prevented by the cosmetic intervention.
It's a complex area to argue, that I might submit a header about one weekend.
Linked issues are too-easy creation of PSPOs with no real evidence needed and the resulting abuse of harmless people (eg disabled cyclists / elderly) by Council Officers, policing (as Lab are picking up on) including wider use of Tactical Contact, and better regulation needed of some supply chains - lithium batteries being one of them, e-motorcycles such as Suttons being another.
I don't think they will be able to nail the Conservatives with this beyond another strand of crass incompetence, but it will help Lab retain votes from people like me, and disabled / mobility aid users, and maybe also from wavering Tory/Reform if they can make a good argument that they can address ASB.
I got mugged by a sustrans lady on a cycle track the other day who said they are making a big push to improve recumbent and wheelchair access to their network.
They are heroic; it's a project called "Paths for Everyone". They did an audit in 2018 and found 16,000 inaccessible barriers on 13,000 miles of national walking / cycling network. They got started in 2020, and are now removing or redesigning ~400 per annum on a tiny budget. It's a tough job since they only own 1% of the network.
One of my mini "talking about it in public" projects is to help improve the image of Sustrans; some cycling people are like everybody - very good at complaining about things (eg muddy NCN), and not 'getting on their bikes' to do anything about it.
A friend at Wheels for Wellbeing challenged the Trans-Pennine Trail people this week and they are addressing problems on their trails, which their website page currently tries to justify.
Bigger issues are around new and existing paths not built to national Guidelines - eg >1:20 gradients, inaccessible/unsafe surfaces. Barriers can at least just be removed. An expensive serpentine path up a bank that, is too steep because it is not serpentine enough, is a big project to fix.
Very funny but last night I went to a (very, very rare for me) military shindig. Some serving and plenty of retired soldiers age range I would say (incl those serving) 25-70.
I was on a very agreeable table and a friend leaned over to me, waved at the assembled masses and said: you see all these people, these people are Reform voters.
He is a local councillor and said that there had been a lot of eastern European immigration into the area and as a result "locals" couldn't find a school or GP or whatnot for love nor money.
It surprised him (as did the enthusiasm for Brexit seven years ago) but there you are.
They are making all the same mistakes all over again. In almost 20 years they've learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Insinuating Farage is like the "SS" is just stupid Met hyberlibz hyperbolic bullshit that just accentuates division and fuels populism.
Labour announce crackdown on off road motorbikes. Didn't realise the fines were only £100.
That's interesting. And quite difficult to do truly effectively. Many police forces run an operation called Operation Endurance addressing it (or half addressing it) in different ways. In Notts they hand out bits of paper with advice to illegal trail-bikers. Cardiff and Cleveland are two forces which are better.
It plays very much into the barriers on paths I am sometimes on about, in that the justification for anti-wheelchair barriers is always "but the motorbikes" - as if that justifies discrimination. I coined a concept of "Schrodinger's ASBO Motorcyclist", which most of the time only exists in the mind of the barrier-defender.
What happens is that something is whacked in because it *looks* like an answer to an alleged problem, created in part by 3 decades of police advice at planning stage on cellular disconnected developments after experience of chasing youths in places like Blackbird Leys and the Meadows in Nottingham. Councillors like it because it is a very public, cheap sticky plaster to please noisy voters.
Then it becomes part of the mental furniture, and a difficult assumption to dig out. Often a problem that did not exist is now believed to exist but is prevented by the cosmetic intervention.
It's a complex area to argue, that I might submit a header about one weekend.
Linked issues are too-easy creation of PSPOs with no real evidence needed and the resulting abuse of harmless people (eg disabled cyclists / elderly) by Council Officers, policing (as Lab are picking up on) including wider use of Tactical Contact, and better regulation needed of some supply chains - lithium batteries being one of them, e-motorcycles such as Surrons being another, and delivery riders being a third.
For my issues I need a clear distinction in the public between pedal-cycles and the electric mopeds / motorcycles idiots like IDS and Lord Hogan-Howe are wandering around branding as 'e-bikes' ridden by 'killer cyclists'.
I don't think they will be able to nail the Conservatives with this beyond another strand of crass incompetence, but it will help Lab retain votes from people like me, and disabled / mobility aid users, and maybe also from wavering Tory/Reform if they can make a good argument that they can address ASB.
As usual, the problem is a tiny percentage. Bit like the twat “walkers” I saw in Cornwall, whom seemed to take delight in opening a farm gate and not closing it behind you. 1 in a hundred, but that is how you get stiles.
Two recent things - there’s a lady near me who rides a tricycle because of balance problems. Well known and liked locally for her fierce independence. Walking up to the GP, watched as she repeatedly tried to get over the bumps to slow cars down. Despite her reputation for disdain in help, I nearly ventured over, but she made it over the bloody thing, unaided, in the end.
The other - Just yesterday, was shouted at because I was riding my bike at slow walking speed - by some of the e-bike motorcycle brigade. The reason I was going slow - a pedestrianised area, full of pedestrians. Slamming through at 20 would have been uncivilised.
If you read the social media - there is a small, hard core group of scramble bike and quad bike riders who believe in their solemn, God given right to plough up the countryside.
I think the Labour policy is particularly targetted at those who believe it is their God given right to drive in excess of the speed limit up and down main roads and around estates at all hours with no helmets, number plates or insurance.
Labour should concentrate on getting electric scooters and illegal ebikes sorted. I personally think they are a great idea and would hope they can be successfully integrated into our transport system, but if they can't, then the laws need to be aggressively enforced because they're a fecking menace in urban areas around here.
So either campaigning will continue as before next week, or Sunak will be somewhat less visible, meaning that some of the unsourced reports abd rumours of this weekend will have been right.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Mel Stride did a top job on Skye, pushing the "Tories are cutting your taxes" lie. Trevor Philips then puts up the graphic showing that average taxes are £13k higher than in 2019.
Stride then agrees that taxes have gone up. And goes back to saying that taxes have gone down.
Is he touring all the Hebridean islands? Ambitious to target those contituencies at this point in the campaign. Should have taken Johnson with him. Would have made a good Journal. 😀
So either campaigning will continue as before next week, or Sunak will be somewhat less visible, meaning that some of the unsourced reports abd rumours of this weekend will have been right.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Mel Stride did a top job on Skye, pushing the "Tories are cutting your taxes" lie. Trevor Philips then puts up the graphic showing that average taxes are £13k higher than in 2019.
Stride then agrees that taxes have gone up. And goes back to saying that taxes have gone down.
So either campaigning will continue as before next week, or Sunak will be somewhat less visible, meaning that some of the unsourced reports abd rumours of this weekend will have been right.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Mel Stride did a top job on Skye, pushing the "Tories are cutting your taxes" lie. Trevor Philips then puts up the graphic showing that average taxes are £13k higher than in 2019.
Stride then agrees that taxes have gone up. And goes back to saying that taxes have gone down.
Very funny but last night I went to a (very, very rare for me) military shindig. Some serving and plenty of retired soldiers age range I would say (incl those serving) 25-70.
I was on a very agreeable table and a friend leaned over to me, waved at the assembled masses and said: you see all these people, these people are Reform voters.
He is a local councillor and said that there had been a lot of eastern European immigration into the area and as a result "locals" couldn't find a school or GP or whatnot for love nor money.
It surprised him (as did the enthusiasm for Brexit seven years ago) but there you are.
They are making all the same mistakes all over again. In almost 20 years they've learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Insinuating Farage is like the "SS" is just stupid Met hyberlibz hyperbolic bullshit that just accentuates division and fuels populism.
Hey, I thought you enjoyed a bit of Yestapo banter!
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
It's unfortunate we won't get to see the results of the Covid inquiry until much later, but I think there will be a couple of stern words said about preparedness and the speed of response. It was very, very clear by February that the government needed to do something but Boris delayed for ideological reasons. He downplayed the severity, setting the wrong tone. These failures cost lives and I expect the report will say as much. This cultural blinkeredness continued, of course, through to the Downing Street parties. Further, I also think "eat out to help out" will attract some criticism for pushing up cases and for damaging the health messaging.
The preparedness thing will be a blame spread across many more people, of course.
The purpose here is to detail the potential mistakes, because your assessment of "ok" is probably correct, but you only gave positive examples. It we're going to add narrative to that judgement, we need to talk about the bad as well as the good.
I give them something of a pass on that, not because it was handled well, but because it's unclear anyone else would have done massively better on that. A 'perfect' response might significantly have altered the course of the UK pandemic, but given the infectivity of the virus, a bit better management wouldn't have done so.
The real failures IMO were the huge amounts of money blown on failing to transition quickly from expensive and slow PCR 'track and trace' policy to lateral flow tests; on were clearly corrupt contracts for PPE; and on fraudulent loans and the failure to recover significant amounts.
We'd still be financially stretched, but we might be anywhere between 50 and 100 £bn better off.
“Clearly corrupt”? Citation needed. A massive slur on thousands of hard working civil servants who did their best to implement an imperfect solution at speed, and a very naive view on how much influence politicians can have over that much procurement.
Those who want to hammer the Tories on "clearly corrupt" PPE contracts seem to have been zapped with a Men In Black memory eraser - of when Labour were saying the Government should have entered into a bunch of PPE contracts that, er, did not stand up to a moment's scrutiny.
You can guarantee failure to provide PPE would have been an ongoing theme in this election, if the Government had left the NHS without masks and gowns.
Everyone may have been calling for the NHS to be equipped with appropriate PPE, although I don't think anyone except Johnson's Cabinet had in mind contracts for friends and family to be paid up front by the NHS for PPE ordered from AliExpress with a 900% margin.
Bar owners are natural experts in PPE procurement?
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
It's unfortunate we won't get to see the results of the Covid inquiry until much later, but I think there will be a couple of stern words said about preparedness and the speed of response. It was very, very clear by February that the government needed to do something but Boris delayed for ideological reasons. He downplayed the severity, setting the wrong tone. These failures cost lives and I expect the report will say as much. This cultural blinkeredness continued, of course, through to the Downing Street parties. Further, I also think "eat out to help out" will attract some criticism for pushing up cases and for damaging the health messaging.
The preparedness thing will be a blame spread across many more people, of course.
The purpose here is to detail the potential mistakes, because your assessment of "ok" is probably correct, but you only gave positive examples. It we're going to add narrative to that judgement, we need to talk about the bad as well as the good.
I give them something of a pass on that, not because it was handled well, but because it's unclear anyone else would have done massively better on that. A 'perfect' response might significantly have altered the course of the UK pandemic, but given the infectivity of the virus, a bit better management wouldn't have done so.
The real failures IMO were the huge amounts of money blown on failing to transition quickly from expensive and slow PCR 'track and trace' policy to lateral flow tests; on were clearly corrupt contracts for PPE; and on fraudulent loans and the failure to recover significant amounts.
We'd still be financially stretched, but we might be anywhere between 50 and 100 £bn better off.
“Clearly corrupt”? Citation needed. A massive slur on thousands of hard working civil servants who did their best to implement an imperfect solution at speed, and a very naive view on how much influence politicians can have over that much procurement.
Those who want to hammer the Tories on "clearly corrupt" PPE contracts seem to have been zapped with a Men In Black memory eraser - of when Labour were saying the Government should have entered into a bunch of PPE contracts that, er, did not stand up to a moment's scrutiny.
You can guarantee failure to provide PPE would have been an ongoing theme in this election, if the Government had left the NHS without masks and gowns.
One can well imagine the cabinet meetings, where “Does anyone know anyone who knows anyone who can get hold of this stuff?” was said.
Another party in government would have done exactly the same, and IIRC at the time there were a lot of Labour figures pitching their own ‘preferred suppliers’ to the government.
That said, those suppliers who who were paid and didn’t deliver should be harried to make amends, and any politician who took an unusual payment from any supplier should also be investigated.
*ANY* payment surely. Who's to know what is usual in those circles?
What seems to most wind up the 5 remaining Tories is that people are openly laughing at their attempts to lie. Not remotely convincing, and the more they shriek on about Labour the funnier it gets.
I've now seen that Sky keep putting up the same bar chart at every opportunity. People like Stride keep trying to pivot back onto a Labour attack but its difficult when people are sniggering at you.
Remember John Major in 1992? YES IT HURT, YES IT WORKED. This campaign is No, it didn't hurt. Actually you're not in agony, you're feeling great! No, really you are. That isn't pain, its pleasure actually. Hear me out. If Labour get in then you are going to feel pain. Please stop swearing.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he takes a back seat in the campaign with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
I don’t think that works . Hiding away will get media attention and I think that would be worse for the Tories.
I think he'd be wise to stop actively courting attention, though.
No more whizz-bang announcements, no stunts, end the presidential approach... and, most of all, try to get ITV to pull the D-day interview due to be broadcast on Wednesday.
But he should still talk to the press pack at campaign events in battleground constituencies, ideally prioritising local and regional media where possible. The whole cabinet should attend the manifesto launch. Probable leadership contenders should be encouraged to do the morning broadcast round, rather than Sunak loyalists.
There is no way of getting ITV to pull the interview that doesn’t generate even more negative publicity than the interview itself.
There’s no chance, I suppose, that all of this is Sunak channelling Frank Underwood but with the goal of a return to Silicon Valley?
You know, deliberately sabotaging the Conservative Party?
You’d have to be magnificently devious to pull it off. Not sure anyone aside from Boris Johnson has it in them.
So either campaigning will continue as before next week, or Sunak will be somewhat less visible, meaning that some of the unsourced reports abd rumours of this weekend will have been right.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Mel Stride did a top job on Skye, pushing the "Tories are cutting your taxes" lie. Trevor Philips then puts up the graphic showing that average taxes are £13k higher than in 2019.
Stride then agrees that taxes have gone up. And goes back to saying that taxes have gone down.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him out of resigning, but only if he is free to take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
Absolute State of some of his ministers, though? Sgt. Lewis might say "Is this wise, Sir?"
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he takes a back seat in the campaign with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
I don’t think that works . Hiding away will get media attention and I think that would be worse for the Tories.
I think he'd be wise to stop actively courting attention, though.
No more whizz-bang announcements, no stunts, end the presidential approach... and, most of all, try to get ITV to pull the D-day interview due to be broadcast on Wednesday.
But he should still talk to the press pack at campaign events in battleground constituencies, ideally prioritising local and regional media where possible. The whole cabinet should attend the manifesto launch. Probable leadership contenders should be encouraged to do the morning broadcast round, rather than Sunak loyalists.
There is no way of getting ITV to pull the interview that doesn’t generate even more negative publicity than the interview itself.
There’s no chance, I suppose, that all of this is Sunak channelling Frank Underwood but with the goal of a return to Silicon Valley?
You know, deliberately sabotaging the Conservative Party?
You’d have to be magnificently devious to pull it off. Not sure anyone aside from Boris Johnson has it in them.
Nah, if he was deliberately sabotaging the Conservative Party, surely he'd have made some attempt to disguise the fact?
Very funny but last night I went to a (very, very rare for me) military shindig. Some serving and plenty of retired soldiers age range I would say (incl those serving) 25-70.
I was on a very agreeable table and a friend leaned over to me, waved at the assembled masses and said: you see all these people, these people are Reform voters.
He is a local councillor and said that there had been a lot of eastern European immigration into the area and as a result "locals" couldn't find a school or GP or whatnot for love nor money.
It surprised him (as did the enthusiasm for Brexit seven years ago) but there you are.
Insinuating Farage is like the "SS" is just stupid Met hyberlibz hyperbolic bullshit that just accentuates division and fuels populism.
Well, there are some pretty lurid accounts of his time in Dulwich sidling up to Jewish students and making gassing noises, then proclaiming that Hitler had the right idea.
I don’t think it’s all a hatchet job either. He barely denied some of the allegations.
Very funny but last night I went to a (very, very rare for me) military shindig. Some serving and plenty of retired soldiers age range I would say (incl those serving) 25-70.
I was on a very agreeable table and a friend leaned over to me, waved at the assembled masses and said: you see all these people, these people are Reform voters.
He is a local councillor and said that there had been a lot of eastern European immigration into the area and as a result "locals" couldn't find a school or GP or whatnot for love nor money.
It surprised him (as did the enthusiasm for Brexit seven years ago) but there you are.
They are making all the same mistakes all over again. In almost 20 years they've learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Insinuating Farage is like the "SS" is just stupid Met hyberlibz hyperbolic bullshit that just accentuates division and fuels populism.
Hey, I thought you enjoyed a bit of Yestapo banter!
Very funny but last night I went to a (very, very rare for me) military shindig. Some serving and plenty of retired soldiers age range I would say (incl those serving) 25-70.
I was on a very agreeable table and a friend leaned over to me, waved at the assembled masses and said: you see all these people, these people are Reform voters.
He is a local councillor and said that there had been a lot of eastern European immigration into the area and as a result "locals" couldn't find a school or GP or whatnot for love nor money.
It surprised him (as did the enthusiasm for Brexit seven years ago) but there you are.
They are making all the same mistakes all over again. In almost 20 years they've learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Insinuating Farage is like the "SS" is just stupid Met hyberlibz hyperbolic bullshit that just accentuates division and fuels populism.
Hey, I thought you enjoyed a bit of Yestapo banter!
I think I might even have used the WaffenYesYes at some point, or at least liked someone else who said it.
So either campaigning will continue as before next week, or Sunak will be somewhat less visible, meaning that some of the unsourced reports abd rumours of this weekend will have been right.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Mel Stride did a top job on Skye, pushing the "Tories are cutting your taxes" lie. Trevor Philips then puts up the graphic showing that average taxes are £13k higher than in 2019.
Stride then agrees that taxes have gone up. And goes back to saying that taxes have gone down.
Is he touring all the Hebridean islands? Ambitious to target those contituencies at this point in the campaign. Should have taken Johnson with him. Would have made a good Journal. 😀
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he takes a back seat in the campaign with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
I don’t think that works . Hiding away will get media attention and I think that would be worse for the Tories.
I think he'd be wise to stop actively courting attention, though.
No more whizz-bang announcements, no stunts, end the presidential approach... and, most of all, try to get ITV to pull the D-day interview due to be broadcast on Wednesday.
But he should still talk to the press pack at campaign events in battleground constituencies, ideally prioritising local and regional media where possible. The whole cabinet should attend the manifesto launch. Probable leadership contenders should be encouraged to do the morning broadcast round, rather than Sunak loyalists.
There is no way of getting ITV to pull the interview that doesn’t generate even more negative publicity than the interview itself.
There’s no chance, I suppose, that all of this is Sunak channelling Frank Underwood but with the goal of a return to Silicon Valley?
You know, deliberately sabotaging the Conservative Party?
You’d have to be magnificently devious to pull it off. Not sure anyone aside from Boris Johnson has it in them.
Nah, if he was deliberately sabotaging the Conservative Party, surely he'd have made some attempt to disguise the fact?
As mentioned in @ShippersUnbound long read, we found voters are currently more likely to believe Keir Starmer than Rishi Sunak in the £2,000 tax row that dominated last weeks debate. Though a significant number don't know (Whole piece well worth a read!)
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he is free take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
In a presidential campaign, hiding the president seems, suboptimal...
The Americans are about to have a good go at it.
By hiding Trump in jail?
Fortunately the decision will be made by a very distinguished judge with a record for designing appopriate punishments for criminals, including exercise of mercy or setting up rehabilitation where there is evidence it can be achieved.
I suspect Mr Trump, by failing even to take responsibility for himself or his crimes, has talked himself into severe sanctions, and he has continued committing multifarious Contempt of Court Offences.
Judge Merchan may do something to accommodate Trump's campaigning.
I would not - I'd say "The party knew the risks when they selected an indicted criminal suspect as candidate. No one is above the law. Live with the consequences your own actions, dipsticks."
And I might send Trump to prison but give him access to social media until the Election. So he'd have an opportunity to remind the electorate what a dishonest coward he is, and incidentally earn more jail time.
As mentioned in @ShippersUnbound long read, we found voters are currently more likely to believe Keir Starmer than Rishi Sunak in the £2,000 tax row that dominated last weeks debate. Though a significant number don't know (Whole piece well worth a read!)
Perhaps. The more pertinent aspect is WHO the people they convince are - if you 'only' convince 20% but half of them change voting because of it and the 40% who are not convinced and DKs just stick with their vote you've effected a big shift. Campaigns aren't about overwhelming convincing, they are about targeted convincing
1. Smallest majority and which seat and who. 2. First to declare and what time. 3. Smallest number of votes and which seat. 4. Exit poll numbers. 5. Numbers of winners from third place or lower 6. Number of lost deposits by 7 major parties.
Rishi Sunak’s aides realised immediately that his interview with ITV’s Paul Brand on Thursday afternoon was going to be a problem hanging over them for the better part of a week. In a 25-minute grilling, to be broadcast on Wednesday, the prime minister endured a torrid time over his personal wealth, leading to “frank exchanges” with his interviewer.
Very funny but last night I went to a (very, very rare for me) military shindig. Some serving and plenty of retired soldiers age range I would say (incl those serving) 25-70.
I was on a very agreeable table and a friend leaned over to me, waved at the assembled masses and said: you see all these people, these people are Reform voters.
He is a local councillor and said that there had been a lot of eastern European immigration into the area and as a result "locals" couldn't find a school or GP or whatnot for love nor money.
It surprised him (as did the enthusiasm for Brexit seven years ago) but there you are.
They are making all the same mistakes all over again. In almost 20 years they've learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Insinuating Farage is like the "SS" is just stupid Met hyberlibz hyperbolic bullshit that just accentuates division and fuels populism.
I think it’s rather Farage who accentuates division and fuels populism!
What seems to most wind up the 5 remaining Tories is that people are openly laughing at their attempts to lie. Not remotely convincing, and the more they shriek on about Labour the funnier it gets.
I've now seen that Sky keep putting up the same bar chart at every opportunity. People like Stride keep trying to pivot back onto a Labour attack but its difficult when people are sniggering at you.
Remember John Major in 1992? YES IT HURT, YES IT WORKED. This campaign is No, it didn't hurt. Actually you're not in agony, you're feeling great! No, really you are. That isn't pain, its pleasure actually. Hear me out. If Labour get in then you are going to feel pain. Please stop swearing.
They can't run on their record. They can't run on attacking Labour as that will just pivot back to the Tory's record. They can't run on immigration as that strengthens Reform.
The best way to limit their defeat and avoid wipeout is paradoxically probably just to copy Starmer and be as quiet as possible.
I can't think of anyway they could have won this election from the time it was called without Labour massively cocking up, which under Starmer wasn't going to happen.
Very funny but last night I went to a (very, very rare for me) military shindig. Some serving and plenty of retired soldiers age range I would say (incl those serving) 25-70.
I was on a very agreeable table and a friend leaned over to me, waved at the assembled masses and said: you see all these people, these people are Reform voters.
He is a local councillor and said that there had been a lot of eastern European immigration into the area and as a result "locals" couldn't find a school or GP or whatnot for love nor money.
It surprised him (as did the enthusiasm for Brexit seven years ago) but there you are.
They are making all the same mistakes all over again. In almost 20 years they've learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Insinuating Farage is like the "SS" is just stupid Met hyberlibz hyperbolic bullshit that just accentuates division and fuels populism.
Hey, I thought you enjoyed a bit of Yestapo banter!
I did, because it got such a fantastic reaction.
Still childish, of course.
I'm not sure if gammony mumping counts as fantastic, but I guess N.Monkey should be gratified at getting a reaction at least.
Rishi Sunak’s aides realised immediately that his interview with ITV’s Paul Brand on Thursday afternoon was going to be a problem hanging over them for the better part of a week. In a 25-minute grilling, to be broadcast on Wednesday, the prime minister endured a torrid time over his personal wealth, leading to “frank exchanges” with his interviewer.
It's going to get worse, it's happened, I feel sorry for Rishi.
Oh dear.
Unless I’ve missed it this campaign which is quite possible as I’ve other things to concentrate on, the subject of his personal wealth hasn't really been in the spotlight? Snide comments about helicopter trips of course but no real focus on it.
The issue is whether it makes him less relatable. Coming on top of the D-Day debacle, the answer is probably ‘yes.’
Interestingly, my Surrey tory friend who was herself a banker before focusing on being a mum, said straightaway on his appointment that it was a hopeless decision: that he was out of touch and ‘would never be seen as a man of the people.’
Mind you, she still loves Boris so there’s an agenda.
My god. I was all bubbly and jovial. And then I got a cab to Maidan square and now I am standing in front of THIS and there are women either side of me weeping. Every flag is a fallen Ukrainian soldier
This is just one part of it. The flags go on and on. Quite close to blubbing myself.
We cannot let them lose!
Slava ukraini
What a journey, from someone who started out as Putin's little cheerleader.
Yes, quite a journey. I’ve actually come to Ukraine - twice. I’ve been to Lviv and chernivtsi, Kyiv and Odessa. I’ve heard bombs fall on the castle of Kamanets podolski’y. I saw a chunk of missile fall on my own street in Odessa. I watched and heard the ack ack over the Potemkin steps as Putin’s drones came in - two nights ago
I’ve seen Ukrainians in crutches, I’ve met Ukrainian draft dodgers, I’ve talked to Ukrainians who have lost ALL their schoolfriends, and now I’m standing in front of the memorial to 200,000 dead Ukrainians in maidan square listening to the widows crying and in all that time you’ve been pootling around fucking Norway with your stupid little dog
p.s. Has @IanB2 even been to Norway? Let alone with his dog?
Maybe you shouldn’t assume you’re the only one on this forum who has (allegedly) been into a war zone, conflict area, or indeed extreme danger?
All very GenZ of you, ironically.
Do you still believe I am “pretending to be in Ukraine”??!
I just met a lovely guy. Ronan. A videographer
Everyone in Ukraine has stories - his: he was driving through suburban Kyiv with his wife and he saw two anti-missile missiles hit a Russian missile directly over his car. They miraculously escaped
His best friend - a Jehovah’s Witness - is in prison in Crimea
I asked him how long the war might last
His answer: “I was discussing this with friends last night. Some reckon it could go on to the end of the decade”
However, the decision for the prime minister to abandon the D-Day commemoration, after the Tories made security and national service cornerstones of their campaign, left MPs incredulous. Cabinet ministers responded with impotent rage, criticising Sunak’s political judgment and appetite for the job. The prime minister has repeatedly complained privately that foreign affairs take up too much of his time and he has little interest in the ceremonial aspects of his job.
As mentioned in @ShippersUnbound long read, we found voters are currently more likely to believe Keir Starmer than Rishi Sunak in the £2,000 tax row that dominated last weeks debate. Though a significant number don't know (Whole piece well worth a read!)
Perhaps. The more pertinent aspect is WHO the people they convince are - if you 'only' convince 20% but half of them change voting because of it and the 40% who are not convinced and DKs just stick with their vote you've effected a big shift. Campaigns aren't about overwhelming convincing, they are about targeted convincing
The conservation has just turned to Tories have cost us £13k in extra tax this parliament and everyone expects some more in the next one. Labour £2k over 4 years doesn't sound unreasonable or frightening in that context.
Of course this is unfair to the Tories, but when you are losing, life isn't fair.
1. Smallest majority and which seat and who. 2. First to declare and what time. 3. Smallest number of votes and which seat. 4. Exit poll numbers. 5. Numbers of winners from third place or lower 6. Number of lost deposits by 7 major parties.
Welcome Jack! By 4, the exit poll numbers closest to/furthest away from the actual result? And by 5, what if the party had never had a candidate there before?
As mentioned in @ShippersUnbound long read, we found voters are currently more likely to believe Keir Starmer than Rishi Sunak in the £2,000 tax row that dominated last weeks debate. Though a significant number don't know (Whole piece well worth a read!)
Perhaps. The more pertinent aspect is WHO the people they convince are - if you 'only' convince 20% but half of them change voting because of it and the 40% who are not convinced and DKs just stick with their vote you've effected a big shift. Campaigns aren't about overwhelming convincing, they are about targeted convincing
The conservation has just turned to Tories have cost us £13k in extra tax this parliament and everyone expects some more in the next one. Labour £2k over 4 years doesn't sound unreasonable or frightening in that context.
Of course this is unfair to the Tories, but when you are losing, life isn't fair.
The conversation is still on the beach tbf My point would remain however. What is sticking and with whom. The 13k will no more universally connect than £2094. Its not a simple binary. It never is
So either campaigning will continue as before next week, or Sunak will be somewhat less visible, meaning that some of the unsourced reports abd rumours of this weekend will have been right.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Mel Stride did a top job on Skye, pushing the "Tories are cutting your taxes" lie. Trevor Philips then puts up the graphic showing that average taxes are £13k higher than in 2019.
Stride then agrees that taxes have gone up. And goes back to saying that taxes have gone down.
Did Trevor Philips put up a graphic of how much public spending had increased since 2019 ?
The way extra public spending is immediately taken for granted and/or forgotten about is a major part of this country's financial problems.
Lol dont be silly, we have to spend spend spend. Nothing can be cut because we'll upset the OBR or crash the economy or something.
The whole fraudulent evasion of discussing where we are economically just means the elctorate is in for a surprise post 4 July.
Ive bought popcorn. Lots of popcorn.
Would anyone have any better suggestions for election night snacks than popcorn?
I think a pork pie might go very well with some beer, and it's a very Farage-themed choice, if I can find any down here. I might have to go up to the city and see if Tesco stock them in Ireland.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he takes a back seat in the campaign with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
I don’t think that works . Hiding away will get media attention and I think that would be worse for the Tories.
I think he'd be wise to stop actively courting attention, though.
No more whizz-bang announcements, no stunts, end the presidential approach... and, most of all, try to get ITV to pull the D-day interview due to be broadcast on Wednesday.
But he should still talk to the press pack at campaign events in battleground constituencies, ideally prioritising local and regional media where possible. The whole cabinet should attend the manifesto launch. Probable leadership contenders should be encouraged to do the morning broadcast round, rather than Sunak loyalists.
There is no way of getting ITV to pull the interview that doesn’t generate even more negative publicity than the interview itself.
There’s no chance, I suppose, that all of this is Sunak channelling Frank Underwood but with the goal of a return to Silicon Valley?
You know, deliberately sabotaging the Conservative Party?
You’d have to be magnificently devious to pull it off. Not sure anyone aside from Boris Johnson has it in them.
But that pudding is distinctly over-egged. If Rishi just wanted to hand in his notice, all he had to do was call an election and campaign normally. He'd have been on track to lose handily.
To mess up this much deliberately... Either he's sold Conservative seats on the spreads, or he wants the Conservatives nuked do they can get replaced by a Proper Right Wing Party. Neither of which entirely makes sense.
So we're left with "there is no magic door, behind which the ninjas are" theory. His success has been down to some talent, some hard work, but mostly luck, bluster and being in the right place at the right time. And now his luck has run out, so the bluster isn't working, so everything is falling apart.
Rishi's misfortune is for that to be happening to him on one of the biggest stages of all.
So either campaigning will continue as before next week, or Sunak will be somewhat less visible, meaning that some of the unsourced reports abd rumours of this weekend will have been right.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Mel Stride did a top job on Skye, pushing the "Tories are cutting your taxes" lie. Trevor Philips then puts up the graphic showing that average taxes are £13k higher than in 2019.
Stride then agrees that taxes have gone up. And goes back to saying that taxes have gone down.
Did Trevor Philips put up a graphic of how much public spending had increased since 2019 ?
The way extra public spending is immediately taken for granted and/or forgotten about is a major part of this country's financial problems.
Lol dont be silly, we have to spend spend spend. Nothing can be cut because we'll upset the OBR or crash the economy or something.
The whole fraudulent evasion of discussing where we are economically just means the elctorate is in for a surprise post 4 July.
Ive bought popcorn. Lots of popcorn.
Would anyone have any better suggestions for election night snacks than popcorn?
I think a pork pie might go very well with some beer, and it's a very Farage-themed choice, if I can find any down here. I might have to go up to the city and see if Tesco stock them in Ireland.
I am having an early night and will listen to the media broadcasts from breakfast
So either campaigning will continue as before next week, or Sunak will be somewhat less visible, meaning that some of the unsourced reports abd rumours of this weekend will have been right.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Mel Stride did a top job on Skye, pushing the "Tories are cutting your taxes" lie. Trevor Philips then puts up the graphic showing that average taxes are £13k higher than in 2019.
Stride then agrees that taxes have gone up. And goes back to saying that taxes have gone down.
Did Trevor Philips put up a graphic of how much public spending had increased since 2019 ?
The way extra public spending is immediately taken for granted and/or forgotten about is a major part of this country's financial problems.
Lol dont be silly, we have to spend spend spend. Nothing can be cut because we'll upset the OBR or crash the economy or something.
The whole fraudulent evasion of discussing where we are economically just means the elctorate is in for a surprise post 4 July.
Ive bought popcorn. Lots of popcorn.
Would anyone have any better suggestions for election night snacks than popcorn?
I think a pork pie might go very well with some beer, and it's a very Farage-themed choice, if I can find any down here. I might have to go up to the city and see if Tesco stock them in Ireland.
Haha I’ve been wondering this very thing.
On the beverage front I’ll stick to my peppermint teas I think but perhaps with a diet coke for the caffeine boost. (I don’t drink alcohol.)
Food-wise a scotch egg for some reason takes my fancy for election night, which is similar to your pork pie. Maybe some good cheese too.
However, the decision for the prime minister to abandon the D-Day commemoration, after the Tories made security and national service cornerstones of their campaign, left MPs incredulous. Cabinet ministers responded with impotent rage, criticising Sunak’s political judgment and appetite for the job. The prime minister has repeatedly complained privately that foreign affairs take up too much of his time and he has little interest in the ceremonial aspects of his job.
Somehow Sunak manages to come across even worse than I expected.
It was said at the time of the surprise David Cameron appointment that he effectively wanted to turn Cameron into the "foreign affairs prime minister" so that he could ignore the subject going forward.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he takes a back seat in the campaign with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
I don’t think that works . Hiding away will get media attention and I think that would be worse for the Tories.
I think he'd be wise to stop actively courting attention, though.
No more whizz-bang announcements, no stunts, end the presidential approach... and, most of all, try to get ITV to pull the D-day interview due to be broadcast on Wednesday.
But he should still talk to the press pack at campaign events in battleground constituencies, ideally prioritising local and regional media where possible. The whole cabinet should attend the manifesto launch. Probable leadership contenders should be encouraged to do the morning broadcast round, rather than Sunak loyalists.
There is no way of getting ITV to pull the interview that doesn’t generate even more negative publicity than the interview itself.
There’s no chance, I suppose, that all of this is Sunak channelling Frank Underwood but with the goal of a return to Silicon Valley?
You know, deliberately sabotaging the Conservative Party?
You’d have to be magnificently devious to pull it off. Not sure anyone aside from Boris Johnson has it in them.
But that pudding is distinctly over-egged. If Rishi just wanted to hand in his notice, all he had to do was call an election and campaign normally. He'd have been on track to lose handily.
To mess up this much deliberately... Either he's sold Conservative seats on the spreads, or he wants the Conservatives nuked do they can get replaced by a Proper Right Wing Party. Neither of which entirely makes sense.
So we're left with "there is no magic door, behind which the ninjas are" theory. His success has been down to some talent, some hard work, but mostly luck, bluster and being in the right place at the right time. And now his luck has run out, so the bluster isn't working, so everything is falling apart.
Rishi's misfortune is for that to be happening to him on one of the biggest stages of all.
He stood in the rain and Dday was a baffling and shitty error. Everything else is fluff, but the media have snuggled into it
Sunak has somehow done worse than I thought he would. He's conspired to make 2017 look positively strategic.
For an intelligent chap, he sure makes a lot of very dumb decisions.
Being intelligent does not make you into a politician
If it did we may have a better society and future
Do you think part of the problem may be down to him not having been an MP for all that long? You feel that a more experienced Politician would have sussed straight away that the fixture clash was a huge banana skin waiting to be slipped on.
In that sense, it may have been innocence rather than arrogance that led to the mistake.
Sunak has somehow done worse than I thought he would. He's conspired to make 2017 look positively strategic.
For an intelligent chap, he sure makes a lot of very dumb decisions.
I've been wondering about this. I think two things might have happened to Sunak that have resulted in this:
1. When he came to power time was short. He's had real jobs, he's from a consulting background, and I think he's fallen for the cult of busyness that is prevalent - jus push, push, push on the priorities and the sheer weight of effort will tell. But you can always push harder as PM, and in doing so the danger is you lose your peripheral vision and (to use an ADHD term, though no suggestion that Sunak is anything more than busy) hyperfocus. It is also prevalent in high stress workplaces, that is where humans are more likely to overfocus on the tick boxes without even looking up to think why.
2. As a corrolory of this, whatever sense of optics Sunak had, which may have been a little weak, but certainly existed, has gone out of the window - wait for the weather to clear?, no, push on through, get to the next thing. Stay at D-Day, no things to do, show my face, next.
I don't believe Sunak understands D-Day any less than the next man, the Help for Heroes cultism around it has grown in the last 20 years, whilst he has been in politics. He knew, but busyness got the better of him.
What Sunak needs to do is chill, and take 5 to listen to whatever instincts he still possesses and set a pace that allows for thought.
Labour saying new prisons will be deemed nationally significant and so decided by ministers is good, but we'll see if that survives individual MP outrage.
Labour saying new prisons will be deemed nationally significant and so decided by ministers is good, but we'll see if that survives individual MP outrage.
Excellent policy. Vital infrastructure including railways, 4G/5G sites etc. next please in urban areas.
Sunak has somehow done worse than I thought he would. He's conspired to make 2017 look positively strategic.
For an intelligent chap, he sure makes a lot of very dumb decisions.
Being intelligent does not make you into a politician
If it did we may have a better society and future
Do you think part of the problem may be down to him not having been an MP for all that long? You feel that a more experienced Politician would have sussed straight away that the fixture clash was a huge banana skin waiting to be slipped on.
In that sense, it may have been innocence rather than arrogance that led to the mistake.
I guess it’s worth remembering that Sunak lost to Truss … who lost to a lettuce.
Comments
Seriously though, perhaps all the cray cray is preventing the expected swing back, hence the lack of movement.
Two recent things - there’s a lady near me who rides a tricycle because of balance problems. Well known and liked locally for her fierce independence. Walking up to the GP, watched as she repeatedly tried to get over the bumps to slow cars down. Despite her reputation for disdain in help, I nearly ventured over, but she made it over the bloody thing, unaided, in the end.
The other - Just yesterday, was shouted at because I was riding my bike at slow walking speed - by some of the e-bike motorcycle brigade. The reason I was going slow - a pedestrianised area, full of pedestrians. Slamming through at 20 would have been uncivilised.
If you read the social media - there is a small, hard core group of scramble bike and quad bike riders who believe in their solemn, God given right to plough up the countryside.
Stride then agrees that taxes have gone up. And goes back to saying that taxes have gone down.
https://x.com/implausibleblog/status/1799717467213750632
The schedule of any political leader or head of state is totally mental, with various planes, trains, and automobiles everywhere.
On the downside they are supported by Cleese, Rod Liddle and Patrick O'Flynn
Tax it and it will move.
For example, the non-dom status stuff is about people who have considerable assets and income from other countries. If you remove the non-dom system, they will go back to all the games about being in the country x days a year etc. The original idea of the non-dom system was to encourage people in that situation on-shore, so that they are economically active in the UK and paying tax on *those* activities.
If we learn nothing else from the enquiry, it should be how to run cost effective disease surveillance.
And have domestic capacity for producing cheap lateral flow tests (which we also greatly overpaid for).
That is a PCN that would be handed out by a Council Enforcement Officer or BID (Business Improvement District) clipboard warrior in a peaked cap.
The far bigger issue is around policing priorities; Labour seem to have a decent grasp of this with bringing police back into neighbourhoods. That also needs thoughtful and effective use of PCSOs and things like Operation Parksafe, which is about ASB by people blocking / damaging pavements, pedestrian drop kerbs, schools, zebras and so on.
Police already have the power to seize for no insurance, just as they do for cars, under RTA1988.
Under Section 165A of the Road Traffic Act 1988, police have the power to seize any vehicle being driven without the owner of valid insurance. It's not a scenario that unfolds only in movies or TV shows.
...
When the police suspect you're driving without insurance, they'll first verify this using the Motor Insurance Database. If confirmed, they'll issue a fixed penalty notice, a fine of £300, and six penalty points on your driving license. In some cases, they might choose to report you to the court where the penalties can be even more severe.
https://www.insurancefactory.co.uk/news/July-2023/Caught-Without-Insurance-Here-s-What-Happens-When
Another party in government would have done exactly the same, and IIRC at the time there were a lot of Labour figures pitching their own ‘preferred suppliers’ to the government.
That said, those suppliers who who were paid and didn’t deliver should be harried to make amends, and any politician who took an unusual payment from any supplier should also be investigated.
To get back to a few councillors and standing 122, plus getting more than 'buttons' in the London mayoral (2% is respectable for a fringe party) is tenacious
https://youtu.be/0pK4JDFLazs?si=8VJiBEXB2UIHdcHq
As demonstrated by The Gun Jesus
The Tories have decided that the big policy to bring back voters is...abolish inheritance tax
Maybe you shouldn’t assume you’re the only one on this forum who has (allegedly) been into a war zone, conflict area, or indeed extreme danger?
All very GenZ of you, ironically.
One of my mini "talking about it in public" projects is to help improve the image of Sustrans; some cycling people are like everybody - very good at complaining about things (eg muddy NCN), and not 'getting on their bikes' to do anything about it.
https://road.cc/content/forum/sustrans-removes-redesigns-377-barriers-ncn-306937
A friend at Wheels for Wellbeing challenged the Trans-Pennine Trail people this week and they are addressing problems on their trails, which their website page currently tries to justify.
Bigger issues are around new and existing paths not built to national Guidelines - eg >1:20 gradients, inaccessible/unsafe surfaces. Barriers can at least just be removed. An expensive serpentine path up a bank that, is too steep because it is not serpentine enough, is a big project to fix.
Insinuating Farage is like the "SS" is just stupid Met hyberlibz hyperbolic bullshit that just accentuates division and fuels populism.
The way extra public spending is immediately taken for granted and/or forgotten about is a major part of this country's financial problems.
I've now seen that Sky keep putting up the same bar chart at every opportunity. People like Stride keep trying to pivot back onto a Labour attack but its difficult when people are sniggering at you.
Remember John Major in 1992? YES IT HURT, YES IT WORKED. This campaign is No, it didn't hurt. Actually you're not in agony, you're feeling great! No, really you are. That isn't pain, its pleasure actually. Hear me out. If Labour get in then you are going to feel pain. Please stop swearing.
You know, deliberately sabotaging the Conservative Party?
You’d have to be magnificently devious to pull it off. Not sure anyone aside from Boris Johnson has it in them.
The whole fraudulent evasion of discussing where we are economically just means the elctorate is in for a surprise post 4 July.
Ive bought popcorn. Lots of popcorn.
Just think about it, the new leader would be in charge for five minutes and would inevitably lose. Nobody will take up that chalice.
I don’t think it’s all a hatchet job either. He barely denied some of the allegations.
Still childish, of course.
When did you stop beating your wife questions
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1799751733528469865
The Tories have completely mis-played this.
For an intelligent chap, he sure makes a lot of very dumb decisions.
You get your picture on the Downing Street walls, be appointed to various quangos and can give speeches for £10k for the rest of your life.
I suspect Mr Trump, by failing even to take responsibility for himself or his crimes, has talked himself into severe sanctions, and he has continued committing multifarious Contempt of Court Offences.
Judge Merchan may do something to accommodate Trump's campaigning.
I would not - I'd say "The party knew the risks when they selected an indicted criminal suspect as candidate. No one is above the law. Live with the consequences your own actions, dipsticks."
And I might send Trump to prison but give him access to social media until the Election. So he'd have an opportunity to remind the electorate what a dishonest coward he is, and incidentally earn more jail time.
Campaigns aren't about overwhelming convincing, they are about targeted convincing
1. Smallest majority and which seat and who.
2. First to declare and what time.
3. Smallest number of votes and which seat.
4. Exit poll numbers.
5. Numbers of winners from third place or lower
6. Number of lost deposits by 7 major parties.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/infighting-on-the-beaches-behind-the-scenes-of-the-d-day-debacle-6rlvt8nr6
It's going to get worse, it's happened, I feel sorry for Rishi.
I should say the present IHT is generous anyway
The best way to limit their defeat and avoid wipeout is paradoxically probably just to copy Starmer and be as quiet as possible.
I can't think of anyway they could have won this election from the time it was called without Labour massively cocking up, which under Starmer wasn't going to happen.
If it did we may have a better society and future
Unless I’ve missed it this campaign which is quite possible as I’ve other things to concentrate on, the subject of his personal wealth hasn't really been in the spotlight? Snide comments about helicopter trips of course but no real focus on it.
The issue is whether it makes him less relatable. Coming on top of the D-Day debacle, the answer is probably ‘yes.’
Interestingly, my Surrey tory friend who was herself a banker before focusing on being a mum, said straightaway on his appointment that it was a hopeless decision: that he was out of touch and ‘would never be seen as a man of the people.’
Mind you, she still loves Boris so there’s an agenda.
I just met a lovely guy. Ronan. A videographer
Everyone in Ukraine has stories - his: he was driving through suburban Kyiv with his wife and he saw two anti-missile missiles hit a Russian missile directly over his car. They miraculously escaped
His best friend - a Jehovah’s Witness - is in prison in Crimea
I asked him how long the war might last
His answer: “I was discussing this with friends last night. Some reckon it could go on to the end of the decade”
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/infighting-on-the-beaches-behind-the-scenes-of-the-d-day-debacle-6rlvt8nr6
Somehow Sunak manages to come across even worse than I expected.
Of course this is unfair to the Tories, but when you are losing, life isn't fair.
By 4, the exit poll numbers closest to/furthest away from the actual result? And by 5, what if the party had never had a candidate there before?
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_home.html
https://imgur.com/gallery/vmXmbdJ
You can see her lanyard. That’s a volunteer by the flags in Maidan Square. £10
Now you have to give me £10,010 if - WHEN - the Tories get zero seats
My point would remain however. What is sticking and with whom. The 13k will no more universally connect than £2094. Its not a simple binary. It never is
xx
I think a pork pie might go very well with some beer, and it's a very Farage-themed choice, if I can find any down here. I might have to go up to the city and see if Tesco stock them in Ireland.
To mess up this much deliberately... Either he's sold Conservative seats on the spreads, or he wants the Conservatives nuked do they can get replaced by a Proper Right Wing Party. Neither of which entirely makes sense.
So we're left with "there is no magic door, behind which the ninjas are" theory. His success has been down to some talent, some hard work, but mostly luck, bluster and being in the right place at the right time. And now his luck has run out, so the bluster isn't working, so everything is falling apart.
Rishi's misfortune is for that to be happening to him on one of the biggest stages of all.
On the beverage front I’ll stick to my peppermint teas I think but perhaps with a diet coke for the caffeine boost. (I don’t drink alcohol.)
Food-wise a scotch egg for some reason takes my fancy for election night, which is similar to your pork pie. Maybe some good cheese too.
Seems this was right.
In that sense, it may have been innocence rather than arrogance that led to the mistake.
1. When he came to power time was short. He's had real jobs, he's from a consulting background, and I think he's fallen for the cult of busyness that is prevalent - jus push, push, push on the priorities and the sheer weight of effort will tell. But you can always push harder as PM, and in doing so the danger is you lose your peripheral vision and (to use an ADHD term, though no suggestion that Sunak is anything more than busy) hyperfocus. It is also prevalent in high stress workplaces, that is where humans are more likely to overfocus on the tick boxes without even looking up to think why.
2. As a corrolory of this, whatever sense of optics Sunak had, which may have been a little weak, but certainly existed, has gone out of the window - wait for the weather to clear?, no, push on through, get to the next thing. Stay at D-Day, no things to do, show my face, next.
I don't believe Sunak understands D-Day any less than the next man, the Help for Heroes cultism around it has grown in the last 20 years, whilst he has been in politics. He knew, but busyness got the better of him.
What Sunak needs to do is chill, and take 5 to listen to whatever instincts he still possesses and set a pace that allows for thought.