OT it’s now June 10th and the most recent opinion polls had fieldwork from 6-8th and 5th-7th.
We need some fresh data please. They should now be post Faragasm and D-Day gate and we may have a clearer picture of how this election is heading.
My sense is that nothing much from here will change, barring anything extraordinary. People begin voting next week ...
Note of caution Heathener: in 1997 the Labour lead halved between this point and election day.
In 1997, Labour were up against John Major, Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind (and John Selwyn Gummer and Peter Lilley tbf).
This time around, they're up against *checks notes* Rishi Sunak (at the time of writing), Richard Holden, Michael Green and Kemi Badenoch.
Labour had Prezza, Blair, Brown, Kinnock, Beckett, Cook, Livingstone and any other number of big beasts from the Wilson and Callaghan years still on the scene. Now they have *checks notes* a boring guy and that woman with shiny hair
The paucity of talent runs rife throughout
But the LibDems have got Paddleboard Man!
And the Lib Dems have just had an excellent manifesto launch. You are so obsessed with Labour and Conservatives, you seem to have missed that.
What on earth is 'an excellent manifesto launch'? It's a manifesto launch, they are all the same, the voters will later give their verdict
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
It's hard to argue we're strapped for cash while we still have the Arts Council.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
There are going to be a hell of a lot more in 5 years time if Labour implement their promised policies.
I’m looking at a decrepit babushka crossing the road as I near the ravine of death. Incredible to think that it’s just about possible she personally saw Yaroslav the Wise found the city, if she is about 980 years old and she’s definitely old
History is so much closer than we think. Its kinda humbling
Thomas Hardy, who was taken to see a public execution when fairly young, lived into the lifetime of HM QEII as well as people I know still living.
Yes that’s impressive but not as impressive as this old lady. She could actually have seen Yaroslav march over the Dnieper and build the Church of Tithes, on the old pagan shrines of Podil - IF she is nearly 1000 years old. And as I say she’s definitely knocking on
That’s incredible
For those of a historical bent, Christopher Trychay was Vicar of Morebath in Devon from 1520 to 1574 and his annotated parish accounts are a diary of the tumultuous conversion of England from what was (largely - especially in Devon) an extremely devout Catholic nation through radical Protestantism to the uneasy compromise of the Elizabethan settlement. Morebath was a small Catholic village, forced to abandon its allegiance to the Pope, forced to regain it, and then told to lose it again, in the meantime sending villagers don to Exeter to to join the Prayer Book Rebellion. Keeping his head, let alone his job, over those 54 years was quite an achievment.
Got Eamon Duffy's history of the village. Must find it and reread it now you've reminded me.
As Duffy himself says, it is a "pendant" to Stripping of the Altars, which is an amazing work of scholarship but gets a bit polemical in trying to wrest the narrative of the Traditionalists like AJ Dickens. The reality is quite nuanced. In England, rural upland areas seemed to be the most Catholic, while Londoners were actually getting ahead of themselves in tearing down crucifixes and altars etc before governmental injunction required it - in fact a few parishes were required to put them back up. Duffy isn't good on geographical nuance IMHO.
I do find it desperately sad to wander round places like Glastonbury Abbey, or the London Charterhouse, and contemplate what was lost - as well as the courage of people who were martyred in a lost cause.
OT it’s now June 10th and the most recent opinion polls had fieldwork from 6-8th and 5th-7th.
We need some fresh data please. They should now be post Faragasm and D-Day gate and we may have a clearer picture of how this election is heading.
My sense is that nothing much from here will change, barring anything extraordinary. People begin voting next week ...
Note of caution Heathener: in 1997 the Labour lead halved between this point and election day.
In 1997, Labour were up against John Major, Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind (and John Selwyn Gummer and Peter Lilley tbf).
This time around, they're up against *checks notes* Rishi Sunak (at the time of writing), Richard Holden, Michael Green and Kemi Badenoch.
Labour had Prezza, Blair, Brown, Kinnock, Beckett, Cook, Livingstone and any other number of big beasts from the Wilson and Callaghan years still on the scene. Now they have *checks notes* a boring guy and that woman with shiny hair
The paucity of talent runs rife throughout
If your argument is that the general quality of our political class has been in freefall since 1997 (and even well before then), you'll catch no disagreement from me.
I'm not sure about that. In the 1990s it wasn't unheard of for the older members to harumph at the paucity of talent on the Labour front bench "It used to be a cabinet of big beasts, Callaghan, Healey, Crosland, Jenkins. Now what have you got? Brown, Straw, Blunkett, not fit to lace their boots."
OT it’s now June 10th and the most recent opinion polls had fieldwork from 6-8th and 5th-7th.
We need some fresh data please. They should now be post Faragasm and D-Day gate and we may have a clearer picture of how this election is heading.
My sense is that nothing much from here will change, barring anything extraordinary. People begin voting next week ...
Note of caution Heathener: in 1997 the Labour lead halved between this point and election day.
In 1997, Labour were up against John Major, Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind (and John Selwyn Gummer and Peter Lilley tbf).
This time around, they're up against *checks notes* Rishi Sunak (at the time of writing), Richard Holden, Michael Green and Kemi Badenoch.
Labour had Prezza, Blair, Brown, Kinnock, Beckett, Cook, Livingstone and any other number of big beasts from the Wilson and Callaghan years still on the scene. Now they have *checks notes* a boring guy and that woman with shiny hair
The paucity of talent runs rife throughout
But the LibDems have got Paddleboard Man!
True! It's over
Not until Ed Davey does "Dent Arthur Dent at Lords"
(It strikes me that Rishi Sunk needs about 293625456047252 Somebody Else's Problem fields.
Hatred for Churchill seems to be common on both the crank right, and the crank left. The crank right think we should have made peace with Hitler. The crank left think Western powers were no better than Hitler.
Reform candidate said UK should have been neutral against Hitler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care". In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...
OT it’s now June 10th and the most recent opinion polls had fieldwork from 6-8th and 5th-7th.
We need some fresh data please. They should now be post Faragasm and D-Day gate and we may have a clearer picture of how this election is heading.
My sense is that nothing much from here will change, barring anything extraordinary. People begin voting next week ...
Note of caution Heathener: in 1997 the Labour lead halved between this point and election day.
In 1997, Labour were up against John Major, Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind (and John Selwyn Gummer and Peter Lilley tbf).
This time around, they're up against *checks notes* Rishi Sunak (at the time of writing), Richard Holden, Michael Green and Kemi Badenoch.
Labour had Prezza, Blair, Brown, Kinnock, Beckett, Cook, Livingstone and any other number of big beasts from the Wilson and Callaghan years still on the scene. Now they have *checks notes* a boring guy and that woman with shiny hair
The paucity of talent runs rife throughout
If your argument is that the general quality of our political class has been in freefall since 1997 (and even well before then), you'll catch no disagreement from me.
That's precisely my point, yes. We are left to choose from rotted fruits
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Thank you for illustrating my point. The OBR's annual spend is about £5m.
And he hasn’t saved any money, just moved the people elsewhere - which was how the OBR was created in the first place
Reform candidate said UK should have been neutral against Hitler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care". In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...
And Reform have backed him. They realise quite quickly they can't afford to disown hundreds of candidates with highly iffy views
Ok, I know it's ultimately an exercise in politcal irrelevancy, but which of the rich smörgåsbord of talent on the Holyrood benches is next SCon leader? I'm going for Sandesh 'does my hair look good' Gulhane, with a lol saver on Annie Wells.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Thank you for illustrating my point. The OBR's annual spend is about £5m.
I’m looking at a decrepit babushka crossing the road as I near the ravine of death. Incredible to think that it’s just about possible she personally saw Yaroslav the Wise found the city, if she is about 980 years old and she’s definitely old
History is so much closer than we think. Its kinda humbling
Thomas Hardy, who was taken to see a public execution when fairly young, lived into the lifetime of HM QEII as well as people I know still living.
Yes that’s impressive but not as impressive as this old lady. She could actually have seen Yaroslav march over the Dnieper and build the Church of Tithes, on the old pagan shrines of Podil - IF she is nearly 1000 years old. And as I say she’s definitely knocking on
That’s incredible
For those of a historical bent, Christopher Trychay was Vicar of Morebath in Devon from 1520 to 1574 and his annotated parish accounts are a diary of the tumultuous conversion of England from what was (largely - especially in Devon) an extremely devout Catholic nation through radical Protestantism to the uneasy compromise of the Elizabethan settlement. Morebath was a small Catholic village, forced to abandon its allegiance to the Pope, forced to regain it, and then told to lose it again, in the meantime sending villagers don to Exeter to to join the Prayer Book Rebellion. Keeping his head, let alone his job, over those 54 years was quite an achievment.
Got Eamon Duffy's history of the village. Must find it and reread it now you've reminded me.
As Duffy himself says, it is a "pendant" to Stripping of the Altars, which is an amazing work of scholarship but gets a bit polemical in trying to wrest the narrative of the Traditionalists like AJ Dickens. The reality is quite nuanced. In England, rural upland areas seemed to be the most Catholic, while Londoners were actually getting ahead of themselves in tearing down crucifixes and altars etc before governmental injunction required it - in fact a few parishes were required to put them back up. Duffy isn't good on geographical nuance IMHO.
I do find it desperately sad to wander round places like Glastonbury Abbey, or the London Charterhouse, and contemplate what was lost - as well as the courage of people who were martyred in a lost cause.
Glastonbury Abbey looks like it was one of the most beautiful churches in Europe, and many of the remaining ones in these islands are nothing special by European standards.
England, and also Britain, gained a lot in terms of liberty of thought and tolerance, but also lost a lot by the Reformation. We've forgotten how much was on the debit side, hence the arrogant attitudes to Europe, particularly since World War II, and also a failure to see where the resulting scepticism of grand ideas has turned to turgid anti-intellectualism in our culture.
Shut the System, a recently launched underground climate movement, partnered with Palestine Action's underground division to launch the attacks, both activist groups confirmed.
Ok, I know it's ultimately an exercise in politcal irrelevancy, but which of the rich smörgåsbord of talent on the Holyrood benches is next SCon leader? I'm going for Sandesh 'does my hair look good' Gulhane, with a lol saver on Annie Wells.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Thank you for illustrating my point. The OBR's annual spend is about £5m.
And he hasn’t saved any money, just moved the people elsewhere - which was how the OBR was created in the first place
Reform candidate said UK should have been neutral against Hitler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care". In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...
And Reform have backed him. They realise quite quickly they can't afford to disown hundreds of candidates with highly iffy views
Well they’d have to start at the very top. Although Farage disowns himself all the time especially when what he said yesterday is inconsistent with what he wants to say today.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where it’s needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Quangos are not (usually) off balance sheet. And they usually have a statutory purpose. Taking the OBR as an example, before there was an OBR there was a forecasting team in HMT: pretty much exactly the same team operating from the same desks.
The list is here. 90% have a clear statutory purpose, many of which will have grown due to Brexit (which I supported and still support, but I get that it drives decision making, and therefore these sorts of bodies, home).
OT it’s now June 10th and the most recent opinion polls had fieldwork from 6-8th and 5th-7th.
We need some fresh data please. They should now be post Faragasm and D-Day gate and we may have a clearer picture of how this election is heading.
My sense is that nothing much from here will change, barring anything extraordinary. People begin voting next week ...
Note of caution Heathener: in 1997 the Labour lead halved between this point and election day.
In 1997, Labour were up against John Major, Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind (and John Selwyn Gummer and Peter Lilley tbf).
This time around, they're up against *checks notes* Rishi Sunak (at the time of writing), Richard Holden, Michael Green and Kemi Badenoch.
Labour had Prezza, Blair, Brown, Kinnock, Beckett, Cook, Livingstone and any other number of big beasts from the Wilson and Callaghan years still on the scene. Now they have *checks notes* a boring guy and that woman with shiny hair
The paucity of talent runs rife throughout
If your argument is that the general quality of our political class has been in freefall since 1997 (and even well before then), you'll catch no disagreement from me.
More an embarrassment of poverty than an embarrassment of riches.
Richard Holden's interview at the weekend just summed it all up for me. The state of politics.
Phil Burton-Cartledge, leftie blogger has compiled a list of the left independents standing in this election. Might be a good resource for people looking at potential left-wing vote splitting.
Aberdeen South - Sophie Molly Banbury - Cassie Bellingham Bethnal Green and Stepney - Ajmal Masroor Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk - Ellie Merton Birmingham Edgbaston - Ammar Waraich Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley - Mohammad Hafeez Birmingham Ladywood - Akhmed Yakoob Birmingham Selly Oak - Kamel Hawwash Brentford and Isleworth - Zebunisa Rao Bristol East - Wael Arafat Cardiff West - John Urquhart Central Devon - Arthur Price Chingford and Woodford Green - Faiza Shaheen Dewsbury West - Tanisha Bramwell Dudley - Shakeela Bibi East Ham - Tahir Mirza Eltham and Chislehurst - John Courtneidge Enfield North - Ertan Karpazli Feltham and Heston - Damian Read Frome and East Somerset - Gareth Heathcote Grantham and Bourne - Charmaine Morgan Harrow West - Pamela Fitzpatrick Heywood and Middleton North - Chris Furlong Holborn St Pancras - Andrew Feinstein Hove and Portslade - Tanushka Marah Ilford North - Leanne Mohamad Ilford South - Syed Siddiqi Islington North - Jeremy Corbyn Kensington and Bayswater - Emma Dent Coad Kingston and Surbiton - Yvonne Tracey Leicester East - Claudia Webbe Leicester South - Shockat Adam Leyton and Wanstead - Shanell Johnson Liverpool Garston - Sam Gorst Liverpool Wavertree - Anne San Mid Cheshire - Helen Clawson Monmouthshire - Owen Lewis Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West - Yvonne Ridley Newport East - Pippa Bartolotti Oxford East - Jabu Nala-Hartley Preston - Michael Lavalette Reading West and Mod Berkshire - Adrian Abbs Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough - Maxine Bowler Sittingbourne and Sheppey - Mike Baldock South Dorset - Giovanna Lewis Southgate and Wood Green - Karl Vidol Southport - Sean Halsall Stockport - Asley Walker Stockton West - Monty Brack Stoke-on-Trent Central - Andy Polshaw Stratford and Bow - Fiona Lali Stratford and Bow - Steve Headley Tottenham - Nandita Lal Tunbridge Wells - Hassan Kassem Walsall and Bloxwich - Aftab Nawaz Wells and Mendip Hills - Abi McGuire West Suffolk - Katie Parker West Ham and Beckton - Sophia Naqvi Wigan - Jan Cunliffe Windsor - David Buckley Wycombe - Ajaz Rehman
I'd treat that list with some caution. Tanisha Bramwell in Dewsbury West was a winning council ward candidate and Iqbal Mohammed is who I presume to be the left flank (i.e. pro-Gaza) independent in Dewsbury & Batley.
Reform candidate said UK should have been neutral against Hitler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care". In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...
And Reform have backed him. They realise quite quickly they can't afford to disown hundreds of candidates with highly iffy views
This is just not up to the standard of UKIP though. Where are the gay donkeys raping horses?
Ok, I know it's ultimately an exercise in politcal irrelevancy, but which of the rich smörgåsbord of talent on the Holyrood benches is next SCon leader? I'm going for Sandesh 'does my hair look good' Gulhane, with a lol saver on Annie Wells.
Murdo
on the Orient Express?
Could be! I think it's him though, the SCons will split from the UK party per his plan and he's the obvious man to poke at Swinney whilst he's there. Possible he'll be an interim to achieve the split and then hand on after 2026
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Thank you for illustrating my point. The OBR's annual spend is about £5m.
And he hasn’t saved any money, just moved the people elsewhere - which was how the OBR was created in the first place
You forget Im posting from abroad.
We can get on to IT when youve stopped sulking.
Sorry I have a life (last night was Pet Shop Boys at Co-op, great venue shame security is a mess and transport a complete disaster), now slowly back home and tomorrow the actual holiday
But again you need people to audit the maths and that used to be done in house and was shunted elsewhere. It’s a job that needs to be done hence it’s as pointless as your other harebrained schemes
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
The OBR's budget was £4.38m in 2021-22. You'd save maybe a couple of hundred k by merging it with the Treasury.
So what you're proposing is actually below the "just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss" level; you're advocating for a minor form of the salami slicing variant of austerity that Osborne fell back on when his initial 'bonfire of the quangoes' approach failed.
Why would it turn out to be any more effective now than it was in 2014-15?
Reform candidate said UK should have been neutral against Hitler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care". In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...
And Reform have backed him. They realise quite quickly they can't afford to disown hundreds of candidates with highly iffy views
I commend the Reform staffer that came up with the term "offence archaeology".
I’m looking at a decrepit babushka crossing the road as I near the ravine of death. Incredible to think that it’s just about possible she personally saw Yaroslav the Wise found the city, if she is about 980 years old and she’s definitely old
History is so much closer than we think. Its kinda humbling
Thomas Hardy, who was taken to see a public execution when fairly young, lived into the lifetime of HM QEII as well as people I know still living.
Yes that’s impressive but not as impressive as this old lady. She could actually have seen Yaroslav march over the Dnieper and build the Church of Tithes, on the old pagan shrines of Podil - IF she is nearly 1000 years old. And as I say she’s definitely knocking on
That’s incredible
For those of a historical bent, Christopher Trychay was Vicar of Morebath in Devon from 1520 to 1574 and his annotated parish accounts are a diary of the tumultuous conversion of England from what was (largely - especially in Devon) an extremely devout Catholic nation through radical Protestantism to the uneasy compromise of the Elizabethan settlement. Morebath was a small Catholic village, forced to abandon its allegiance to the Pope, forced to regain it, and then told to lose it again, in the meantime sending villagers don to Exeter to to join the Prayer Book Rebellion. Keeping his head, let alone his job, over those 54 years was quite an achievment.
Got Eamon Duffy's history of the village. Must find it and reread it now you've reminded me.
As Duffy himself says, it is a "pendant" to Stripping of the Altars, which is an amazing work of scholarship but gets a bit polemical in trying to wrest the narrative of the Traditionalists like AJ Dickens. The reality is quite nuanced. In England, rural upland areas seemed to be the most Catholic, while Londoners were actually getting ahead of themselves in tearing down crucifixes and altars etc before governmental injunction required it - in fact a few parishes were required to put them back up. Duffy isn't good on geographical nuance IMHO.
Many thanks - really good to know.
Just bought, as homework for next holiday, Underdown Fire from Heaven about the Civil Wars times in Dorchester, a century or so later ... and with only a link or two to get to Hardy.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Thank you for illustrating my point. The OBR's annual spend is about £5m.
Indeed. Many NDPBs are funded by industry levies too (e.g. FCA, most of OFCOM, etc). So if you axe them you don’t necessarily have their money. So you either have to retain the various levies as sector specific taxes or just get rid. .
Reform candidate said UK should have been neutral against Hitler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care". In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...
And Reform have backed him. They realise quite quickly they can't afford to disown hundreds of candidates with highly iffy views
This is just not up to the standard of UKIP though. Where are the gay donkeys raping horses?
I'm sure there are more than a few admirers of Der Fuhrer, among their candidates.
Reform candidate said UK should have been neutral against Hitler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care". In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...
And Reform have backed him. They realise quite quickly they can't afford to disown hundreds of candidates with highly iffy views
This is just not up to the standard of UKIP though. Where are the gay donkeys raping horses?
Phil Burton-Cartledge, leftie blogger has compiled a list of the left independents standing in this election. Might be a good resource for people looking at potential left-wing vote splitting.
Aberdeen South - Sophie Molly Banbury - Cassie Bellingham Bethnal Green and Stepney - Ajmal Masroor Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk - Ellie Merton Birmingham Edgbaston - Ammar Waraich Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley - Mohammad Hafeez Birmingham Ladywood - Akhmed Yakoob Birmingham Selly Oak - Kamel Hawwash Brentford and Isleworth - Zebunisa Rao Bristol East - Wael Arafat Cardiff West - John Urquhart Central Devon - Arthur Price Chingford and Woodford Green - Faiza Shaheen Dewsbury West - Tanisha Bramwell Dudley - Shakeela Bibi East Ham - Tahir Mirza Eltham and Chislehurst - John Courtneidge Enfield North - Ertan Karpazli Feltham and Heston - Damian Read Frome and East Somerset - Gareth Heathcote Grantham and Bourne - Charmaine Morgan Harrow West - Pamela Fitzpatrick Heywood and Middleton North - Chris Furlong Holborn St Pancras - Andrew Feinstein Hove and Portslade - Tanushka Marah Ilford North - Leanne Mohamad Ilford South - Syed Siddiqi Islington North - Jeremy Corbyn Kensington and Bayswater - Emma Dent Coad Kingston and Surbiton - Yvonne Tracey Leicester East - Claudia Webbe Leicester South - Shockat Adam Leyton and Wanstead - Shanell Johnson Liverpool Garston - Sam Gorst Liverpool Wavertree - Anne San Mid Cheshire - Helen Clawson Monmouthshire - Owen Lewis Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West - Yvonne Ridley Newport East - Pippa Bartolotti Oxford East - Jabu Nala-Hartley Preston - Michael Lavalette Reading West and Mod Berkshire - Adrian Abbs Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough - Maxine Bowler Sittingbourne and Sheppey - Mike Baldock South Dorset - Giovanna Lewis Southgate and Wood Green - Karl Vidol Southport - Sean Halsall Stockport - Asley Walker Stockton West - Monty Brack Stoke-on-Trent Central - Andy Polshaw Stratford and Bow - Fiona Lali Stratford and Bow - Steve Headley Tottenham - Nandita Lal Tunbridge Wells - Hassan Kassem Walsall and Bloxwich - Aftab Nawaz Wells and Mendip Hills - Abi McGuire West Suffolk - Katie Parker West Ham and Beckton - Sophia Naqvi Wigan - Jan Cunliffe Windsor - David Buckley Wycombe - Ajaz Rehman
A forever-blogger - interesting analysis, that needs itself to be analysed, since about 2006.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Thank you for illustrating my point. The OBR's annual spend is about £5m.
And he hasn’t saved any money, just moved the people elsewhere - which was how the OBR was created in the first place
As usual, AlanB misunderstands my argument. I'm not saying that it's impossible to cut spending. But it is politically difficult, and the difficulties have to be directly addressed.
The big spending quangos fall into the 'controversial' category.
'Cutting quangos' is therefore dishonest either because it means no cuts of any real significance - or it's not being upfront about choices which are likely to be very unpopular with large parts of the electorate.
He's criticising the parties for being dishonest about the choices which face us - which is entirely fair comment - but in this particular case doing much the same himself.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where it’s needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Quangos are not (usually) off balance sheet. And they usually have a statutory purpose. Taking the OBR as an example, before there was an OBR there was a forecasting team in HMT: pretty much exactly the same team operating from the same desks.
Of course but you can repeal laws. The treasury still does forecasts so now we're paying twice over for the same service and in the OBRs case they admit their forecasts are consistently out and not timely. Would you spend £5 million on that or spend it on something more useful ?
OT it’s now June 10th and the most recent opinion polls had fieldwork from 6-8th and 5th-7th.
We need some fresh data please. They should now be post Faragasm and D-Day gate and we may have a clearer picture of how this election is heading.
My sense is that nothing much from here will change, barring anything extraordinary. People begin voting next week ...
Note of caution Heathener: in 1997 the Labour lead halved between this point and election day.
In 1997, Labour were up against John Major, Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind (and John Selwyn Gummer and Peter Lilley tbf).
This time around, they're up against *checks notes* Rishi Sunak (at the time of writing), Richard Holden, Michael Green and Kemi Badenoch.
Labour had Prezza, Blair, Brown, Kinnock, Beckett, Cook, Livingstone and any other number of big beasts from the Wilson and Callaghan years still on the scene. Now they have *checks notes* a boring guy and that woman with shiny hair
The paucity of talent runs rife throughout
If your argument is that the general quality of our political class has been in freefall since 1997 (and even well before then), you'll catch no disagreement from me.
More an embarrassment of poverty than an embarrassment of riches.
Richard Holden's interview at the weekend just summed it all up for me. The state of politics.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Thank you for illustrating my point. The OBR's annual spend is about £5m.
Thats just over half a pence per person per month saving. How much did the budget without the OBR review attached increase mortgage costs by......
Reform candidate said UK should have been neutral against Hitler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care". In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...
And Reform have backed him. They realise quite quickly they can't afford to disown hundreds of candidates with highly iffy views
I commend the Reform staffer that came up with the term "offence archaeology".
I’m looking at a decrepit babushka crossing the road as I near the ravine of death. Incredible to think that it’s just about possible she personally saw Yaroslav the Wise found the city, if she is about 980 years old and she’s definitely old
History is so much closer than we think. Its kinda humbling
Thomas Hardy, who was taken to see a public execution when fairly young, lived into the lifetime of HM QEII as well as people I know still living.
Yes that’s impressive but not as impressive as this old lady. She could actually have seen Yaroslav march over the Dnieper and build the Church of Tithes, on the old pagan shrines of Podil - IF she is nearly 1000 years old. And as I say she’s definitely knocking on
That’s incredible
For those of a historical bent, Christopher Trychay was Vicar of Morebath in Devon from 1520 to 1574 and his annotated parish accounts are a diary of the tumultuous conversion of England from what was (largely - especially in Devon) an extremely devout Catholic nation through radical Protestantism to the uneasy compromise of the Elizabethan settlement. Morebath was a small Catholic village, forced to abandon its allegiance to the Pope, forced to regain it, and then told to lose it again, in the meantime sending villagers don to Exeter to to join the Prayer Book Rebellion. Keeping his head, let alone his job, over those 54 years was quite an achievment.
Got Eamon Duffy's history of the village. Must find it and reread it now you've reminded me.
As Duffy himself says, it is a "pendant" to Stripping of the Altars, which is an amazing work of scholarship but gets a bit polemical in trying to wrest the narrative of the Traditionalists like AJ Dickens. The reality is quite nuanced. In England, rural upland areas seemed to be the most Catholic, while Londoners were actually getting ahead of themselves in tearing down crucifixes and altars etc before governmental injunction required it - in fact a few parishes were required to put them back up. Duffy isn't good on geographical nuance IMHO.
I do find it desperately sad to wander round places like Glastonbury Abbey, or the London Charterhouse, and contemplate what was lost - as well as the courage of people who were martyred in a lost cause.
Glastonbury Abbey looks like it was one of the most beautiful churches in Europe, and many of the remaining ones in these islands are nothing special by European standards.
England, and also Britain, gained a lot in terms of liberty of thought and tolerance, but also lost a lot by the Reformation. We've forgotten how much was on the debit side, hence the arrogant attitudes to Europe, particularly since World War II, and also a failure to see where the resulting scepticism of grand ideas has turned to turgid anti-intellectualism in our culture.
The 16th and 17th centuries are examples of how rising standards of education, and the creation of great works of art and literature, can go hand in hand with total barbarism.
Shut the System, a recently launched underground climate movement, partnered with Palestine Action's underground division to launch the attacks, both activist groups confirmed.
Reform candidate said UK should have been neutral against Hitler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care". In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where it’s needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Quangos are not (usually) off balance sheet. And they usually have a statutory purpose. Taking the OBR as an example, before there was an OBR there was a forecasting team in HMT: pretty much exactly the same team operating from the same desks.
Of course but you can repeal laws. The treasury still does forecasts so now we're paying twice over for the same service and in the OBRs case they admit their forecasts are consistently out and not timely. Would you spend £5 million on that or spend it on something more useful ?
No, Treasury uses the OBR numbers.
On laws. Yes, you can start to deregulate but your getting into something far more complex than just “cutting quangos”:
As noted above, many regulators charge their industry for the service and much if the other stuff is political third rail stuff: good luck cutting the Coal Authority or Historic England for example. We don’t really need either, but they don’t cost much and those who love them really love them.
Ok, I know it's ultimately an exercise in politcal irrelevancy, but which of the rich smörgåsbord of talent on the Holyrood benches is next SCon leader? I'm going for Sandesh 'does my hair look good' Gulhane, with a lol saver on Annie Wells.
Murdo
on the Orient Express?
Could be! I think it's him though, the SCons will split from the UK party per his plan and he's the obvious man to poke at Swinney whilst he's there. Possible he'll be an interim to achieve the split and then hand on after 2026
Too many times the bridesmaid? Murdo has a very much over masticated piece of chewing gum vibe.
Phil Burton-Cartledge, leftie blogger has compiled a list of the left independents standing in this election. Might be a good resource for people looking at potential left-wing vote splitting.
Aberdeen South - Sophie Molly Banbury - Cassie Bellingham Bethnal Green and Stepney - Ajmal Masroor Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk - Ellie Merton Birmingham Edgbaston - Ammar Waraich Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley - Mohammad Hafeez Birmingham Ladywood - Akhmed Yakoob Birmingham Selly Oak - Kamel Hawwash Brentford and Isleworth - Zebunisa Rao Bristol East - Wael Arafat Cardiff West - John Urquhart Central Devon - Arthur Price Chingford and Woodford Green - Faiza Shaheen Dewsbury West - Tanisha Bramwell Dudley - Shakeela Bibi East Ham - Tahir Mirza Eltham and Chislehurst - John Courtneidge Enfield North - Ertan Karpazli Feltham and Heston - Damian Read Frome and East Somerset - Gareth Heathcote Grantham and Bourne - Charmaine Morgan Harrow West - Pamela Fitzpatrick Heywood and Middleton North - Chris Furlong Holborn St Pancras - Andrew Feinstein Hove and Portslade - Tanushka Marah Ilford North - Leanne Mohamad Ilford South - Syed Siddiqi Islington North - Jeremy Corbyn Kensington and Bayswater - Emma Dent Coad Kingston and Surbiton - Yvonne Tracey Leicester East - Claudia Webbe Leicester South - Shockat Adam Leyton and Wanstead - Shanell Johnson Liverpool Garston - Sam Gorst Liverpool Wavertree - Anne San Mid Cheshire - Helen Clawson Monmouthshire - Owen Lewis Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West - Yvonne Ridley Newport East - Pippa Bartolotti Oxford East - Jabu Nala-Hartley Preston - Michael Lavalette Reading West and Mod Berkshire - Adrian Abbs Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough - Maxine Bowler Sittingbourne and Sheppey - Mike Baldock South Dorset - Giovanna Lewis Southgate and Wood Green - Karl Vidol Southport - Sean Halsall Stockport - Asley Walker Stockton West - Monty Brack Stoke-on-Trent Central - Andy Polshaw Stratford and Bow - Fiona Lali Stratford and Bow - Steve Headley Tottenham - Nandita Lal Tunbridge Wells - Hassan Kassem Walsall and Bloxwich - Aftab Nawaz Wells and Mendip Hills - Abi McGuire West Suffolk - Katie Parker West Ham and Beckton - Sophia Naqvi Wigan - Jan Cunliffe Windsor - David Buckley Wycombe - Ajaz Rehman
A forever-blogger - interesting analysis, that needs itself to be analysed, since about 2006.
Shut the System, a recently launched underground climate movement, partnered with Palestine Action's underground division to launch the attacks, both activist groups confirmed.
The clue is in the name, it has little to do with Barclays indirectly investing Israel.
Quite likely they are being egged on or supported in other ways by Russia even if they are unaware of it.
Its the same far left groups that come back around under a different guise. In 2000s, it was smashing up banks, McDonalds, Starbucks, etc because of WTO. In 2010s, it was smashing them up because of public spending cuts. In 2024, its smashing them up because of climate change and Israel.
Reform candidate said UK should have been neutral against Hitler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care". In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...
And Reform have backed him. They realise quite quickly they can't afford to disown hundreds of candidates with highly iffy views
"I would welcome Nigel into the Conservative party. There’s not much difference really between him and many of the policies that we stand for..."
It is the tricycle of Dr Harrie Larrington-Spencer (@tricyclemayor on Twitter, who is doing research into whether physical barriers reduce motorcycle ASB) being rescued by a recovery service after she had a puncture. For techies the tyres are Marathon Pluses (removing them makes a strong man weep) running Tannus inserts - it must have been one hell of a drawing pin. It is a Babboe Flow Mountain e-cargo bike which weighs 69kg, and has a stepless gearbox.
Reactions have been interesting in the desire to avoid the underlying point - that especially for disabled people such vehicles give autonomy and equality. Far fewer disabled have driving licences - 40% of adults do not vs 25% of able-bodied.
eg "Not able to do basic repairs should not be on the road". Fascinating doublethink - no mention of those of us who call out the AA to a spare tyre.
Most modern cars don’t even have a spare tyre. Calling out the AA when you get a puncture is pretty much inevitable!
I’m looking at a decrepit babushka crossing the road as I near the ravine of death. Incredible to think that it’s just about possible she personally saw Yaroslav the Wise found the city, if she is about 980 years old and she’s definitely old
History is so much closer than we think. Its kinda humbling
Thomas Hardy, who was taken to see a public execution when fairly young, lived into the lifetime of HM QEII as well as people I know still living.
Yes that’s impressive but not as impressive as this old lady. She could actually have seen Yaroslav march over the Dnieper and build the Church of Tithes, on the old pagan shrines of Podil - IF she is nearly 1000 years old. And as I say she’s definitely knocking on
That’s incredible
For those of a historical bent, Christopher Trychay was Vicar of Morebath in Devon from 1520 to 1574 and his annotated parish accounts are a diary of the tumultuous conversion of England from what was (largely - especially in Devon) an extremely devout Catholic nation through radical Protestantism to the uneasy compromise of the Elizabethan settlement. Morebath was a small Catholic village, forced to abandon its allegiance to the Pope, forced to regain it, and then told to lose it again, in the meantime sending villagers don to Exeter to to join the Prayer Book Rebellion. Keeping his head, let alone his job, over those 54 years was quite an achievment.
Got Eamon Duffy's history of the village. Must find it and reread it now you've reminded me.
As Duffy himself says, it is a "pendant" to Stripping of the Altars, which is an amazing work of scholarship but gets a bit polemical in trying to wrest the narrative of the Traditionalists like AJ Dickens. The reality is quite nuanced. In England, rural upland areas seemed to be the most Catholic, while Londoners were actually getting ahead of themselves in tearing down crucifixes and altars etc before governmental injunction required it - in fact a few parishes were required to put them back up. Duffy isn't good on geographical nuance IMHO.
I do find it desperately sad to wander round places like Glastonbury Abbey, or the London Charterhouse, and contemplate what was lost - as well as the courage of people who were martyred in a lost cause.
Glastonbury Abbey looks like it was one of the most beautiful churches in Europe, and many of the remaining ones in these islands are nothing special by European standards.
England, and also Britain, gained a lot in terms of liberty of thought and tolerance, but also lost a lot by the Reformation. We've forgotten how much was on the debit side, hence the arrogant attitudes to Europe, particularly since World War II, and also a failure to see where the resulting scepticism of grand ideas has turned to turgid anti-intellectualism in our culture.
Wasn’t our greatest contribution to thought and tolerance after the reformation? The great thinkers and writers of the enlightenment, for example Locke, Hobbes, Bacon and Newton, and later Paine, contributed far more than I can think of pre-reformation.
Also I can’t agree re our churches being nothing special by European standards. Outside of specialities such as the Sainte-Chapelle our churches are pretty fantastic on the whole.
Go around much of France or Switzerland and you will find very few churches that match the great churches built off the wool trade. Our college chapels are generally beautiful and often the leaks of ecclesiastical design such as King’s Canterbury.
Sure in Catholic countries you will have lots of fluff inside their churches but the cool beauty of our churches is wonderful.
Ok, I know it's ultimately an exercise in politcal irrelevancy, but which of the rich smörgåsbord of talent on the Holyrood benches is next SCon leader? I'm going for Sandesh 'does my hair look good' Gulhane, with a lol saver on Annie Wells.
Murdo
on the Orient Express?
Could be! I think it's him though, the SCons will split from the UK party per his plan and he's the obvious man to poke at Swinney whilst he's there. Possible he'll be an interim to achieve the split and then hand on after 2026
Too many times the bridesmaid? Murdo has a very much over masticated piece of chewing gum vibe.
Transitional. To achieve the split they will desperately want post July 4
Ok, I know it's ultimately an exercise in politcal irrelevancy, but which of the rich smörgåsbord of talent on the Holyrood benches is next SCon leader? I'm going for Sandesh 'does my hair look good' Gulhane, with a lol saver on Annie Wells.
Murdo
on the Orient Express?
Could be! I think it's him though, the SCons will split from the UK party per his plan and he's the obvious man to poke at Swinney whilst he's there. Possible he'll be an interim to achieve the split and then hand on after 2026
Too many times the bridesmaid? Murdo has a very much over masticated piece of chewing gum vibe.
Not a MSP. And the seat Mr Ross may or may not vacate is a list one, so the next person on the list will get it automatically (mind, I didn't check who that is).
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Thank you for illustrating my point. The OBR's annual spend is about £5m.
And he hasn’t saved any money, just moved the people elsewhere - which was how the OBR was created in the first place
As usual, AlanB misunderstands my argument. I'm not saying that it's impossible to cut spending. But it is politically difficult, and the difficulties have to be directly addressed.
The big spending quangos fall into the 'controversial' category.
'Cutting quangos' is therefore dishonest either because it means no cuts of any real significance - or it's not being upfront about choices which are likely to be very unpopular with large parts of the electorate.
He's criticising the parties for being dishonest about the choices which face us - which is entirely fair comment - but in this particular case doing much the same himself.
Mr b I perfectly understand where you are but a bit surprised by it. When I raise the prospects of spending cuts - which this country will have to face up to - there is a general wailing that othing can be done. You in your business must go through costs regularly and in practice weed out the non essentials from the have to dos. Thats in a normal year, when you are having a year when you are being squeezed you get a bigger knife out. In the private sector everybody has to do it. I have spent the last 20 years running distressed companies and sometimes it gets painful but usually cuts need to be done.
I reject your accusation that I am being dishonest I am simply flagging up that the people saying they are taking "difficult decisions" are not and need to start doing so. And while quangos are easy meat, I also threw in the pot we need to reschedule debt. Again just cries of no we cant, yet this could save anywhere upwards of £10 billion a year. Oddly Gordon Brown got on the case in an article over the weekend and now suddenly it's worth considering.
As I said before if you dont go looking for savings they wont just drop in to your lap. So having said all that back to my original question would you save the £5 million.
( PS dont know where you found the figure my searches said OBR dont publish r=theirrunning costs )
It is the tricycle of Dr Harrie Larrington-Spencer (@tricyclemayor on Twitter, who is doing research into whether physical barriers reduce motorcycle ASB) being rescued by a recovery service after she had a puncture. For techies the tyres are Marathon Pluses (removing them makes a strong man weep) running Tannus inserts - it must have been one hell of a drawing pin. It is a Babboe Flow Mountain e-cargo bike which weighs 69kg, and has a stepless gearbox.
Reactions have been interesting in the desire to avoid the underlying point - that especially for disabled people such vehicles give autonomy and equality. Far fewer disabled have driving licences - 40% of adults do not vs 25% of able-bodied.
eg "Not able to do basic repairs should not be on the road". Fascinating doublethink - no mention of those of us who call out the AA to a spare tyre.
Most modern cars don’t even have a spare tyre. Calling out the AA when you get a puncture is pretty much inevitable!
Mine has a kit which squirts goo into the punctured tyre, which hardens. You have to drive around slowly for a couple of miles, then re-inflate the tyre and see if it holds. Drawn-out process, but it actually worked for me.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where it’s needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Quangos are not (usually) off balance sheet. And they usually have a statutory purpose. Taking the OBR as an example, before there was an OBR there was a forecasting team in HMT: pretty much exactly the same team operating from the same desks.
Of course but you can repeal laws. The treasury still does forecasts so now we're paying twice over for the same service and in the OBRs case they admit their forecasts are consistently out and not timely. Would you spend £5 million on that or spend it on something more useful ?
No, Treasury uses the OBR numbers.
On laws. Yes, you can start to deregulate but your getting into something far more complex than just “cutting quangos”:
As noted above, many regulators charge their industry for the service and much if the other stuff is political third rail stuff: good luck cutting the Coal Authority or Historic England for example. We don’t really need either, but they don’t cost much and those who love them really love them.
You seem to be saying nobody can take difficult decisions
Shut the System, a recently launched underground climate movement, partnered with Palestine Action's underground division to launch the attacks, both activist groups confirmed.
The clue is in the name, it has little to do with Barclays indirectly investing Israel.
Quite likely they are being egged on or supported in other ways by Russia even if they are unaware of it.
Its the same far left groups that come back around under a different guise. In 2000s, it was smashing up banks, McDonalds, Starbucks, etc because of WTO. In 2010s, it was smashing them up because of public spending cuts. In 2024, its smashing them up because of climate change and Israel.
I'm not saying the groups are new or founded by Russian intelligence services, but they sure as hell are trying to stir up trouble using such proxies. There have been numerous incidents across Europe where Russia is recruiting or directing criminals and protest groups to cause trouble.
Ok, I know it's ultimately an exercise in politcal irrelevancy, but which of the rich smörgåsbord of talent on the Holyrood benches is next SCon leader? I'm going for Sandesh 'does my hair look good' Gulhane, with a lol saver on Annie Wells.
Murdo
on the Orient Express?
Could be! I think it's him though, the SCons will split from the UK party per his plan and he's the obvious man to poke at Swinney whilst he's there. Possible he'll be an interim to achieve the split and then hand on after 2026
Too many times the bridesmaid? Murdo has a very much over masticated piece of chewing gum vibe.
Not a MSP. And the seat Mr Ross may or may not vacate is a list one, so the next person on the list will get it automatically (mind, I didn't check who that is).
Knowing Tatton as I do (which is to say - a bit), I find the idea of it going anything other than Tory kind of an astonishing prospect - the Golden Triangle etc.
It is the tricycle of Dr Harrie Larrington-Spencer (@tricyclemayor on Twitter, who is doing research into whether physical barriers reduce motorcycle ASB) being rescued by a recovery service after she had a puncture. For techies the tyres are Marathon Pluses (removing them makes a strong man weep) running Tannus inserts - it must have been one hell of a drawing pin. It is a Babboe Flow Mountain e-cargo bike which weighs 69kg, and has a stepless gearbox.
Reactions have been interesting in the desire to avoid the underlying point - that especially for disabled people such vehicles give autonomy and equality. Far fewer disabled have driving licences - 40% of adults do not vs 25% of able-bodied.
eg "Not able to do basic repairs should not be on the road". Fascinating doublethink - no mention of those of us who call out the AA to a spare tyre.
Most modern cars don’t even have a spare tyre. Calling out the AA when you get a puncture is pretty much inevitable!
Mine has a kit which squirts goo into the punctured tyre, which hardens. You have to drive around slowly for a couple of miles, then re-inflate the tyre and see if it holds. Drawn-out process, but it actually worked for me.
Mine has a space saver spare, which was an option.
Used once, and I did call out the included breakdown service.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Thank you for illustrating my point. The OBR's annual spend is about £5m.
And he hasn’t saved any money, just moved the people elsewhere - which was how the OBR was created in the first place
As usual, AlanB misunderstands my argument. I'm not saying that it's impossible to cut spending. But it is politically difficult, and the difficulties have to be directly addressed.
The big spending quangos fall into the 'controversial' category.
'Cutting quangos' is therefore dishonest either because it means no cuts of any real significance - or it's not being upfront about choices which are likely to be very unpopular with large parts of the electorate.
He's criticising the parties for being dishonest about the choices which face us - which is entirely fair comment - but in this particular case doing much the same himself.
Mr b I perfectly understand where you are but a bit surprised by it. When I raise the prospects of spending cuts - which this country will have to face up to - there is a general wailing that othing can be done. You in your business must go through costs regularly and in practice weed out the non essentials from the have to dos. Thats in a normal year, when you are having a year when you are being squeezed you get a bigger knife out. In the private sector everybody has to do it. I have spent the last 20 years running distressed companies and sometimes it gets painful but usually cuts need to be done.
I reject your accusation that I am being dishonest I am simply flagging up that the people saying they are taking "difficult decisions" are not and need to start doing so. And while quangos are easy meat, I also threw in the pot we need to reschedule debt. Again just cries of no we cant, yet this could save anywhere upwards of £10 billion a year. Oddly Gordon Brown got on the case in an article over the weekend and now suddenly it's worth considering.
As I said before if you dont go looking for savings they wont just drop in to your lap. So having said all that back to my original question would you save the £5 million.
( PS dont know where you found the figure my searches said OBR dont publish r=theirrunning costs )
It would be more honest just to say cuts to public spending. The idea that there is £80 billion being spent by a few regulators on red tape is just plain wrong.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where it’s needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Quangos are not (usually) off balance sheet. And they usually have a statutory purpose. Taking the OBR as an example, before there was an OBR there was a forecasting team in HMT: pretty much exactly the same team operating from the same desks.
Of course but you can repeal laws. The treasury still does forecasts so now we're paying twice over for the same service and in the OBRs case they admit their forecasts are consistently out and not timely. Would you spend £5 million on that or spend it on something more useful ?
No, Treasury uses the OBR numbers.
On laws. Yes, you can start to deregulate but your getting into something far more complex than just “cutting quangos”:
As noted above, many regulators charge their industry for the service and much if the other stuff is political third rail stuff: good luck cutting the Coal Authority or Historic England for example. We don’t really need either, but they don’t cost much and those who love them really love them.
You seem to be saying nobody can take difficult decisions
No, I’m saying they take different ones, routinely. In the case of the public sector the decision has routinely been made to depress salaries to retain staff numbers. I’d increase salaries and reduce staff, and do that fairly evenly in most areas but in an accelerated manner where, for example, AI can help boost productivity.
In the Whitehall centre the standard staff turnover in post is about 20%, so you don’t even need redundancies if you reshape the teams. The problem with most recruitment freezes is that no one plans for it, and all the holes randomly appear where all your best people (usually the first to move on) happen to leave. What’s needed is proper org redesign (and no, I don’t mean you hire McKinsey, it can be done internally).
Sky saying you have to go to page 112 for the Lib Dems to refer to Europe and their hope to rejoin the single market
And yet the actual document talks about Europe on pages 7,8,9,11,12,17 and 18 - and that's just the first 10 of 65 mentions of Europe or the EU in the manifesto.
Yes, they list an ambition to eventually join the Single Market on page 112 - but Sky are simply wrong if they're saying that the Lib Dems are otherwise silent on Europe.
Sky saying you have to go to page 112 for the Lib Dems to refer to Europe and their hope to rejoin the single market
And yet the actual document talks about Europe on pages 7,8,9,11,12,17 and 18 - and that's just the first 10 of 65 mentions of Europe or the EU in the manifesto.
Yes, they list an ambition to eventually join the Single Market on page 11 - but Sky are simply wrong if they're saying that the Lib Dems are otherwise silent on Europe.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where it’s needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Quangos are not (usually) off balance sheet. And they usually have a statutory purpose. Taking the OBR as an example, before there was an OBR there was a forecasting team in HMT: pretty much exactly the same team operating from the same desks.
Of course but you can repeal laws. The treasury still does forecasts so now we're paying twice over for the same service and in the OBRs case they admit their forecasts are consistently out and not timely. Would you spend £5 million on that or spend it on something more useful ?
No, Treasury uses the OBR numbers.
On laws. Yes, you can start to deregulate but your getting into something far more complex than just “cutting quangos”:
As noted above, many regulators charge their industry for the service and much if the other stuff is political third rail stuff: good luck cutting the Coal Authority or Historic England for example. We don’t really need either, but they don’t cost much and those who love them really love them.
You seem to be saying nobody can take difficult decisions
No, I’m saying they take different ones, routinely. In the case of the public sector the decision has routinely been made to depress salaries to retain staff numbers. I’d increase salaries and reduce staff, and do that fairly evenly in most areas but in an accelerated manner where, for example, AI can help boost productivity.
In the Whitehall centre the standard staff turnover in post is about 20%, so you don’t even need redundancies if you reshape the teams. The problem with most recruitment freezes is that no one plans for it, and all the holes randomly appear where all your best people (usually the first to move on) happen to leave. What’s needed is proper org redesign (and no, I don’t mean you hire McKinsey, it can be done internally).
I agree with that but as in other costs cutting efforts sometimes you can just get rid of a whole department and integrate it elsewhere in the business. It's like the examples you cite who needs the coal authority ? The country will go on without it. A "difficult decision" but it needs to be made.
It is the tricycle of Dr Harrie Larrington-Spencer (@tricyclemayor on Twitter, who is doing research into whether physical barriers reduce motorcycle ASB) being rescued by a recovery service after she had a puncture. For techies the tyres are Marathon Pluses (removing them makes a strong man weep) running Tannus inserts - it must have been one hell of a drawing pin. It is a Babboe Flow Mountain e-cargo bike which weighs 69kg, and has a stepless gearbox.
Reactions have been interesting in the desire to avoid the underlying point - that especially for disabled people such vehicles give autonomy and equality. Far fewer disabled have driving licences - 40% of adults do not vs 25% of able-bodied.
eg "Not able to do basic repairs should not be on the road". Fascinating doublethink - no mention of those of us who call out the AA to a spare tyre.
I run Marathon Pluses myself and have snapped teaspoons and tyre irons getting the buggers off. It does take a lot to get through them though (I've pulled out nails, tacks, big chunks of glass etc) and in fact couple of the punctures have come from the spoke breaking and putting a hole in the inner from the wheel-rim side.
Sky saying you have to go to page 112 for the Lib Dems to refer to Europe and their hope to rejoin the single market
And yet the actual document talks about Europe on pages 7,8,9,11,12,17 and 18 - and that's just the first 10 of 65 mentions of Europe or the EU in the manifesto.
Yes, they list an ambition to eventually join the Single Market on page 112 - but Sky are simply wrong if they're saying that the Lib Dems are otherwise silent on Europe.
No mention of 20mph limits though, so that's BigG's vote secured!
It seems crazy to me that it isn't the law for car manufacturers to provide room for a proper spare and that you must have carry one.
Maybe, maybe not. I have not had a puncture that required the use of a spare in over 30 years. I do about 12,000 miles a year. Should cars also carry battery packs in case of flat batteries? etc
I’m looking at a decrepit babushka crossing the road as I near the ravine of death. Incredible to think that it’s just about possible she personally saw Yaroslav the Wise found the city, if she is about 980 years old and she’s definitely old
History is so much closer than we think. Its kinda humbling
Thomas Hardy, who was taken to see a public execution when fairly young, lived into the lifetime of HM QEII as well as people I know still living.
Yes that’s impressive but not as impressive as this old lady. She could actually have seen Yaroslav march over the Dnieper and build the Church of Tithes, on the old pagan shrines of Podil - IF she is nearly 1000 years old. And as I say she’s definitely knocking on
That’s incredible
For those of a historical bent, Christopher Trychay was Vicar of Morebath in Devon from 1520 to 1574 and his annotated parish accounts are a diary of the tumultuous conversion of England from what was (largely - especially in Devon) an extremely devout Catholic nation through radical Protestantism to the uneasy compromise of the Elizabethan settlement. Morebath was a small Catholic village, forced to abandon its allegiance to the Pope, forced to regain it, and then told to lose it again, in the meantime sending villagers don to Exeter to to join the Prayer Book Rebellion. Keeping his head, let alone his job, over those 54 years was quite an achievment.
Got Eamon Duffy's history of the village. Must find it and reread it now you've reminded me.
As Duffy himself says, it is a "pendant" to Stripping of the Altars, which is an amazing work of scholarship but gets a bit polemical in trying to wrest the narrative of the Traditionalists like AJ Dickens. The reality is quite nuanced. In England, rural upland areas seemed to be the most Catholic, while Londoners were actually getting ahead of themselves in tearing down crucifixes and altars etc before governmental injunction required it - in fact a few parishes were required to put them back up. Duffy isn't good on geographical nuance IMHO.
I do find it desperately sad to wander round places like Glastonbury Abbey, or the London Charterhouse, and contemplate what was lost - as well as the courage of people who were martyred in a lost cause.
Glastonbury Abbey looks like it was one of the most beautiful churches in Europe, and many of the remaining ones in these islands are nothing special by European standards.
England, and also Britain, gained a lot in terms of liberty of thought and tolerance, but also lost a lot by the Reformation. We've forgotten how much was on the debit side, hence the arrogant attitudes to Europe, particularly since World War II, and also a failure to see where the resulting scepticism of grand ideas has turned to turgid anti-intellectualism in our culture.
Wasn’t our greatest contribution to thought and tolerance after the reformation? The great thinkers and writers of the enlightenment, for example Locke, Hobbes, Bacon and Newton, and later Paine, contributed far more than I can think of pre-reformation.
Also I can’t agree re our churches being nothing special by European standards. Outside of specialities such as the Sainte-Chapelle our churches are pretty fantastic on the whole.
Go around much of France or Switzerland and you will find very few churches that match the great churches built off the wool trade. Our college chapels are generally beautiful and often the leaks of ecclesiastical design such as King’s Canterbury.
Sure in Catholic countries you will have lots of fluff inside their churches but the cool beauty of our churches is wonderful.
Personally, I wouldn't rate most British churches apart from the remains of Glastonbury on the level of the cream of the Continent's, but there are some definitely some magnificent standouts and exceptions here and there, like Durham.
Britain contributed a huge amount intellectually, bur early on, post-Reformation, not later. 18th century Britain was an intellectual powerhouse that continental Europeans came to visit and learn from, but 19th century Britain wasn't, primarily because we drew the wrong and old anti-intellectual conclusions from the Terror after the French Revolution. Science was definitely the shining exception to this, but that's because it was seen and protected as the home of sceptical enquiry.
Post-Thatcherism, this misunderstanding of scepticism has unfotunately led us to a situation where our public culture is much more degraded and dumbed-down than France and Germany's, as mentioned yesterday with the example of the uncompromisingly intellectual discussion programmes that still abound on French television, but left ours thirty years ago. If you don't value these things as much as some of your near neighbours, they are expendable.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where its needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Thank you for illustrating my point. The OBR's annual spend is about £5m.
And he hasn’t saved any money, just moved the people elsewhere - which was how the OBR was created in the first place
As usual, AlanB misunderstands my argument. I'm not saying that it's impossible to cut spending. But it is politically difficult, and the difficulties have to be directly addressed.
The big spending quangos fall into the 'controversial' category.
'Cutting quangos' is therefore dishonest either because it means no cuts of any real significance - or it's not being upfront about choices which are likely to be very unpopular with large parts of the electorate.
He's criticising the parties for being dishonest about the choices which face us - which is entirely fair comment - but in this particular case doing much the same himself.
Mr b I perfectly understand where you are but a bit surprised by it. When I raise the prospects of spending cuts - which this country will have to face up to - there is a general wailing that othing can be done. You in your business must go through costs regularly and in practice weed out the non essentials from the have to dos. Thats in a normal year, when you are having a year when you are being squeezed you get a bigger knife out. In the private sector everybody has to do it. I have spent the last 20 years running distressed companies and sometimes it gets painful but usually cuts need to be done.
I reject your accusation that I am being dishonest I am simply flagging up that the people saying they are taking "difficult decisions" are not and need to start doing so. And while quangos are easy meat, I also threw in the pot we need to reschedule debt. Again just cries of no we cant, yet this could save anywhere upwards of £10 billion a year. Oddly Gordon Brown got on the case in an article over the weekend and now suddenly it's worth considering.
As I said before if you dont go looking for savings they wont just drop in to your lap. So having said all that back to my original question would you save the £5 million.
( PS dont know where you found the figure my searches said OBR dont publish r=theirrunning costs )
It would be more honest just to say cuts to public spending. The idea that there is £80 billion being spent by a few regulators on red tape is just plain wrong.
Most 'public sector wastage' is caused by ministers having idiotic ideas. They should only be allowed three ideas each per parliament.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where it’s needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Quangos are not (usually) off balance sheet. And they usually have a statutory purpose. Taking the OBR as an example, before there was an OBR there was a forecasting team in HMT: pretty much exactly the same team operating from the same desks.
Of course but you can repeal laws. The treasury still does forecasts so now we're paying twice over for the same service and in the OBRs case they admit their forecasts are consistently out and not timely. Would you spend £5 million on that or spend it on something more useful ?
No, Treasury uses the OBR numbers.
On laws. Yes, you can start to deregulate but your getting into something far more complex than just “cutting quangos”:
As noted above, many regulators charge their industry for the service and much if the other stuff is political third rail stuff: good luck cutting the Coal Authority or Historic England for example. We don’t really need either, but they don’t cost much and those who love them really love them.
You seem to be saying nobody can take difficult decisions
No, I’m saying they take different ones, routinely. In the case of the public sector the decision has routinely been made to depress salaries to retain staff numbers. I’d increase salaries and reduce staff, and do that fairly evenly in most areas but in an accelerated manner where, for example, AI can help boost productivity.
In the Whitehall centre the standard staff turnover in post is about 20%, so you don’t even need redundancies if you reshape the teams. The problem with most recruitment freezes is that no one plans for it, and all the holes randomly appear where all your best people (usually the first to move on) happen to leave. What’s needed is proper org redesign (and no, I don’t mean you hire McKinsey, it can be done internally).
I agree with that but as in other costs cutting efforts sometimes you can just get rid of a whole department and integrate it elsewhere in the business. It's like the examples you cite who needs the coal authority ? The country will go on without it. A "difficult decision" but it needs to be made.
But I bet it’s three people in an office. Not worth the political argument. I don’t disagree with a lot of rationalisation though. What you have to bear in mind though it that there are only 450,000 civil servants. For the purposes of this discussion (FCA etc.) let’s call it half a million. Average wage is probably 40K, which gets us to 20Bn. Add on 50% for NI, rents, teasing etc and you get to 30Bn.
That will be a massive over-estimate, and even then a massive 20% reduction gets you 6Bn, which is well under 1% of annual government spend.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where it’s needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Quangos are not (usually) off balance sheet. And they usually have a statutory purpose. Taking the OBR as an example, before there was an OBR there was a forecasting team in HMT: pretty much exactly the same team operating from the same desks.
Of course but you can repeal laws. The treasury still does forecasts so now we're paying twice over for the same service and in the OBRs case they admit their forecasts are consistently out and not timely. Would you spend £5 million on that or spend it on something more useful ?
No, Treasury uses the OBR numbers.
On laws. Yes, you can start to deregulate but your getting into something far more complex than just “cutting quangos”:
As noted above, many regulators charge their industry for the service and much if the other stuff is political third rail stuff: good luck cutting the Coal Authority or Historic England for example. We don’t really need either, but they don’t cost much and those who love them really love them.
You seem to be saying nobody can take difficult decisions
No, I’m saying they take different ones, routinely. In the case of the public sector the decision has routinely been made to depress salaries to retain staff numbers. I’d increase salaries and reduce staff, and do that fairly evenly in most areas but in an accelerated manner where, for example, AI can help boost productivity.
In the Whitehall centre the standard staff turnover in post is about 20%, so you don’t even need redundancies if you reshape the teams. The problem with most recruitment freezes is that no one plans for it, and all the holes randomly appear where all your best people (usually the first to move on) happen to leave. What’s needed is proper org redesign (and no, I don’t mean you hire McKinsey, it can be done internally).
I agree with that but as in other costs cutting efforts sometimes you can just get rid of a whole department and integrate it elsewhere in the business. It's like the examples you cite who needs the coal authority ? The country will go on without it. A "difficult decision" but it needs to be made.
But I bet it’s three people in an office. Not worth the political argument. I don’t disagree with a lot of rationalisation though. What you have to bear in mind though it that there are only 450,000 civil servants. For the purposes of this discussion (FCA etc.) let’s call it half a million. Average wage is probably 40K, which gets us to 20Bn. Add on 50% for NI, rents, teasing etc and you get to 30Bn.
That will be a massive over-estimate, and even then a massive 20% reduction gets you 6Bn, which is well under 1% of annual government spend.
Plus politicians of all stripes just can't help themselves; they'll create more anyway.
It is the tricycle of Dr Harrie Larrington-Spencer (@tricyclemayor on Twitter, who is doing research into whether physical barriers reduce motorcycle ASB) being rescued by a recovery service after she had a puncture. For techies the tyres are Marathon Pluses (removing them makes a strong man weep) running Tannus inserts - it must have been one hell of a drawing pin. It is a Babboe Flow Mountain e-cargo bike which weighs 69kg, and has a stepless gearbox.
Reactions have been interesting in the desire to avoid the underlying point - that especially for disabled people such vehicles give autonomy and equality. Far fewer disabled have driving licences - 40% of adults do not vs 25% of able-bodied.
eg "Not able to do basic repairs should not be on the road". Fascinating doublethink - no mention of those of us who call out the AA to a spare tyre.
I run Marathon Pluses myself and have snapped teaspoons and tyre irons getting the buggers off. It does take a lot to get through them though (I've pulled out nails, tacks, big chunks of glass etc) and in fact couple of the punctures have come from the spoke breaking and putting a hole in the inner from the wheel-rim side.
I usually refer to them as "tractor tyres" .
There's a whole sub-art of tips and tricks.
One useful trick (I am told) is to carry 3 or 4 zip ties or straps, to put on one side of the tyre, which makes the other side looser and a bit easier to get off.
But they will give 5k or 8k miles between punctures.
Round here the tricky season is when the hawthorn hedges are cut or drop their thorns.
I’m looking at a decrepit babushka crossing the road as I near the ravine of death. Incredible to think that it’s just about possible she personally saw Yaroslav the Wise found the city, if she is about 980 years old and she’s definitely old
History is so much closer than we think. Its kinda humbling
Thomas Hardy, who was taken to see a public execution when fairly young, lived into the lifetime of HM QEII as well as people I know still living.
Yes that’s impressive but not as impressive as this old lady. She could actually have seen Yaroslav march over the Dnieper and build the Church of Tithes, on the old pagan shrines of Podil - IF she is nearly 1000 years old. And as I say she’s definitely knocking on
That’s incredible
For those of a historical bent, Christopher Trychay was Vicar of Morebath in Devon from 1520 to 1574 and his annotated parish accounts are a diary of the tumultuous conversion of England from what was (largely - especially in Devon) an extremely devout Catholic nation through radical Protestantism to the uneasy compromise of the Elizabethan settlement. Morebath was a small Catholic village, forced to abandon its allegiance to the Pope, forced to regain it, and then told to lose it again, in the meantime sending villagers don to Exeter to to join the Prayer Book Rebellion. Keeping his head, let alone his job, over those 54 years was quite an achievment.
Got Eamon Duffy's history of the village. Must find it and reread it now you've reminded me.
As Duffy himself says, it is a "pendant" to Stripping of the Altars, which is an amazing work of scholarship but gets a bit polemical in trying to wrest the narrative of the Traditionalists like AJ Dickens. The reality is quite nuanced. In England, rural upland areas seemed to be the most Catholic, while Londoners were actually getting ahead of themselves in tearing down crucifixes and altars etc before governmental injunction required it - in fact a few parishes were required to put them back up. Duffy isn't good on geographical nuance IMHO.
I do find it desperately sad to wander round places like Glastonbury Abbey, or the London Charterhouse, and contemplate what was lost - as well as the courage of people who were martyred in a lost cause.
Glastonbury Abbey looks like it was one of the most beautiful churches in Europe, and many of the remaining ones in these islands are nothing special by European standards.
England, and also Britain, gained a lot in terms of liberty of thought and tolerance, but also lost a lot by the Reformation. We've forgotten how much was on the debit side, hence the arrogant attitudes to Europe, particularly since World War II, and also a failure to see where the resulting scepticism of grand ideas has turned to turgid anti-intellectualism in our culture.
Wasn’t our greatest contribution to thought and tolerance after the reformation? The great thinkers and writers of the enlightenment, for example Locke, Hobbes, Bacon and Newton, and later Paine, contributed far more than I can think of pre-reformation.
Also I can’t agree re our churches being nothing special by European standards. Outside of specialities such as the Sainte-Chapelle our churches are pretty fantastic on the whole.
Go around much of France or Switzerland and you will find very few churches that match the great churches built off the wool trade. Our college chapels are generally beautiful and often the leaks of ecclesiastical design such as King’s Canterbury.
Sure in Catholic countries you will have lots of fluff inside their churches but the cool beauty of our churches is wonderful.
Indeed. The beauty and noom of British/English churches and cathedrals is likely peerless. As we have discussed on here French churches lack the spirituality (tho often impressive on the outside). Only Italy comes close
If you walk into any English village there is a 20% chance you will find an architectural masterpiece or an historical gem (or both) at its centre
It seems crazy to me that it isn't the law for car manufacturers to provide room for a proper spare and that you must have carry one.
Maybe, maybe not. I have not had a puncture that required the use of a spare in over 30 years. I do about 12,000 miles a year. Should cars also carry battery packs in case of flat batteries? etc
I think the difference there is you aren't going to get a flat battery as you are driving about. Its either a serious fault on your car or you parked it for a long period with lights etc left on.
I think Anabobazina point is a better one about cars that have run flats. Although, after a few years and the tyres need changing (particularly if you brought it 2nd hand) how many people then start putting the shitty Chinese knock-off tyres on that can't do this.
Indeed, and it’s wishful thinking that the LDs are going to suddenly morph into a centre-right orange booker party. They are liberal ‘progressive’ left and they’re not going to change overnight. Are there even any orange bookers left?
OT it’s now June 10th and the most recent opinion polls had fieldwork from 6-8th and 5th-7th.
We need some fresh data please. They should now be post Faragasm and D-Day gate and we may have a clearer picture of how this election is heading.
My sense is that nothing much from here will change, barring anything extraordinary. People begin voting next week ...
Note of caution Heathener: in 1997 the Labour lead halved between this point and election day.
In 1997, Labour were up against John Major, Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind (and John Selwyn Gummer and Peter Lilley tbf).
This time around, they're up against *checks notes* Rishi Sunak (at the time of writing), Richard Holden, Michael Green and Kemi Badenoch.
Labour had Prezza, Blair, Brown, Kinnock, Beckett, Cook, Livingstone and any other number of big beasts from the Wilson and Callaghan years still on the scene. Now they have *checks notes* a boring guy and that woman with shiny hair
The paucity of talent runs rife throughout
If your argument is that the general quality of our political class has been in freefall since 1997 (and even well before then), you'll catch no disagreement from me.
I'm not sure about that. In the 1990s it wasn't unheard of for the older members to harumph at the paucity of talent on the Labour front bench "It used to be a cabinet of big beasts, Callaghan, Healey, Crosland, Jenkins. Now what have you got? Brown, Straw, Blunkett, not fit to lace their boots."
And the likes of Callaghan, Healey, Crosland, Jenkins, Williams et al were compared unfavourably to Attlee, Bevan and Hardie no doubt. I guess it is the fate of every generation of politicians to be dismissed as a pale shadow of its forebears. It just feels that the current lot have a particular shortage of figures that inspire, that exude competent authority, that command respect... and I don't think that was the case in, say, 1997.
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where it’s needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Quangos are not (usually) off balance sheet. And they usually have a statutory purpose. Taking the OBR as an example, before there was an OBR there was a forecasting team in HMT: pretty much exactly the same team operating from the same desks.
Of course but you can repeal laws. The treasury still does forecasts so now we're paying twice over for the same service and in the OBRs case they admit their forecasts are consistently out and not timely. Would you spend £5 million on that or spend it on something more useful ?
No, Treasury uses the OBR numbers.
On laws. Yes, you can start to deregulate but your getting into something far more complex than just “cutting quangos”:
As noted above, many regulators charge their industry for the service and much if the other stuff is political third rail stuff: good luck cutting the Coal Authority or Historic England for example. We don’t really need either, but they don’t cost much and those who love them really love them.
You seem to be saying nobody can take difficult decisions
No, I’m saying they take different ones, routinely. In the case of the public sector the decision has routinely been made to depress salaries to retain staff numbers. I’d increase salaries and reduce staff, and do that fairly evenly in most areas but in an accelerated manner where, for example, AI can help boost productivity.
In the Whitehall centre the standard staff turnover in post is about 20%, so you don’t even need redundancies if you reshape the teams. The problem with most recruitment freezes is that no one plans for it, and all the holes randomly appear where all your best people (usually the first to move on) happen to leave. What’s needed is proper org redesign (and no, I don’t mean you hire McKinsey, it can be done internally).
I agree with that but as in other costs cutting efforts sometimes you can just get rid of a whole department and integrate it elsewhere in the business. It's like the examples you cite who needs the coal authority ? The country will go on without it. A "difficult decision" but it needs to be made.
But I bet it’s three people in an office. Not worth the political argument. I don’t disagree with a lot of rationalisation though. What you have to bear in mind though it that there are only 450,000 civil servants. For the purposes of this discussion (FCA etc.) let’s call it half a million. Average wage is probably 40K, which gets us to 20Bn. Add on 50% for NI, rents, teasing etc and you get to 30Bn.
That will be a massive over-estimate, and even then a massive 20% reduction gets you 6Bn, which is well under 1% of annual government spend.
Just flicking through the Coal Authority's publications and frankly it looks like interesting and important work.
Disused colliery tip inspection is probably something we can all get behind, given prior disasters. Lots on metals pollution too.
It is the tricycle of Dr Harrie Larrington-Spencer (@tricyclemayor on Twitter, who is doing research into whether physical barriers reduce motorcycle ASB) being rescued by a recovery service after she had a puncture. For techies the tyres are Marathon Pluses (removing them makes a strong man weep) running Tannus inserts - it must have been one hell of a drawing pin. It is a Babboe Flow Mountain e-cargo bike which weighs 69kg, and has a stepless gearbox.
Reactions have been interesting in the desire to avoid the underlying point - that especially for disabled people such vehicles give autonomy and equality. Far fewer disabled have driving licences - 40% of adults do not vs 25% of able-bodied.
eg "Not able to do basic repairs should not be on the road". Fascinating doublethink - no mention of those of us who call out the AA to a spare tyre.
I run Marathon Pluses myself and have snapped teaspoons and tyre irons getting the buggers off. It does take a lot to get through them though (I've pulled out nails, tacks, big chunks of glass etc) and in fact couple of the punctures have come from the spoke breaking and putting a hole in the inner from the wheel-rim side.
I usually refer to them as "tractor tyres" .
There's a whole sub-art of tips and tricks.
One useful trick (I am told) is to carry 3 or 4 zip ties or straps, to put on one side of the tyre, which makes the other side looser and a bit easier to get off.
But they will give 5k or 8k miles between punctures.
Round here the tricky season is when the hawthorn hedges are cut or drop their thorns.
It's roadside debris for me, and the notoriously crap state of Manchester's roads in general.
The zip-tie trick is interesting, though my favourite trick is to take it to my local bike shop for a service which will likely be overdue at the time of puncture anyway
If things go as currently anticipated it will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of all political parties going forward. The Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having someone clearly unsuited to the role in the position of leader. Up to now, even if this was not optimal, one would expect swing back and old time loyalties to reduce that cost to tolerable levels. In the more febrile present it appears that that is not the case.
I think this will make MPs, and not just Tory MPs, much more anxious about their leadership in future. If Starmer is not cutting the mustard in 2-3 years time there will be 200-300 Labour MPs worried about their future. The consequences of the complacency and arrogance of this episode will burn deep in their souls.
Technically I think the Tories are about to pay a terrible price for having three people unsuited to the role as leader, one after another.
The leaders dont help, but lack of policies is the bigger problem.
"Cutting quangos" isn't a policy; it's a slogan. Like the earlier 'bonfire of the quangos', it's meaningless in financial or policy terms.
Eg, would you scrap the rest of HS2 ? Cut your 4% from NHS England ?
Or a you just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss ?
Yes, you routinely come up with this drivel by chosing the most contoversial things to cut. Quangos are off balance sheet government. They employ something like 700,000 people and cost anywhere from £40 -80 billion depending on whose numbers you chose to believe. There are over 750 of them.
You say you couldnt find savings in that. You shouldnt be put in charge of a budget. Like any cost savings you start with a target, protect the essentials and eliminate nice to dos and not needed. Then you end up with a potential list.
Ive already said as an example I'd close the OBR we lived without it prior to Osborne. Merge its with the BoE or the Treasury for forecasts and take the headcount savings. Then look at the other 750. It may well be you find more savings than you wanted, so park a budget and put some money back where it’s needed. I'd go for infrastructure.
Quangos are not (usually) off balance sheet. And they usually have a statutory purpose. Taking the OBR as an example, before there was an OBR there was a forecasting team in HMT: pretty much exactly the same team operating from the same desks.
Of course but you can repeal laws. The treasury still does forecasts so now we're paying twice over for the same service and in the OBRs case they admit their forecasts are consistently out and not timely. Would you spend £5 million on that or spend it on something more useful ?
No, Treasury uses the OBR numbers.
On laws. Yes, you can start to deregulate but your getting into something far more complex than just “cutting quangos”:
As noted above, many regulators charge their industry for the service and much if the other stuff is political third rail stuff: good luck cutting the Coal Authority or Historic England for example. We don’t really need either, but they don’t cost much and those who love them really love them.
You seem to be saying nobody can take difficult decisions
No, I’m saying they take different ones, routinely. In the case of the public sector the decision has routinely been made to depress salaries to retain staff numbers. I’d increase salaries and reduce staff, and do that fairly evenly in most areas but in an accelerated manner where, for example, AI can help boost productivity.
In the Whitehall centre the standard staff turnover in post is about 20%, so you don’t even need redundancies if you reshape the teams. The problem with most recruitment freezes is that no one plans for it, and all the holes randomly appear where all your best people (usually the first to move on) happen to leave. What’s needed is proper org redesign (and no, I don’t mean you hire McKinsey, it can be done internally).
I agree with that but as in other costs cutting efforts sometimes you can just get rid of a whole department and integrate it elsewhere in the business. It's like the examples you cite who needs the coal authority ? The country will go on without it. A "difficult decision" but it needs to be made.
But I bet it’s three people in an office. Not worth the political argument. I don’t disagree with a lot of rationalisation though. What you have to bear in mind though it that there are only 450,000 civil servants. For the purposes of this discussion (FCA etc.) let’s call it half a million. Average wage is probably 40K, which gets us to 20Bn. Add on 50% for NI, rents, teasing etc and you get to 30Bn.
That will be a massive over-estimate, and even then a massive 20% reduction gets you 6Bn, which is well under 1% of annual government spend.
Quangos have 700,000 employees so thats 1.2 million at a time when we are being told we have to import people to do the jobs. At a time when we have a deficit of £50 billion we should be taking any saving we can get. .
Indeed, and it’s wishful thinking that the LDs are going to suddenly morph into a centre-right orange booker party. They are liberal ‘progressive’ left and they’re not going to change overnight. Are there even any orange bookers left?
Yes, in some respects the LD manifesto is left of Starmer Labour, including a massive rise in council tax for second homes and restoration of student grants. Davey clearly trying to attract left liberals disillusioned by a centrist, authoritarian Labour Party as Kennedy did to Blair New Labour.
Clearly only Reform are a real alternative to the Tories on the right
Ok, I know it's ultimately an exercise in politcal irrelevancy, but which of the rich smörgåsbord of talent on the Holyrood benches is next SCon leader? I'm going for Sandesh 'does my hair look good' Gulhane, with a lol saver on Annie Wells.
Murdo
on the Orient Express?
Could be! I think it's him though, the SCons will split from the UK party per his plan and he's the obvious man to poke at Swinney whilst he's there. Possible he'll be an interim to achieve the split and then hand on after 2026
Too many times the bridesmaid? Murdo has a very much over masticated piece of chewing gum vibe.
Not a MSP. And the seat Mr Ross may or may not vacate is a list one, so the next person on the list will get it automatically (mind, I didn't check who that is).
He is an MSP if you're referring to Murdo?
Murdo Fraser is a list MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, We were university contemporaries, although politically very different brands. We got on OK back then, and he has certainly mellowed a fair deal with age. He might yet get there.
I've skimmed through the whole Lib Dem manifesto document, as I'll need to be au fait with its contents on fiscal policy for my work later, but also out of interest as a party member.
There is much to applaud in there - whilst it's very much on the social democrat end of the Lib Dem spectrum, their manifestos often are. But it pains me to say that many of the tax policies are ill-advised and badly thought out.
The share buyback tax would be introduced in a completely different context from Biden's, and might well raise virtually nothing. The "proper, one off windfall tax" on upstream oil and gas makes the same category error that Labour make in confusing global profits with UK upstream activity, and could end up drying up future investment.
As for pushing for a global minimum tax of 21% rather than the current 15%, that's just silly. It's both unfair (why should smaller resource-poor countries be forced to tax at rates that suit large countries with resources or large markets?), and politically unworkable - not going to happen. And finally, all it does is shuffle tax revenue among rich countries, in an inefficient way. It does nothing to increase tax take by developing countries.
They do have some other decent tax policies but those three suggest they really should have taken some expert advice.
Indeed, and it’s wishful thinking that the LDs are going to suddenly morph into a centre-right orange booker party. They are liberal ‘progressive’ left and they’re not going to change overnight. Are there even any orange bookers left?
Yes, in some respects the LD manifesto is left of Starmer Labour, including a massive rise in council tax for second homes and restoration of student grants. Davey clearly trying to attract left liberals disillusioned by a centrist, authoritarian Labour Party as Kennedy did to Blair New Labour.
Clearly only Reform are a real alternative to the Tories on the right
Reform need to stop banging on about migration everybody knows where they stand, they need to put some focus on cost of living if they want to pick up extra votes.
It is the tricycle of Dr Harrie Larrington-Spencer (@tricyclemayor on Twitter, who is doing research into whether physical barriers reduce motorcycle ASB) being rescued by a recovery service after she had a puncture. For techies the tyres are Marathon Pluses (removing them makes a strong man weep) running Tannus inserts - it must have been one hell of a drawing pin. It is a Babboe Flow Mountain e-cargo bike which weighs 69kg, and has a stepless gearbox.
Reactions have been interesting in the desire to avoid the underlying point - that especially for disabled people such vehicles give autonomy and equality. Far fewer disabled have driving licences - 40% of adults do not vs 25% of able-bodied.
eg "Not able to do basic repairs should not be on the road". Fascinating doublethink - no mention of those of us who call out the AA to a spare tyre.
I run Marathon Pluses myself and have snapped teaspoons and tyre irons getting the buggers off. It does take a lot to get through them though (I've pulled out nails, tacks, big chunks of glass etc) and in fact couple of the punctures have come from the spoke breaking and putting a hole in the inner from the wheel-rim side.
I usually refer to them as "tractor tyres" .
There's a whole sub-art of tips and tricks.
One useful trick (I am told) is to carry 3 or 4 zip ties or straps, to put on one side of the tyre, which makes the other side looser and a bit easier to get off.
But they will give 5k or 8k miles between punctures.
Round here the tricky season is when the hawthorn hedges are cut or drop their thorns.
I've always bought more pliable and less resistant tyres like the delta cruiser plus. You have a slightly higher chance of a puncture but at least they will come off on a cold, wet and windy night.
I doubt the Liberal Democrats will be that bothered by a negative review from Guido. It'd be like Reform UK pinning their hopes on a glowing editorial by the Canary.
NEW: Undecided voters are turning away from the Conservatives, according to new @JLPartnersPolls modelling that if replicated at the election would kill off Rishi Sunak’s already slim chances of avoiding a huge defeat
Comments
It's a manifesto launch, they are all the same, the voters will later give their verdict
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko
(It strikes me that Rishi Sunk needs about 293625456047252 Somebody Else's Problem fields.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjmmrwexv4ko
A Reform UK candidate claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two.
Ian Gribbin, the party's candidate in Bexhill and Battle, also wrote online that women were the "sponging gender" and should be "deprived of health care".
In posts from 2022 on the Unherd magazine website, seen by the BBC, he said Winston Churchill was "abysmal" and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...
England, and also Britain, gained a lot in terms of liberty of thought and tolerance, but also lost a lot by the Reformation. We've forgotten how much was on the debit side, hence the arrogant attitudes to Europe, particularly since World War II, and also a failure to see where the resulting scepticism of grand ideas has turned to turgid anti-intellectualism in our culture.
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1800128325446410371?s=19
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1rrzp1qwp1o
The clue is in the name, it has little to do with Barclays indirectly investing Israel.
We can get on to IT when youve stopped sulking.
The list is here. 90% have a clear statutory purpose, many of which will have grown due to Brexit (which I supported and still support, but I get that it drives decision making, and therefore these sorts of bodies, home).
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations
Richard Holden's interview at the weekend just summed it all up for me. The state of politics.
I think it's him though, the SCons will split from the UK party per his plan and he's the obvious man to poke at Swinney whilst he's there. Possible he'll be an interim to achieve the split and then hand on after 2026
But again you need people to audit the maths and that used to be done in house and was shunted elsewhere. It’s a job that needs to be done hence it’s as pointless as your other harebrained schemes
So what you're proposing is actually below the "just talking about a few million pounds from scrapping some of the obscure ones few would miss" level; you're advocating for a minor form of the salami slicing variant of austerity that Osborne fell back on when his initial 'bonfire of the quangoes' approach failed.
Why would it turn out to be any more effective now than it was in 2014-15?
Just bought, as homework for next holiday, Underdown Fire from Heaven about the Civil Wars times in Dorchester, a century or so later ... and with only a link or two to get to Hardy.
I think he loves pushing buttons so much he will put this on his grave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAUmgE3WyM
I'm not saying that it's impossible to cut spending. But it is politically difficult, and the difficulties have to be directly addressed.
The big spending quangos fall into the 'controversial' category.
'Cutting quangos' is therefore dishonest either because it means no cuts of any real significance - or it's not being upfront about choices which are likely to be very unpopular with large parts of the electorate.
He's criticising the parties for being dishonest about the choices which face us - which is entirely fair comment - but in this particular case doing much the same himself.
Although Esther's comedy gig seems quite popular at the hustings:
https://x.com/JaThLa/status/1799567986329628934
On laws. Yes, you can start to deregulate but your getting into something far more complex than just “cutting quangos”:
As noted above, many regulators charge their industry for the service and much if the other stuff is political third rail stuff: good luck cutting the Coal Authority or Historic England for example. We don’t really need either, but they don’t cost much and those who love them really love them.
https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2010/12/top-100-dance-songs-of-80s.html
Also I can’t agree re our churches being nothing special by European standards. Outside of specialities such as the Sainte-Chapelle our churches are pretty fantastic on the whole.
Go around much of France or Switzerland and you will find very few churches that match the great churches built off the wool trade. Our college chapels are generally beautiful and often the leaks of ecclesiastical design such as King’s Canterbury.
Sure in Catholic countries you will have lots of fluff inside their churches but the cool beauty of our churches is wonderful.
I reject your accusation that I am being dishonest I am simply flagging up that the people saying they are taking "difficult decisions" are not and need to start doing so. And while quangos are easy meat, I also threw in the pot we need to reschedule debt. Again just cries of no we cant, yet this could save anywhere upwards of £10 billion a year.
Oddly Gordon Brown got on the case in an article over the weekend and now suddenly it's worth considering.
As I said before if you dont go looking for savings they wont just drop in to your lap. So having said all that back to my original question would you save the £5 million.
( PS dont know where you found the figure my searches said OBR dont publish r=theirrunning costs )
Used once, and I did call out the included breakdown service.
In the Whitehall centre the standard staff turnover in post is about 20%, so you don’t even need redundancies if you reshape the teams. The problem with most recruitment freezes is that no one plans for it, and all the holes randomly appear where all your best people (usually the first to move on) happen to leave. What’s needed is proper org redesign (and no, I don’t mean you hire McKinsey, it can be done internally).
Yes, they list an ambition to eventually join the Single Market on page 112 - but Sky are simply wrong if they're saying that the Lib Dems are otherwise silent on Europe.
https://order-order.com/2024/06/10/all-the-bonkers-policies-in-the-libdem-manifesto/
Britain contributed a huge amount intellectually, bur early on, post-Reformation, not later. 18th century Britain was an intellectual powerhouse that continental Europeans came to visit and learn from, but 19th century Britain wasn't, primarily because we drew the wrong and old anti-intellectual conclusions from the Terror after the French Revolution. Science was definitely the shining exception to this, but that's because it was seen and protected as the home of sceptical enquiry.
Post-Thatcherism, this misunderstanding of scepticism has unfotunately led us to a situation where our public culture is much more degraded and dumbed-down than France and Germany's, as mentioned yesterday with the example of the uncompromisingly intellectual discussion programmes that still abound on French television, but left ours thirty years ago. If you don't value these things as much as some of your near neighbours, they are expendable.
That will be a massive over-estimate, and even then a massive 20% reduction gets you 6Bn, which is well under 1% of annual government spend.
There's a whole sub-art of tips and tricks.
One useful trick (I am told) is to carry 3 or 4 zip ties or straps, to put on one side of the tyre, which makes the other side looser and a bit easier to get off.
But they will give 5k or 8k miles between punctures.
Round here the tricky season is when the hawthorn hedges are cut or drop their thorns.
If you walk into any English village there is a 20% chance you will find an architectural
masterpiece or an historical gem (or both) at its centre
I think Anabobazina point is a better one about cars that have run flats. Although, after a few years and the tyres need changing (particularly if you brought it 2nd hand) how many people then start putting the shitty Chinese knock-off tyres on that can't do this.
Disused colliery tip inspection is probably something we can all get behind, given prior disasters. Lots on metals pollution too.
Mine water heating... cool! https://www.gov.uk/government/news/project-explores-potential-demand-for-mine-water-heat
The zip-tie trick is interesting, though my favourite trick is to take it to my local bike shop for a service which will likely be overdue at the time of puncture anyway
.
Clearly only Reform are a real alternative to the Tories on the right
I think it's an interesting policy idea for sure but am surprised the LDs have gone for it!
There is much to applaud in there - whilst it's very much on the social democrat end of the Lib Dem spectrum, their manifestos often are. But it pains me to say that many of the tax policies are ill-advised and badly thought out.
The share buyback tax would be introduced in a completely different context from Biden's, and might well raise virtually nothing. The "proper, one off windfall tax" on upstream oil and gas makes the same category error that Labour make in confusing global profits with UK upstream activity, and could end up drying up future investment.
As for pushing for a global minimum tax of 21% rather than the current 15%, that's just silly. It's both unfair (why should smaller resource-poor countries be forced to tax at rates that suit large countries with resources or large markets?), and politically unworkable - not going to happen. And finally, all it does is shuffle tax revenue among rich countries, in an inefficient way. It does nothing to increase tax take by developing countries.
They do have some other decent tax policies but those three suggest they really should have taken some expert advice.
NEW: Undecided voters are turning away from the Conservatives, according to new
@JLPartnersPolls modelling that if replicated at the election would kill off Rishi Sunak’s already slim chances of avoiding a huge defeat
https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1800141295467593949
So Reform will likely cost the Tories the seat
https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast