Paul Whitwick, surely? I'll watch that later thanks; his videos are usually good.
Incidentally, yesterday I was talking to a chap (in his late thirties) who lives in a newbuild flat. He wants to have a bike, but there is nowhere to store it aside from in his flat, and he lives on the second floor. Residents have been keeping their bikes in a communal area outside, but the owners have told them that they cannot, and the bikes will have to be removed by the end of next month.
It's fine talking about the need for active travel, but it's pointless if people cannot actually have bikes.
Cycle Parking.
Where is it?
If urban, there may be a list for people who want cycle hangars held by the Council.
If it is newbuild flat, there should be a requirement for cycle storage in the Planning Permission, perhaps as a Planning Condition. If that or similar exists, they can all ask the Council to enforce it as long as it is within X years.
My plan B would be a folder or e-folder.
Or if he has a parking space, he could SORN a van he puts there, and store his cycle in it. That's one tactic that is sometimes mentioned in connection with front curtilege parking spaces being Permitted Development, whilst a cycle locker needs Planning Permission.
Bikes increasingly being ebikes may be a problem as they run slap bang into the new fire safety regulations for flats after Grenfell. SORNing a van seems overkill, and a build it and they will come attitude to lockable cycle shelters has led to one near here that in the past two years, I've never seen house more than one bike. I can't guarantee it is not always the same one whose owner has died.
The fires one is I think to do with an unregulated battery supply chain - especially cheap and dangerous batteries from China via Ali Express or Ebay, and the previous Govt's failure to regulate. They would spend time on "dangerous cycling" for political reasons, but ignored something that was material in many times more deaths.
Brompton Bicycle reported to Parliament last spring that they have sold 50k->100k e-cycles, and never had a single report of a fire.
There was a consultation in 23-24 about cycle storage as permitted development, but the proposed sizes were smaller than adapted cycles or mobility scooters needed (responses were made), but I think the Election cut it off.
On the hangars, it sounds as though the Council need to run their scheme more effectively.
On hangars etc, I see it as a basic matter of equality. If we are to allow storage of private transport in the public realm, then it should be the same for motors, cycles, mobility scooters and all the rest, where needed. I'd expect schemes to pay for themselves in terms of road space used, and perhaps bias it towards more efficient forms of transport. I'd call it that in 5-8 years more integrated residents' parking schemes will be the norm,
The London Fire Brigade give out regular warnings about people storing or charging electric bikes in flats, there’s been dozens of fires in the past couple of years.
It’s not the Bromptons though, with their expensive batteries and expensive chargers, it’s mostly the Chinese bikes, and especially the AliExpress conversion kits of very poor quality which customs are failing to intercept.
Reform voters are not generally the poor and the dispossessed slaving away on minimum wage jobs. The most Reform-supporting voter group is 'C2', the skilled working class - e.g. plumbers, bricklayers, carpenters. These are broadly middle income jobs.
Reform support is actually significantly lower among DEs, which is where many of the minimum wage occupations are found. What's more, most of this support is among the 55+. Turnout among DEs was just 22% among 18-34s and 42% among 35-45s, according to Ipsos. Pitifully low.
So among DEs under 55, according to Ipsos, about 33% turned out. And of these, about 16% voted Reform. ...That means about *5%* of people under 55 in the lowest social class voted for Reform. Not exactly an outcry of the dispossessed, is it?
C2's are the worst done by, they just about get by but they get taxed to death.
And there's a lot of them well spread out across the country. Reform would win a lot of seats if this group voted reform en masse.
The lower middle class have been badly hit. Too rich for state support, affected by inflation without any significant wage rises, probably have a mortgage, so hit by the interest rates and not wealthy enough to op out of on state services like NHS, public schools etc
It why bugger all voted Tory at the GE.
Earning £40k a year is not middle class utopia of 2.4 kids and the semi detached house in surburbs with enough for a nice holiday. Its just about managing territory.
Paul Whitwick, surely? I'll watch that later thanks; his videos are usually good.
Incidentally, yesterday I was talking to a chap (in his late thirties) who lives in a newbuild flat. He wants to have a bike, but there is nowhere to store it aside from in his flat, and he lives on the second floor. Residents have been keeping their bikes in a communal area outside, but the owners have told them that they cannot, and the bikes will have to be removed by the end of next month.
It's fine talking about the need for active travel, but it's pointless if people cannot actually have bikes.
Cycle Parking.
Where is it?
If urban, there may be a list for people who want cycle hangars held by the Council.
If it is newbuild flat, there should be a requirement for cycle storage in the Planning Permission, perhaps as a Planning Condition. If that or similar exists, they can all ask the Council to enforce it as long as it is within X years.
My plan B would be a folder or e-folder.
Or if he has a parking space, he could SORN a van he puts there, and store his cycle in it. That's one tactic that is sometimes mentioned in connection with front curtilege parking spaces being Permitted Development, whilst a cycle locker needs Planning Permission.
Bikes increasingly being ebikes may be a problem as they run slap bang into the new fire safety regulations for flats after Grenfell. SORNing a van seems overkill, and a build it and they will come attitude to lockable cycle shelters has led to one near here that in the past two years, I've never seen house more than one bike. I can't guarantee it is not always the same one whose owner has died.
The fires one is I think to do with an unregulated battery supply chain - especially cheap and dangerous batteries from China via Ali Express or Ebay, and the previous Govt's failure to regulate. They would spend time on "dangerous cycling" for political reasons, but ignored something that was material in many times more deaths.
Brompton Bicycle reported to Parliament last spring that they have sold 50k->100k e-cycles, and never had a single report of a fire.
There was a consultation in 23-24 about cycle storage as permitted development, but the proposed sizes were smaller than adapted cycles or mobility scooters needed (responses were made), but I think the Election cut it off.
On the hangars, it sounds as though the Council need to run their scheme more effectively.
On hangars etc, I see it as a basic matter of equality. If we are to allow storage of private transport in the public realm, then it should be the same for motors, cycles, mobility scooters and all the rest, where needed. I'd expect schemes to pay for themselves in terms of road space used, and perhaps bias it towards more efficient forms of transport. I'd call it that in 5-8 years more integrated residents' parking schemes will be the norm,
The London Fire Brigade give out regular warnings about people storing or charging electric bikes in flats, there’s been dozens of fires in the past couple of years.
It’s not the Bromptons though, with their expensive batteries and expensive chargers, it’s mostly the Chinese bikes, and especially the AliExpress conversion kits of very poor quality which customs are failing to intercept.
I didn't get a specific answer from @leon about what the government should do other than "Denmark".
I think there a few great initiatives we could lift from the Danes. Taking our international quota of refugees. Allowing refugees to work. Creating asylum centres to house and feed refugees so that they are safe and protected from violent mobs. A scheme to fund refuge outside Europe *if and when their claim is refused having first been housed in and assessed by Denmark*
Good ideas worthy of discussion. Though I suspect the "Denmark" reference meant "send them to Rwanda" which is not what Denmark does.
There are challenges to "Denmark". Building refuge centres is something that gets attacked by NIMBY MPs and then by violent mobs. Allowing refugees to work is a great idea - so many skilled and talented people come as refugees. Won't be popular with the "Dey Terk Er Jerbs" mentality. And processing claims here? Radical.
A lot of the resentment is around hotels*. Completely unnecessary if we allow them to work and process their claims swiftly, both of which are fully in our control, and would save us money too.
* Of course a life stuck within a hotel with little money, restricted movement and no opportunity for legal work is not actually pleasant at all, but it does create resentment.
As I and others noted yesterday, the asylum-processing rolling disaster, perpetrated by the last government, is largely separate from the actual levels of immigration. And as you note, is a problem which might much more easily be resolved, given the resources.
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
Pretty credible theories that much of US tech boom was being funded by Japan carry trade. Yen was crashing, bank of Japan tried intervening directly in currency markets but has now raised rates twice to arrest currency collapse and the resultant inflation. On cue, bank stocks and now the whole Japanese equity market collapsing.
I have been reading a fair bit about this over the last week. People starting to predict this would happen due to what was happening between the Yen and USD. Cheap Japanese Money used to fund activities outside Japan. Fine while interest rates are low.
I am not knowledgeable enough on this to offer an opinion, I find it fascinating reading and learning about it.
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
And that's the lesson for us. I used to worry about our seemingly endless appetite for consumer spending at the expense of savings. After a decade of increased savings rates I'd love to see a good old fashioned bit of consumer spending back. It helps to support government finances through VAT receipts, it encourages the right sort of inflation: wage and service sector inflation which returns much of the growth into the pockets of the consumer, and it engenders confidence in the economy.
On the other hand when people save, the government has to spend. That's why Japan's public debt is the most eye wateringly huge in the Western world.
What we need is some sort of liquidity event, like the building society demutualisations back in the 90s. Maybe the government could carry through on my geostrategic proposal to sell the Isle of Portland to Spain, and distribute the proceeds to the population.
‘Zero asylum seekers’: Denmark forces refugees to return to Syria
An article which is 2 years old. And says nothing about Danish policy other than they have the right to refuse asylum claims. Which is exactly what I posted above.
An article more than 4 years old. Did you read past the headline? They are bulldozing ghettoes to rebuild and encourage integration. We do the exact same thing here when money is available- bulldoze tatty and deprived neighbourhoods and build new houses. Where I used to live in Stockton was exactly that. The new build homes being smashed over the weekend another example.
As I asked William, what is the point you are making? You said “Denmark”. This is Denmark. Do you support their policies of letting asylum seekers work and investing to integrate them into society?
Or was “Denmark” code for “Rwanda”. Which isn’t something they do. As you have had pointed out endlessly when you were the last person left supporting the Tory Rwanda crayon drawing.
As @williamglenn correctly notes, you haven't got a clue what you're talking about and now you're just flailing. Embarrassing
I grew up in a town which had ethnic ghettoisation as policy. Did you? I’ve advocated taking down these kinds of policies to integrate for decades - have you? I’ve seen what it’s like when different ethnic groups attack each other in my own town - have you?
Integration- as Denmark are doing and we do patchily - is the solution. Bulldozing tired unwanted housing stock for redevelopment is what the UK already does. Just not enough of it because social housing hasn’t been popular since the 80s.
You can sit there in France taking a pop and thats up to you. But it is embarrassing that you think I don’t have a clue about this issue and am “flailing” because I disagree with your “ship them all to Rwanda it’s the only solution” plan. Which is no solution.
It isn’t Camden that gets town apart by this. It’s Rochdale. Where I grew up. Rotherham. Where I lived. Sunderland. Where I lived. Oldham - where I went to college and went through a spell of different ethnic groups coming out of their council policy ghettoes attacking each other back in c1994. Been there, done that. Racists attacking people in the town centre? Been there.
You don’t know shit about this in practical terms.
Making any man who pays a prostitute for sex sign the Sex Offenders Register.
If the man does not pay, then surely it is rape. Have the Danes thought this through?
What if he technically just buys her dinner, or buys her a handbag? I've heard this is just one more way these devious male perverts get their paid sex
‘Zero asylum seekers’: Denmark forces refugees to return to Syria
I suspect the bit of Denmark some people want is the high tax, high spend part, but not the stuff like this.
It was obvious circa 2014 that it would end up like this. The elite just collectively lost its mind completely over refugees. The unthinking belief in progressivism "we can do it!":
Thank goodness we have the corrective of the right not collectively losing its mind completely over refugees.
Its the Economy Stupid is also the key driver as to why people are rioting. The migrants are the scapegoats. Why do people want the migrants gone? Because they are poor and think the migrants are to blame.
I am open to suggestions from our more aggressive right wing commentators as to the specific actions that Cooper and the government should action this morning to stop this.
Mate, I've said it again and I'll say it 100 times, I personally have no problem with the SM or FoM. That is not why I voted Leave
But you are backing a solution that almost all those who are rioting - and the far-right politicians and influencers egging them on - would oppose.
That said, I am with you on Denmark - a high tax, redistributive society with a strong welfare state inside the single market that also, coincidentally or not, is currently home to Europe's most valuable company. What Denmark cannot do, though, is control immigration. Just certain kinds.
But they are ruthless on asylum and they destroy ethnic ghettoes. And they seem to have some of the happiest people on earth and suffer much less ethnic friction than very similar Sweden. We can do a swap, you accept their ghetto and asylum policies and I will accept their tax and welfare policies
So if you destroy the 'ethnic ghettoes' of this country where do their inhabitants move to ?
I'm not sure Yorkshire Dales villages want tens of thousands of Muslims to be relocated there.
At the present rates of immigration they are coming anyway
And you want even more by supporting FoM with the EU.
Do you know where the people in the 'ethnic ghetto' in Harehills originated ?
I seem to remember reading that is was 'white people' who burned the bus in Harehills.
Iustin Dobre, 37, of Clifton Mount, Harehills, was on Saturday charged with arson and violent disorder. The other five people arrested on suspicion of violent disorder remain in police custody.
Iustin Dobre, not quite a name to go with Len, Fred, Brian, Geoff and Ray.
Roma, and Romanians, are White people too. In an old man yelling at cloud rant, I might deplore the general trend to treat foreigners in general as non-White.
Yup. I contracted for various Romanian businesses for a few years. Great people.
‘Zero asylum seekers’: Denmark forces refugees to return to Syria
An article which is 2 years old. And says nothing about Danish policy other than they have the right to refuse asylum claims. Which is exactly what I posted above.
An article more than 4 years old. Did you read past the headline? They are bulldozing ghettoes to rebuild and encourage integration. We do the exact same thing here when money is available- bulldoze tatty and deprived neighbourhoods and build new houses. Where I used to live in Stockton was exactly that. The new build homes being smashed over the weekend another example.
As I asked William, what is the point you are making? You said “Denmark”. This is Denmark. Do you support their policies of letting asylum seekers work and investing to integrate them into society?
Or was “Denmark” code for “Rwanda”. Which isn’t something they do. As you have had pointed out endlessly when you were the last person left supporting the Tory Rwanda crayon drawing.
As @williamglenn correctly notes, you haven't got a clue what you're talking about and now you're just flailing. Embarrassing
I grew up in a town which had ethnic ghettoisation as policy. Did you? I’ve advocated taking down these kinds of policies to integrate for decades - have you? I’ve seen what it’s like when different ethnic groups attack each other in my own town - have you?
Integration- as Denmark are doing and we do patchily - is the solution. Bulldozing tired unwanted housing stock for redevelopment is what the UK already does. Just not enough of it because social housing hasn’t been popular since the 80s.
You can sit there in France taking a pop and thats up to you. But it is embarrassing that you think I don’t have a clue about this issue and am “flailing” because I disagree with your “ship them all to Rwanda it’s the only solution” plan. Which is no solution.
It isn’t Camden that gets town apart by this. It’s Rochdale. Where I grew up. Rotherham. Where I lived. Sunderland. Where I lived. Oldham - where I went to college and went through a spell of different ethnic groups coming out of their council policy ghettoes attacking each other back in c1994. Been there, done that. Racists attacking people in the town centre? Been there.
You don’t know shit about this in practical terms.
Denmark wants to limit the proportion of residents of “non-western” origin in each neighbourhood to a maximum of 30% within 10 years.
That kind of limit has national as well as local implications. It means that they country as a whole must maintain at least a 70% ethnically European population. Do you advocate similar approach to policymaking in the UK?
Paul Whitwick, surely? I'll watch that later thanks; his videos are usually good.
Incidentally, yesterday I was talking to a chap (in his late thirties) who lives in a newbuild flat. He wants to have a bike, but there is nowhere to store it aside from in his flat, and he lives on the second floor. Residents have been keeping their bikes in a communal area outside, but the owners have told them that they cannot, and the bikes will have to be removed by the end of next month.
It's fine talking about the need for active travel, but it's pointless if people cannot actually have bikes.
Cycle Parking.
Where is it?
If urban, there may be a list for people who want cycle hangars held by the Council.
If it is newbuild flat, there should be a requirement for cycle storage in the Planning Permission, perhaps as a Planning Condition. If that or similar exists, they can all ask the Council to enforce it as long as it is within X years.
My plan B would be a folder or e-folder.
Or if he has a parking space, he could SORN a van he puts there, and store his cycle in it. That's one tactic that is sometimes mentioned in connection with front curtilege parking spaces being Permitted Development, whilst a cycle locker needs Planning Permission.
Bikes increasingly being ebikes may be a problem as they run slap bang into the new fire safety regulations for flats after Grenfell. SORNing a van seems overkill, and a build it and they will come attitude to lockable cycle shelters has led to one near here that in the past two years, I've never seen house more than one bike. I can't guarantee it is not always the same one whose owner has died.
The fires one is I think to do with an unregulated battery supply chain - especially cheap and dangerous batteries from China via Ali Express or Ebay, and the previous Govt's failure to regulate. They would spend time on "dangerous cycling" for political reasons, but ignored something that was material in many times more deaths.
Brompton Bicycle reported to Parliament last spring that they have sold 50k->100k e-cycles, and never had a single report of a fire.
There was a consultation in 23-24 about cycle storage as permitted development, but the proposed sizes were smaller than adapted cycles or mobility scooters needed (responses were made), but I think the Election cut it off.
On the hangars, it sounds as though the Council need to run their scheme more effectively.
On hangars etc, I see it as a basic matter of equality. If we are to allow storage of private transport in the public realm, then it should be the same for motors, cycles, mobility scooters and all the rest, where needed. I'd expect schemes to pay for themselves in terms of road space used, and perhaps bias it towards more efficient forms of transport. I'd call it that in 5-8 years more integrated residents' parking schemes will be the norm,
The London Fire Brigade give out regular warnings about people storing or charging electric bikes in flats, there’s been dozens of fires in the past couple of years.
It’s not the Bromptons though, with their expensive batteries and expensive chargers, it’s mostly the Chinese bikes, and especially the AliExpress conversion kits of very poor quality which customs are failing to intercept.
And - I suppose - the more e-cycles are in cycle hangars or cycle lockers in the front garden, the fewer will be inside flats.
I've heard noises about this, but have not seen any proposals yet. I'd expect a fairly rapid move, as it's a blatantly obvious thing to do with big benefits.
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
‘Zero asylum seekers’: Denmark forces refugees to return to Syria
An article which is 2 years old. And says nothing about Danish policy other than they have the right to refuse asylum claims. Which is exactly what I posted above.
An article more than 4 years old. Did you read past the headline? They are bulldozing ghettoes to rebuild and encourage integration. We do the exact same thing here when money is available- bulldoze tatty and deprived neighbourhoods and build new houses. Where I used to live in Stockton was exactly that. The new build homes being smashed over the weekend another example.
As I asked William, what is the point you are making? You said “Denmark”. This is Denmark. Do you support their policies of letting asylum seekers work and investing to integrate them into society?
Or was “Denmark” code for “Rwanda”. Which isn’t something they do. As you have had pointed out endlessly when you were the last person left supporting the Tory Rwanda crayon drawing.
As @williamglenn correctly notes, you haven't got a clue what you're talking about and now you're just flailing. Embarrassing
I grew up in a town which had ethnic ghettoisation as policy. Did you? I’ve advocated taking down these kinds of policies to integrate for decades - have you? I’ve seen what it’s like when different ethnic groups attack each other in my own town - have you?
Integration- as Denmark are doing and we do patchily - is the solution. Bulldozing tired unwanted housing stock for redevelopment is what the UK already does. Just not enough of it because social housing hasn’t been popular since the 80s.
You can sit there in France taking a pop and thats up to you. But it is embarrassing that you think I don’t have a clue about this issue and am “flailing” because I disagree with your “ship them all to Rwanda it’s the only solution” plan. Which is no solution.
It isn’t Camden that gets town apart by this. It’s Rochdale. Where I grew up. Rotherham. Where I lived. Sunderland. Where I lived. Oldham - where I went to college and went through a spell of different ethnic groups coming out of their council policy ghettoes attacking each other back in c1994. Been there, done that. Racists attacking people in the town centre? Been there.
You don’t know shit about this in practical terms.
WTF are you talking about? I have witnessed plentiful riots in London, from the riots of the 80s, the poll tax riots, to Tottenham and the plasma riots, to the BLM riots of 2020 - the latter at extremely scary close quarters, given that they were seeking out whites to beat the shit out of
My point is that you piously say you agree with Danish proposals but what they actually mean is dispersing settled communities if they are perceived to be ghettoes -too much crime, too much inactivity, too much alienation. That's pretty tough, but it does seem to work, and it is highly popular with Danish voters. But very controversial with politicians outside Denmark who think it is cruel
If you agree with the fuill on Danish ghetto policy, then we don't have an argument
The US media, and in particular Fox, have been talking the US economy down throughout Biden's period in office and it has clearly distorted perceptions of how the economy is doing. The estimate for GDP growth in Q2 of 2024 is 2.8% on an annualised basis, really not bad at all. Real wages are growing strongly after a fairly prolonged period where they were not (like here), job growth was exceptionally strong until last Friday (hence the panic on the markets) and the stock market was at a record high.
In short, Biden has a fairly excellent record, certainly better than Trump's whose major tax cut was very heavily weighted towards the much better off. The CHIPs and Science Act may well have skirted the edges of what is permissible in terms of state support but it has undoubtedly encouraged US based production. The additional, and way overdue, expenditure on infrastructure has been significant and helped to drive US growth to the top of the G7.
Of course, peoples' perceptions matter when it comes to their choice of who to vote for and a significant proportion of America are being fed alternative facts. Like us, the US is borrowing far too much and has a serious trade deficit (the 2 are, of course, linked in both cases because consumption is being driven by the excess borrowing). Not everything is great. The perception that it would be better under Trump really needs to be challenged.
People will believe what they want to believe.
Like you do that rejoining the single market and free movement is a solution to mass migration and integration challenges.
But that's just what you want to believe I said. Thank-you for proving my point so perfectly!
You literally said it upthread.
Either you're trolling, or you're just not very bright.
I literally said this:
"What Denmark cannot do, though, is control immigration. Just certain kinds."
Again, thank-you for proving my point so exquisitely.
They have explicit policies aimed at limiting the scale of "non-Western" communities. Are you saying you would be happy with that as long as Europeans could move freely?
We already have significant non-Western communities. Given that our economy is predicated on immigration, it always seemed silly to me to substitute immigration from countries that are similar to the UK for immigration from countries that are very different - especially as we enjoyed reciprocal benefits. But we are where we are.
The EU was always going to decline as a source of immigration, Brexit or no Brexit. The period between 2004 and 2016 was anomalous, not the norm.
You are also talking as if you are unaware of the fact that non-EU immigration massively outstripped EU immigration even during that period.
We always had control over non-EU immigration.
It's so tedious to keep relitigating the EU referendum. You want to make Brexit the source of all our woes but it just isn't true.
Most of those who voted for it wanted to make it the solution for all our woes - and most recognise now that it wasn't. Immigration is now a similar scapegoat.
Had the last decade of government actually delivered something along the lines of "levelling up", rather than chasing shadows, we'd be in a much better place.
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Well, yes, and I am sure it won't happen (they don't have the numbers) but the proposals are all over social media
And one day they MAY have the numbers, if the polarisation continues (and I have yet to see any policies designed to stop it)
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
On the available evidence, cleverer and less repulsive seems a stretch.
Making any man who pays a prostitute for sex sign the Sex Offenders Register.
If the man does not pay, then surely it is rape. Have the Danes thought this through?
What if he technically just buys her dinner, or buys her a handbag? I've heard this is just one more way these devious male perverts get their paid sex
Dinner in exchange for sex is just Tinder isn’t it? Should we have every man on there be forced to sign a register?
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
A lot of it's just following the exchange rate. Big Japanese companies are worth about the same in real terms whether JPY is high or low, or a bit more if it's low because their production is cheaper.
JPY has gone back to where it was 1 year ago, and the stock market has gone back to where it was one year ago. This wouldn't be particularly remarkable except that JPY went down (and the stock market up) over the course of an entire year, then the reverse happened over the course of 2 weeks, and the biggest part of that was over 2 days.
I didn't get a specific answer from @leon about what the government should do other than "Denmark".
I think there a few great initiatives we could lift from the Danes. Taking our international quota of refugees. Allowing refugees to work. Creating asylum centres to house and feed refugees so that they are safe and protected from violent mobs. A scheme to fund refuge outside Europe *if and when their claim is refused having first been housed in and assessed by Denmark*
Good ideas worthy of discussion. Though I suspect the "Denmark" reference meant "send them to Rwanda" which is not what Denmark does.
There are challenges to "Denmark". Building refuge centres is something that gets attacked by NIMBY MPs and then by violent mobs. Allowing refugees to work is a great idea - so many skilled and talented people come as refugees. Won't be popular with the "Dey Terk Er Jerbs" mentality. And processing claims here? Radical.
A lot of the resentment is around hotels*. Completely unnecessary if we allow them to work and process their claims swiftly, both of which are fully in our control, and would save us money too.
* Of course a life stuck within a hotel with little money, restricted movement and no opportunity for legal work is not actually pleasant at all, but it does create resentment.
As I and others noted yesterday, the asylum-processing rolling disaster, perpetrated by the last government, is largely separate from the actual levels of immigration. And as you note, is a problem which might much more easily be resolved, given the resources.
One of the sensible things I saw proposed by Labour was to give the 90,000 an amnesty and approval to clear the backlog and then start from there.
Not desirable but a pragmatic solution to the problem to get a fresh starting point.
Making any man who pays a prostitute for sex sign the Sex Offenders Register.
If the man does not pay, then surely it is rape. Have the Danes thought this through?
What if he technically just buys her dinner, or buys her a handbag? I've heard this is just one more way these devious male perverts get their paid sex
Dinner in exchange for sex is just Tinder isn’t it? Should we have every man on there be forced to sign a register?
Nowadays you go 50:50 on dinner, take it turns for coffee.
My first dates would always include a steep incline to sort the walkers from the rest.
‘Zero asylum seekers’: Denmark forces refugees to return to Syria
An article which is 2 years old. And says nothing about Danish policy other than they have the right to refuse asylum claims. Which is exactly what I posted above.
An article more than 4 years old. Did you read past the headline? They are bulldozing ghettoes to rebuild and encourage integration. We do the exact same thing here when money is available- bulldoze tatty and deprived neighbourhoods and build new houses. Where I used to live in Stockton was exactly that. The new build homes being smashed over the weekend another example.
As I asked William, what is the point you are making? You said “Denmark”. This is Denmark. Do you support their policies of letting asylum seekers work and investing to integrate them into society?
Or was “Denmark” code for “Rwanda”. Which isn’t something they do. As you have had pointed out endlessly when you were the last person left supporting the Tory Rwanda crayon drawing.
As @williamglenn correctly notes, you haven't got a clue what you're talking about and now you're just flailing. Embarrassing
I grew up in a town which had ethnic ghettoisation as policy. Did you? I’ve advocated taking down these kinds of policies to integrate for decades - have you? I’ve seen what it’s like when different ethnic groups attack each other in my own town - have you?
Integration- as Denmark are doing and we do patchily - is the solution. Bulldozing tired unwanted housing stock for redevelopment is what the UK already does. Just not enough of it because social housing hasn’t been popular since the 80s.
You can sit there in France taking a pop and thats up to you. But it is embarrassing that you think I don’t have a clue about this issue and am “flailing” because I disagree with your “ship them all to Rwanda it’s the only solution” plan. Which is no solution.
It isn’t Camden that gets town apart by this. It’s Rochdale. Where I grew up. Rotherham. Where I lived. Sunderland. Where I lived. Oldham - where I went to college and went through a spell of different ethnic groups coming out of their council policy ghettoes attacking each other back in c1994. Been there, done that. Racists attacking people in the town centre? Been there.
You don’t know shit about this in practical terms.
I lived in Rochdale in the early 60's, and saw the development of areas for ethnic minorities. As far as I could see, it wasn't that there was a 'policy' of ghettoisation; it was a question of the availability of cheap housing, and the perhaps understandable desire of people to live close to their brothers, brothers-in-law and so on. I'm not sure whether there's a Gurkha 'area' in Colchester, but there are quite a few there. Don't think there's ever been any trouble, but perhaps no-one wants to 'mix it' with Gurkhas!
Paul Whitwick, surely? I'll watch that later thanks; his videos are usually good.
Incidentally, yesterday I was talking to a chap (in his late thirties) who lives in a newbuild flat. He wants to have a bike, but there is nowhere to store it aside from in his flat, and he lives on the second floor. Residents have been keeping their bikes in a communal area outside, but the owners have told them that they cannot, and the bikes will have to be removed by the end of next month.
It's fine talking about the need for active travel, but it's pointless if people cannot actually have bikes.
Cycle Parking.
Where is it?
If urban, there may be a list for people who want cycle hangars held by the Council.
If it is newbuild flat, there should be a requirement for cycle storage in the Planning Permission, perhaps as a Planning Condition. If that or similar exists, they can all ask the Council to enforce it as long as it is within X years.
My plan B would be a folder or e-folder.
Or if he has a parking space, he could SORN a van he puts there, and store his cycle in it. That's one tactic that is sometimes mentioned in connection with front curtilege parking spaces being Permitted Development, whilst a cycle locker needs Planning Permission.
Bikes increasingly being ebikes may be a problem as they run slap bang into the new fire safety regulations for flats after Grenfell. SORNing a van seems overkill, and a build it and they will come attitude to lockable cycle shelters has led to one near here that in the past two years, I've never seen house more than one bike. I can't guarantee it is not always the same one whose owner has died.
All the private rental agreements I have signed prohibit bikes inside a property, so I don't see how that would change with e-bikes (and would be similarly unenforced). At least the new builds round here tend to have decent dedicated storage and local councillors kick up a fuss if they don't include that in the planning.
For existing tenements, the storage put in by my council are massively over-subscribed, and expensive enough for Matt's idea of parking a van and selling the space inside to actually make sense!
There is *not* (unless I missed it) a clause excluding cycles or e-cycles from a rental property in the standard tenancy agreement issued by the NRLA, which is the largest UK landlord organisation. TBH I have never seen such a term in an agreement, including in the 6 different places I rented in London.
In an HMO there may be things around common areas used by all the tenants, and clauses for the private rented space would be tighter due to tighter fire regs. It is the sort of thing Councils would put in a licensing term for large (<6 T) or small HMOs, or both.
For blocks of flats, there would also be regs around Common Parts due to fire requirements and required clear emergency exit routes.
A sensible landlord will provide lockers with charging sockets included, so T never needs to take an e-bikes inside, just as a sensible landlord provides enough wall sockets so that the issue of trailing leads never arises. It is ALWAYS better to work with the grain of tenant behaviour.
I would expect the new Fire Regs to be one of the things that drives LLs to provide safe e-cycle storage.
The US media, and in particular Fox, have been talking the US economy down throughout Biden's period in office and it has clearly distorted perceptions of how the economy is doing. The estimate for GDP growth in Q2 of 2024 is 2.8% on an annualised basis, really not bad at all. Real wages are growing strongly after a fairly prolonged period where they were not (like here), job growth was exceptionally strong until last Friday (hence the panic on the markets) and the stock market was at a record high.
In short, Biden has a fairly excellent record, certainly better than Trump's whose major tax cut was very heavily weighted towards the much better off. The CHIPs and Science Act may well have skirted the edges of what is permissible in terms of state support but it has undoubtedly encouraged US based production. The additional, and way overdue, expenditure on infrastructure has been significant and helped to drive US growth to the top of the G7.
Of course, peoples' perceptions matter when it comes to their choice of who to vote for and a significant proportion of America are being fed alternative facts. Like us, the US is borrowing far too much and has a serious trade deficit (the 2 are, of course, linked in both cases because consumption is being driven by the excess borrowing). Not everything is great. The perception that it would be better under Trump really needs to be challenged.
People will believe what they want to believe.
Like you do that rejoining the single market and free movement is a solution to mass migration and integration challenges.
But that's just what you want to believe I said. Thank-you for proving my point so perfectly!
You literally said it upthread.
Either you're trolling, or you're just not very bright.
I literally said this:
"What Denmark cannot do, though, is control immigration. Just certain kinds."
Again, thank-you for proving my point so exquisitely.
They have explicit policies aimed at limiting the scale of "non-Western" communities. Are you saying you would be happy with that as long as Europeans could move freely?
We already have significant non-Western communities. Given that our economy is predicated on immigration, it always seemed silly to me to substitute immigration from countries that are similar to the UK for immigration from countries that are very different - especially as we enjoyed reciprocal benefits. But we are where we are.
The EU was always going to decline as a source of immigration, Brexit or no Brexit. The period between 2004 and 2016 was anomalous, not the norm.
You are also talking as if you are unaware of the fact that non-EU immigration massively outstripped EU immigration even during that period.
We always had control over non-EU immigration.
It's so tedious to keep relitigating the EU referendum. You want to make Brexit the source of all our woes but it just isn't true.
Most of those who voted for it wanted to make it the solution for all our woes - and most recognise now that it wasn't. Immigration is now a similar scapegoat.
Had the last decade of government actually delivered something along the lines of "levelling up", rather than chasing shadows, we'd be in a much better place.
Yes ; it's very striking that many of these post-industriaj towns are some of the places that Farage visited during the referendum campaign.
In London, with much higher actual experience of recent immigration, but also much better economic prospects abd infrastructure, there's been virtually no trouble so far.
I didn't get a specific answer from @leon about what the government should do other than "Denmark".
I think there a few great initiatives we could lift from the Danes. Taking our international quota of refugees. Allowing refugees to work. Creating asylum centres to house and feed refugees so that they are safe and protected from violent mobs. A scheme to fund refuge outside Europe *if and when their claim is refused having first been housed in and assessed by Denmark*
Good ideas worthy of discussion. Though I suspect the "Denmark" reference meant "send them to Rwanda" which is not what Denmark does.
There are challenges to "Denmark". Building refuge centres is something that gets attacked by NIMBY MPs and then by violent mobs. Allowing refugees to work is a great idea - so many skilled and talented people come as refugees. Won't be popular with the "Dey Terk Er Jerbs" mentality. And processing claims here? Radical.
A lot of the resentment is around hotels*. Completely unnecessary if we allow them to work and process their claims swiftly, both of which are fully in our control, and would save us money too.
* Of course a life stuck within a hotel with little money, restricted movement and no opportunity for legal work is not actually pleasant at all, but it does create resentment.
As I and others noted yesterday, the asylum-processing rolling disaster, perpetrated by the last government, is largely separate from the actual levels of immigration. And as you note, is a problem which might much more easily be resolved, given the resources.
One of the sensible things I saw proposed by Labour was to give the 90,000 an amnesty and approval to clear the backlog and then start from there.
Not desirable but a pragmatic solution to the problem to get a fresh starting point.
Presumably this is dead in the water now.
Doesn't really solve any problems as they need housing and accommodation and support one way or another.
Had the last decade of government actually delivered something along the lines of "levelling up", rather than chasing shadows, we'd be in a much better place.
BoZo knew Brexit was a bad idea, but he won an election telling people it was great
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
This rioting is being very heavily reported in the European press. It is making the UK look pretty disgusting. We're heading back to the days when we were the football hooligans no one wanted visiting their country.
You could have made this aperçu regarding British politics on every day since 23/06/16 and been basically correct.
No, the Evermore Intense Ridiculousness began with Sindyref in 2014. The world has never been the same since. Perhaps that was when the new scriptwriters took over The Simulation
Just to being some context to the "C2" debate, in 2019, according to YouGov , the C2 social group voted 49% Conservative, 31% Labour, 9% LD.
In 2024, the same group split 32% Labour, 24% Conservative, 20% Reform and 11% LD.
That's a 13% swing from Conservative to Labour.
IPSOS-MORI had 31% Labour, 25% Conservative and 25% Reform this time compared to 47% Conservative, 32% Labour in 2019 so a smaller swing (10.5%).
The C2 group was famously the group which enabled the Thatcher victory in 1979 and mostly stayed loyal to 1997 when fragmenting to Labour, the Referendum Party or our old friend Abe Stention.
Using YouGov numbers:
The AB group voted 42% Conservative, 32% Labour and 16% LD in 2019 - this time it was 27% Conservative, 36% Labour, 15% LD and 10% Reform so a smaller swing (just 9.5% Con-Lab).
The C1s voted 43-34-12 in 2019, on July 4th they voted 23-36-13 so a swing of 11% from Conservative to Labour.
The DEs voted 47% Conservative, 34% Labour (according to YouGov) in 2019 (IPSOS rather different) but this time 34% Labour, 23% Conservative with 19% Reform so a 12% swing.
MY analysis so far tells a fairly consistent story across social groups - a swing of between 9 and 13% based on the Labour vote staying still or rising slightly but the Conservative vote falling heavily and consistently by 15-25 points across the board. Reform filling the gap and while a simplistic analysis might suggest a vote transfer from Conservative to Reform I suspect there was a lot more churn behind the figures with Reform picking up votes from Labour and abe stentions all playing their part.
This rioting is being very heavily reported in the European press. It is making the UK look pretty disgusting. We're heading back to the days when we were the football hooligans no one wanted visiting their country.
You'd think they'd focus on this given that we're irrelevant now:
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
And that's the lesson for us. I used to worry about our seemingly endless appetite for consumer spending at the expense of savings. After a decade of increased savings rates I'd love to see a good old fashioned bit of consumer spending back. It helps to support government finances through VAT receipts, it encourages the right sort of inflation: wage and service sector inflation which returns much of the growth into the pockets of the consumer, and it engenders confidence in the economy.
On the other hand when people save, the government has to spend. That's why Japan's public debt is the most eye wateringly huge in the Western world.
What we need is some sort of liquidity event, like the building society demutualisations back in the 90s. Maybe the government could carry through on my geostrategic proposal to sell the Isle of Portland to Spain, and distribute the proceeds to the population.
Might the Labour creation of large tracts of new building land count ?
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
And that's the lesson for us. I used to worry about our seemingly endless appetite for consumer spending at the expense of savings. After a decade of increased savings rates I'd love to see a good old fashioned bit of consumer spending back. It helps to support government finances through VAT receipts, it encourages the right sort of inflation: wage and service sector inflation which returns much of the growth into the pockets of the consumer, and it engenders confidence in the economy.
On the other hand when people save, the government has to spend. That's why Japan's public debt is the most eye wateringly huge in the Western world.
What we need is some sort of liquidity event, like the building society demutualisations back in the 90s. Maybe the government could carry through on my geostrategic proposal to sell the Isle of Portland to Spain, and distribute the proceeds to the population.
Might the Labour creation of large tracts of new building land count ?
A government-driven construction boom is definitely one of the fastest ways to economic growth. I think that, as much as social and affordability concerns, is partly behind the new government's enthusiasm. The trouble is it will still take time, because this is Britain and the projects are not shovel-ready.
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
Pretty credible theories that much of US tech boom was being funded by Japan carry trade. Yen was crashing, bank of Japan tried intervening directly in currency markets but has now raised rates twice to arrest currency collapse and the resultant inflation. On cue, bank stocks and now the whole Japanese equity market collapsing.
I have been reading a fair bit about this over the last week. People starting to predict this would happen due to what was happening between the Yen and USD. Cheap Japanese Money used to fund activities outside Japan. Fine while interest rates are low.
I am not knowledgeable enough on this to offer an opinion, I find it fascinating reading and learning about it.
Probably just as well the Fed didn't cut rates last week. It might make the immediate unwinding of the trade a little more manageable.
Repatriation of capital back into Japan is likely to be the process of several years, though.
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
And that's the lesson for us. I used to worry about our seemingly endless appetite for consumer spending at the expense of savings. After a decade of increased savings rates I'd love to see a good old fashioned bit of consumer spending back. It helps to support government finances through VAT receipts, it encourages the right sort of inflation: wage and service sector inflation which returns much of the growth into the pockets of the consumer, and it engenders confidence in the economy.
On the other hand when people save, the government has to spend. That's why Japan's public debt is the most eye wateringly huge in the Western world.
What we need is some sort of liquidity event, like the building society demutualisations back in the 90s. Maybe the government could carry through on my geostrategic proposal to sell the Isle of Portland to Spain, and distribute the proceeds to the population.
Might the Labour creation of large tracts of new building land count ?
A government-driven construction boom is definitely one of the fastest ways to economic growth. I think that, as much as social and affordability concerns, is partly behind the new government's enthusiasm. The trouble is it will still take time, because this is Britain and the projects are not shovel-ready.
Build a load of social housing, not for sale. Rent to people at a price they can afford. Money into the economy as they are built, and money into the economy as people pay less for rent and have more cash to spend on stuff.
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
I don't want to spend another endless day discussing this bleak subject. Also, I have a TGV to catch
But if you don't believe there were "any tensions building up" before Southport then you live in some bizarre la-la-land - where, in that same week, thwere wasn't a riot in Leeds and there wasn't a riot in Whitechapel and there wasn't the soldier stabbed in Gillingham and there wasn't a vile attempt to smear cops at Manchester airport and there wasn't a machete frenzy in Southend - and there's no point in debating anyway because you're a damn fool. So that's all good
I didn't get a specific answer from @leon about what the government should do other than "Denmark".
I think there a few great initiatives we could lift from the Danes. Taking our international quota of refugees. Allowing refugees to work. Creating asylum centres to house and feed refugees so that they are safe and protected from violent mobs. A scheme to fund refuge outside Europe *if and when their claim is refused having first been housed in and assessed by Denmark*
Good ideas worthy of discussion. Though I suspect the "Denmark" reference meant "send them to Rwanda" which is not what Denmark does.
There are challenges to "Denmark". Building refuge centres is something that gets attacked by NIMBY MPs and then by violent mobs. Allowing refugees to work is a great idea - so many skilled and talented people come as refugees. Won't be popular with the "Dey Terk Er Jerbs" mentality. And processing claims here? Radical.
A lot of the resentment is around hotels*. Completely unnecessary if we allow them to work and process their claims swiftly, both of which are fully in our control, and would save us money too.
* Of course a life stuck within a hotel with little money, restricted movement and no opportunity for legal work is not actually pleasant at all, but it does create resentment.
As I and others noted yesterday, the asylum-processing rolling disaster, perpetrated by the last government, is largely separate from the actual levels of immigration. And as you note, is a problem which might much more easily be resolved, given the resources.
One of the sensible things I saw proposed by Labour was to give the 90,000 an amnesty and approval to clear the backlog and then start from there.
Not desirable but a pragmatic solution to the problem to get a fresh starting point.
Presumably this is dead in the water now.
Doesn't really solve any problems as they need housing and accommodation and support one way or another.
It potentially solves the problem of enforcing, and paying for their economic inactivity over a number of years.
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
And that's the lesson for us. I used to worry about our seemingly endless appetite for consumer spending at the expense of savings. After a decade of increased savings rates I'd love to see a good old fashioned bit of consumer spending back. It helps to support government finances through VAT receipts, it encourages the right sort of inflation: wage and service sector inflation which returns much of the growth into the pockets of the consumer, and it engenders confidence in the economy.
On the other hand when people save, the government has to spend. That's why Japan's public debt is the most eye wateringly huge in the Western world.
What we need is some sort of liquidity event, like the building society demutualisations back in the 90s. Maybe the government could carry through on my geostrategic proposal to sell the Isle of Portland to Spain, and distribute the proceeds to the population.
Might the Labour creation of large tracts of new building land count ?
A government-driven construction boom is definitely one of the fastest ways to economic growth. I think that, as much as social and affordability concerns, is partly behind the new government's enthusiasm. The trouble is it will still take time, because this is Britain and the projects are not shovel-ready.
Build a load of social housing, not for sale. Rent to people at a price they can afford. Money into the economy as they are built, and money into the economy as people pay less for rent and have more cash to spend on stuff.
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
Labour and Conservative governments accelerated mass migration for decades - against the wishes of the British public. They forced mass migration on us and said it was racist to object. The society this created was always going to be a powder-keg. Anything could have set it off. The murder of three young girls in Southport seems to have done it. But it could have been anything. Labour and the Conservatives were warned and didn’t just ignore the warnings. They ploughed onwards.
This rioting is being very heavily reported in the European press. It is making the UK look pretty disgusting. We're heading back to the days when we were the football hooligans no one wanted visiting their country.
This rioting is being very heavily reported in the European press. It is making the UK look pretty disgusting. We're heading back to the days when we were the football hooligans no one wanted visiting their country.
You'd think they'd focus on this given that we're irrelevant now:
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
And that's the lesson for us. I used to worry about our seemingly endless appetite for consumer spending at the expense of savings. After a decade of increased savings rates I'd love to see a good old fashioned bit of consumer spending back. It helps to support government finances through VAT receipts, it encourages the right sort of inflation: wage and service sector inflation which returns much of the growth into the pockets of the consumer, and it engenders confidence in the economy.
On the other hand when people save, the government has to spend. That's why Japan's public debt is the most eye wateringly huge in the Western world.
What we need is some sort of liquidity event, like the building society demutualisations back in the 90s. Maybe the government could carry through on my geostrategic proposal to sell the Isle of Portland to Spain, and distribute the proceeds to the population.
Might the Labour creation of large tracts of new building land count ?
A government-driven construction boom is definitely one of the fastest ways to economic growth. I think that, as much as social and affordability concerns, is partly behind the new government's enthusiasm. The trouble is it will still take time, because this is Britain and the projects are not shovel-ready.
Build a load of social housing, not for sale. Rent to people at a price they can afford. Money into the economy as they are built, and money into the economy as people pay less for rent and have more cash to spend on stuff.
That is one thing that is needed, I think - a type of social housing tenure which is immune to sale.
But it needs to be pepper-potted into general developments, not done as ghettoes.
Its the Economy Stupid is also the key driver as to why people are rioting. The migrants are the scapegoats. Why do people want the migrants gone? Because they are poor and think the migrants are to blame.
I am open to suggestions from our more aggressive right wing commentators as to the specific actions that Cooper and the government should action this morning to stop this.
Mate, I've said it again and I'll say it 100 times, I personally have no problem with the SM or FoM. That is not why I voted Leave
But you are backing a solution that almost all those who are rioting - and the far-right politicians and influencers egging them on - would oppose.
That said, I am with you on Denmark - a high tax, redistributive society with a strong welfare state inside the single market that also, coincidentally or not, is currently home to Europe's most valuable company. What Denmark cannot do, though, is control immigration. Just certain kinds.
But they are ruthless on asylum and they destroy ethnic ghettoes. And they seem to have some of the happiest people on earth and suffer much less ethnic friction than very similar Sweden. We can do a swap, you accept their ghetto and asylum policies and I will accept their tax and welfare policies
So if you destroy the 'ethnic ghettoes' of this country where do their inhabitants move to ?
I'm not sure Yorkshire Dales villages want tens of thousands of Muslims to be relocated there.
At the present rates of immigration they are coming anyway
And you want even more by supporting FoM with the EU.
Do you know where the people in the 'ethnic ghetto' in Harehills originated ?
I seem to remember reading that is was 'white people' who burned the bus in Harehills.
Iustin Dobre, 37, of Clifton Mount, Harehills, was on Saturday charged with arson and violent disorder. The other five people arrested on suspicion of violent disorder remain in police custody.
Iustin Dobre, not quite a name to go with Len, Fred, Brian, Geoff and Ray.
Roma, and Romanians, are White people too. In an old man yelling at cloud rant, I might deplore the general trend to treat foreigners in general as non-White.
Eh? Dividing foreigners into White and Non-White seems way worse...
This rioting is being very heavily reported in the European press. It is making the UK look pretty disgusting. We're heading back to the days when we were the football hooligans no one wanted visiting their country.
You'd think they'd focus on this given that we're irrelevant now:
Bangladesh clashes: 90 killed in anti-government protests
It is indeed being reported higher in the German news than British riots, which aren't getting much attention, at least in Germany, whatever Roger says.
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
And that's the lesson for us. I used to worry about our seemingly endless appetite for consumer spending at the expense of savings. After a decade of increased savings rates I'd love to see a good old fashioned bit of consumer spending back. It helps to support government finances through VAT receipts, it encourages the right sort of inflation: wage and service sector inflation which returns much of the growth into the pockets of the consumer, and it engenders confidence in the economy.
On the other hand when people save, the government has to spend. That's why Japan's public debt is the most eye wateringly huge in the Western world.
What we need is some sort of liquidity event, like the building society demutualisations back in the 90s. Maybe the government could carry through on my geostrategic proposal to sell the Isle of Portland to Spain, and distribute the proceeds to the population.
Might the Labour creation of large tracts of new building land count ?
A government-driven construction boom is definitely one of the fastest ways to economic growth. I think that, as much as social and affordability concerns, is partly behind the new government's enthusiasm. The trouble is it will still take time, because this is Britain and the projects are not shovel-ready.
Build a load of social housing, not for sale. Rent to people at a price they can afford. Money into the economy as they are built, and money into the economy as people pay less for rent and have more cash to spend on stuff.
Yep. There are no silver bullets but that's a silver bullet.
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
Labour and Conservative governments accelerated mass migration for decades - against the wishes of the British public. They forced mass migration on us and said it was racist to object. The society this created was always going to be a powder-keg. Anything could have set it off. The murder of three young girls in Southport seems to have done it. But it could have been anything. Labour and the Conservatives were warned and didn’t just ignore the warnings. They ploughed onwards.
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
And that's the lesson for us. I used to worry about our seemingly endless appetite for consumer spending at the expense of savings. After a decade of increased savings rates I'd love to see a good old fashioned bit of consumer spending back. It helps to support government finances through VAT receipts, it encourages the right sort of inflation: wage and service sector inflation which returns much of the growth into the pockets of the consumer, and it engenders confidence in the economy.
On the other hand when people save, the government has to spend. That's why Japan's public debt is the most eye wateringly huge in the Western world.
What we need is some sort of liquidity event, like the building society demutualisations back in the 90s. Maybe the government could carry through on my geostrategic proposal to sell the Isle of Portland to Spain, and distribute the proceeds to the population.
Might the Labour creation of large tracts of new building land count ?
A government-driven construction boom is definitely one of the fastest ways to economic growth. I think that, as much as social and affordability concerns, is partly behind the new government's enthusiasm. The trouble is it will still take time, because this is Britain and the projects are not shovel-ready.
See the article I posted on the last thread.
The public wants I-95-ness State capacity sounds like a nerdy concept, but people feel it, or the lack of it.
https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/the-public-wants-i-95-ness ,I>...what makes someone competitive against presumed nominee Donald Trump? Pollsters will have their answers, but I will dare to propose one element I suspect they will not discuss. I don't have a good noun for it, but I do have the perfect example of it. So for lack of a better term I'll call it I-95-ness.
Yes, I'm referring to the incident last year when a section of I-95 collapsed in Pennsylvania. Expectations about a timeline to fix it were pretty low given our national track record at building just about anything. But Governor Josh Shapiro used emergency powers to suspend a whole host of rules and regulations and get the highway reopened in under two weeks. He could have celebrated the victory by saying "I alone have fixed it." It would have been dismissive of the thousands of public servants and contractors who scrambled like mad to make it happen, but it would have been a great dig at Trump. ..
...An I-95 moment shouldn’t have to invoke emergency powers, but I would love to see more politicians recognize and name the crisis we are in, and act accordingly. I would love, but don’t remotely expect, for someone to say out loud that we are in a crisis of state capacity, and that that crisis underpins all the others..
...After the fact, no one seems to debate much whether Shapiro was correct to invoke emergency powers to fix the freeway, but I would bet a whole lot of money that there were a lot of voices of grave concern from a lot of different stakeholders about that choice as it was being made. I can only begin to guess at the categories of rules that were swept away – funding, procurement and contracting, environmental review, workforce protections and diversity, oversight – and the number of processes and procedures that disappeared with those rules would have been staggering. The point is that each of these categories has its own fiercely protective constituency. The environmental ones, for example, seem obvious, but if you’ve ever worked in a bureaucracy you know the burning passion with which procurement officers will defend processes that seem like meaningless paperwork to the outsider.
I have come to respect that passion, because I see how deeply those who have it believe that they are serving the public. That’s the job they were hired to do, and they will do it better and more thoroughly and diligently than anyone else. It’s not their job to pull back and weigh the value of these processes against the costs of delays and inaction and to restructure the bureaucracy accordingly. That’s the job of leadership. And too few of our leaders are doing that job...
Its the Economy Stupid is also the key driver as to why people are rioting. The migrants are the scapegoats. Why do people want the migrants gone? Because they are poor and think the migrants are to blame.
I am open to suggestions from our more aggressive right wing commentators as to the specific actions that Cooper and the government should action this morning to stop this.
Mate, I've said it again and I'll say it 100 times, I personally have no problem with the SM or FoM. That is not why I voted Leave
But you are backing a solution that almost all those who are rioting - and the far-right politicians and influencers egging them on - would oppose.
That said, I am with you on Denmark - a high tax, redistributive society with a strong welfare state inside the single market that also, coincidentally or not, is currently home to Europe's most valuable company. What Denmark cannot do, though, is control immigration. Just certain kinds.
But they are ruthless on asylum and they destroy ethnic ghettoes. And they seem to have some of the happiest people on earth and suffer much less ethnic friction than very similar Sweden. We can do a swap, you accept their ghetto and asylum policies and I will accept their tax and welfare policies
So if you destroy the 'ethnic ghettoes' of this country where do their inhabitants move to ?
I'm not sure Yorkshire Dales villages want tens of thousands of Muslims to be relocated there.
At the present rates of immigration they are coming anyway
And you want even more by supporting FoM with the EU.
Do you know where the people in the 'ethnic ghetto' in Harehills originated ?
I seem to remember reading that is was 'white people' who burned the bus in Harehills.
Iustin Dobre, 37, of Clifton Mount, Harehills, was on Saturday charged with arson and violent disorder. The other five people arrested on suspicion of violent disorder remain in police custody.
Iustin Dobre, not quite a name to go with Len, Fred, Brian, Geoff and Ray.
Roma, and Romanians, are White people too. In an old man yelling at cloud rant, I might deplore the general trend to treat foreigners in general as non-White.
Eh? Dividing foreigners into White and Non-White seems way worse...
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
I don't want to spend another endless day discussing this bleak subject. Also, I have a TGV to catch
But if you don't believe there were "any tensions building up" before Southport then you live in some bizarre la-la-land - where, in that same week, thwere wasn't a riot in Leeds and there wasn't a riot in Whitechapel and there wasn't the soldier stabbed in Gillingham and there wasn't a vile attempt to smear cops at Manchester airport and there wasn't a machete frenzy in Southend - and there's no point in debating anyway because you're a damn fool. So that's all good
Long, long years ago, when I was a teenager there were regular fights on Southend sea front in the summer. Causes included wealthy foreign students at the local Tech making a play for girls, American servicemen from Weatherfield base coming down with buses to offer girls somewhere different to dance (!), East London lads coming down 'to see how hard the locals were', local groups of mods and rockers facing off...... I must admit I don't recall machetes being used, though.
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
Pretty credible theories that much of US tech boom was being funded by Japan carry trade. Yen was crashing, bank of Japan tried intervening directly in currency markets but has now raised rates twice to arrest currency collapse and the resultant inflation. On cue, bank stocks and now the whole Japanese equity market collapsing.
I have been reading a fair bit about this over the last week. People starting to predict this would happen due to what was happening between the Yen and USD. Cheap Japanese Money used to fund activities outside Japan. Fine while interest rates are low.
I am not knowledgeable enough on this to offer an opinion, I find it fascinating reading and learning about it.
Probably just as well the Fed didn't cut rates last week. It might make the immediate unwinding of the trade a little more manageable.
Repatriation of capital back into Japan is likely to be the process of several years, though.
They are expected to cut rates this year though. From September. 50 bps is being talked up. I suspect that would cause some panic.
I would have surprised myself a year ago to suggest Patel as the best candidate for the Conservative Party leader. She is the only serious politician amongst the candidates for a party that has been deeply unserious for years.
No-one cares what I think of course.
Boris is said to back Priti, although the man has form for promising support to all and any. Priti has two main obstacles. She did not go to Oxbridge which offends the PPE snobs in the media, and Rwanda.
There is a third obstacle and that is that Priti is Priti and has disastrously poor ratings with the public.
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
Labour and Conservative governments accelerated mass migration for decades - against the wishes of the British public. They forced mass migration on us and said it was racist to object. The society this created was always going to be a powder-keg. Anything could have set it off. The murder of three young girls in Southport seems to have done it. But it could have been anything. Labour and the Conservatives were warned and didn’t just ignore the warnings. They ploughed onwards.
The usually stanfard-issue, boilerplate rhetoric, that is nowadays de rigeur on the British Right, for this issue. The fabled "British public" has in fact always been thoroughly mixed in its views on this issue, and certainly hasnt bern monolithic.on it.
And most relevantly, the largest recent rise in immigration from other parts of the world has been as a result of the self-defeating Rightwing and Conservative idiocy of Brexit.
I've not commented too much on the various disorders as there's no need to throw petrol onto a perfectly good hotel.
Listening to some limited vox pops of those on the "anti immigration" marches, apart from those just there for the violence, who turn up at every one of these events, I'm struck by a divergence in opinion.
The issue is part immigration (the numbers) but it's more about cultural assimilation or the perceived lack of it. More than one of those demonstrating spoke about "British Christian values". The line seemed to be there was less of a problem with people coming to the country but they had to leave their culture at Dover and fully embrace these "British Christian values" (whatever these may be and I'm sure there's a line somewhere in the Bible about loving your neighbour).
I remarked on here before about how it is possible to come here and live within your community and have almost no contact with the indigenous community (let alone other micro communities) in a way that it wasn't 50 or 60 years ago. The children speak English at school but the native language at home and to their friends and remember Stodge's Number One law of everything "people like people like themselves".
I don't share the bleak pessimism of those who throw round terms like "civil war" - societal/cultural division has to an extent always existed and problems between cultures didn't start on July 5th 2024. My two areas of hope are education and capitalism.
There is clearly a separate British identity out there that isn't English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish. It's the identity of the second and third generation migrants and they often resent the incomers who seem (and again this may be technological or there may be other factors at work) less willing to integrate.
On Trump, I see that Judge Chutkan is back on the RICO case, and moving fast.
The most interesting prospect is that we may get a mini-trial to assess the application of the "immunity" test from the SCOTUS to the evidence, which may involve the evidence being laid out in the public court for that evaluation this side of the Election.
Is there any suggestion that those who posted on line suggesting there was Moslem involvement in the Southport tragedy will have their collars felt? Especially those who named names?
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
I don't want to spend another endless day discussing this bleak subject. Also, I have a TGV to catch
But if you don't believe there were "any tensions building up" before Southport then you live in some bizarre la-la-land - where, in that same week, thwere wasn't a riot in Leeds and there wasn't a riot in Whitechapel and there wasn't the soldier stabbed in Gillingham and there wasn't a vile attempt to smear cops at Manchester airport and there wasn't a machete frenzy in Southend - and there's no point in debating anyway because you're a damn fool. So that's all good
Well I don't know about all of these, but what I do know about had nothing whatsoever to do with white tension with muslims or asylum seekers or the involvement of far right. I mean do you want to put every crime down to this. Are we now at the point where we are going to blame every bank robbery, speeding ticket and flasher on muslims and asylum seekers (or come to that, the far right)?
You see what you want to see. Like the other day with Biden going onto the plane. You ended up making statements of fact about what happened when he came off which were clearly not true about how they grabbed him and led him away. You see stuff and form an opinion (fair enough) but then added a few additional facts that simply were not there.
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey
Growth. Whether growth is a good measure of electoral success, and is based on the experience of the Afghan War. Yes really.
Battleground: whether the concept of a "battleground" state has meaning
Andy_JS vs John Curtice: how we measure success in polling
Corporatism: how this keeps cropping up
Christian Dominionism, Christian Nationalism and Christian Reconstructionism: how the US religious right have expanded in concept but declined in influence
The Expanded Cuts: expanded versions of previous articles, incorporating comments from below-the-line.
Solarpunk II: my first sequel, taking into account that the arguments in the comments section for the Solarpunk were so prolific they needed a new article
The RSS Conference is in a month's time so everything is on hold until after that.
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
I don't want to spend another endless day discussing this bleak subject. Also, I have a TGV to catch
But if you don't believe there were "any tensions building up" before Southport then you live in some bizarre la-la-land - where, in that same week, thwere wasn't a riot in Leeds and there wasn't a riot in Whitechapel and there wasn't the soldier stabbed in Gillingham and there wasn't a vile attempt to smear cops at Manchester airport and there wasn't a machete frenzy in Southend - and there's no point in debating anyway because you're a damn fool. So that's all good
Well I don't know about all of these, but what I do know about had nothing whatsoever to do with white tension with muslims or asylum seekers or the involvement of far right. I mean do you want to put every crime down to this. Are we now at the point where we are going to blame every bank robbery, speeding ticket and flasher on muslims and asylum seekers (or come to that, the far right)?
You see what you want to see. Like the other day with Biden going onto the plane. You ended up making statements of fact about what happened when he came off which were clearly not true about how they grabbed him and led him away. You see stuff and form an opinion (fair enough) but then added a few additional facts that simply were not there.
“Well I don’t know about all of these”
You should have stopped right there as it summarises your entire position on everything
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
I don't want to spend another endless day discussing this bleak subject. Also, I have a TGV to catch
But if you don't believe there were "any tensions building up" before Southport then you live in some bizarre la-la-land - where, in that same week, thwere wasn't a riot in Leeds and there wasn't a riot in Whitechapel and there wasn't the soldier stabbed in Gillingham and there wasn't a vile attempt to smear cops at Manchester airport and there wasn't a machete frenzy in Southend - and there's no point in debating anyway because you're a damn fool. So that's all good
Well I don't know about all of these, but what I do know about had nothing whatsoever to do with white tension with muslims or asylum seekers or the involvement of far right. I mean do you want to put every crime down to this. Are we now at the point where we are going to blame every bank robbery, speeding ticket and flasher on muslims and asylum seekers (or come to that, the far right)?
You see what you want to see. Like the other day with Biden going onto the plane. You ended up making statements of fact about what happened when he came off which were clearly not true about how they grabbed him and led him away. You see stuff and form an opinion (fair enough) but then added a few additional facts that simply were not there.
“Well I don’t know about all of these”
You should have stopped right there as it summarises your entire position on everything
I'm sorry to admit I don't know everything about everything, unlike maybe yourself. Terrible failing on my part for a PB poster I know.
I knew enough about some of them however to know you were talking bollocks which was all that was required.
Its the Economy Stupid is also the key driver as to why people are rioting. The migrants are the scapegoats. Why do people want the migrants gone? Because they are poor and think the migrants are to blame.
I am open to suggestions from our more aggressive right wing commentators as to the specific actions that Cooper and the government should action this morning to stop this.
Mate, I've said it again and I'll say it 100 times, I personally have no problem with the SM or FoM. That is not why I voted Leave
But you are backing a solution that almost all those who are rioting - and the far-right politicians and influencers egging them on - would oppose.
That said, I am with you on Denmark - a high tax, redistributive society with a strong welfare state inside the single market that also, coincidentally or not, is currently home to Europe's most valuable company. What Denmark cannot do, though, is control immigration. Just certain kinds.
But they are ruthless on asylum and they destroy ethnic ghettoes. And they seem to have some of the happiest people on earth and suffer much less ethnic friction than very similar Sweden. We can do a swap, you accept their ghetto and asylum policies and I will accept their tax and welfare policies
So if you destroy the 'ethnic ghettoes' of this country where do their inhabitants move to ?
I'm not sure Yorkshire Dales villages want tens of thousands of Muslims to be relocated there.
At the present rates of immigration they are coming anyway
And you want even more by supporting FoM with the EU.
Do you know where the people in the 'ethnic ghetto' in Harehills originated ?
I seem to remember reading that is was 'white people' who burned the bus in Harehills.
Iustin Dobre, 37, of Clifton Mount, Harehills, was on Saturday charged with arson and violent disorder. The other five people arrested on suspicion of violent disorder remain in police custody.
Iustin Dobre, not quite a name to go with Len, Fred, Brian, Geoff and Ray.
Roma, and Romanians, are White people too. In an old man yelling at cloud rant, I might deplore the general trend to treat foreigners in general as non-White.
Eh? Dividing foreigners into White and Non-White seems way worse...
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
Labour and Conservative governments accelerated mass migration for decades - against the wishes of the British public. They forced mass migration on us and said it was racist to object. The society this created was always going to be a powder-keg. Anything could have set it off. The murder of three young girls in Southport seems to have done it. But it could have been anything. Labour and the Conservatives were warned and didn’t just ignore the warnings. They ploughed onwards.
The usually stanfard-issue, boilerplate rhetoric, that is nowadays de rigeur on the British Right, for this issue. The fabled "British public" has in fact always been thoroughly mixed in its views on this issue, and certainly hasnt bern monolithic.on it.
And most relevantly, the largest recent rise in immigration from other parts of the world has been as a result of the self-defeating Rightwing and Conservative idiocy of Brexit.
I thought Murray's gripe was only with Islam and its threat to Western enlightenment values. Seems that he's now going beyond theology - it's just any ghastly foreigner that gets his gander up. It's quite astonishing how this episode has revealed the supposed intellectuals of the British Right to be little more than posh Bovver Boys.
I'm interested to know how all these "middle Americans" believe they will be better off under Mr Trump when aiui he has pledged to reverse the Biden reforms that have removed financial burdens from them - cost of medical treatment for one, but also other things.
An example of believing what they are told most loudly?
On the stock market, has that not increased significantly under Biden?
The Stock market has increased to a record high under Biden. Indeed, the fear is that this is a bubble caused by frankly insane optimism about the earning potential of AI. I am not suggesting for a moment that AI will not be economically significant but the multipliers for many of the tech firms are simply unsustainable.
It is not the Dotcom bubble, alot of the froth in this market was due to expectations of growth but these are companies that are already delivering earnings and earnings growth and in some cases paying a dividend. Many of the Dotcom companies had nothing really behind them.
They may have got ahead of themselves, as you say, on the expectation of future growth and the P/E of the S&P 500 has been at a historic high. Once they start to falter in growth then we will see what happens. This earnings season has been less than good so far. It is pointless dipping in and out on a short term basis.. I am in it for the long term. Over the long term the S&P 500 delivers.
Many of the new generation of tech companies are, like in the dotcom bubble, hugely leveraged and unprofitable. They were flush with hedge fund money which needs to see a return now that money isn’t free any more.
The S&P 500 is absolutely the gold standard for long term investment, I have half my saving fund it in, with the other half split between the FTSE 100 and various tech and emerging stock markets.
I think comparisons with the dot.com bubble are a little overstated frankly. There are a lot of fundamental structural differences. This doesn't mean there won't be a crash but if there is it will be for different reasons and manifest in a different way.
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
Labour and Conservative governments accelerated mass migration for decades - against the wishes of the British public. They forced mass migration on us and said it was racist to object. The society this created was always going to be a powder-keg. Anything could have set it off. The murder of three young girls in Southport seems to have done it. But it could have been anything. Labour and the Conservatives were warned and didn’t just ignore the warnings. They ploughed onwards.
The usually stanfard-issue, boilerplate rhetoric, that is nowadays de rigeur on the British Right, for this issue. The fabled "British public" has in fact always been thoroughly mixed in its views on this issue, and certainly hasnt bern monolithic.on it.
And most relevantly, the largest recent rise in immigration from other parts of the world has been as a result of the self-defeating Rightwing and Conservative idiocy of Brexit.
I thought Murray's gripe was only with Islam and its threat to Western enlightenment values. Seems that he's now going beyond theology - it's just any ghastly foreigner that gets his gander up. It's quite astonishing how this episode has revealed the supposed intellectuals of the British Right to be little more than posh Bovver Boys.
The two-tier Keir moniker / hashtag is really being pushed on twitter, how much is Russian bots and how much is organic, who knows.
Its why I said yesterday I think he made a small misstep by not addressing the counter "protesters" and saying let the police do their job, we are deploying extra resources, we can't have vigilante groups, if you do, you will also feel the full weight of the law.
They are not necessarily vigilante groups. You can form a human chain around a hotel and defend it then use the legal power of citizen's arrest to subdue an attacker. Provided you do not initiate violence and act in accordance with the law otherwise it perfect legal and ethical.
Why did Japanese stock market tumble so much over night? Is it weighted towards AI stocks?
Lots of companies in the supply chain. Plus Japan is very sensitive to a US downturn because domestic demand has been pretty poor for the last 30 years.
Pretty credible theories that much of US tech boom was being funded by Japan carry trade. Yen was crashing, bank of Japan tried intervening directly in currency markets but has now raised rates twice to arrest currency collapse and the resultant inflation. On cue, bank stocks and now the whole Japanese equity market collapsing.
I have been reading a fair bit about this over the last week. People starting to predict this would happen due to what was happening between the Yen and USD. Cheap Japanese Money used to fund activities outside Japan. Fine while interest rates are low.
I am not knowledgeable enough on this to offer an opinion, I find it fascinating reading and learning about it.
Probably just as well the Fed didn't cut rates last week. It might make the immediate unwinding of the trade a little more manageable.
Repatriation of capital back into Japan is likely to be the process of several years, though.
They are expected to cut rates this year though. From September. 50 bps is being talked up. I suspect that would cause some panic.
I think we've already done the immediate panic. The real question is whether that's it, or if it feeds on itself.
Ruth Davidson, now in the House of Lords, said “watch this space” when asked if she might make a David Cameron-style comeback to mainstream politics.
Davidson quit as leader of the Scottish Conservatives in 2019.
“I promised my partner I wouldn’t take another big job until my son started school and he’s just finished primary one, so we’ll see. Watch this space,” she said.
“I’m not saying I necessarily think my next big job is going to be in politics. It doesn’t have to be. But I’m 45, I’m not nearing retirement.”
Describing herself as “a cringing Presbyterian”, she admitted feeling “uncomfortable” in the Lords and said she would vote herself out given the chance.
“It is an absolute privilege to sit in the Lords and I never forget that. It’s amazing to see, and if you are in a debate on Ukraine or an issue like that, there’s a former Sea Lord there, a former head of the Army, and also people who were big parts of my childhood, such as Michael Heseltine.
“But I am such a cringing Presbyterian with an utter sense of not being worthy because there are so many connotations with rank and title and stuff like that.
“Growing up and going to school in Buckhaven in Fife and with parents from two Glasgow council estates, there’s a feeling that I shouldn’t be there and I feel uncomfortable.”
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
I don't want to spend another endless day discussing this bleak subject. Also, I have a TGV to catch
But if you don't believe there were "any tensions building up" before Southport then you live in some bizarre la-la-land - where, in that same week, thwere wasn't a riot in Leeds and there wasn't a riot in Whitechapel and there wasn't the soldier stabbed in Gillingham and there wasn't a vile attempt to smear cops at Manchester airport and there wasn't a machete frenzy in Southend - and there's no point in debating anyway because you're a damn fool. So that's all good
Well I don't know about all of these, but what I do know about had nothing whatsoever to do with white tension with muslims or asylum seekers or the involvement of far right. I mean do you want to put every crime down to this. Are we now at the point where we are going to blame every bank robbery, speeding ticket and flasher on muslims and asylum seekers (or come to that, the far right)?
You see what you want to see. Like the other day with Biden going onto the plane. You ended up making statements of fact about what happened when he came off which were clearly not true about how they grabbed him and led him away. You see stuff and form an opinion (fair enough) but then added a few additional facts that simply were not there.
“Well I don’t know about all of these”
You should have stopped right there as it summarises your entire position on everything
When has knowing something about a subject stopped you from pontificating though @Leon lol? In reality you know jackshit about most subjects but you still have a simplistic hyperbolic opinion to express.
Ruth Davidson, now in the House of Lords, said “watch this space” when asked if she might make a David Cameron-style comeback to mainstream politics.
Davidson quit as leader of the Scottish Conservatives in 2019.
“I promised my partner I wouldn’t take another big job until my son started school and he’s just finished primary one, so we’ll see. Watch this space,” she said.
“I’m not saying I necessarily think my next big job is going to be in politics. It doesn’t have to be. But I’m 45, I’m not nearing retirement.”
Describing herself as “a cringing Presbyterian”, she admitted feeling “uncomfortable” in the Lords and said she would vote herself out given the chance.
“It is an absolute privilege to sit in the Lords and I never forget that. It’s amazing to see, and if you are in a debate on Ukraine or an issue like that, there’s a former Sea Lord there, a former head of the Army, and also people who were big parts of my childhood, such as Michael Heseltine.
“But I am such a cringing Presbyterian with an utter sense of not being worthy because there are so many connotations with rank and title and stuff like that.
“Growing up and going to school in Buckhaven in Fife and with parents from two Glasgow council estates, there’s a feeling that I shouldn’t be there and I feel uncomfortable.”
And they say there's no such thing as the Scottish cringe. I'd think more of Ruth if she'd vote to end the HoL because it's the right thing to do rather than a sense of 'not being worthy'.
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey..
On that one, you might also consider this argument.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html ..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
Ruth Davidson, now in the House of Lords, said “watch this space” when asked if she might make a David Cameron-style comeback to mainstream politics.
Davidson quit as leader of the Scottish Conservatives in 2019.
“I promised my partner I wouldn’t take another big job until my son started school and he’s just finished primary one, so we’ll see. Watch this space,” she said.
“I’m not saying I necessarily think my next big job is going to be in politics. It doesn’t have to be. But I’m 45, I’m not nearing retirement.”
Describing herself as “a cringing Presbyterian”, she admitted feeling “uncomfortable” in the Lords and said she would vote herself out given the chance.
“It is an absolute privilege to sit in the Lords and I never forget that. It’s amazing to see, and if you are in a debate on Ukraine or an issue like that, there’s a former Sea Lord there, a former head of the Army, and also people who were big parts of my childhood, such as Michael Heseltine.
“But I am such a cringing Presbyterian with an utter sense of not being worthy because there are so many connotations with rank and title and stuff like that.
“Growing up and going to school in Buckhaven in Fife and with parents from two Glasgow council estates, there’s a feeling that I shouldn’t be there and I feel uncomfortable.”
And they say there's no such thing as the Scottish cringe. I'd think more of Ruth if she'd vote to end the HoL because it's the right thing to do rather than a sense of 'not being worthy'.
I'm no Conservative, but I think that Ruth D is 'worthy'; a great deal more so than many who sit there.
Paul Whitwick, surely? I'll watch that later thanks; his videos are usually good.
Incidentally, yesterday I was talking to a chap (in his late thirties) who lives in a newbuild flat. He wants to have a bike, but there is nowhere to store it aside from in his flat, and he lives on the second floor. Residents have been keeping their bikes in a communal area outside, but the owners have told them that they cannot, and the bikes will have to be removed by the end of next month.
It's fine talking about the need for active travel, but it's pointless if people cannot actually have bikes.
Cycle Parking.
Where is it?
If urban, there may be a list for people who want cycle hangars held by the Council.
If it is newbuild flat, there should be a requirement for cycle storage in the Planning Permission, perhaps as a Planning Condition. If that or similar exists, they can all ask the Council to enforce it as long as it is within X years.
My plan B would be a folder or e-folder.
Or if he has a parking space, he could SORN a van he puts there, and store his cycle in it. That's one tactic that is sometimes mentioned in connection with front curtilege parking spaces being Permitted Development, whilst a cycle locker needs Planning Permission.
Bikes increasingly being ebikes may be a problem as they run slap bang into the new fire safety regulations for flats after Grenfell. SORNing a van seems overkill, and a build it and they will come attitude to lockable cycle shelters has led to one near here that in the past two years, I've never seen house more than one bike. I can't guarantee it is not always the same one whose owner has died.
All the private rental agreements I have signed prohibit bikes inside a property, so I don't see how that would change with e-bikes (and would be similarly unenforced). At least the new builds round here tend to have decent dedicated storage and local councillors kick up a fuss if they don't include that in the planning.
For existing tenements, the storage put in by my council are massively over-subscribed, and expensive enough for Matt's idea of parking a van and selling the space inside to actually make sense!
There's no prohibition in my current lease, but I live in the rear half of the lower ground floor of a converted Victorian house, so would have to drag a bike up two flights of stairs and down one to get to the street.
There's a bike hangar almost directly outside my door, and a few others on nearby streets. They cost about £100/year (plus £25 for the key deposit) which is fine, but there's generally a 6-9 month waiting list for a space so not really useful for people who're in rented accommodation.
It's why the proliferation of cycle hire schemes around here is such a gamechanger. No need to have my own bike when there are currently 18 available for hire within a five minute walk.
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
Labour and Conservative governments accelerated mass migration for decades - against the wishes of the British public. They forced mass migration on us and said it was racist to object. The society this created was always going to be a powder-keg. Anything could have set it off. The murder of three young girls in Southport seems to have done it. But it could have been anything. Labour and the Conservatives were warned and didn’t just ignore the warnings. They ploughed onwards.
The usually stanfard-issue, boilerplate rhetoric, that is nowadays de rigeur on the British Right, for this issue. The fabled "British public" has in fact always been thoroughly mixed in its views on this issue, and certainly hasnt bern monolithic.on it.
And most relevantly, the largest recent rise in immigration from other parts of the world has been as a result of the self-defeating Rightwing and Conservative idiocy of Brexit.
I thought Murray's gripe was only with Islam and its threat to Western enlightenment values. Seems that he's now going beyond theology - it's just any ghastly foreigner that gets his gander up. It's quite astonishing how this episode has revealed the supposed intellectuals of the British Right to be little more than posh Bovver Boys.
Assume you meant dander but I quite like the idea of fashy Doug being embodied by a honking enraged male goose.
Far-right organisers on social media have listed 39 immigration centres as targets for a coordinated attack on Wednesday night (Joey D’Urso and Tom Witherow write).
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
The locations cover the length and breadth of England, from big cities to smaller cities and towns.
The post suggests far-right extremists are trying to escalate the violence again once more after rioters tried to burn down two migrant hotels on Sunday
Far-right organisers on social media have listed 39 immigration centres as targets for a coordinated attack on Wednesday night (Joey D’Urso and Tom Witherow write).
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
The locations cover the length and breadth of England, from big cities to smaller cities and towns.
The post suggests far-right extremists are trying to escalate the violence again once more after rioters tried to burn down two migrant hotels on Sunday
Far-right organisers on social media have listed 39 immigration centres as targets for a coordinated attack on Wednesday night (Joey D’Urso and Tom Witherow write).
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
The locations cover the length and breadth of England, from big cities to smaller cities and towns.
The post suggests far-right extremists are trying to escalate the violence again once more after rioters tried to burn down two migrant hotels on Sunday
Far-right organisers on social media have listed 39 immigration centres as targets for a coordinated attack on Wednesday night (Joey D’Urso and Tom Witherow write).
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
The locations cover the length and breadth of England, from big cities to smaller cities and towns.
The post suggests far-right extremists are trying to escalate the violence again once more after rioters tried to burn down two migrant hotels on Sunday
The two-tier Keir moniker / hashtag is really being pushed on twitter, how much is Russian bots and how much is organic, who knows.
Its why I said yesterday I think he made a small misstep by not addressing the counter "protesters" and saying let the police do their job, we are deploying extra resources, we can't have vigilante groups, if you do, you will also feel the full weight of the law.
They are not necessarily vigilante groups. You can form a human chain around a hotel and defend it then use the legal power of citizen's arrest to subdue an attacker. Provided you do not initiate violence and act in accordance with the law otherwise it perfect legal and ethical.
The police have so far not used enough violence to prevent violent disorder. Maybe they ate outnumbered. But yesterday they appeared to allow the thugs to invade and set fire to occupied hotels. Given that is a direct risk to life, they should have done more to stop it.
So in cases where the forces of the state will not protect you, surely self defence is all you have.
And I wish people would stop calling these people protesters, and the disorder riots. They are not. These events look like planned, organised thuggery. The police need to start breaking heads.
Far-right organisers on social media have listed 39 immigration centres as targets for a coordinated attack on Wednesday night (Joey D’Urso and Tom Witherow write).
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
The locations cover the length and breadth of England, from big cities to smaller cities and towns.
The post suggests far-right extremists are trying to escalate the violence again once more after rioters tried to burn down two migrant hotels on Sunday
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey..
On that one, you might also consider this argument.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html ..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
Far-right organisers on social media have listed 39 immigration centres as targets for a coordinated attack on Wednesday night (Joey D’Urso and Tom Witherow write).
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
The locations cover the length and breadth of England, from big cities to smaller cities and towns.
The post suggests far-right extremists are trying to escalate the violence again once more after rioters tried to burn down two migrant hotels on Sunday
Is there any suggestion that those who posted on line suggesting there was Moslem involvement in the Southport tragedy will have their collars felt? Especially those who named names?
It's not clear what law they have broken. The name that circulated wasn't that of a real person, so no libel was committed.
Comments
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-68234673
It’s not the Bromptons though, with their expensive batteries and expensive chargers, it’s mostly the Chinese bikes, and especially the AliExpress conversion kits of very poor quality which customs are failing to intercept.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-66497800
Transport for London banned electric bikes and scooters in 2021, following a number of fires on the network.
https://www.london-fire.gov.uk/safety/the-home/e-scooters-and-e-bikes/
Denmark has much higher rates of Unionisation than the UK too (67% v 24%), which might be another way to support the "downtrodden".
It why bugger all voted Tory at the GE.
Earning £40k a year is not middle class utopia of 2.4 kids and the semi detached house in surburbs with enough for a nice holiday. Its just about managing territory.
A supply chain requiring appropriate regulation.
I am not knowledgeable enough on this to offer an opinion, I find it fascinating reading and learning about it.
On the other hand when people save, the government has to spend. That's why Japan's public debt is the most eye wateringly huge in the Western world.
What we need is some sort of liquidity event, like the building society demutualisations back in the 90s. Maybe the government could carry through on my geostrategic proposal to sell the Isle of Portland to Spain, and distribute the proceeds to the population.
Integration- as Denmark are doing and we do patchily - is the solution. Bulldozing tired unwanted housing stock for redevelopment is what the UK already does. Just not enough of it because social housing hasn’t been popular since the 80s.
You can sit there in France taking a pop and thats up to you. But it is embarrassing that you think I don’t have a clue about this issue and am “flailing” because I disagree with your “ship them all to Rwanda it’s the only solution” plan. Which is no solution.
It isn’t Camden that gets town apart by this. It’s Rochdale. Where I grew up. Rotherham. Where I lived. Sunderland. Where I lived. Oldham - where I went to college and went through a spell of different ethnic groups coming out of their council policy ghettoes attacking each other back in c1994. Been there, done that. Racists attacking people in the town centre? Been there.
You don’t know shit about this in practical terms.
That kind of limit has national as well as local implications. It means that they country as a whole must maintain at least a 70% ethnically European population. Do you advocate similar approach to policymaking in the UK?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/17/denmark-plans-to-limit-non-western-residents-in-disadvantaged-areas
The number I have in my head, which I have not checked today, is ~10 deaths in fires possibly caused by batteries in 2022.
Here was a call for better regulation from 2023, for example - supported by the industry:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66304564
And - I suppose - the more e-cycles are in cycle hangars or cycle lockers in the front garden, the fewer will be inside flats.
I've heard noises about this, but have not seen any proposals yet. I'd expect a fairly rapid move, as it's a blatantly obvious thing to do with big benefits.
My point is that you piously say you agree with Danish proposals but what they actually mean is dispersing settled communities if they are perceived to be ghettoes -too much crime, too much inactivity, too much alienation. That's pretty tough, but it does seem to work, and it is highly popular with Danish voters. But very controversial with politicians outside Denmark who think it is cruel
If you agree with the fuill on Danish ghetto policy, then we don't have an argument
Had the last decade of government actually delivered something along the lines of "levelling up", rather than chasing shadows, we'd be in a much better place.
And one day they MAY have the numbers, if the polarisation continues (and I have yet to see any policies designed to stop it)
JPY has gone back to where it was 1 year ago, and the stock market has gone back to where it was one year ago. This wouldn't be particularly remarkable except that JPY went down (and the stock market up) over the course of an entire year, then the reverse happened over the course of 2 weeks, and the biggest part of that was over 2 days.
Not desirable but a pragmatic solution to the problem to get a fresh starting point.
Presumably this is dead in the water now.
My first dates would always include a steep incline to sort the walkers from the rest.
I'm not sure whether there's a Gurkha 'area' in Colchester, but there are quite a few there. Don't think there's ever been any trouble, but perhaps no-one wants to 'mix it' with Gurkhas!
There is *not* (unless I missed it) a clause excluding cycles or e-cycles from a rental property in the standard tenancy agreement issued by the NRLA, which is the largest UK landlord organisation. TBH I have never seen such a term in an agreement, including in the 6 different places I rented in London.
In an HMO there may be things around common areas used by all the tenants, and clauses for the private rented space would be tighter due to tighter fire regs. It is the sort of thing Councils would put in a licensing term for large (<6 T) or small HMOs, or both.
For blocks of flats, there would also be regs around Common Parts due to fire requirements and required clear emergency exit routes.
A sensible landlord will provide lockers with charging sockets included, so T never needs to take an e-bikes inside, just as a sensible landlord provides enough wall sockets so that the issue of trailing leads never arises. It is ALWAYS better to work with the grain of tenant behaviour.
I would expect the new Fire Regs to be one of the things that drives LLs to provide safe e-cycle storage.
In London, with much higher actual experience of recent immigration, but also much better economic prospects abd infrastructure, there's been virtually no trouble so far.
This is the result...
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
Just to being some context to the "C2" debate, in 2019, according to YouGov , the C2 social group voted 49% Conservative, 31% Labour, 9% LD.
In 2024, the same group split 32% Labour, 24% Conservative, 20% Reform and 11% LD.
That's a 13% swing from Conservative to Labour.
IPSOS-MORI had 31% Labour, 25% Conservative and 25% Reform this time compared to 47% Conservative, 32% Labour in 2019 so a smaller swing (10.5%).
The C2 group was famously the group which enabled the Thatcher victory in 1979 and mostly stayed loyal to 1997 when fragmenting to Labour, the Referendum Party or our old friend Abe Stention.
Using YouGov numbers:
The AB group voted 42% Conservative, 32% Labour and 16% LD in 2019 - this time it was 27% Conservative, 36% Labour, 15% LD and 10% Reform so a smaller swing (just 9.5% Con-Lab).
The C1s voted 43-34-12 in 2019, on July 4th they voted 23-36-13 so a swing of 11% from Conservative to Labour.
The DEs voted 47% Conservative, 34% Labour (according to YouGov) in 2019 (IPSOS rather different) but this time 34% Labour, 23% Conservative with 19% Reform so a 12% swing.
MY analysis so far tells a fairly consistent story across social groups - a swing of between 9 and 13% based on the Labour vote staying still or rising slightly but the Conservative vote falling heavily and consistently by 15-25 points across the board. Reform filling the gap and while a simplistic analysis might suggest a vote transfer from Conservative to Reform I suspect there was a lot more churn behind the figures with Reform picking up votes from Labour and abe stentions all playing their part.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8vdd4venj7o
Bangladesh clashes: 90 killed in anti-government protests
It might make the immediate unwinding of the trade a little more manageable.
Repatriation of capital back into Japan is likely to be the process of several years, though.
But if you don't believe there were "any tensions building up" before Southport then you live in some bizarre la-la-land - where, in that same week, thwere wasn't a riot in Leeds and there wasn't a riot in Whitechapel and there wasn't the soldier stabbed in Gillingham and there wasn't a vile attempt to smear cops at Manchester airport and there wasn't a machete frenzy in Southend - and there's no point in debating anyway because you're a damn fool. So that's all good
"Douglas Murray
@DouglasKMurray
Labour and Conservative governments accelerated mass migration for decades - against the wishes of the British public. They forced mass migration on us and said it was racist to object. The society this created was always going to be a powder-keg. Anything could have set it off. The murder of three young girls in Southport seems to have done it. But it could have been anything. Labour and the Conservatives were warned and didn’t just ignore the warnings. They ploughed onwards.
11:28 PM · Aug 3, 2024
·
1M Views"
https://x.com/DouglasKMurray/status/1819863048762675493
@ConHome
Do you miss us yet?
But it needs to be pepper-potted into general developments, not done as ghettoes.
The public wants I-95-ness
State capacity sounds like a nerdy concept, but people feel it, or the lack of it.
https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/the-public-wants-i-95-ness
,I>...what makes someone competitive against presumed nominee Donald Trump? Pollsters will have their answers, but I will dare to propose one element I suspect they will not discuss. I don't have a good noun for it, but I do have the perfect example of it. So for lack of a better term I'll call it I-95-ness.
Yes, I'm referring to the incident last year when a section of I-95 collapsed in Pennsylvania. Expectations about a timeline to fix it were pretty low given our national track record at building just about anything. But Governor Josh Shapiro used emergency powers to suspend a whole host of rules and regulations and get the highway reopened in under two weeks. He could have celebrated the victory by saying "I alone have fixed it." It would have been dismissive of the thousands of public servants and contractors who scrambled like mad to make it happen, but it would have been a great dig at Trump. ..
...An I-95 moment shouldn’t have to invoke emergency powers, but I would love to see more politicians recognize and name the crisis we are in, and act accordingly. I would love, but don’t remotely expect, for someone to say out loud that we are in a crisis of state capacity, and that that crisis underpins all the others..
...After the fact, no one seems to debate much whether Shapiro was correct to invoke emergency powers to fix the freeway, but I would bet a whole lot of money that there were a lot of voices of grave concern from a lot of different stakeholders about that choice as it was being made. I can only begin to guess at the categories of rules that were swept away – funding, procurement and contracting, environmental review, workforce protections and diversity, oversight – and the number of processes and procedures that disappeared with those rules would have been staggering. The point is that each of these categories has its own fiercely protective constituency. The environmental ones, for example, seem obvious, but if you’ve ever worked in a bureaucracy you know the burning passion with which procurement officers will defend processes that seem like meaningless paperwork to the outsider.
I have come to respect that passion, because I see how deeply those who have it believe that they are serving the public. That’s the job they were hired to do, and they will do it better and more thoroughly and diligently than anyone else. It’s not their job to pull back and weigh the value of these processes against the costs of delays and inaction and to restructure the bureaucracy accordingly. That’s the job of leadership. And too few of our leaders are doing that job...
It's first approximation racism based on an irrelevant characteristic.
(I think probably everyone here agrees with that?)
I must admit I don't recall machetes being used, though.
And no, I didn't get involved.
They are expected to cut rates this year though. From September. 50 bps is being talked up. I suspect that would cause some panic.
And most relevantly, the largest recent rise in immigration from other parts of the world has been as a result of the self-defeating Rightwing and Conservative idiocy of Brexit.
Listening to some limited vox pops of those on the "anti immigration" marches, apart from those just there for the violence, who turn up at every one of these events, I'm struck by a divergence in opinion.
The issue is part immigration (the numbers) but it's more about cultural assimilation or the perceived lack of it. More than one of those demonstrating spoke about "British Christian values". The line seemed to be there was less of a problem with people coming to the country but they had to leave their culture at Dover and fully embrace these "British Christian values" (whatever these may be and I'm sure there's a line somewhere in the Bible about loving your neighbour).
I remarked on here before about how it is possible to come here and live within your community and have almost no contact with the indigenous community (let alone other micro communities) in a way that it wasn't 50 or 60 years ago. The children speak English at school but the native language at home and to their friends and remember Stodge's Number One law of everything "people like people like themselves".
I don't share the bleak pessimism of those who throw round terms like "civil war" - societal/cultural division has to an extent always existed and problems between cultures didn't start on July 5th 2024. My two areas of hope are education and capitalism.
There is clearly a separate British identity out there that isn't English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish. It's the identity of the second and third generation migrants and they often resent the incomers who seem (and again this may be technological or there may be other factors at work) less willing to integrate.
The most interesting prospect is that we may get a mini-trial to assess the application of the "immunity" test from the SCOTUS to the evidence, which may involve the evidence being laid out in the public court for that evaluation this side of the Election.
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-federal-election-case-chutkan-immunity-rcna164930
https://x.com/francescrook/status/1820205009038110986
They could release asylum seekers from the immigration detention centres and use them to lock up the thugs
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/politics/6549473/liam-kerr-scottish-conservative-leadership-contest/
An hors d'oeuvres before the main event.
Especially those who named names?
https://x.com/jamesrbuk/status/1820386298412093569
You see what you want to see. Like the other day with Biden going onto the plane. You ended up making statements of fact about what happened when he came off which were clearly not true about how they grabbed him and led him away. You see stuff and form an opinion (fair enough) but then added a few additional facts that simply were not there.
Kamala Harris gets drunk over the weekend, and picks Ben Shapiro as VP by accident.
https://babylonbee.com/news/drunken-kamala-mistakenly-picks-wrong-shapiro-for-vp
- Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey
- Growth. Whether growth is a good measure of electoral success, and is based on the experience of the Afghan War. Yes really.
- Battleground: whether the concept of a "battleground" state has meaning
- Andy_JS vs John Curtice: how we measure success in polling
- Corporatism: how this keeps cropping up
- Christian Dominionism, Christian Nationalism and Christian Reconstructionism: how the US religious right have expanded in concept but declined in influence
- The Expanded Cuts: expanded versions of previous articles, incorporating comments from below-the-line.
- Solarpunk II: my first sequel, taking into account that the arguments in the comments section for the Solarpunk were so prolific they needed a new article
The RSS Conference is in a month's time so everything is on hold until after that.You should have stopped right there as it summarises your entire position on everything
I knew enough about some of them however to know you were talking bollocks which was all that was required.
The real question is whether that's it, or if it feeds on itself.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/viewpoint/24496652.labour-honeymoon-ends-talk-comeback-one-tory/
Ruth Davidson, now in the House of Lords, said “watch this space” when asked if she might make a David Cameron-style comeback to mainstream politics.
Davidson quit as leader of the Scottish Conservatives in 2019.
“I promised my partner I wouldn’t take another big job until my son started school and he’s just finished primary one, so we’ll see. Watch this space,” she said.
“I’m not saying I necessarily think my next big job is going to be in politics. It doesn’t have to be. But I’m 45, I’m not nearing retirement.”
Describing herself as “a cringing Presbyterian”, she admitted feeling “uncomfortable” in the Lords and said she would vote herself out given the chance.
“It is an absolute privilege to sit in the Lords and I never forget that. It’s amazing to see, and if you are in a debate on Ukraine or an issue like that, there’s a former Sea Lord there, a former head of the Army, and also people who were big parts of my childhood, such as Michael Heseltine.
“But I am such a cringing Presbyterian with an utter sense of not being worthy because there are so many connotations with rank and title and stuff like that.
“Growing up and going to school in Buckhaven in Fife and with parents from two Glasgow council estates, there’s a feeling that I shouldn’t be there and I feel uncomfortable.”
I'd think more of Ruth if she'd vote to end the HoL because it's the right thing to do rather than a sense of 'not being worthy'.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html
..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
(Here's the report referenced in the article.
https://transitcosts.com/final-report/ )
Surely it won't be too difficult to find out who organised the coach and gathered these muppets together?
There's a bike hangar almost directly outside my door, and a few others on nearby streets. They cost about £100/year (plus £25 for the key deposit) which is fine, but there's generally a 6-9 month waiting list for a space so not really useful for people who're in rented accommodation.
It's why the proliferation of cycle hire schemes around here is such a gamechanger. No need to have my own bike when there are currently 18 available for hire within a five minute walk.
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
The locations cover the length and breadth of England, from big cities to smaller cities and towns.
The post suggests far-right extremists are trying to escalate the violence again once more after rioters tried to burn down two migrant hotels on Sunday
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/riots-latest-news-today-cobra-starmer-s3s3whxp2
Whether a story sourced from the police, or the Times's own solo investigation, the police's soon be onto it.
I presume this MP must be Reform or at least Tory...
Oh.
https://x.com/SarahEdwardsTam/status/1818240122103484735
So in cases where the forces of the state will not protect you, surely self defence is all you have.
And I wish people would stop calling these people protesters, and the disorder riots. They are not. These events look like planned, organised thuggery. The police need to start breaking heads.
It'll be the NHS next