The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Public Service isn't for everyone - being an MP is hard work. I can only imagine the volume of casework my local MP, Stephen Timms, has to manage and while I've never voted for him, I have nothing but admiration for his dedication to our local area and his constituents and while I've no knowledge of his personal finances and have seen him shopping at Sainsbury's, I think he does the job because he wants to.
Looking at all the Conservatives unceremoniously booted out in July, how many of them would "want another go" or would they rather have a quieter life doing their best for their family in a career or profession from which they voluntarily excluded for five years (and in many professions, five years is an eternity in terms of carrer progression)?
@HYUFD or someone could no doubt tell me but how many of the 121 MPs currently in the Conservative Parliamentary Party have had experience of Opposition - if all you've known is Government and the privileges of that, how is it to wake up one day and find all that gone and to be frankly a backbench irrelevance when Ben Houchen or Tim Oliver probably have more actual power and influence?
Being an MP isn't like other jobs - you can be thrown out however "well" you think you've done. The only performance measurement is the ballot box every 4-5 years. Does this mean however that when you stand and are elected you have implicitly contracted yourself to serve a full term as an MP? Clearly not - there may be previously unknown factors (health) which force you to stand down or you may get a better offer abroad.
If you want to leave a job because you don't want to do it any more, that's your prerogative and shouldn't the same rules apply to MPs?
I would turn several comments on this thread round. If we are unable to attract MPs of a sufficient calibre without them having second jobs during their time in parliament, they should be paid more.
I'm not sure this is the case by the way. I suspect it's just special pleading. But the principle applies. MPs have going rates, like the rest of us
The quality of MPs is piss poor. The question is would more pay solve that. I think a big issue is that now with social media, basically your whole life can be under the spotlight 24/7, most high calibre people can earn a lot more money and be totally anonymous to the world.
I think you need to look in to all aspects of the MP role to attract candidates with calibre, not just pay. But the assumption you should need a second job is wrong IMO. This is a full time role.
Then an MP who becomes a minister creates a vacancy.
There is a lack of reality in the public discourse about the kind of money that even fairly mid ranking professionals in the private sector can earn. I get it that politicians shouldn't be in it for the money, but if we expect them to make ever greater sacrifices, in terms of opportunity cost, we shouldn't be too surprised if this affects the distribution of abilities among people who serve in the role. You can say the same thing about senior unelected public servants. It is always tempting to take a hair shirt kind of approach and point out the median salary etc, and I have some emotional sympathy for that attitude, but we can't be blind to the consequences.
No, that's daft. In a binary choice there will be all sorts of things about your preferred candidate which you don't like. You just dislike the other one more.
Or perhaps his economic grasp persuades you the racism, and plans to use the military to round up and deport millions don't matter ?
To be clear, I'm not saying I'd vote for Trump. I'd vote for Harris. And I'd vote for her despite lots of issues where I don't support her, because I think Trump is far worse. I'm just making the point that voting for candidate or party x in a binary system cannot mean support for every aspect of that candidate or party.
True, but it's also the case that there may be some aspects of a candidate that are deal-breakers for you, where no matter how good the rest of the platform they have is you still can't vote for somebody who supports something you are vehemently opposed to. The quoted tweet is essentially saying "you should consider open racism to be a deal-breaker, and if you do not then other people will judge you accordingly".
It's not even that in this case. Rather it's saying you can't vote for a candidate and disclaim support for the central policy and overarching theme of their campaign.
That's just not the same thing as saying there are a few policies I don't agree with.
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
In front of me is The Independent newspaper from Wednesday, 26 June, 2002.
Its front page headline is Blair in rift with Bush over Israel.
President Bush had called for Yasser Arafat to be ousted as leader of the Palestinian authority. Britain, along with the EU and UN rejected this. Kofi Annan warned that a more hardline leader might replace him. Former US Senator George Mitchell, who had tried to broker a Middle East peace deal, expressed similar worries that Islamic Jihad or Hamas could take over.
Public Service isn't for everyone - being an MP is hard work. I can only imagine the volume of casework my local MP, Stephen Timms, has to manage and while I've never voted for him, I have nothing but admiration for his dedication to our local area and his constituents and while I've no knowledge of his personal finances and have seen him shopping at Sainsbury's, I think he does the job because he wants to.
Looking at all the Conservatives unceremoniously booted out in July, how many of them would "want another go" or would they rather have a quieter life doing their best for their family in a career or profession from which they voluntarily excluded for five years (and in many professions, five years is an eternity in terms of carrer progression)?
@HYUFD or someone could no doubt tell me but how many of the 121 MPs currently in the Conservative Parliamentary Party have had experience of Opposition - if all you've known is Government and the privileges of that, how is it to wake up one day and find all that gone and to be frankly a backbench irrelevance when Ben Houchen or Tim Oliver probably have more actual power and influence?
Being an MP isn't like other jobs - you can be thrown out however "well" you think you've done. The only performance measurement is the ballot box every 4-5 years. Does this mean however that when you stand and are elected you have implicitly contracted yourself to serve a full term as an MP? Clearly not - there may be previously unknown factors (health) which force you to stand down or you may get a better offer abroad.
If you want to leave a job because you don't want to do it any more, that's your prerogative and shouldn't the same rules apply to MPs?
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The problem is that you used the word 'local'.
Motorways generally do little *directly* for residents in a locality, and can have significant downsides in terms of noise. Motorways mostly benefit people who are not local.
Motorways are a classic example where we need national planning, not local.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
Public Service isn't for everyone - being an MP is hard work. I can only imagine the volume of casework my local MP, Stephen Timms, has to manage and while I've never voted for him, I have nothing but admiration for his dedication to our local area and his constituents and while I've no knowledge of his personal finances and have seen him shopping at Sainsbury's, I think he does the job because he wants to.
Looking at all the Conservatives unceremoniously booted out in July, how many of them would "want another go" or would they rather have a quieter life doing their best for their family in a career or profession from which they voluntarily excluded for five years (and in many professions, five years is an eternity in terms of carrer progression)?
@HYUFD or someone could no doubt tell me but how many of the 121 MPs currently in the Conservative Parliamentary Party have had experience of Opposition - if all you've known is Government and the privileges of that, how is it to wake up one day and find all that gone and to be frankly a backbench irrelevance when Ben Houchen or Tim Oliver probably have more actual power and influence?
Being an MP isn't like other jobs - you can be thrown out however "well" you think you've done. The only performance measurement is the ballot box every 4-5 years. Does this mean however that when you stand and are elected you have implicitly contracted yourself to serve a full term as an MP? Clearly not - there may be previously unknown factors (health) which force you to stand down or you may get a better offer abroad.
If you want to leave a job because you don't want to do it any more, that's your prerogative and shouldn't the same rules apply to MPs?
A minority but a few were MPs in opposition too like Bernard Jenkin, Sir Roger Gale, Jeremy Hunt, John Whittingale, Geoffrey Clifton Brown etc
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
I would turn several comments on this thread round. If we are unable to attract MPs of a sufficient calibre without them having second jobs during their time in parliament, they should be paid more.
I'm not sure this is the case by the way. I suspect it's just special pleading. But the principle applies. MPs have going rates, like the rest of us
The quality of MPs is piss poor. The question is would more pay solve that. I think a big issue is that now with social media, basically your whole life can be under the spotlight 24/7, most high calibre people can earn a lot more money and be totally anonymous to the world.
I think you need to look in to all aspects of the MP role to attract candidates with calibre, not just pay. But the assumption you should need a second job is wrong IMO. This is a full time role.
Then an MP who becomes a minister creates a vacancy.
It doesn't have to be, and doesn't in practice. Minister is one of several activities of an MP, which in this case attracts a higher salary. Other MPs are doing admin work for no extra pay on committees etc They all need to look after their constituents and meet interest groups etc.
Temperature Check (10/11): What’s The Point Of A Model?
https://split-ticket.org/2024/10/12/temperature-check-10-11-whats-the-point-of-a-model/ ...If the race were to meaningfully shift, it would be because the underlying data changed. Until that happens, it will continue to say what it has always said: this race is a Toss Up. That doesn’t mean the election is guaranteed to be close in terms of the actual outcome — recall that a Toss Up fundamentally means that the evidence doesn’t conclusively point to one candidate being clearly ahead. Polling error is correlated, so it’s actually more likely than you might imagine that one candidate is underestimated by surveys and sweeps all swing states come election day. In fact, in our model, there’s a 26% chance that Kamala Harris wins all 7 swing states, and a 25% chance that Donald Trump does so. But we have no way of knowing ahead of time which way the polling error will break, because it’s famously volatile and unpredictable. Response environments change across cycles, and pollsters make corrections to avoid repeating recent misses, so it’s not possible to confidently predict which side will be underestimated by polls. That’s why the best thing to do is to assume that the polls will be unbiased and keep wide uncertainty bands, which is what our model does...
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The problem is that you used the word 'local'.
Motorways generally do little *directly* for residents in a locality, and can have significant downsides in terms of noise. Motorways mostly benefit people who are not local.
Motorways are a classic example where we need national planning, not local.
It's the argument we heard when HS2 was cut.
"People don't want high speed rail, they want their local roads and buses to be better."
Bottom line is that having different bits of government with real powers but working in a hierarchy is probably a good thing.
I’m a little ambivalent on this - it depends on the job and the circumstances. Being a member of parliament is not a job - it’s holding an office. And office holders often have other jobs or roles - government ministers, opposition spokespeople, party officials.
Where MPs want to retain professional standards in areas such as law or medicine I see no real issue. If their additional income is corrupting then we have a problem. But the problem is that we will just get a ban on “second jobs” without much rationale or detailed thinking as to what that means in practice.
I think, in general, this is something for voters to judge on at election time - but it would be easier for them to do so with STV, instead of FPTP.
The best way I can think of to implement the change is to cap the hours and pay for second jobs. No more than 10 hours a week for no more than 25% of the MP's salary, something like that, but exact figures could be whatever. That would allow someone to do enough to keep a skill alive, but would put a stop to most of the piss-taking.
But then, what would the sanction be? Suspension from the Commons? That feels draconian and unnecessary. So I would leave it to the voters.
I think that if you have set clear rules like that for external income then it is fine for the punsihment to be something like suspension. You're not punishing the having of an external income but the wilful disregard for rules. If you set no punishment at all then you might as well not have the rule.
There would still be awkward corner cases under your proposal -- how do you account for e.g. getting royalties off writing a book, where the income arriving is disconnected in time from the time when you did the work and the amount of income is unpredictable?
Lots of new MPs’ declarations of interest are for pay coming in after they were elected for work they did before they were elected. Yes, you need some sort of rules to allow payments like that.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The problem is that you used the word 'local'.
Motorways generally do little *directly* for residents in a locality, and can have significant downsides in terms of noise. Motorways mostly benefit people who are not local.
Motorways are a classic example where we need national planning, not local.
It's the argument we heard when HS2 was cut.
"People don't want high speed rail, they want their local roads and buses to be better."
Bottom line is that having different bits of government with real powers but working in a hierarchy is probably a good thing.
A lot of those people calling out for 'local' services would argue against specific local infrastructure as well: because it does not advantage *them*. Another argument we have heard on here.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
How do you distinguish between xenophobia and racism ? (Genuine question.) In any event, the xenophobia has become pretty clearly based, with its talk of "poisoning the blood", etc.
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
I suspect that is wishful thinking. I also think, living in a seat predicted to go Reform on the latest polling, is the plague on all your houses view comes from the feeling none of these parties have ever done anything for areas like mine. Rochdale is right in so far as areas like mine, in decline, want stuff done in our towns to revive them.
We currently have a problem in the local town with a gang of youths from not only the town but outside coming and making bother. Petty vandalism, harassing shops and customers, petty vandalism and the like. Shops are locking their door at 5PM and customers can enter when let in. The Police have been as much use as a marzipan dildo until recently. Now they are raising their presence and have spoken to a few kids and their parents but it persists. People get fed up.
The local elections next year won't say much for Reform based on where they are but in places like Durham they will really need to go forward there and pick up a number of councillors if they are to have any impact.
It looks quite possible that North Korean troops might soon be fighting in Ukraine; or at the very least, taking over rear-area jobs to allow more Russians forwards.
Perhaps those who screech about Putin's 'red lines' should ask themselves why Putin is allowed to do this, yet if we were to send in troops in large numbers to help Ukraine it would, in their eyes, be an escalation.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
Regional power pricing FTW.
I bet there'd be a lot less argument over the new power lines in East Anglia, if the local super-abundance of new wind generated electricity meant lower power prices there.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
How do you distinguish between xenophobia and racism ? (Genuine question.) In any event, the xenophobia has become pretty clearly based, with its talk of "poisoning the blood", etc.
Temperature Check (10/11): What’s The Point Of A Model?
https://split-ticket.org/2024/10/12/temperature-check-10-11-whats-the-point-of-a-model/ ...If the race were to meaningfully shift, it would be because the underlying data changed. Until that happens, it will continue to say what it has always said: this race is a Toss Up. That doesn’t mean the election is guaranteed to be close in terms of the actual outcome — recall that a Toss Up fundamentally means that the evidence doesn’t conclusively point to one candidate being clearly ahead. Polling error is correlated, so it’s actually more likely than you might imagine that one candidate is underestimated by surveys and sweeps all swing states come election day. In fact, in our model, there’s a 26% chance that Kamala Harris wins all 7 swing states, and a 25% chance that Donald Trump does so. But we have no way of knowing ahead of time which way the polling error will break, because it’s famously volatile and unpredictable. Response environments change across cycles, and pollsters make corrections to avoid repeating recent misses, so it’s not possible to confidently predict which side will be underestimated by polls. That’s why the best thing to do is to assume that the polls will be unbiased and keep wide uncertainty bands, which is what our model does...
A useful reminder to me, at least, that "what if it's not close" applies both ways
The second jobs thing requires a lot of care. What sort of politics do we want? Most of the MPs who are going to support banning MPs doing all sorts of things, human nature being what it is, are those whose pay and lifestyle as an MPs far exceeds anything they could achieve elsewhere. That accounts for a lot of them.
Nearly everything they do nearly all the time, except casework mostly done by their staff, is no more than worthless lobby fodder with the occasional soundbite. Most debates in the house are desultory beyond belief. Many have no understanding of the meaning of legislation they approve.
In an ultra materialist society overwhelmingly the most able avoid direct political engagement absolutely. Think about the calibre of our top people in medicine, science, law, humanities, finance, business. (Then compare with the average MP, or the front bench). They almost all keep out of the fray.
The question is: What would best facilitate getting a decent pool of outstandingly able people into parliament and government?
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
From what I've read the US has made it clear to VVP what the consequences would be of using nukes. The Americans could do an awful lot to vulnerable Russian infrastructure by purely conventional means. The advantage of being an actual superpower which can project force.
The second jobs thing requires a lot of care. What sort of politics do we want? Most of the MPs who are going to support banning MPs doing all sorts of things, human nature being what it is, are those whose pay and lifestyle as an MPs far exceeds anything they could achieve elsewhere. That accounts for a lot of them.
Nearly everything they do nearly all the time, except casework mostly done by their staff, is no more than worthless lobby fodder with the occasional soundbite. Most debates in the house are desultory beyond belief. Many have no understanding of the meaning of legislation they approve.
In an ultra materialist society overwhelmingly the most able avoid direct political engagement absolutely. Think about the calibre of our top people in medicine, science, law, humanities, finance, business. (Then compare with the average MP, or the front bench). They almost all keep out of the fray.
The question is: What would best facilitate getting a decent pool of outstandingly able people into parliament and government?
Disallow anyone who has a PPE degree. Disallow anyone who has worked for a political party or affiliated organisation.
It looks quite possible that North Korean troops might soon be fighting in Ukraine; or at the very least, taking over rear-area jobs to allow more Russians forwards.
Perhaps those who screech about Putin's 'red lines' should ask themselves why Putin is allowed to do this, yet if we were to send in troops in large numbers to help Ukraine it would, in their eyes, be an escalation.
Could it be related to the asymmetry of political discourse?
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
From what I've read the US has made it clear to VVP what the consequences would be of using nukes. The Americans could do an awful lot to vulnerable Russian infrastructure by purely conventional means. The advantage of being an actual superpower which can project force.
Indeed. There's also the valid concern (from Putin's POV) that use of nukes will lose him the support of some of the countries that are still friendly towards his imperialistic, fascistic regime, e.g. China.
It looks quite possible that North Korean troops might soon be fighting in Ukraine; or at the very least, taking over rear-area jobs to allow more Russians forwards.
Perhaps those who screech about Putin's 'red lines' should ask themselves why Putin is allowed to do this, yet if we were to send in troops in large numbers to help Ukraine it would, in their eyes, be an escalation.
Could it be related to the asymmetry of political discourse?
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
It's a logical error to say that because Putin hasn't used nuclear weapons yet, he will never use nuclear weapons. If there came a point where Putin's personal safety was at risk, either from his enemies or his own people turning on him, then I'm sure he would indeed risk using them. More likely perhaps is that he'd feel justified in using some sort of weapon (though not a nuke) directly against a Western country, perhaps Germany or Poland, given their proximity, support for Ukraine and history.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
I suspect your bar for what counts as racism is pretty high. Personally, I think Trumps 'black jobs' comment is racist but I appreciate others might disagree.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
This is sheer speculation, but I wonder whether the job expected by constituents who vote for an MP like Farage isn't surgeries but more to hear their point of view articulated publicly.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
It's a logical error to say that because Putin hasn't used nuclear weapons yet, he will never use nuclear weapons. If there came a point where Putin's personal safety was at risk, either from his enemies or his own people turning on him, then I'm sure he would indeed risk using them. More likely perhaps is that he'd feel justified in using some sort of weapon (though not a nuke) directly against a Western country, perhaps Germany or Poland, given their proximity, support for Ukraine and history.
Whenever have I said that he'd never use nuclear weapons?
The points are this:
*) Putin has repeatedly set red lines in this war. When those red lines are breached, he does nothing. Providing tanks and providing long-range weapons are just two examples.
*) There are limited use-cases for tactical or strategic nuclear weapons that will help Russia in their war effort.
*) The downsides from using nukes are very considerable.
While at the same time introducing a load of new red tape on workers rights...
A stupid childish catechism which reveals only a politician who has not bothered to read the Grenfell Tower report and has no understanding of the history of finance in the last 50 years.
I’m a little ambivalent on this - it depends on the job and the circumstances. Being a member of parliament is not a job - it’s holding an office. And office holders often have other jobs or roles - government ministers, opposition spokespeople, party officials.
Where MPs want to retain professional standards in areas such as law or medicine I see no real issue. If their additional income is corrupting then we have a problem. But the problem is that we will just get a ban on “second jobs” without much rationale or detailed thinking as to what that means in practice.
Coming up with an approved list of second jobs is bound to be contentious. It simply has to be all or nothing.
What problem is this change designed to solve?
MPs like Farage not holding surgeries but presenting shows on GB News.
Playing devil's advocate: why is that a problem, if it is fully registered and his constituents know it is going on? And would it be any better if it was BBC News?
(I dislike Farage, and think many MPs hold far too few surgeries - albeit sometimes with good reasons. But don't expect him to automagically start holding surgeries if he is banned from TV.)
It is amusing that a certain section of the PB commentariate are so unhappy about Farage and his media appearences when none of them seem to have ever said a word about Diane Abbott and her regular appearences on Weekly Politics.
MPs should be free to make as many media appearances as they wish. But ‘free’ needs to be on both sides and cover both meanings of the word.
The former MP Caroline Flint was on Sky a few weeks ago arguing against MPs being paid to go on TV (because of, you guessed it, Farage). Problem is, she herself took money for going on This Week.
I’ll guess that half the MPs have some media income, and probably 10% have a ‘regular’ media gig for a TV station or newspaper. They can boost their profile and earn money, it’s a win-win for a backbench MP.
You can read the Register of Interests. I’ve not been through it systematically, but I’ve browsed and only a small proportion of MPs have any media income.
As a matter of interest, did you notice any particular MPs whose external income seems highly disproportionate? They would seem to be the ones most likely to resign their seats..... Betting opportunities.....
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
We currently have a problem in the local town with a gang of youths from not only the town but outside coming and making bother. Petty vandalism, harassing shops and customers, petty vandalism and the like. Shops are locking their door at 5PM and customers can enter when let in. The Police have been as much use as a marzipan dildo until recently. Now they are raising their presence and have spoken to a few kids and their parents but it persists. People get fed up
The local elections next year won't say much for Reform based on where they are but in places like Durham they will really need to go forward there and pick up a number of councillors if they are to have any impact.
This is far from unique and a problem which exists in many small towns and parts of cities.
In the "old days", we'd have had the local copper "give 'em a clip round the ear and send 'em home". Well, whether that ever actually worked I don't know but is anyone arguing for a physical response and if so, would a clip round the ear work these days?
What then is the solution? Finding out who they are isn't difficult so if we go and "talk to the parents", will that achieve anything? Did it ever? Are the school aware of what these children/young people/strudents are doing - would they take the line that if it happens outside their gates they don't care?
Is it simply a question of them being "bored"? I suspect most youth-based activities have long since been closed because of lack of funding (how short-sighted we were and are) but there's a fundamental at work here to do with how those young people who fall out of education and can't fall into work are living their lives.
While at the same time introducing a load of new red tape on workers rights...
A stupid childish catechism which reveals only a politician who has not bothered to read the Grenfell Tower report and has no understanding of the history of finance in the last 50 years.
Both of which relate to the piling up of paperwork and process, without any concern for the actual goal.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
I suspect your bar for what counts as racism is pretty high. Personally, I think Trumps 'black jobs' comment is racist but I appreciate others might disagree.
Accusing Haitian immigrants of eating pets seems pretty obviously racist. Calling Mexican immigrants rapists ditto. There is good evidence of Trump making openly racist statements in private. He seems pretty obviously racist to anyone paying attention. Not in a kkk kind of way, just a kind of basic racist old man kind of way.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
It's a logical error to say that because Putin hasn't used nuclear weapons yet, he will never use nuclear weapons. If there came a point where Putin's personal safety was at risk, either from his enemies or his own people turning on him, then I'm sure he would indeed risk using them. More likely perhaps is that he'd feel justified in using some sort of weapon (though not a nuke) directly against a Western country, perhaps Germany or Poland, given their proximity, support for Ukraine and history.
Perhaps, but at that point the people around Putin who would have to follow those orders would be thinking ahead to their future under a new regime. They're unlikely to follow Putin's orders in such a scenario.
The paradox of nuclear weapons is that their use is not particularly effective. Their value lies in deterrence. But Russia's nuclear weapons only have deterrence value now insofar as they deter use of nuclear weapons against Russia, and they deter a direct attempt at regime change.
Otherwise they have zero deterrent value, because it's been shown repeatedly that Russia will back down and not use them.
Unfortunately the weak White House is terrified of Russia losing, and are deterring themselves.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
It's a logical error to say that because Putin hasn't used nuclear weapons yet, he will never use nuclear weapons. If there came a point where Putin's personal safety was at risk, either from his enemies or his own people turning on him, then I'm sure he would indeed risk using them. More likely perhaps is that he'd feel justified in using some sort of weapon (though not a nuke) directly against a Western country, perhaps Germany or Poland, given their proximity, support for Ukraine and history.
Whenever have I said that he'd never use nuclear weapons?
The points are this:
*) Putin has repeatedly set red lines in this war. When those red lines are breached, he does nothing. Providing tanks and providing long-range weapons are just two examples.
*) There are limited use-cases for tactical or strategic nuclear weapons that will help Russia in their war effort.
*) The downsides from using nukes are very considerable.
The implication of your statements is that Putin would never use nuclear weapons, given you appear to be suggesting that because he hasn't done so when some of his red lines have been breached, there is no risk involved in continuing to breach his red lines. This is the logical error.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
How do you distinguish between xenophobia and racism ? (Genuine question.) In any event, the xenophobia has become pretty clearly based, with its talk of "poisoning the blood", etc.
"The Democrats say, 'Please don't call them animals. They're humans.' I said, 'No, they're not humans, they're not humans, they're animals,'" said Trump
This is textbook dehumanisation. We’ve seen this over and over, with the Holocaust, with the Armenian genocide, with the Rwandan genocide.
And it’s clear that Trump’s views (like Musk’s) are racist, like when he talks about “bad genes”. Trump has a long history of racism. We can go back to the 1973 case where the US government sued him for racial discrimination in renting practices. He has constantly attacked people born in the US, be that promoting conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the US; claiming the judge in the Trump University case would be biased because he’s of “Mexican heritage”; saying of 4 non-white, Democratic congresswomen, 3 of whom were born in the US, “Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” As you note, he has repeatedly talked of how immigrants, "they're poisoning the blood of our country". He has repeatedly lied about black Americans, e.g. made-up crime statistics. It was never just about immigration.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
Repeatedly it's the other way round. The threat of an overwhelming conventional response from NATO was successful in deterring Russia from ant serious considerations of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Strength works. Being deterred and backing down just invites the other side to push their luck further. The West is being too weak and it's making the situation worse
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
Indeed Storm Shadow Missiles have not been authorised yet for attacks on Russian territory, if Moscow was hit by them what is to stop Putin going mad and hitting a Baltic capital or even London, Paris or DC or NYC in response
I’m a little ambivalent on this - it depends on the job and the circumstances. Being a member of parliament is not a job - it’s holding an office. And office holders often have other jobs or roles - government ministers, opposition spokespeople, party officials.
Where MPs want to retain professional standards in areas such as law or medicine I see no real issue. If their additional income is corrupting then we have a problem. But the problem is that we will just get a ban on “second jobs” without much rationale or detailed thinking as to what that means in practice.
Coming up with an approved list of second jobs is bound to be contentious. It simply has to be all or nothing.
What problem is this change designed to solve?
MPs like Farage not holding surgeries but presenting shows on GB News.
Playing devil's advocate: why is that a problem, if it is fully registered and his constituents know it is going on? And would it be any better if it was BBC News?
(I dislike Farage, and think many MPs hold far too few surgeries - albeit sometimes with good reasons. But don't expect him to automagically start holding surgeries if he is banned from TV.)
It is amusing that a certain section of the PB commentariate are so unhappy about Farage and his media appearences when none of them seem to have ever said a word about Diane Abbott and her regular appearences on Weekly Politics.
MPs should be free to make as many media appearances as they wish. But ‘free’ needs to be on both sides and cover both meanings of the word.
The former MP Caroline Flint was on Sky a few weeks ago arguing against MPs being paid to go on TV (because of, you guessed it, Farage). Problem is, she herself took money for going on This Week.
I’ll guess that half the MPs have some media income, and probably 10% have a ‘regular’ media gig for a TV station or newspaper. They can boost their profile and earn money, it’s a win-win for a backbench MP.
You can read the Register of Interests. I’ve not been through it systematically, but I’ve browsed and only a small proportion of MPs have any media income.
As a matter of interest, did you notice any particular MPs whose external income seems highly disproportionate? They would seem to be the ones most likely to resign their seats..... Betting opportunities.....
The only one who really stood out on that front was Nigel Farage!
While at the same time introducing a load of new red tape on workers rights...
A stupid childish catechism which reveals only a politician who has not bothered to read the Grenfell Tower report and has no understanding of the history of finance in the last 50 years.
Both of which relate to the piling up of paperwork and process, without any concern for the actual goal.
Well, that's not quite what the Grenfell Tower Report says. It makes a very clear link between politicians' demands for No More Red Tape and the refusal of the department to implement the recommendations of the Lakanal Fire coroner, to take only one of many many examples. And that weak regulatory system and feeble enforcement was deliberately and dishonestly exploited by bad actors, whose products directly led to the deaths of 72 people.
When politicians talk in trite terms they are not addressing the very real issues that arise which is why in this country we have all the disadvantages of a bureaucracy and few of its advantages. The state abdicating from its basic responsibilities is not a good thing. And the Red Tape / Blob discussion is frankly a facile way of approaching it.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
If we ever got to that point, there would be mass panic in the UK and across most of Europe.
There's a reason why no one has used a nuclear weapon in anger in the last 80 years and a reason why for all the posturing direct confrontation between NATO and first the Warsaw Pact and now Russia has been largely avoided.
Nobody on the NATO side is going to risk a nuclear confrontation - Putin isn't going to risk it either. We all know escalation and we all know the lifestyle which we mostly enjoy (trips to foreign places, trying exotic food, sampling the history and culture of largely unknown parts of the world) ends with the first missile. Putin enjoys the finer things of life - so do Xi, BIden, Netanyahu, Starmer, Modi etc, etc. No one is going to risk it all.
I don't know how Russia and Ukraine will end up - probably some form of unsatisfactory compromise but as a wise man once said if everyone wakes up alive in the morning and can save a little face, isn't that the best outcome?
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
It's a logical error to say that because Putin hasn't used nuclear weapons yet, he will never use nuclear weapons. If there came a point where Putin's personal safety was at risk, either from his enemies or his own people turning on him, then I'm sure he would indeed risk using them. More likely perhaps is that he'd feel justified in using some sort of weapon (though not a nuke) directly against a Western country, perhaps Germany or Poland, given their proximity, support for Ukraine and history.
Whenever have I said that he'd never use nuclear weapons?
The points are this:
*) Putin has repeatedly set red lines in this war. When those red lines are breached, he does nothing. Providing tanks and providing long-range weapons are just two examples.
*) There are limited use-cases for tactical or strategic nuclear weapons that will help Russia in their war effort.
*) The downsides from using nukes are very considerable.
The implication of your statements is that Putin would never use nuclear weapons, given you appear to be suggesting that because he hasn't done so when some of his red lines have been breached, there is no risk involved in continuing to breach his red lines. This is the logical error.
No. It's about *this war*.
If NATO troops were about to roll into the Kremlin, then yes, he may well use them. But losing his pathetic little war in Ukraine would not lead to that. In fact, Putin could withdraw all his troops from Ukraine's pre-2014 borders and his country would be intact - as I daresay the Ukrainians would be more than happy to withdraw from Kursk in kind.
And the natural consequence of what you say is to give Putin whatever he wants. Because as we cave in, his red lines will move, and he will demand more.
Where are your personal red lines? At what point should we tell Putin "No more?" Romania? The Baltics? Germany? Because unless you quite like fascist imperialism, there will come a point where we need to say "no more".
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
Indeed Storm Shadow Missiles have not been authorised yet for attacks on Russian territory, if Moscow was hit by them what is to stop Putin going mad and hitting a Baltic capital or even London, Paris or DC or NYC in response
And when Putin said similar about western tanks being provided to Ukraine? Or other arms? Time and time again, he says this shit, and people believe him. People like you are Putin's greatest weapon.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
Repeatedly it's the other way round. The threat of an overwhelming conventional response from NATO was successful in deterring Russia from ant serious considerations of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Strength works. Being deterred and backing down just invites the other side to push their luck further. The West is being too weak and it's making the situation worse
I’m not arguing the details. I’m arguing the principle and - like others - pointing out your illogicality. Just because Putin hasn’t gone nuclear yet doesn’t mean he never would
If NATO was raining down missiles on Moscow or St Petersburg Putin would use his nuclear arsenal in some form, to get us to stop. Because, if he didn’t, he’d soon be replaced by a new leader that WOULD do that
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
I suspect that is wishful thinking. I also think, living in a seat predicted to go Reform on the latest polling, is the plague on all your houses view comes from the feeling none of these parties have ever done anything for areas like mine. Rochdale is right in so far as areas like mine, in decline, want stuff done in our towns to revive them.
We currently have a problem in the local town with a gang of youths from not only the town but outside coming and making bother. Petty vandalism, harassing shops and customers, petty vandalism and the like. Shops are locking their door at 5PM and customers can enter when let in. The Police have been as much use as a marzipan dildo until recently. Now they are raising their presence and have spoken to a few kids and their parents but it persists. People get fed up.
The local elections next year won't say much for Reform based on where they are but in places like Durham they will really need to go forward there and pick up a number of councillors if they are to have any impact.
This is the same reason why people are voting for Trump in the US. It's not because they positively like him, it's a protest vote about the fact that things have got worse over the last few decades in their area.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
If we ever got to that point, there would be mass panic in the UK and across most of Europe.
There's a reason why no one has used a nuclear weapon in anger in the last 80 years and a reason why for all the posturing direct confrontation between NATO and first the Warsaw Pact and now Russia has been largely avoided.
Nobody on the NATO side is going to risk a nuclear confrontation - Putin isn't going to risk it either. We all know escalation and we all know the lifestyle which we mostly enjoy (trips to foreign places, trying exotic food, sampling the history and culture of largely unknown parts of the world) ends with the first missile. Putin enjoys the finer things of life - so do Xi, BIden, Netanyahu, Starmer, Modi etc, etc. No one is going to risk it all.
I don't know how Russia and Ukraine will end up - probably some form of unsatisfactory compromise but as a wise man once said if everyone wakes up alive in the morning and can save a little face, isn't that the best outcome?
I think there is a sort of MODIFIED MUTUALLY ASSURED DISTRUCTION
If we nuke them then they nuke us etc etc. But either way Putin himself would not survive for 24 hours. He wouldn't like that.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
How do you distinguish between xenophobia and racism ? (Genuine question.) In any event, the xenophobia has become pretty clearly based, with its talk of "poisoning the blood", etc.
"The Democrats say, 'Please don't call them animals. They're humans.' I said, 'No, they're not humans, they're not humans, they're animals,'" said Trump
This is textbook dehumanisation. We’ve seen this over and over, with the Holocaust, with the Armenian genocide, with the Rwandan genocide.
And it’s clear that Trump’s views (like Musk’s) are racist, like when he talks about “bad genes”. Trump has a long history of racism. We can go back to the 1973 case where the US government sued him for racial discrimination in renting practices. He has constantly attacked people born in the US, be that promoting conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the US; claiming the judge in the Trump University case would be biased because he’s of “Mexican heritage”; saying of 4 non-white, Democratic congresswomen, 3 of whom were born in the US, “Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” As you note, he has repeatedly talked of how immigrants, "they're poisoning the blood of our country". He has repeatedly lied about black Americans, e.g. made-up crime statistics. It was never just about immigration.
Which is why I was curious about how Leon would define 'racism'.
The Rwandan genocide is an interesting test.
If he wants to say that wasn't about racism, then fine. But the dehumanisation of 'the other' that presaged it is very much the same kind of thing Trump is now engaged in. Calling it xenophobia doesn't really make it any more palatable.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
If we ever got to that point, there would be mass panic in the UK and across most of Europe.
There's a reason why no one has used a nuclear weapon in anger in the last 80 years and a reason why for all the posturing direct confrontation between NATO and first the Warsaw Pact and now Russia has been largely avoided.
Nobody on the NATO side is going to risk a nuclear confrontation - Putin isn't going to risk it either. We all know escalation and we all know the lifestyle which we mostly enjoy (trips to foreign places, trying exotic food, sampling the history and culture of largely unknown parts of the world) ends with the first missile. Putin enjoys the finer things of life - so do Xi, BIden, Netanyahu, Starmer, Modi etc, etc. No one is going to risk it all.
I don't know how Russia and Ukraine will end up - probably some form of unsatisfactory compromise but as a wise man once said if everyone wakes up alive in the morning and can save a little face, isn't that the best outcome?
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
There is a local planning process in place - local plans are a requirement for every principal authority outlining the numbers of houses and the densities and where they should be built.
The Local Plans go through an intense public consultation process with meetings and roadshows so it's not as though people don't have the opportunity to have their say if they want it. I'm not sure I know what this "process" sector is you mention but the Local Plan finally has to be approved by the local elected representatives but said representatives are hamstrung by Government housebuilding quotas.
The Local Plans are often the political faultline - councils of whatever stripe (or none) trying to create plans to meet national housebuilding targets find local opposition from those of all political colours (despite what some on here would have you believe) opposed to further development in their area.
This is a good comment. The process is a mess, though, and one of 3 or 4 areas that have to be properly reformed/aligned to make house building happen.
I got a development through in 2013 in a hurry because the Local Plan was coming in and the sustainability analysis therein of my site was flawed ... and it was do it now or fight a difficult battle.
We got it through on Appeal, after a political no from the Planning Committee over a recommendation to approve.
In 2024 there is still not (afaik) a Local Plan in place in Ashfield, due mainly to the local politics being a shark-infested custard.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
How much have you been drinking? I had two beers and a glass of wine on Friday and pushed my sleep score down into the low 70s.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
If we ever got to that point, there would be mass panic in the UK and across most of Europe.
There's a reason why no one has used a nuclear weapon in anger in the last 80 years and a reason why for all the posturing direct confrontation between NATO and first the Warsaw Pact and now Russia has been largely avoided.
Nobody on the NATO side is going to risk a nuclear confrontation - Putin isn't going to risk it either. We all know escalation and we all know the lifestyle which we mostly enjoy (trips to foreign places, trying exotic food, sampling the history and culture of largely unknown parts of the world) ends with the first missile. Putin enjoys the finer things of life - so do Xi, BIden, Netanyahu, Starmer, Modi etc, etc. No one is going to risk it all.
I don't know how Russia and Ukraine will end up - probably some form of unsatisfactory compromise but as a wise man once said if everyone wakes up alive in the morning and can save a little face, isn't that the best outcome?
The question is which side we force to stop fighting. If it's Ukraine, then it's probably only a pause at best, and at worst a surrender.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
I suspect that is wishful thinking. I also think, living in a seat predicted to go Reform on the latest polling, is the plague on all your houses view comes from the feeling none of these parties have ever done anything for areas like mine. Rochdale is right in so far as areas like mine, in decline, want stuff done in our towns to revive them.
We currently have a problem in the local town with a gang of youths from not only the town but outside coming and making bother. Petty vandalism, harassing shops and customers, petty vandalism and the like. Shops are locking their door at 5PM and customers can enter when let in. The Police have been as much use as a marzipan dildo until recently. Now they are raising their presence and have spoken to a few kids and their parents but it persists. People get fed up.
The local elections next year won't say much for Reform based on where they are but in places like Durham they will really need to go forward there and pick up a number of councillors if they are to have any impact.
This is the same reason why people are voting for Trump in the US. It's not because they positively like him, it's a protest vote about the fact that things have got worse over the last few decades in their area.
And that's the central fact of politics right now. It's probably always been true, but we're experiencing it in an extreme way right now.
Any government that can make life better for voters has a good chance of sweeping the board, and any government that doesn't has a good chance of being swept off the board. All else is noise.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
Indeed Storm Shadow Missiles have not been authorised yet for attacks on Russian territory, if Moscow was hit by them what is to stop Putin going mad and hitting a Baltic capital or even London, Paris or DC or NYC in response
NATO has effective deterrence against an attack from Russia, which is why Russia invaded non-NATO members Georgia and Ukraine, but hasn't invaded NATO members Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
It's a logical error to say that because Putin hasn't used nuclear weapons yet, he will never use nuclear weapons. If there came a point where Putin's personal safety was at risk, either from his enemies or his own people turning on him, then I'm sure he would indeed risk using them. More likely perhaps is that he'd feel justified in using some sort of weapon (though not a nuke) directly against a Western country, perhaps Germany or Poland, given their proximity, support for Ukraine and history.
Whenever have I said that he'd never use nuclear weapons?
The points are this:
*) Putin has repeatedly set red lines in this war. When those red lines are breached, he does nothing. Providing tanks and providing long-range weapons are just two examples.
*) There are limited use-cases for tactical or strategic nuclear weapons that will help Russia in their war effort.
*) The downsides from using nukes are very considerable.
The implication of your statements is that Putin would never use nuclear weapons, given you appear to be suggesting that because he hasn't done so when some of his red lines have been breached, there is no risk involved in continuing to breach his red lines. This is the logical error.
No. It's about *this war*.
If NATO troops were about to roll into the Kremlin, then yes, he may well use them. But losing his pathetic little war in Ukraine would not lead to that. In fact, Putin could withdraw all his troops from Ukraine's pre-2014 borders and his country would be intact - as I daresay the Ukrainians would be more than happy to withdraw from Kursk in kind.
And the natural consequence of what you say is to give Putin whatever he wants. Because as we cave in, his red lines will move, and he will demand more.
Where are your personal red lines? At what point should we tell Putin "No more?" Romania? The Baltics? Germany? Because unless you quite like fascist imperialism, there will come a point where we need to say "no more".
FFS, why is it always with me or against me with you? Are you incapable of following a nuanced argument without resorting to casting personal aspersions? FWIW, I fully support the current approach of resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine without actually attacking Russian territory. I'd even support the use of foreign troops in Ukraine. But it isn't defeatist to acknowledge the dangers of pushing Russia into a corner; indeed it is stupid to ignore those dangers.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
How do you distinguish between xenophobia and racism ? (Genuine question.) In any event, the xenophobia has become pretty clearly based, with its talk of "poisoning the blood", etc.
"The Democrats say, 'Please don't call them animals. They're humans.' I said, 'No, they're not humans, they're not humans, they're animals,'" said Trump
This is textbook dehumanisation. We’ve seen this over and over, with the Holocaust, with the Armenian genocide, with the Rwandan genocide.
And it’s clear that Trump’s views (like Musk’s) are racist, like when he talks about “bad genes”. Trump has a long history of racism. We can go back to the 1973 case where the US government sued him for racial discrimination in renting practices. He has constantly attacked people born in the US, be that promoting conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the US; claiming the judge in the Trump University case would be biased because he’s of “Mexican heritage”; saying of 4 non-white, Democratic congresswomen, 3 of whom were born in the US, “Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” As you note, he has repeatedly talked of how immigrants, "they're poisoning the blood of our country". He has repeatedly lied about black Americans, e.g. made-up crime statistics. It was never just about immigration.
Indeed. If Trump isn't racist we might as well retire the word.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
Just start a tracked activity (walk etc). GPS tracking uses battery so is best reserved for exercise you want to record.
I'll claim 90 last night, but 57 earlier in the week after watching Threads.
At least I don't have to watch it again for another 40 years.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
I suspect your bar for what counts as racism is pretty high. Personally, I think Trumps 'black jobs' comment is racist but I appreciate others might disagree.
Accusing Haitian immigrants of eating pets seems pretty obviously racist. Calling Mexican immigrants rapists ditto. There is good evidence of Trump making openly racist statements in private. He seems pretty obviously racist to anyone paying attention. Not in a kkk kind of way, just a kind of basic racist old man kind of way.
His mother was, of course, an immigrant. And his wife is. And 'recent' ones, as are a large number of 'Americans'. The majority of African-Americans are, of course, descended from involuntary immigrants.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
From what I've read the US has made it clear to VVP what the consequences would be of using nukes. The Americans could do an awful lot to vulnerable Russian infrastructure by purely conventional means. The advantage of being an actual superpower which can project force.
Putin would also lose support from China if he went nuclear. Nuclear war is the last thing China wants over Putin's "special operation".
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
Repeatedly it's the other way round. The threat of an overwhelming conventional response from NATO was successful in deterring Russia from ant serious considerations of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Strength works. Being deterred and backing down just invites the other side to push their luck further. The West is being too weak and it's making the situation worse
I’m not arguing the details. I’m arguing the principle and - like others - pointing out your illogicality. Just because Putin hasn’t gone nuclear yet doesn’t mean he never would
If NATO was raining down missiles on Moscow or St Petersburg Putin would use his nuclear arsenal in some form, to get us to stop. Because, if he didn’t, he’d soon be replaced by a new leader that WOULD do that
But no-one is calling for NATO to attack Russia directly. Only provide Ukraine with the weapons to do so. The distinction is important, because it means NATO retains the deterrence of becoming directly involved in response to a Russian attack on NATO.
It also clearly signals to Russia a way for them to stop the weapon supplies to Ukraine and the attacks on Russia - withdraw from Ukraine. Which is why the attacks from Ukraine are not existential and Russia can safely lose the war.
But a direct attack from NATO would be different, as it wouldn't be obvious how Russia could end such a conflict. That's why I'm not calling for that.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
It's a logical error to say that because Putin hasn't used nuclear weapons yet, he will never use nuclear weapons. If there came a point where Putin's personal safety was at risk, either from his enemies or his own people turning on him, then I'm sure he would indeed risk using them. More likely perhaps is that he'd feel justified in using some sort of weapon (though not a nuke) directly against a Western country, perhaps Germany or Poland, given their proximity, support for Ukraine and history.
Whenever have I said that he'd never use nuclear weapons?
The points are this:
*) Putin has repeatedly set red lines in this war. When those red lines are breached, he does nothing. Providing tanks and providing long-range weapons are just two examples.
*) There are limited use-cases for tactical or strategic nuclear weapons that will help Russia in their war effort.
*) The downsides from using nukes are very considerable.
The implication of your statements is that Putin would never use nuclear weapons, given you appear to be suggesting that because he hasn't done so when some of his red lines have been breached, there is no risk involved in continuing to breach his red lines. This is the logical error.
Dark subject this morning. But, you do wonder how well maintained the Russian Nuclear threat is. We saw the tanks which had been mothballed for 20/30 years could hardly trundle out of their stores when they were taken to the Ukraine. It probably wasn't a total lie that the money intended to maintain them had been spent on vodka.
MAD requires immediate readiness. If there is a month's work of untrained lads pulling 40 year old materiel out of sheds with tractors and fork lifts and trying to pump up flat tyres then there will be a sort of un-intended warning.
AND presumably some of the more able soldiers are currently in Ukraine or is even that naive
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
The interesting problem Reform will hit at some point is the calibre of their top support base. Beyond Farage - who is very able in a particular way - there are currently no names at all, and in particular no names with an apparent capacity to run a medium size or large organisation - like a council, or a ministry.
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
From what I've read the US has made it clear to VVP what the consequences would be of using nukes. The Americans could do an awful lot to vulnerable Russian infrastructure by purely conventional means. The advantage of being an actual superpower which can project force.
Putin would also lose support from China if he went nuclear. Nuclear war is the last thing China wants over Putin's "special operation".
If Putin is only not nuking Ukraine thanks to Chinese disapproval then we really should be worrying.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
I suspect your bar for what counts as racism is pretty high. Personally, I think Trumps 'black jobs' comment is racist but I appreciate others might disagree.
Accusing Haitian immigrants of eating pets seems pretty obviously racist. Calling Mexican immigrants rapists ditto. There is good evidence of Trump making openly racist statements in private. He seems pretty obviously racist to anyone paying attention. Not in a kkk kind of way, just a kind of basic racist old man kind of way.
There is also his threat to forcibly export legal migrants, which would certainly fall into the category of racism
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
The interesting problem Reform will hit at some point is the calibre of their top support base. Beyond Farage - who is very able in a particular way - there are currently no names at all, and in particular no names with an apparent capacity to run a medium size or large organisation - like a council, or a ministry.
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
Farage has said he wants to build Reform into a serious party
I suspect it’s a reach too far. It’s so hard in the UK with FPTP. Can he really find - as you say - lots of capable and sane people willing to be candidates for a controversial right wing party? I doubt it
That said, remember what he did with UKIP. We Brexited precisely because of what he achieved with UKIP. So only a fool writes him off entirely
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
Ukraine are occupying parts of Kursk Oblast and have hit dozens of targets in Russia
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
But there is a limit. If NATO began hurling big missiles at Moscow or St Pete’s then we’d quickly get a nuclear response
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
Indeed Storm Shadow Missiles have not been authorised yet for attacks on Russian territory, if Moscow was hit by them what is to stop Putin going mad and hitting a Baltic capital or even London, Paris or DC or NYC in response
NATO has effective deterrence against an attack from Russia, which is why Russia invaded non-NATO members Georgia and Ukraine, but hasn't invaded NATO members Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania.
Not invaded no but Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other nation on earth, even if its economy and conventional military is less strong than the big western nations in NATO
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
The interesting problem Reform will hit at some point is the calibre of their top support base. Beyond Farage - who is very able in a particular way - there are currently no names at all, and in particular no names with an apparent capacity to run a medium size or large organisation - like a council, or a ministry.
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
Scarily Richard Tice has more experience running businesses than the whole of the current cabinet combined.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
The thing is we are then also going to give in to Saudis and China...I believe Shein want to list on FTSE after been banned from NYSE because of the way they bypass sanctions on the use of slave labour.
I would turn several comments on this thread round. If we are unable to attract MPs of a sufficient calibre without them having second jobs during their time in parliament, they should be paid more.
I'm not sure this is the case by the way. I suspect it's just special pleading. But the principle applies. MPs have going rates, like the rest of us
The quality of MPs is piss poor. The question is would more pay solve that. I think a big issue is that now with social media, basically your whole life can be under the spotlight 24/7, most high calibre people can earn a lot more money and be totally anonymous to the world.
I'm not wholly convinced by the piss poor comment.
Let's see how the new Lib Dem intake turn out - there are some very capable people there.
On the finances, I think it's absurd to pretend that £91k plus a superb pension scheme and all the rest is inadequate, especially as it includes fully funded accommodation in London.
If being in the top 5% (I estimate) of the salary profile plus a generous package and expenses is not sufficient for someone to be an MP, let them take a running jump.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
I suspect your bar for what counts as racism is pretty high. Personally, I think Trumps 'black jobs' comment is racist but I appreciate others might disagree.
Accusing Haitian immigrants of eating pets seems pretty obviously racist. Calling Mexican immigrants rapists ditto. There is good evidence of Trump making openly racist statements in private. He seems pretty obviously racist to anyone paying attention. Not in a kkk kind of way, just a kind of basic racist old man kind of way.
His mother was, of course, an immigrant. And his wife is. And 'recent' ones, as are a large number of 'Americans'. The majority of African-Americans are, of course, descended from involuntary immigrants.
His first wife was another immigrant, as were his paternal grandparents. But they were all white. When Trump says “immigrant”, he means black or brown, Hispanic or Muslim.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
At the same time, they have gone, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry I called you a bus wanker, DP world...
In previous times, the line the UK government would raise the things we object to with them and attach conditions to anything we want to do with them.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
There is a local planning process in place - local plans are a requirement for every principal authority outlining the numbers of houses and the densities and where they should be built.
The Local Plans go through an intense public consultation process with meetings and roadshows so it's not as though people don't have the opportunity to have their say if they want it. I'm not sure I know what this "process" sector is you mention but the Local Plan finally has to be approved by the local elected representatives but said representatives are hamstrung by Government housebuilding quotas.
The Local Plans are often the political faultline - councils of whatever stripe (or none) trying to create plans to meet national housebuilding targets find local opposition from those of all political colours (despite what some on here would have you believe) opposed to further development in their area.
This is a good comment. The process is a mess, though, and one of 3 or 4 areas that have to be properly reformed/aligned to make house building happen.
I got a development through in 2013 in a hurry because the Local Plan was coming in and the sustainability analysis therein of my site was flawed ... and it was do it now or fight a difficult battle.
We got it through on Appeal, after a political no from the Planning Committee over a recommendation to approve.
In 2024 there is still not (afaik) a Local Plan in place in Ashfield, due mainly to the local politics being a shark-infested custard.
The Local Plan process is incapable of delivering large scale projects hence their being designated national infrastructure projects. A refusal when the officers have recommended granting is pretty well free money. It is a very bad part of the process, the officers are town planners, the inspector is a town planner, it is virtually unheard of for an inspector to go with the members against the officers.
Comments
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1845488922752688402
Public Service isn't for everyone - being an MP is hard work. I can only imagine the volume of casework my local MP, Stephen Timms, has to manage and while I've never voted for him, I have nothing but admiration for his dedication to our local area and his constituents and while I've no knowledge of his personal finances and have seen him shopping at Sainsbury's, I think he does the job because he wants to.
Looking at all the Conservatives unceremoniously booted out in July, how many of them would "want another go" or would they rather have a quieter life doing their best for their family in a career or profession from which they voluntarily excluded for five years (and in many professions, five years is an eternity in terms of carrer progression)?
@HYUFD or someone could no doubt tell me but how many of the 121 MPs currently in the Conservative Parliamentary Party have had experience of Opposition - if all you've known is Government and the privileges of that, how is it to wake up one day and find all that gone and to be frankly a backbench irrelevance when Ben Houchen or Tim Oliver probably have more actual power and influence?
Being an MP isn't like other jobs - you can be thrown out however "well" you think you've done. The only performance measurement is the ballot box every 4-5 years. Does this mean however that when you stand and are elected you have implicitly contracted yourself to serve a full term as an MP? Clearly not - there may be previously unknown factors (health) which force you to stand down or you may get a better offer abroad.
If you want to leave a job because you don't want to do it any more, that's your prerogative and shouldn't the same rules apply to MPs?
Rather it's saying you can't vote for a candidate and disclaim support for the central policy and overarching theme of their campaign.
That's just not the same thing as saying there are a few policies I don't agree with.
https://youtu.be/Xo1w2LnQz1Q?si=wcBU87VJ5Z-zP6rR
Not a taunt - a genuine query
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
Its front page headline is Blair in rift with Bush over Israel.
President Bush had called for Yasser Arafat to be ousted as leader of the Palestinian authority. Britain, along with the EU and UN rejected this. Kofi Annan warned that a more hardline leader might replace him. Former US Senator George Mitchell, who had tried to broker a Middle East peace deal, expressed similar worries that Islamic Jihad or Hamas could take over.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_United_Kingdom_MPs_by_seniority_(2024–present)&wprov=rarw1
I make it 21.
Some rather rum coves there. Ideological fire is probably pretty helpful at protecting you from the chill winds of impotence and irrelevance.
Motorways generally do little *directly* for residents in a locality, and can have significant downsides in terms of noise. Motorways mostly benefit people who are not local.
Motorways are a classic example where we need national planning, not local.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
Temperature Check (10/11): What’s The Point Of A Model?
https://split-ticket.org/2024/10/12/temperature-check-10-11-whats-the-point-of-a-model/
...If the race were to meaningfully shift, it would be because the underlying data changed. Until that happens, it will continue to say what it has always said: this race is a Toss Up.
That doesn’t mean the election is guaranteed to be close in terms of the actual outcome — recall that a Toss Up fundamentally means that the evidence doesn’t conclusively point to one candidate being clearly ahead. Polling error is correlated, so it’s actually more likely than you might imagine that one candidate is underestimated by surveys and sweeps all swing states come election day. In fact, in our model, there’s a 26% chance that Kamala Harris wins all 7 swing states, and a 25% chance that Donald Trump does so.
But we have no way of knowing ahead of time which way the polling error will break, because it’s famously volatile and unpredictable. Response environments change across cycles, and pollsters make corrections to avoid repeating recent misses, so it’s not possible to confidently predict which side will be underestimated by polls. That’s why the best thing to do is to assume that the polls will be unbiased and keep wide uncertainty bands, which is what our model does...
"People don't want high speed rail, they want their local roads and buses to be better."
Bottom line is that having different bits of government with real powers but working in a hierarchy is probably a good thing.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
(Genuine question.)
In any event, the xenophobia has become pretty clearly based, with its talk of "poisoning the blood", etc.
Trump on immigrants: ‘We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now’
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/07/trump-immigrants-crime-00182702
We currently have a problem in the local town with a gang of youths from not only the town but outside coming and making bother. Petty vandalism, harassing shops and customers, petty vandalism and the like. Shops are locking their door at 5PM and customers can enter when let in. The Police have been as much use as a marzipan dildo until recently. Now they are raising their presence and have spoken to a few kids and their parents but it persists. People get fed up.
The local elections next year won't say much for Reform based on where they are but in places like Durham they will really need to go forward there and pick up a number of councillors if they are to have any impact.
Perhaps those who screech about Putin's 'red lines' should ask themselves why Putin is allowed to do this, yet if we were to send in troops in large numbers to help Ukraine it would, in their eyes, be an escalation.
I bet there'd be a lot less argument over the new power lines in East Anglia, if the local super-abundance of new wind generated electricity meant lower power prices there.
I’m not sure it matters that much. If you want to dislike Trump there a million other very good reasons
Nearly everything they do nearly all the time, except casework mostly done by their staff, is no more than worthless lobby fodder with the occasional soundbite. Most debates in the house are desultory beyond belief. Many have no understanding of the meaning of legislation they approve.
In an ultra materialist society overwhelmingly the most able avoid direct political engagement absolutely. Think about the calibre of our top people in medicine, science, law, humanities, finance, business. (Then compare with the average MP, or the front bench). They almost all keep out of the fray.
The question is: What would best facilitate getting a decent pool of outstandingly able people into parliament and government?
Disallow anyone who has worked for a political party or affiliated organisation.
This has not resulted in nuclear war.
You're just showing yourself to be intimidated by Russia. Weak.
The points are this:
*) Putin has repeatedly set red lines in this war. When those red lines are breached, he does nothing. Providing tanks and providing long-range weapons are just two examples.
*) There are limited use-cases for tactical or strategic nuclear weapons that will help Russia in their war effort.
*) The downsides from using nukes are very considerable.
I imagine Putin would drop a small nuke on a Baltic capital or something. A final warning that we’re close to all out nuclear holocaust
And it would work. We’d back off
In the "old days", we'd have had the local copper "give 'em a clip round the ear and send 'em home". Well, whether that ever actually worked I don't know but is anyone arguing for a physical response and if so, would a clip round the ear work these days?
What then is the solution? Finding out who they are isn't difficult so if we go and "talk to the parents", will that achieve anything? Did it ever? Are the school aware of what these children/young people/strudents are doing - would they take the line that if it happens outside their gates they don't care?
Is it simply a question of them being "bored"? I suspect most youth-based activities have long since been closed because of lack of funding (how short-sighted we were and are) but there's a fundamental at work here to do with how those young people who fall out of education and can't fall into work are living their lives.
80!!
*air punch in Camden*
The paradox of nuclear weapons is that their use is not particularly effective. Their value lies in deterrence. But Russia's nuclear weapons only have deterrence value now insofar as they deter use of nuclear weapons against Russia, and they deter a direct attempt at regime change.
Otherwise they have zero deterrent value, because it's been shown repeatedly that Russia will back down and not use them.
Unfortunately the weak White House is terrified of Russia losing, and are deterring themselves.
From https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-expected-highlight-murder-michigan-woman-immigration-speech-2024-04-02/
This is textbook dehumanisation. We’ve seen this over and over, with the Holocaust, with the Armenian genocide, with the Rwandan genocide.
And it’s clear that Trump’s views (like Musk’s) are racist, like when he talks about “bad genes”. Trump has a long history of racism. We can go back to the 1973 case where the US government sued him for racial discrimination in renting practices. He has constantly attacked people born in the US, be that promoting conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the US; claiming the judge in the Trump University case would be biased because he’s of “Mexican heritage”; saying of 4 non-white, Democratic congresswomen, 3 of whom were born in the US, “Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” As you note, he has repeatedly talked of how immigrants, "they're poisoning the blood of our country". He has repeatedly lied about black Americans, e.g. made-up crime statistics. It was never just about immigration.
Mr. Leon, I'm glad you slept well, although must wonder how much I'd trust a piece of tech about that.
Edited extra bit: on an unrelated note, the Morris Dancer Party is opposed to nuclear apocalypse.
Strength works. Being deterred and backing down just invites the other side to push their luck further. The West is being too weak and it's making the situation worse
When politicians talk in trite terms they are not addressing the very real issues that arise which is why in this country we have all the disadvantages of a bureaucracy and few of its advantages. The state abdicating from its basic responsibilities is not a good thing. And the Red Tape / Blob discussion is frankly a facile way of approaching it.
There's a reason why no one has used a nuclear weapon in anger in the last 80 years and a reason why for all the posturing direct confrontation between NATO and first the Warsaw Pact and now Russia has been largely avoided.
Nobody on the NATO side is going to risk a nuclear confrontation - Putin isn't going to risk it either. We all know escalation and we all know the lifestyle which we mostly enjoy (trips to foreign places, trying exotic food, sampling the history and culture of largely unknown parts of the world) ends with the first missile. Putin enjoys the finer things of life - so do Xi, BIden, Netanyahu, Starmer, Modi etc, etc. No one is going to risk it all.
I don't know how Russia and Ukraine will end up - probably some form of unsatisfactory compromise but as a wise man once said if everyone wakes up alive in the morning and can save a little face, isn't that the best outcome?
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
If NATO troops were about to roll into the Kremlin, then yes, he may well use them. But losing his pathetic little war in Ukraine would not lead to that. In fact, Putin could withdraw all his troops from Ukraine's pre-2014 borders and his country would be intact - as I daresay the Ukrainians would be more than happy to withdraw from Kursk in kind.
And the natural consequence of what you say is to give Putin whatever he wants. Because as we cave in, his red lines will move, and he will demand more.
Where are your personal red lines? At what point should we tell Putin "No more?" Romania? The Baltics? Germany? Because unless you quite like fascist imperialism, there will come a point where we need to say "no more".
If NATO was raining down missiles on Moscow or St Petersburg Putin would use his nuclear arsenal in some form, to get us to stop. Because, if he didn’t, he’d soon be replaced by a new leader that WOULD do that
If we nuke them then they nuke us etc etc. But either way Putin himself would not survive for 24 hours. He wouldn't like that.
The Rwandan genocide is an interesting test.
If he wants to say that wasn't about racism, then fine. But the dehumanisation of 'the other' that presaged it is very much the same kind of thing Trump is now engaged in.
Calling it xenophobia doesn't really make it any more palatable.
I got a development through in 2013 in a hurry because the Local Plan was coming in and the sustainability analysis therein of my site was flawed ... and it was do it now or fight a difficult battle.
We got it through on Appeal, after a political no from the Planning Committee over a recommendation to approve.
In 2024 there is still not (afaik) a Local Plan in place in Ashfield, due mainly to the local politics being a shark-infested custard.
If it's Ukraine, then it's probably only a pause at best, and at worst a surrender.
Any government that can make life better for voters has a good chance of sweeping the board, and any government that doesn't has a good chance of being swept off the board. All else is noise.
In the UK context, it's too soon to tell.
I'll claim 90 last night, but 57 earlier in the week after watching Threads.
At least I don't have to watch it again for another 40 years.
Nuclear war is the last thing China wants over Putin's "special operation".
It also clearly signals to Russia a way for them to stop the weapon supplies to Ukraine and the attacks on Russia - withdraw from Ukraine. Which is why the attacks from Ukraine are not existential and Russia can safely lose the war.
But a direct attack from NATO would be different, as it wouldn't be obvious how Russia could end such a conflict. That's why I'm not calling for that.
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
MAD requires immediate readiness. If there is a month's work of untrained lads pulling 40 year old materiel out of sheds with tractors and fork lifts and trying to pump up flat tyres then there will be a sort of un-intended warning.
AND presumably some of the more able soldiers are currently in Ukraine or is even that naive
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
I suspect it’s a reach too far. It’s so hard in the UK with FPTP. Can he really find - as you say - lots of capable and sane people willing to be candidates for a controversial right wing party? I doubt it
That said, remember what he did with UKIP. We Brexited precisely because of what he achieved with UKIP. So only a fool writes him off entirely
Let's see how the new Lib Dem intake turn out - there are some very capable people there.
On the finances, I think it's absurd to pretend that £91k plus a superb pension scheme and all the rest is inadequate, especially as it includes fully funded accommodation in London.
If being in the top 5% (I estimate) of the salary profile plus a generous package and expenses is not sufficient for someone to be an MP, let them take a running jump.
In previous times, the line the UK government would raise the things we object to with them and attach conditions to anything we want to do with them.