I find myself wanting to take a theatre rig to make it go dark outside @Leon 's flat at 2pm tomorrow, just for the purposes of finding out what will happen .
Where's The Truman Show apparatus when you need it?
I know you don't ordinarily pay for your trips around the world, but maybe use some of your money to have a holiday to Barbados and get some sunshine?
Somewhere like Southern Portugal is very nice this time of year and less than 3hr flight if you need to get back to UK.
The eastern Algarve probably has the nicest climate in Europe. Discuss...
Doesn't get as hideously hot as the Med coast (esp these days), avoids the high winds of the western Algarve
Yeah but the beaches are crab infested mud banks. Much nicer out to the west nearer Albuferia.
Sounds like you have been to the wrong places. There are plenty of very sandy beaches in the East near the border with Spain (although I still prefer west of Faro).
Yes, quite. The beaches near somewhere like Tavira are arguably amongst the finest in Europe. The only caveat is that they can be so wide and long they lack shade. But you can find cute smaller shadier beaches with a short drive
A strange argument
IMO the best Portuguese beaches are still the ones on the Atlantic. Like Cornwall but bigger and more impressive and of course in certain areas the massive rollers. Also, you can get away from the tourists. Just not at this time of year.
You mean the beaches on the Costa Vicentina?
Yes, they are incredible. Wild and beautiful and huge and clean. Great surfing (apparently - I don't surf)
If there is any criticism it is the wind, it can be brutal and it somehow makes the hot sun hotter
But nonetheless magnificent
Shame about Portuguese food. It's OK if you stick to grilled sardines and custard tarts. Nice wine
Yes Costa Vicentina has some spectacular ones and also further north between Lisbon and Porto.
“Don’t lie there letting it bother you.” Said Norman, washing under his flappers at the basin whilst still in his string vest. “What better opportunity will you ever get to pick up a few books and learn something?”
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
To be honest I am not that bothered if the COP talks end without an agreement. They have turned into a hussle where so called rich countries (some of which like us and the US are in fact deeply in debt) are pressured into giving money to poorer countries rather than, you know, addressing the global climate. Like all these things (see, for example the G20) they have become a process without a clear sense of purpose.
I am deeply apprehensive about a Trump Presidency but the prospect of an end of these circuses is something to welcome.
Are we sure Ed Miliband has signed us up to make payments regardless?
On topic, why would Farage want to lead the Tories? It is already a 50/50 toss up who will lead the forthcoming Tory-Reform administration. Reform could be running Wales soon. Kemi is going to have to be brilliant and make the most of all her opportunities not to see the Tories go the way of the Liberals.
I agree, I'd say there's a real risk the Tories become the UUP to Reform's DUP.
However, and it's a big however, the Tories can also fish for LD (home counties) and Labour (switchers and floating voters as well) so they can face and pull in multiple directions, if they get the mix and tone right.
Not sure Badenoch is quite the right candidate to go fishing for LD and centrist Labour votes. Davey is a more conservative leader and overall safer bet.
Davey is anything but conservative. He's a socialist in a yellow suit with a flying bird on it.
Not at all.
For example the LDs oppose the abolition of AR on farms and imposition of VAT on private schools.
Davey certainly wasn't a Socialist when in government either.
It will be tough to expand the number of LD seats at the next GE, as there will surely be some dead cat bounce for the Tories, but it isn't impossible. There is not a lot of love out there for either of the big two parties. We may well be in one of those decades where the tectonic plates of party politics shift.
I suggest you read the interviews with him on his background and political philosophy, which was so left-wing the interviewer even asked him why he didn't join the Labour Party then - to which he gave some weakish answer about how he didn't like its tradition.
He's a Lefty through and through.
Don't confuse political opportunism for where his real sympathies lie, and he'd be delighted to prop up a Labour administration that fell short next time.
One of the interesting curiosities of modern politics is that Conservatives don’t look or act conservative. It’s all topsy turvey
On the contrary they seem determined to trash the country rather than conserve it.
It's to do now, with party loyalty running vertically through classes, rather than horizontally, across them.
People are still used to the idea of upper middle class people being overwhelmingly Conservative, and working class people being mainly Labour (with a substantial Conservative minority).
When in reality, the Conservatives have very little in common now, with much of the Establishment, and Labour have very little in common now, with broad swathes of working class Britain.
And, the same is true of the US, France, and other rich world democracies. Quite often now, the most solidly left-leaning constituencies are the most well-heeled.
It's fascinating to consider why that's the case.
Luxury beliefs of the university educated, especially women. They have to distinguish themselves from the hoi poloi who have always had small-c conservative views. Used to be done by owning a Jaguar, etc.
Luxury beliefs come a lot cheaper than luxury living or even traditional middle class living in southern England.
I wonder how much resentment there is among many recent graduates that they're not going to get the lifestyle they expected, that their parents had or what many of their age group who didn't go to university now has.
There's a lot of resentment around. Saw a Mumsnet post from a 40-something who had worked their way up to an income of £75k, and feels their standard of living doesn't match up to their parents who had a similar inflation-adjusted salary.
We could argue about why that is (housing?) and what to do about it, but people aren't happy and the spectacular Tory defeat was not the cathartic experience the country was looking for.
No there's a lot of buyer's remorse among the £50-70k class to voted Labour for the first time in ages or stayed home. They now realise Labour are going to destroy their jobs and tax them into poverty.
It's been a very steep learning curve for those voters and I expect out of the 2m who stayed home or switched Labour we can get 90% of them back and grab 1.5m from reform on the right. That becomes an election winning coalition in 2029 against what I think will be a deeply unpopular Labour government.
A lot of the £50-£70k class underestimate to a significant degree exactly how far up the pile they are.
Live in London or South East and tell me it's far up the pile.
Most people get that Max but it isn’t particularly relevant when it’s your party that is protecting the interests of those with the housing wealth and those who start sentences with “well in my day I only earned £6k a year”.
In my day I only earned £450 per year but that is a longtime ago [1962] !!!!
That salary is worth about £8,000 in today's money - but house prices were only £40,000 on average, compared with about £260,000 now.
In housing cost terms, you were earning about £55,000 in '24 prices.
Our first home in Edinburgh [1964] was an apartment in Comely Bank for £2 000 and we bought a new build semi detached bungalow here on Llandudno in 1965 for £3,250 so not sure about your figures
Indeed our present 4 bed detached cost £16,000 in April 1975 though I was earning more than £450pa by then
FPT: I was wrong then. In housing cost terms, you were earning the equivalent of £75,000, based on the current value of one-bed flats in Comely Bank and the proportion of your salary you spent in '64. That's over twice the current median salary.
I can tell you it felt nothing like that, and the average salary was near 3 times more at £1,168 pa and the average house price was £3,360
You seem to have some very strange datasets and simply do not reflect my lived experience at the time
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
On topic, why would Farage want to lead the Tories? It is already a 50/50 toss up who will lead the forthcoming Tory-Reform administration. Reform could be running Wales soon. Kemi is going to have to be brilliant and make the most of all her opportunities not to see the Tories go the way of the Liberals.
I agree, I'd say there's a real risk the Tories become the UUP to Reform's DUP.
However, and it's a big however, the Tories can also fish for LD (home counties) and Labour (switchers and floating voters as well) so they can face and pull in multiple directions, if they get the mix and tone right.
Not sure Badenoch is quite the right candidate to go fishing for LD and centrist Labour votes. Davey is a more conservative leader and overall safer bet.
Davey is anything but conservative. He's a socialist in a yellow suit with a flying bird on it.
Not at all.
For example the LDs oppose the abolition of AR on farms and imposition of VAT on private schools.
Davey certainly wasn't a Socialist when in government either.
It will be tough to expand the number of LD seats at the next GE, as there will surely be some dead cat bounce for the Tories, but it isn't impossible. There is not a lot of love out there for either of the big two parties. We may well be in one of those decades where the tectonic plates of party politics shift.
I suggest you read the interviews with him on his background and political philosophy, which was so left-wing the interviewer even asked him why he didn't join the Labour Party then - to which he gave some weakish answer about how he didn't like its tradition.
He's a Lefty through and through.
Don't confuse political opportunism for where his real sympathies lie, and he'd be delighted to prop up a Labour administration that fell short next time.
One of the interesting curiosities of modern politics is that Conservatives don’t look or act conservative. It’s all topsy turvey
On the contrary they seem determined to trash the country rather than conserve it.
It's to do now, with party loyalty running vertically through classes, rather than horizontally, across them.
People are still used to the idea of upper middle class people being overwhelmingly Conservative, and working class people being mainly Labour (with a substantial Conservative minority).
When in reality, the Conservatives have very little in common now, with much of the Establishment, and Labour have very little in common now, with broad swathes of working class Britain.
And, the same is true of the US, France, and other rich world democracies. Quite often now, the most solidly left-leaning constituencies are the most well-heeled.
It's fascinating to consider why that's the case.
Luxury beliefs of the university educated, especially women. They have to distinguish themselves from the hoi poloi who have always had small-c conservative views. Used to be done by owning a Jaguar, etc.
Luxury beliefs come a lot cheaper than luxury living or even traditional middle class living in southern England.
I wonder how much resentment there is among many recent graduates that they're not going to get the lifestyle they expected, that their parents had or what many of their age group who didn't go to university now has.
There's a lot of resentment around. Saw a Mumsnet post from a 40-something who had worked their way up to an income of £75k, and feels their standard of living doesn't match up to their parents who had a similar inflation-adjusted salary.
We could argue about why that is (housing?) and what to do about it, but people aren't happy and the spectacular Tory defeat was not the cathartic experience the country was looking for.
No there's a lot of buyer's remorse among the £50-70k class to voted Labour for the first time in ages or stayed home. They now realise Labour are going to destroy their jobs and tax them into poverty.
It's been a very steep learning curve for those voters and I expect out of the 2m who stayed home or switched Labour we can get 90% of them back and grab 1.5m from reform on the right. That becomes an election winning coalition in 2029 against what I think will be a deeply unpopular Labour government.
A lot of the £50-£70k class underestimate to a significant degree exactly how far up the pile they are.
Live in London or South East and tell me it's far up the pile.
Most people get that Max but it isn’t particularly relevant when it’s your party that is protecting the interests of those with the housing wealth and those who start sentences with “well in my day I only earned £6k a year”.
In my day I only earned £450 per year but that is a longtime ago [1962] !!!!
That salary is worth about £8,000 in today's money - but house prices were only £40,000 on average, compared with about £260,000 now.
In housing cost terms, you were earning about £55,000 in '24 prices.
Our first home in Edinburgh [1964] was an apartment in Comely Bank for £2 000 and we bought a new build semi detached bungalow here on Llandudno in 1965 for £3,250 so not sure about your figures
Indeed our present 4 bed detached cost £16,000 in April 1975 though I was earning more than £450pa by then
FPT: I was wrong then. In housing cost terms, you were earning the equivalent of £75,000, based on the current value of one-bed flats in Comely Bank and the proportion of your salary you spent in '64. That's over twice the current median salary.
a one bed flat in comely bank is more than 300K? Mental
He is simply wrong about the comparisons to 1964
He also did not know that we were loaned the money interest free from my my father in law
On topic (and apols if anyone has made this point) the Monarchical system is unfair on individuals singled out for a lifetime of grotesque media intrusion (rather like The Truman Show). Small wonder they're all a bit paranoid, one way or another. Charles was imbued with a 'sense of duty' by his bullying father but I wouldn't blame him if he decided to jack it in, like his great uncle and his younger son.
Am I the only one who gets frightened when (small c) conservatives abandon the institutions they once held dear? It makes me feel unsettled and I fear it makes them unhinged.
Reform voters have rather high rates of Republicanism. It's not the lefties the monarchy needs to worry about.
Reform UK voters want, as the name suggests, reform.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
Read this to feel a little more cheery about prospects:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Cop29 is a cynical scam: technology and markets are already saving the planet
On topic (and apols if anyone has made this point) the Monarchical system is unfair on individuals singled out for a lifetime of grotesque media intrusion (rather like The Truman Show). Small wonder they're all a bit paranoid, one way or another. Charles was imbued with a 'sense of duty' by his bullying father but I wouldn't blame him if he decided to jack it in, like his great uncle and his younger son.
I would think that's very unlikely. For one thing, he has driving passions that he's folded in to the more one-nation influence, architecture and the environment, and Starmer seems to be interested in his views on both.
He's very driven to do these particular kind of things.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
Question that feels like it ought to have an answer, but I don't know where to look...
Has anywhere tried to just not have a Head of State, not even a boring token elected one?
Presumably, something in the setup of a nation breaks, but what?
Switzerland doesn’t have a head of state, but the 7-person Federal Council collectively fill the role, with one of them the President at any one time (but the President is not the Head of State). The Soviet Union and communist Yugoslavia also had collectives in the role. Possibly the same applies to Bosnia today — not certain.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
Read this to feel a little more cheery about prospects:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Cop29 is a cynical scam: technology and markets are already saving the planet
Or, put another way, one fiftieth of the annual budget for housing asylum seekers.
But anyway - my view prior to the reign of the current monarch was that he would be the last hereditary head of state. People would just find him too ridiculous. Actually, he's been a lot better than I feared. But he just doesn't have the magic of his mother. She was probably the most famous person in the world. She had probably met more people than anyone else in the world. She could enthuse royalists while making low grade republicans happily suspend disbelief. She is still the person most people associate with the words 'the Queen'. The current king is doing his best and has carved out some interesting niches (like urban design), but I fear it is not enough. The magic is gone.
I don't see any reason why monarchy or magic can't continue.
People crave and look for that, and we all like our myths, legends and history, whilst despising politicians.
I'm not worried.
If we get rid of the monarchy, we'll replace it with something worse.
See also: House of Lords.
That's why I see myself as a small-c conservative: I'm not against change, but change for change's sake often ends in a far worse situation. Try to make good changes, mostly in incremental evolutions (rarely revolutions). Think the changes, and their effects, through. You won't always get it right, but you'll do better than many of the changes both governing parties have given us over the last three decades.
But don't remain static, either. Preserve what 'works', alter what doesn't.
Some more perspective on those supposedly 'huge' costs.
When my father was in hospital, I spent at least 3 hours, one afternoon, trying to his blood work results released. Complete with my father sitting there and demanding that they be handed over.
On Thursday my GP told me to go into A&E for an emergency op. I went in, a cannular was fitted, bloods taken, and I was prepped for the op. I then saw the doc, who told me I didn't need an op and the problem would probably sort itself out. If it didn't, he would operate in a couple of weeks. In the meantime I am losing a concerning amount of blood (though I've improved today...)
I'm unsure if that was the NHS working well or badly. Certainly, seeing the surgeon before prepping me might have been good. Though maybe the blood results fed into the decision.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
Read this to feel a little more cheery about prospects:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Cop29 is a cynical scam: technology and markets are already saving the planet
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
The most dangerous moment for the monarchy was the 1936 abdication crisis.
Were it not for that we'd have had a delinquent Nazi-sympathising King on the throne, who couldn't control his behaviour or keep his gob shut, and the Attlee government would have abolished the monarchy in their post 1945 administration.
We'd be better off if they'd abolished the monarchy instead of creating the NHS. Discuss.
Yes I am able to discuss it... but only because I am alive, which without the NHS I undoubtedly would not be.
Why on earth not?
No other country has the NHS, and few have anything much like it. Other countries do have healthcare systems though, many considerably better than ours. If we hadn't created the NHS we might have something more like the French or German systems. And my guess is you'd probably still be around.
Indeed. Most of the Health Services of Europe are better than ours - unless your measure is control of paper clip distribution.
Some more perspective on those supposedly 'huge' costs.
When my father was in hospital, I spent at least 3 hours, one afternoon, trying to his blood work results released. Complete with my father sitting there and demanding that they be handed over.
On Thursday my GP told me to go into A&E for an emergency op. I went in, a cannular was fitted, bloods taken, and I was prepped for the op. I then saw the doc, who told me I didn't need an op and the problem would probably sort itself out. If it didn't, he would operate in a couple of weeks. In the meantime I am losing a concerning amount of blood (though I've improved today...)
I'm unsure if that was the NHS working well or badly. Certainly, seeing the surgeon before prepping me might have been good. Though maybe the blood results fed into the decision.
The new US Treasury guy in Trump 2.0 helped give us Black Wednesday.
But he does seem to be actually sane and not wanted by the FBI.
"Bessent then became a partner to George Soros at Soros Fund Management, where alongside Stanley Druckenmiller, he was a driving force behind perhaps Soros’ most famous trade, his 1992 shorting of the British pound which won Soros, Bessent and their team over $1 billion in profits."
Some more perspective on those supposedly 'huge' costs.
When my father was in hospital, I spent at least 3 hours, one afternoon, trying to his blood work results released. Complete with my father sitting there and demanding that they be handed over.
On Thursday my GP told me to go into A&E for an emergency op. I went in, a cannular was fitted, bloods taken, and I was prepped for the op. I then saw the doc, who told me I didn't need an op and the problem would probably sort itself out. If it didn't, he would operate in a couple of weeks. In the meantime I am losing a concerning amount of blood (though I've improved today...)
I'm unsure if that was the NHS working well or badly. Certainly, seeing the surgeon before prepping me might have been good. Though maybe the blood results fed into the decision.
Did you seek another opinion? I would.
Another Tommy Cooper joke. An old lady goes in to see her GP about her bad back. "Nothing to be done, its just old age." The women says, "I demand a second opinion". Dr: "Okay, you're ugly too."
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
Read this to feel a little more cheery about prospects:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Cop29 is a cynical scam: technology and markets are already saving the planet
On topic, I don't really care about the cost of the coronation. But I'm pretty sure that the Royal Family don't pay their fair share of inheritance tax.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
Read this to feel a little more cheery about prospects:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Cop29 is a cynical scam: technology and markets are already saving the planet
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
Read this to feel a little more cheery about prospects:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Cop29 is a cynical scam: technology and markets are already saving the planet
Oh lord, I feel so much less confident about saying I wasn't bothered about the lack of a deal now.
The COP problems are, in part, down to newly rich countries (such as China) reacting to the proposal that they become payees.
Lot of client countries doing what they are being told to do.
Yes, I was very surprised in the BBC updates to see that China and the Gulf states are classed as 'developing' still, and only 23 as developed. Drawing the line may not be easy, but that's clearly nonsense at that level.
I should imagine there'll be some last minute concessions to get a deal of some description through, if not this amount.
Developing countries have dismissed an offer of $250bn (£199bn) per year to help them tackle climate change – some want a figure closer to $500bn
On topic (and apols if anyone has made this point) the Monarchical system is unfair on individuals singled out for a lifetime of grotesque media intrusion (rather like The Truman Show). Small wonder they're all a bit paranoid, one way or another. Charles was imbued with a 'sense of duty' by his bullying father but I wouldn't blame him if he decided to jack it in, like his great uncle and his younger son.
I would think that's very unlikely. For one thing, he has driving passions that he's folded in to the more one-nation influence, architecture and the environment, and Starmer seems to be interested in his views on both.
He's very driven to do these particular kind of things.
More simply, he has waited decades for the job, so isn't going to quit any time soon, particularly for a son who is a lot like his mother.
I am fairly sure though he isn't enjoying the job, and probably would prefer to be in Balmoral etc wandering about, talking to plants and shooting animals.
Some more perspective on those supposedly 'huge' costs.
When my father was in hospital, I spent at least 3 hours, one afternoon, trying to his blood work results released. Complete with my father sitting there and demanding that they be handed over.
On Thursday my GP told me to go into A&E for an emergency op. I went in, a cannular was fitted, bloods taken, and I was prepped for the op. I then saw the doc, who told me I didn't need an op and the problem would probably sort itself out. If it didn't, he would operate in a couple of weeks. In the meantime I am losing a concerning amount of blood (though I've improved today...)
I'm unsure if that was the NHS working well or badly. Certainly, seeing the surgeon before prepping me might have been good. Though maybe the blood results fed into the decision.
Did you seek another opinion? I would.
No, we didn't. Perhaps we should, but I wasn't in much of a state to, and Mrs J was trying to organise things for our son to be picked up from school and looked after (thanks to our good friends ...). I'm in a lot less pain now, and the bleeding has slowed, so perhaps he was right.
It just felt odd to have got so far down the operation process and then to be told it was not necessary. Having said that, I arrived at A&E in mid-afternoon and was discharged four hours later, so it all went rather quickly. I was an emergency, and then I was not...
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
Another patriotic Brexiteer that has buggered off after shitting the bed.
No surprises there.
Are people's views on the subject to be discounted because of where they happen to live?
That is not to say his ideas would be any good (just for starters, how would we deport 'radical imams and extreme islamists' if they are British citizens without even dual citizenship in some cases?), but I don't see that someone for or against Brexit should be disregarded solely because they live or moved abroad.
The one I don't really get is the Supreme Court hate. I only know one person for whom that is apparently a really big issue, and they seem to have a really warped view of it as some kind of US style court captured by liberals, when I don't get that impression at all.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
Read this to feel a little more cheery about prospects:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Cop29 is a cynical scam: technology and markets are already saving the planet
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
Another patriotic Brexiteer that has buggered off after shitting the bed.
No surprises there.
Are people's views on the subject to be discounted because of where they happen to live?
That is not to say his ideas would be any good (just for starters, how would we deport 'radical imams and extreme islamists' if they are British citizens without even dual citizenship in some cases?), but I don't see that someone for or against Brexit should be disregarded solely because they live or moved abroad.
The one I don't really get is the Supreme Court hate. I only know one person for whom that is apparently a really big issue, and they seem to have a really warped view of it as some kind of US style court captured by liberals, when I don't get that impression at all.
I think someone who campaigned for decades for Brexit should stick around to enjoy the sunlit uplands that his policies wrought, or at least apologise for mis-selling.
Or, put another way, one fiftieth of the annual budget for housing asylum seekers.
But anyway - my view prior to the reign of the current monarch was that he would be the last hereditary head of state. People would just find him too ridiculous. Actually, he's been a lot better than I feared. But he just doesn't have the magic of his mother. She was probably the most famous person in the world. She had probably met more people than anyone else in the world. She could enthuse royalists while making low grade republicans happily suspend disbelief. She is still the person most people associate with the words 'the Queen'. The current king is doing his best and has carved out some interesting niches (like urban design), but I fear it is not enough. The magic is gone.
I don't see any reason why monarchy or magic can't continue.
People crave and look for that, and we all like our myths, legends and history, whilst despising politicians.
I'm not worried.
If we get rid of the monarchy, we'll replace it with something worse.
See also: House of Lords.
That's why I see myself as a small-c conservative: I'm not against change, but change for change's sake often ends in a far worse situation. Try to make good changes, mostly in incremental evolutions (rarely revolutions). Think the changes, and their effects, through. You won't always get it right, but you'll do better than many of the changes both governing parties have given us over the last three decades.
But don't remain static, either. Preserve what 'works', alter what doesn't.
Quite so. People oversell alternatives, unintentionally undermining what might be a decent case in their enthusiasm. We know that other governing systems can be awful too, so getting too moralistic about the awfulness of monarchy falls a little flat, even if a lot of people are hardly actively pro-monarchy.
It's like how some people would like to have parliament seating arrangements in a hemicycle like many other places, and rather ludicrously suggest this naturally lead to a less adversarial and confrontational style of politics, as though the shape of the chamber would inevitably affect the political culture so directly. Despite some parliaments having punch ups in those types of chambers.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
“History does not repeat itself but it often rhymes.”
The Medieval Church had *some* success in mediating disputes, and imposing limits on warfare. As its authority disintegrated in the 16th century, so warfare turned more murderous (climate change - global cooling - also played its part).
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
Another patriotic Brexiteer that has buggered off after shitting the bed.
No surprises there.
Are people's views on the subject to be discounted because of where they happen to live?
That is not to say his ideas would be any good (just for starters, how would we deport 'radical imams and extreme islamists' if they are British citizens without even dual citizenship in some cases?), but I don't see that someone for or against Brexit should be disregarded solely because they live or moved abroad.
The one I don't really get is the Supreme Court hate. I only know one person for whom that is apparently a really big issue, and they seem to have a really warped view of it as some kind of US style court captured by liberals, when I don't get that impression at all.
I think someone who campaigned for decades for Brexit should stick around to enjoy the sunlit uplands that his policies wrought, or at least apologise for mis-selling.
Maybe he should do so, I don't see that his patriotism is directly called into question if he doesn't stick around though.
I don't think people who live overseas should be implied to lack patriotism merely by that fact, or indeed incapable of commenting about things. We see it on here occasionally about posters abroad, and I think it's unfair, and that would extend to Carswell. Unless by their words they essentially admit to it.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
Read this to feel a little more cheery about prospects:
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Cop29 is a cynical scam: technology and markets are already saving the planet
Oh lord, I feel so much less confident about saying I wasn't bothered about the lack of a deal now.
The COP problems are, in part, down to newly rich countries (such as China) reacting to the proposal that they become payees.
Lot of client countries doing what they are being told to do.
In terms of GDP per capita, China may not be poor any more, but it's still a long way from being rich.
But in global influence they are the closest we have to a second superpower - these labels are always a bit arbitrary, but China is too big and no poor enough in that to be lumped in with the genuinely poor.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
With the reintroduction of land wars in Europe in the last 10 years it is easy to think we are reverting into some very bad habits.
Slavery back on the cards? (Officially that is, obviously there are many effective slaves in the world).
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Have a look at what Deborah Mattison, the Labour polling person, has said about why Kamala failed. Basically that what Trump did – and what Starmer did – was to target relentlessly those who had lost out to globalism, the working class and what have you. Of course, Starmer's was calculated and Trump's more instinctive, and they are miles apart on policy.
It is Mattison's analysis of why Labour lost the red wall that I lean on when pointing out it is the big shop closures that are canaries in the coalmine.
On topic, why would Farage want to lead the Tories? It is already a 50/50 toss up who will lead the forthcoming Tory-Reform administration. Reform could be running Wales soon. Kemi is going to have to be brilliant and make the most of all her opportunities not to see the Tories go the way of the Liberals.
I agree, I'd say there's a real risk the Tories become the UUP to Reform's DUP.
However, and it's a big however, the Tories can also fish for LD (home counties) and Labour (switchers and floating voters as well) so they can face and pull in multiple directions, if they get the mix and tone right.
Not sure Badenoch is quite the right candidate to go fishing for LD and centrist Labour votes. Davey is a more conservative leader and overall safer bet.
Davey is anything but conservative. He's a socialist in a yellow suit with a flying bird on it.
Not at all.
For example the LDs oppose the abolition of AR on farms and imposition of VAT on private schools.
Davey certainly wasn't a Socialist when in government either.
It will be tough to expand the number of LD seats at the next GE, as there will surely be some dead cat bounce for the Tories, but it isn't impossible. There is not a lot of love out there for either of the big two parties. We may well be in one of those decades where the tectonic plates of party politics shift.
I suggest you read the interviews with him on his background and political philosophy, which was so left-wing the interviewer even asked him why he didn't join the Labour Party then - to which he gave some weakish answer about how he didn't like its tradition.
He's a Lefty through and through.
Don't confuse political opportunism for where his real sympathies lie, and he'd be delighted to prop up a Labour administration that fell short next time.
One of the interesting curiosities of modern politics is that Conservatives don’t look or act conservative. It’s all topsy turvey
On the contrary they seem determined to trash the country rather than conserve it.
It's to do now, with party loyalty running vertically through classes, rather than horizontally, across them.
People are still used to the idea of upper middle class people being overwhelmingly Conservative, and working class people being mainly Labour (with a substantial Conservative minority).
When in reality, the Conservatives have very little in common now, with much of the Establishment, and Labour have very little in common now, with broad swathes of working class Britain.
And, the same is true of the US, France, and other rich world democracies. Quite often now, the most solidly left-leaning constituencies are the most well-heeled.
It's fascinating to consider why that's the case.
Luxury beliefs of the university educated, especially women. They have to distinguish themselves from the hoi poloi who have always had small-c conservative views. Used to be done by owning a Jaguar, etc.
Luxury beliefs come a lot cheaper than luxury living or even traditional middle class living in southern England.
I wonder how much resentment there is among many recent graduates that they're not going to get the lifestyle they expected, that their parents had or what many of their age group who didn't go to university now has.
There's a lot of resentment around. Saw a Mumsnet post from a 40-something who had worked their way up to an income of £75k, and feels their standard of living doesn't match up to their parents who had a similar inflation-adjusted salary.
We could argue about why that is (housing?) and what to do about it, but people aren't happy and the spectacular Tory defeat was not the cathartic experience the country was looking for.
No there's a lot of buyer's remorse among the £50-70k class to voted Labour for the first time in ages or stayed home. They now realise Labour are going to destroy their jobs and tax them into poverty.
It's been a very steep learning curve for those voters and I expect out of the 2m who stayed home or switched Labour we can get 90% of them back and grab 1.5m from reform on the right. That becomes an election winning coalition in 2029 against what I think will be a deeply unpopular Labour government.
A lot of the £50-£70k class underestimate to a significant degree exactly how far up the pile they are.
Live in London or South East and tell me it's far up the pile.
Most people get that Max but it isn’t particularly relevant when it’s your party that is protecting the interests of those with the housing wealth and those who start sentences with “well in my day I only earned £6k a year”.
In my day I only earned £450 per year but that is a longtime ago [1962] !!!!
That salary is worth about £8,000 in today's money - but house prices were only £40,000 on average, compared with about £260,000 now.
In housing cost terms, you were earning about £55,000 in '24 prices.
Our first home in Edinburgh [1964] was an apartment in Comely Bank for £2 000 and we bought a new build semi detached bungalow here on Llandudno in 1965 for £3,250 so not sure about your figures
Indeed our present 4 bed detached cost £16,000 in April 1975 though I was earning more than £450pa by then
FPT: I was wrong then. In housing cost terms, you were earning the equivalent of £75,000, based on the current value of one-bed flats in Comely Bank and the proportion of your salary you spent in '64. That's over twice the current median salary.
a one bed flat in comely bank is more than 300K? Mental
He is simply wrong about the comparisons to 1964
He also did not know that we were loaned the money interest free from my my father in law
That doesn't make it any better...
Your salary:housing cost ratio in the 60s = 450/2000 = 0.225
Current cost of flat in Comely Bank = £315,000 to £435,000
£315,000*0.225 = £70,850.
This is borne out in aggregate data - house prices are roughly 9x average salaries now, compared with about 4x in the 60s. Unlike you, many new home owners are contending with average rates of around 5%.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
With the reintroduction of land wars in Europe in the last 10 years it is easy to think we are reverting into some very bad habits.
Slavery back on the cards? (Officially that is, obviously there are many effective slaves in the world).
There are restrictions on doing business with some Chinese companies down to their use of literal slave labour.
The horror! Aussie lamb on our shelves for Christmas - a direct result of the Tories’ post Brexit trade deals with Australia and NZ! They sold out Welsh farmers by undermining Welsh lamb - this is the result! https://nitter.poast.org/cefincampbell/status/1860045610826760406#m
I suppose I'm not sufficiently sympathetic towards our farmers, but still.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Errr: Carswell and Cameron were two socially liberal conservatives who differed only in their views on the EU.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Errr: Carswell and Cameron were two socially liberal conservatives who differed only in their views on the EU.
Carswell has drunk the Kool-Aid now by the look of it, unless you have a very different idea of what socially liberal conservatism means.
He seems to be just another sad example of someone gradually radicalising themselves by living in an echo chamber.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
With the reintroduction of land wars in Europe in the last 10 years it is easy to think we are reverting into some very bad habits.
Slavery back on the cards? (Officially that is, obviously there are many effective slaves in the world).
I could easily see slavery being reintroduced - if called something else.
Or, put another way, one fiftieth of the annual budget for housing asylum seekers.
But anyway - my view prior to the reign of the current monarch was that he would be the last hereditary head of state. People would just find him too ridiculous. Actually, he's been a lot better than I feared. But he just doesn't have the magic of his mother. She was probably the most famous person in the world. She had probably met more people than anyone else in the world. She could enthuse royalists while making low grade republicans happily suspend disbelief. She is still the person most people associate with the words 'the Queen'. The current king is doing his best and has carved out some interesting niches (like urban design), but I fear it is not enough. The magic is gone.
I don't see any reason why monarchy or magic can't continue.
People crave and look for that, and we all like our myths, legends and history, whilst despising politicians.
I'm not worried.
If we get rid of the monarchy, we'll replace it with something worse.
See also: House of Lords.
That's why I see myself as a small-c conservative: I'm not against change, but change for change's sake often ends in a far worse situation. Try to make good changes, mostly in incremental evolutions (rarely revolutions). Think the changes, and their effects, through. You won't always get it right, but you'll do better than many of the changes both governing parties have given us over the last three decades.
But don't remain static, either. Preserve what 'works', alter what doesn't.
Quite so. People oversell alternatives, unintentionally undermining what might be a decent case in their enthusiasm. We know that other governing systems can be awful too, so getting too moralistic about the awfulness of monarchy falls a little flat, even if a lot of people are hardly actively pro-monarchy.
It's like how some people would like to have parliament seating arrangements in a hemicycle like many other places, and rather ludicrously suggest this naturally lead to a less adversarial and confrontational style of politics, as though the shape of the chamber would inevitably affect the political culture so directly. Despite some parliaments having punch ups in those types of chambers.
I think it's a form of the-grass-is-always-greener. If parliament's seating was in a hemicycle, some of them would be arguing for a different format.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
With the reintroduction of land wars in Europe in the last 10 years it is easy to think we are reverting into some very bad habits.
Slavery back on the cards? (Officially that is, obviously there are many effective slaves in the world).
I could easily see slavery being reintroduced - if called something else.
Don't we still have a lot of indentured labour about the world? Easy enough to fudge the details on that.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Errr: Carswell and Cameron were two socially liberal conservatives who differed only in their views on the EU.
Carswell has drunk the Kool-Aid now by the look of it, unless you have a very different idea of what socially liberal conservatism means.
He seems to be just another sad example of someone gradually radicalising themselves by living in an echo chamber.
Actually, you're right
He used you be pretty actually liberal, but eurosceptic.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
With the reintroduction of land wars in Europe in the last 10 years it is easy to think we are reverting into some very bad habits.
Slavery back on the cards? (Officially that is, obviously there are many effective slaves in the world).
I could easily see slavery being reintroduced - if called something else.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
If they are, and I fear they may well be, then our descendants are basically fucked. The high point of international cooperation has been and gone, and the future is one of nationalist insanity and environmental destruction.
With the reintroduction of land wars in Europe in the last 10 years it is easy to think we are reverting into some very bad habits.
Slavery back on the cards? (Officially that is, obviously there are many effective slaves in the world).
I could easily see slavery being reintroduced - if called something else.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Errr: Carswell and Cameron were two socially liberal conservatives who differed only in their views on the EU.
Carswell has drunk the Kool-Aid now by the look of it, unless you have a very different idea of what socially liberal conservatism means.
He seems to be just another sad example of someone gradually radicalising themselves by living in an echo chamber.
Actually, you're right
He used you be pretty actually liberal, but eurosceptic.
I actually knew him (somewhat), way back. On social issues he was probably more in line with Nick Clegg or Cameron than anyone else.
Or, put another way, one fiftieth of the annual budget for housing asylum seekers.
But anyway - my view prior to the reign of the current monarch was that he would be the last hereditary head of state. People would just find him too ridiculous. Actually, he's been a lot better than I feared. But he just doesn't have the magic of his mother. She was probably the most famous person in the world. She had probably met more people than anyone else in the world. She could enthuse royalists while making low grade republicans happily suspend disbelief. She is still the person most people associate with the words 'the Queen'. The current king is doing his best and has carved out some interesting niches (like urban design), but I fear it is not enough. The magic is gone.
I don't see any reason why monarchy or magic can't continue.
People crave and look for that, and we all like our myths, legends and history, whilst despising politicians.
I'm not worried.
If we get rid of the monarchy, we'll replace it with something worse.
See also: House of Lords.
That's why I see myself as a small-c conservative: I'm not against change, but change for change's sake often ends in a far worse situation. Try to make good changes, mostly in incremental evolutions (rarely revolutions). Think the changes, and their effects, through. You won't always get it right, but you'll do better than many of the changes both governing parties have given us over the last three decades.
But don't remain static, either. Preserve what 'works', alter what doesn't.
Quite so. People oversell alternatives, unintentionally undermining what might be a decent case in their enthusiasm. We know that other governing systems can be awful too, so getting too moralistic about the awfulness of monarchy falls a little flat, even if a lot of people are hardly actively pro-monarchy.
It's like how some people would like to have parliament seating arrangements in a hemicycle like many other places, and rather ludicrously suggest this naturally lead to a less adversarial and confrontational style of politics, as though the shape of the chamber would inevitably affect the political culture so directly. Despite some parliaments having punch ups in those types of chambers.
I think it's a form of the-grass-is-always-greener. If parliament's seating was in a hemicycle, some of them would be arguing for a different format.
It's the fact that there aren't 650 seats that is the problem, not the shape of the chamber.
In that respect, being a back bench MP is akin to being a passenger on Cross Country Trains.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Errr: Carswell and Cameron were two socially liberal conservatives who differed only in their views on the EU.
Carswell has drunk the Kool-Aid now by the look of it, unless you have a very different idea of what socially liberal conservatism means.
He seems to be just another sad example of someone gradually radicalising themselves by living in an echo chamber.
There is plenty of evidence that it is the centre-left that has become radicalised since the advent of social media rather than the right. Can you imagine Tony Blair or Bill Clinton going down the woke rabbit hole?
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Errr: Carswell and Cameron were two socially liberal conservatives who differed only in their views on the EU.
Carswell has drunk the Kool-Aid now by the look of it, unless you have a very different idea of what socially liberal conservatism means.
He seems to be just another sad example of someone gradually radicalising themselves by living in an echo chamber.
Actually, you're right
He used you be pretty actually liberal, but eurosceptic.
There are problems with the process State, but the Supreme Court has been even-handed in using the Equality Act to protect people with traditional religious beliefs and gender-critical feminists (not something I’d have expected back in 2010).
So, people like Carswell need to be careful what they wish for.
Or, put another way, one fiftieth of the annual budget for housing asylum seekers.
But anyway - my view prior to the reign of the current monarch was that he would be the last hereditary head of state. People would just find him too ridiculous. Actually, he's been a lot better than I feared. But he just doesn't have the magic of his mother. She was probably the most famous person in the world. She had probably met more people than anyone else in the world. She could enthuse royalists while making low grade republicans happily suspend disbelief. She is still the person most people associate with the words 'the Queen'. The current king is doing his best and has carved out some interesting niches (like urban design), but I fear it is not enough. The magic is gone.
I don't see any reason why monarchy or magic can't continue.
People crave and look for that, and we all like our myths, legends and history, whilst despising politicians.
I'm not worried.
If we get rid of the monarchy, we'll replace it with something worse.
See also: House of Lords.
That's why I see myself as a small-c conservative: I'm not against change, but change for change's sake often ends in a far worse situation. Try to make good changes, mostly in incremental evolutions (rarely revolutions). Think the changes, and their effects, through. You won't always get it right, but you'll do better than many of the changes both governing parties have given us over the last three decades.
But don't remain static, either. Preserve what 'works', alter what doesn't.
Quite so. People oversell alternatives, unintentionally undermining what might be a decent case in their enthusiasm. We know that other governing systems can be awful too, so getting too moralistic about the awfulness of monarchy falls a little flat, even if a lot of people are hardly actively pro-monarchy.
It's like how some people would like to have parliament seating arrangements in a hemicycle like many other places, and rather ludicrously suggest this naturally lead to a less adversarial and confrontational style of politics, as though the shape of the chamber would inevitably affect the political culture so directly. Despite some parliaments having punch ups in those types of chambers.
I think it's a form of the-grass-is-always-greener. If parliament's seating was in a hemicycle, some of them would be arguing for a different format.
It's the fact that there aren't 650 seats that is the problem, not the shape of the chamber.
In that respect, being a back bench MP is akin to being a passenger on Cross Country Trains.
How big a problem is it though? It's very rare you'd get that many in, so it only comes up infrequently.
Though perhaps we don't need 650 MPs to begin with - these things vary wildly across the world, so there's no 'perfect' number.
Or, put another way, one fiftieth of the annual budget for housing asylum seekers.
But anyway - my view prior to the reign of the current monarch was that he would be the last hereditary head of state. People would just find him too ridiculous. Actually, he's been a lot better than I feared. But he just doesn't have the magic of his mother. She was probably the most famous person in the world. She had probably met more people than anyone else in the world. She could enthuse royalists while making low grade republicans happily suspend disbelief. She is still the person most people associate with the words 'the Queen'. The current king is doing his best and has carved out some interesting niches (like urban design), but I fear it is not enough. The magic is gone.
I don't see any reason why monarchy or magic can't continue.
People crave and look for that, and we all like our myths, legends and history, whilst despising politicians.
I'm not worried.
If we get rid of the monarchy, we'll replace it with something worse.
See also: House of Lords.
That's why I see myself as a small-c conservative: I'm not against change, but change for change's sake often ends in a far worse situation. Try to make good changes, mostly in incremental evolutions (rarely revolutions). Think the changes, and their effects, through. You won't always get it right, but you'll do better than many of the changes both governing parties have given us over the last three decades.
But don't remain static, either. Preserve what 'works', alter what doesn't.
Quite so. People oversell alternatives, unintentionally undermining what might be a decent case in their enthusiasm. We know that other governing systems can be awful too, so getting too moralistic about the awfulness of monarchy falls a little flat, even if a lot of people are hardly actively pro-monarchy.
It's like how some people would like to have parliament seating arrangements in a hemicycle like many other places, and rather ludicrously suggest this naturally lead to a less adversarial and confrontational style of politics, as though the shape of the chamber would inevitably affect the political culture so directly. Despite some parliaments having punch ups in those types of chambers.
I think it's a form of the-grass-is-always-greener. If parliament's seating was in a hemicycle, some of them would be arguing for a different format.
It's the fact that there aren't 650 seats that is the problem, not the shape of the chamber.
In that respect, being a back bench MP is akin to being a passenger on Cross Country Trains.
How big a problem is it though? It's very rare you'd get that many in, so it only comes up infrequently.
Though perhaps we don't need 650 MPs to begin with - these things vary wildly across the world, so there's no 'perfect' number.
I suppose parliament was ahead of the game. Hot desking (i.e., insufficient desks) now the norm in so many offices.
The most dangerous moment for the monarchy was the 1936 abdication crisis.
Were it not for that we'd have had a delinquent Nazi-sympathising King on the throne, who couldn't control his behaviour or keep his gob shut, and the Attlee government would have abolished the monarchy in their post 1945 administration.
I suspect Clem Attlee (later 1st Earl Attlee) was just as much a monarchist as subsequent Labour PMs. Wouldna happen.
What, the man who came up with this?
There were few who thought him a starter, Many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM, an Earl and a Knight of the Garter.
Surely not!
He was married to a Tory, he just f**ked off and joined them late in life if he was ever a proper Socialist anyway.
“Don’t lie there letting it bother you.” Said Norman, washing under his flappers at the basin whilst still in his string vest. “What better opportunity will you ever get to pick up a few books and learn something?”
Dodgson may well have had advance notice of PB activities. Alice and his shoes!
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Errr: Carswell and Cameron were two socially liberal conservatives who differed only in their views on the EU.
Carswell has drunk the Kool-Aid now by the look of it, unless you have a very different idea of what socially liberal conservatism means.
He seems to be just another sad example of someone gradually radicalising themselves by living in an echo chamber.
The Heritage Foundation thinktank itself, whom Carswell's prescriptions somewhat resemble is a good example of this. Once a Reaganite thinktank that was de rigeur to quote in the Times and even among less radical Tories, and now, after years in first the Fox and now Twitter ecosystem, now full Trumpite.
It wrote pretty much the entire Project 2025 plan, which is basically a blueprint for Orban's Hungary in America, but with added Christian extremism.
Or, put another way, one fiftieth of the annual budget for housing asylum seekers.
But anyway - my view prior to the reign of the current monarch was that he would be the last hereditary head of state. People would just find him too ridiculous. Actually, he's been a lot better than I feared. But he just doesn't have the magic of his mother. She was probably the most famous person in the world. She had probably met more people than anyone else in the world. She could enthuse royalists while making low grade republicans happily suspend disbelief. She is still the person most people associate with the words 'the Queen'. The current king is doing his best and has carved out some interesting niches (like urban design), but I fear it is not enough. The magic is gone.
I don't see any reason why monarchy or magic can't continue.
People crave and look for that, and we all like our myths, legends and history, whilst despising politicians.
I'm not worried.
If we get rid of the monarchy, we'll replace it with something worse.
See also: House of Lords.
That's why I see myself as a small-c conservative: I'm not against change, but change for change's sake often ends in a far worse situation. Try to make good changes, mostly in incremental evolutions (rarely revolutions). Think the changes, and their effects, through. You won't always get it right, but you'll do better than many of the changes both governing parties have given us over the last three decades.
But don't remain static, either. Preserve what 'works', alter what doesn't.
Quite so. People oversell alternatives, unintentionally undermining what might be a decent case in their enthusiasm. We know that other governing systems can be awful too, so getting too moralistic about the awfulness of monarchy falls a little flat, even if a lot of people are hardly actively pro-monarchy.
It's like how some people would like to have parliament seating arrangements in a hemicycle like many other places, and rather ludicrously suggest this naturally lead to a less adversarial and confrontational style of politics, as though the shape of the chamber would inevitably affect the political culture so directly. Despite some parliaments having punch ups in those types of chambers.
I think it's a form of the-grass-is-always-greener. If parliament's seating was in a hemicycle, some of them would be arguing for a different format.
It's the fact that there aren't 650 seats that is the problem, not the shape of the chamber.
In that respect, being a back bench MP is akin to being a passenger on Cross Country Trains.
We should make that comparison, and it may make them put on more trains.
On topic, why would Farage want to lead the Tories? It is already a 50/50 toss up who will lead the forthcoming Tory-Reform administration. Reform could be running Wales soon. Kemi is going to have to be brilliant and make the most of all her opportunities not to see the Tories go the way of the Liberals.
I agree, I'd say there's a real risk the Tories become the UUP to Reform's DUP.
However, and it's a big however, the Tories can also fish for LD (home counties) and Labour (switchers and floating voters as well) so they can face and pull in multiple directions, if they get the mix and tone right.
Not sure Badenoch is quite the right candidate to go fishing for LD and centrist Labour votes. Davey is a more conservative leader and overall safer bet.
Davey is anything but conservative. He's a socialist in a yellow suit with a flying bird on it.
Not at all.
For example the LDs oppose the abolition of AR on farms and imposition of VAT on private schools.
Davey certainly wasn't a Socialist when in government either.
It will be tough to expand the number of LD seats at the next GE, as there will surely be some dead cat bounce for the Tories, but it isn't impossible. There is not a lot of love out there for either of the big two parties. We may well be in one of those decades where the tectonic plates of party politics shift.
I suggest you read the interviews with him on his background and political philosophy, which was so left-wing the interviewer even asked him why he didn't join the Labour Party then - to which he gave some weakish answer about how he didn't like its tradition.
He's a Lefty through and through.
Don't confuse political opportunism for where his real sympathies lie, and he'd be delighted to prop up a Labour administration that fell short next time.
One of the interesting curiosities of modern politics is that Conservatives don’t look or act conservative. It’s all topsy turvey
On the contrary they seem determined to trash the country rather than conserve it.
It's to do now, with party loyalty running vertically through classes, rather than horizontally, across them.
People are still used to the idea of upper middle class people being overwhelmingly Conservative, and working class people being mainly Labour (with a substantial Conservative minority).
When in reality, the Conservatives have very little in common now, with much of the Establishment, and Labour have very little in common now, with broad swathes of working class Britain.
And, the same is true of the US, France, and other rich world democracies. Quite often now, the most solidly left-leaning constituencies are the most well-heeled.
It's fascinating to consider why that's the case.
Luxury beliefs of the university educated, especially women. They have to distinguish themselves from the hoi poloi who have always had small-c conservative views. Used to be done by owning a Jaguar, etc.
Luxury beliefs come a lot cheaper than luxury living or even traditional middle class living in southern England.
I wonder how much resentment there is among many recent graduates that they're not going to get the lifestyle they expected, that their parents had or what many of their age group who didn't go to university now has.
There's a lot of resentment around. Saw a Mumsnet post from a 40-something who had worked their way up to an income of £75k, and feels their standard of living doesn't match up to their parents who had a similar inflation-adjusted salary.
We could argue about why that is (housing?) and what to do about it, but people aren't happy and the spectacular Tory defeat was not the cathartic experience the country was looking for.
No there's a lot of buyer's remorse among the £50-70k class to voted Labour for the first time in ages or stayed home. They now realise Labour are going to destroy their jobs and tax them into poverty.
It's been a very steep learning curve for those voters and I expect out of the 2m who stayed home or switched Labour we can get 90% of them back and grab 1.5m from reform on the right. That becomes an election winning coalition in 2029 against what I think will be a deeply unpopular Labour government.
A lot of the £50-£70k class underestimate to a significant degree exactly how far up the pile they are.
Live in London or South East and tell me it's far up the pile.
Most people get that Max but it isn’t particularly relevant when it’s your party that is protecting the interests of those with the housing wealth and those who start sentences with “well in my day I only earned £6k a year”.
In my day I only earned £450 per year but that is a longtime ago [1962] !!!!
That salary is worth about £8,000 in today's money - but house prices were only £40,000 on average, compared with about £260,000 now.
In housing cost terms, you were earning about £55,000 in '24 prices.
Our first home in Edinburgh [1964] was an apartment in Comely Bank for £2 000 and we bought a new build semi detached bungalow here on Llandudno in 1965 for £3,250 so not sure about your figures
Indeed our present 4 bed detached cost £16,000 in April 1975 though I was earning more than £450pa by then
FPT: I was wrong then. In housing cost terms, you were earning the equivalent of £75,000, based on the current value of one-bed flats in Comely Bank and the proportion of your salary you spent in '64. That's over twice the current median salary.
a one bed flat in comely bank is more than 300K? Mental
He is simply wrong about the comparisons to 1964
He also did not know that we were loaned the money interest free from my my father in law
That doesn't make it any better...
Your salary:housing cost ratio in the 60s = 450/2000 = 0.225
Current cost of flat in Comely Bank = £315,000 to £435,000
£315,000*0.225 = £70,850.
This is borne out in aggregate data - house prices are roughly 9x average salaries now, compared with about 4x in the 60s. Unlike you, many new home owners are contending with average rates of around 5%.
I really couldn't care less about your playing around with figures
You are completely out of touch, we could only afford it with an interest free loan from my father in law and my wife working as well
You did not live the reality
Indeed my father bought a brand new detached house in Fairmilehead at the same time for £6,500
GBP72m seems quite a good deal given all the stuff associated with the coronation.
Doesn't it depend on how you account for indirect costs?
For example, how much does an extra Bank Holiday cost in terms of GDP?
The Coronation was on a Saturday, so there was no real point to the extra Bank Holiday
I'm deeply suspicious of these stats that talk of 'extra bank holidays' and the like. Grocery sales just move to another day, some places must see an increase, but most of us just make up the missed time by working a little harder towards the deadlines.
Most of these stats are nonsense anyway, although the change has some relevance.
On topic, why would Farage want to lead the Tories? It is already a 50/50 toss up who will lead the forthcoming Tory-Reform administration. Reform could be running Wales soon. Kemi is going to have to be brilliant and make the most of all her opportunities not to see the Tories go the way of the Liberals.
I agree, I'd say there's a real risk the Tories become the UUP to Reform's DUP.
However, and it's a big however, the Tories can also fish for LD (home counties) and Labour (switchers and floating voters as well) so they can face and pull in multiple directions, if they get the mix and tone right.
Not sure Badenoch is quite the right candidate to go fishing for LD and centrist Labour votes. Davey is a more conservative leader and overall safer bet.
Davey is anything but conservative. He's a socialist in a yellow suit with a flying bird on it.
Not at all.
For example the LDs oppose the abolition of AR on farms and imposition of VAT on private schools.
Davey certainly wasn't a Socialist when in government either.
It will be tough to expand the number of LD seats at the next GE, as there will surely be some dead cat bounce for the Tories, but it isn't impossible. There is not a lot of love out there for either of the big two parties. We may well be in one of those decades where the tectonic plates of party politics shift.
I suggest you read the interviews with him on his background and political philosophy, which was so left-wing the interviewer even asked him why he didn't join the Labour Party then - to which he gave some weakish answer about how he didn't like its tradition.
He's a Lefty through and through.
Don't confuse political opportunism for where his real sympathies lie, and he'd be delighted to prop up a Labour administration that fell short next time.
One of the interesting curiosities of modern politics is that Conservatives don’t look or act conservative. It’s all topsy turvey
On the contrary they seem determined to trash the country rather than conserve it.
It's to do now, with party loyalty running vertically through classes, rather than horizontally, across them.
People are still used to the idea of upper middle class people being overwhelmingly Conservative, and working class people being mainly Labour (with a substantial Conservative minority).
When in reality, the Conservatives have very little in common now, with much of the Establishment, and Labour have very little in common now, with broad swathes of working class Britain.
And, the same is true of the US, France, and other rich world democracies. Quite often now, the most solidly left-leaning constituencies are the most well-heeled.
It's fascinating to consider why that's the case.
Luxury beliefs of the university educated, especially women. They have to distinguish themselves from the hoi poloi who have always had small-c conservative views. Used to be done by owning a Jaguar, etc.
Luxury beliefs come a lot cheaper than luxury living or even traditional middle class living in southern England.
I wonder how much resentment there is among many recent graduates that they're not going to get the lifestyle they expected, that their parents had or what many of their age group who didn't go to university now has.
There's a lot of resentment around. Saw a Mumsnet post from a 40-something who had worked their way up to an income of £75k, and feels their standard of living doesn't match up to their parents who had a similar inflation-adjusted salary.
We could argue about why that is (housing?) and what to do about it, but people aren't happy and the spectacular Tory defeat was not the cathartic experience the country was looking for.
No there's a lot of buyer's remorse among the £50-70k class to voted Labour for the first time in ages or stayed home. They now realise Labour are going to destroy their jobs and tax them into poverty.
It's been a very steep learning curve for those voters and I expect out of the 2m who stayed home or switched Labour we can get 90% of them back and grab 1.5m from reform on the right. That becomes an election winning coalition in 2029 against what I think will be a deeply unpopular Labour government.
A lot of the £50-£70k class underestimate to a significant degree exactly how far up the pile they are.
Live in London or South East and tell me it's far up the pile.
Most people get that Max but it isn’t particularly relevant when it’s your party that is protecting the interests of those with the housing wealth and those who start sentences with “well in my day I only earned £6k a year”.
In my day I only earned £450 per year but that is a longtime ago [1962] !!!!
That salary is worth about £8,000 in today's money - but house prices were only £40,000 on average, compared with about £260,000 now.
In housing cost terms, you were earning about £55,000 in '24 prices.
Our first home in Edinburgh [1964] was an apartment in Comely Bank for £2 000 and we bought a new build semi detached bungalow here on Llandudno in 1965 for £3,250 so not sure about your figures
Indeed our present 4 bed detached cost £16,000 in April 1975 though I was earning more than £450pa by then
FPT: I was wrong then. In housing cost terms, you were earning the equivalent of £75,000, based on the current value of one-bed flats in Comely Bank and the proportion of your salary you spent in '64. That's over twice the current median salary.
a one bed flat in comely bank is more than 300K? Mental
He is simply wrong about the comparisons to 1964
He also did not know that we were loaned the money interest free from my my father in law
That doesn't make it any better...
Your salary:housing cost ratio in the 60s = 450/2000 = 0.225
Current cost of flat in Comely Bank = £315,000 to £435,000
£315,000*0.225 = £70,850.
This is borne out in aggregate data - house prices are roughly 9x average salaries now, compared with about 4x in the 60s. Unlike you, many new home owners are contending with average rates of around 5%.
One wrinkle when comparing houses to salaries is that the ratio falls when looking at household salaries, especially of married middle-class professionals.
On topic, why would Farage want to lead the Tories? It is already a 50/50 toss up who will lead the forthcoming Tory-Reform administration. Reform could be running Wales soon. Kemi is going to have to be brilliant and make the most of all her opportunities not to see the Tories go the way of the Liberals.
I agree, I'd say there's a real risk the Tories become the UUP to Reform's DUP.
However, and it's a big however, the Tories can also fish for LD (home counties) and Labour (switchers and floating voters as well) so they can face and pull in multiple directions, if they get the mix and tone right.
Not sure Badenoch is quite the right candidate to go fishing for LD and centrist Labour votes. Davey is a more conservative leader and overall safer bet.
Davey is anything but conservative. He's a socialist in a yellow suit with a flying bird on it.
Not at all.
For example the LDs oppose the abolition of AR on farms and imposition of VAT on private schools.
Davey certainly wasn't a Socialist when in government either.
It will be tough to expand the number of LD seats at the next GE, as there will surely be some dead cat bounce for the Tories, but it isn't impossible. There is not a lot of love out there for either of the big two parties. We may well be in one of those decades where the tectonic plates of party politics shift.
I suggest you read the interviews with him on his background and political philosophy, which was so left-wing the interviewer even asked him why he didn't join the Labour Party then - to which he gave some weakish answer about how he didn't like its tradition.
He's a Lefty through and through.
Don't confuse political opportunism for where his real sympathies lie, and he'd be delighted to prop up a Labour administration that fell short next time.
One of the interesting curiosities of modern politics is that Conservatives don’t look or act conservative. It’s all topsy turvey
On the contrary they seem determined to trash the country rather than conserve it.
It's to do now, with party loyalty running vertically through classes, rather than horizontally, across them.
People are still used to the idea of upper middle class people being overwhelmingly Conservative, and working class people being mainly Labour (with a substantial Conservative minority).
When in reality, the Conservatives have very little in common now, with much of the Establishment, and Labour have very little in common now, with broad swathes of working class Britain.
And, the same is true of the US, France, and other rich world democracies. Quite often now, the most solidly left-leaning constituencies are the most well-heeled.
It's fascinating to consider why that's the case.
Luxury beliefs of the university educated, especially women. They have to distinguish themselves from the hoi poloi who have always had small-c conservative views. Used to be done by owning a Jaguar, etc.
Luxury beliefs come a lot cheaper than luxury living or even traditional middle class living in southern England.
I wonder how much resentment there is among many recent graduates that they're not going to get the lifestyle they expected, that their parents had or what many of their age group who didn't go to university now has.
There's a lot of resentment around. Saw a Mumsnet post from a 40-something who had worked their way up to an income of £75k, and feels their standard of living doesn't match up to their parents who had a similar inflation-adjusted salary.
We could argue about why that is (housing?) and what to do about it, but people aren't happy and the spectacular Tory defeat was not the cathartic experience the country was looking for.
No there's a lot of buyer's remorse among the £50-70k class to voted Labour for the first time in ages or stayed home. They now realise Labour are going to destroy their jobs and tax them into poverty.
It's been a very steep learning curve for those voters and I expect out of the 2m who stayed home or switched Labour we can get 90% of them back and grab 1.5m from reform on the right. That becomes an election winning coalition in 2029 against what I think will be a deeply unpopular Labour government.
A lot of the £50-£70k class underestimate to a significant degree exactly how far up the pile they are.
Live in London or South East and tell me it's far up the pile.
Most people get that Max but it isn’t particularly relevant when it’s your party that is protecting the interests of those with the housing wealth and those who start sentences with “well in my day I only earned £6k a year”.
In my day I only earned £450 per year but that is a longtime ago [1962] !!!!
That salary is worth about £8,000 in today's money - but house prices were only £40,000 on average, compared with about £260,000 now.
In housing cost terms, you were earning about £55,000 in '24 prices.
Our first home in Edinburgh [1964] was an apartment in Comely Bank for £2 000 and we bought a new build semi detached bungalow here on Llandudno in 1965 for £3,250 so not sure about your figures
Indeed our present 4 bed detached cost £16,000 in April 1975 though I was earning more than £450pa by then
FPT: I was wrong then. In housing cost terms, you were earning the equivalent of £75,000, based on the current value of one-bed flats in Comely Bank and the proportion of your salary you spent in '64. That's over twice the current median salary.
a one bed flat in comely bank is more than 300K? Mental
He is simply wrong about the comparisons to 1964
He also did not know that we were loaned the money interest free from my my father in law
That doesn't make it any better...
Your salary:housing cost ratio in the 60s = 450/2000 = 0.225
Current cost of flat in Comely Bank = £315,000 to £435,000
£315,000*0.225 = £70,850.
This is borne out in aggregate data - house prices are roughly 9x average salaries now, compared with about 4x in the 60s. Unlike you, many new home owners are contending with average rates of around 5%.
One wrinkle when comparing houses to salaries is that the ratio falls when looking at household salaries, especially of married middle-class professionals.
His figures are simply silly and of course our joint income was circa £1,000 pa
Also our actual flat sells circa £275,000 at present
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
I agree broadly with much of it, though I don’t know what his Prime Ministers' department is. Not sure of his grip on monetary policy either - the Bank is in a spate of quantative tightening at the moment, not easing. Would he end this, or support it?
Yet another tedious anti monarchy republican rant of an article by Liberal Radical non Tory TSE.
The Daily Star is a leftwing tabloid rag of a paper which hardly anybody reads nowadays and AN Wilson is just a historian who occasionally comments in the Daily Mail and likes being contrarian.
The fact is the coronation raised far more in tourist revenue than it cost, indeed when we went up to London for the spectacular event there were tourists from Europe, America and all over the world with us who had come specifically to the UK to watch it. It is not as if Presidents don't have costly inaugrations either, US presidential inaugrations cost over $100 milliion every 4 years and they don't even have an NHS at all as a bottomless pit to pour endless billions of taxpayers money into but a mostly private health insurance system
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Errr: Carswell and Cameron were two socially liberal conservatives who differed only in their views on the EU.
Carswell has drunk the Kool-Aid now by the look of it, unless you have a very different idea of what socially liberal conservatism means.
He seems to be just another sad example of someone gradually radicalising themselves by living in an echo chamber.
If Carswell was some massive outlier, you'd have a point. He isn't, so you don't
The USA has just voted for Trump. Across Europe populist or even hard right parties are prospering, mightily
Why? The postwar globalist liberal consensus has broken down, and it is no longer delivering for a lot of people. Indeed quite a few westerners - in America and Europe - see the liberal state as acting AGAINST them, in favour of various minorities, migrants, and so on
If this continues we will see the alt.right in power across the West, and it won't be nice smiley Cameronism, it will have teeth and claws
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Errr: Carswell and Cameron were two socially liberal conservatives who differed only in their views on the EU.
Carswell has drunk the Kool-Aid now by the look of it, unless you have a very different idea of what socially liberal conservatism means.
He seems to be just another sad example of someone gradually radicalising themselves by living in an echo chamber.
The Heritage Foundation thinktank itself, whom Carswell's prescriptions somewhat resemble is a good example of this. Once a Reaganite thinktank that was de rigeur to quote in the Times and even among less radical Tories, and now, after years in first the Fox and now Twitter ecosystem, now full Trumpite.
It wrote pretty much the entire Project 2025 plan, which is basically a blueprint for Orban's Hungary in America, but with added Christian extremism.
You talk as if Trump enacted some kind of radicalist coup d'etat. He did not. He won the election, and he got the most votes, and his party took the Senate and the House. Americans knowingly voted for Trump, having already experienced him as president
On topic, why would Farage want to lead the Tories? It is already a 50/50 toss up who will lead the forthcoming Tory-Reform administration. Reform could be running Wales soon. Kemi is going to have to be brilliant and make the most of all her opportunities not to see the Tories go the way of the Liberals.
I agree, I'd say there's a real risk the Tories become the UUP to Reform's DUP.
However, and it's a big however, the Tories can also fish for LD (home counties) and Labour (switchers and floating voters as well) so they can face and pull in multiple directions, if they get the mix and tone right.
Not sure Badenoch is quite the right candidate to go fishing for LD and centrist Labour votes. Davey is a more conservative leader and overall safer bet.
Davey is anything but conservative. He's a socialist in a yellow suit with a flying bird on it.
Not at all.
For example the LDs oppose the abolition of AR on farms and imposition of VAT on private schools.
Davey certainly wasn't a Socialist when in government either.
It will be tough to expand the number of LD seats at the next GE, as there will surely be some dead cat bounce for the Tories, but it isn't impossible. There is not a lot of love out there for either of the big two parties. We may well be in one of those decades where the tectonic plates of party politics shift.
I suggest you read the interviews with him on his background and political philosophy, which was so left-wing the interviewer even asked him why he didn't join the Labour Party then - to which he gave some weakish answer about how he didn't like its tradition.
He's a Lefty through and through.
Don't confuse political opportunism for where his real sympathies lie, and he'd be delighted to prop up a Labour administration that fell short next time.
One of the interesting curiosities of modern politics is that Conservatives don’t look or act conservative. It’s all topsy turvey
On the contrary they seem determined to trash the country rather than conserve it.
It's to do now, with party loyalty running vertically through classes, rather than horizontally, across them.
People are still used to the idea of upper middle class people being overwhelmingly Conservative, and working class people being mainly Labour (with a substantial Conservative minority).
When in reality, the Conservatives have very little in common now, with much of the Establishment, and Labour have very little in common now, with broad swathes of working class Britain.
And, the same is true of the US, France, and other rich world democracies. Quite often now, the most solidly left-leaning constituencies are the most well-heeled.
It's fascinating to consider why that's the case.
Luxury beliefs of the university educated, especially women. They have to distinguish themselves from the hoi poloi who have always had small-c conservative views. Used to be done by owning a Jaguar, etc.
Luxury beliefs come a lot cheaper than luxury living or even traditional middle class living in southern England.
I wonder how much resentment there is among many recent graduates that they're not going to get the lifestyle they expected, that their parents had or what many of their age group who didn't go to university now has.
There's a lot of resentment around. Saw a Mumsnet post from a 40-something who had worked their way up to an income of £75k, and feels their standard of living doesn't match up to their parents who had a similar inflation-adjusted salary.
We could argue about why that is (housing?) and what to do about it, but people aren't happy and the spectacular Tory defeat was not the cathartic experience the country was looking for.
No there's a lot of buyer's remorse among the £50-70k class to voted Labour for the first time in ages or stayed home. They now realise Labour are going to destroy their jobs and tax them into poverty.
It's been a very steep learning curve for those voters and I expect out of the 2m who stayed home or switched Labour we can get 90% of them back and grab 1.5m from reform on the right. That becomes an election winning coalition in 2029 against what I think will be a deeply unpopular Labour government.
A lot of the £50-£70k class underestimate to a significant degree exactly how far up the pile they are.
Live in London or South East and tell me it's far up the pile.
Most people get that Max but it isn’t particularly relevant when it’s your party that is protecting the interests of those with the housing wealth and those who start sentences with “well in my day I only earned £6k a year”.
In my day I only earned £450 per year but that is a longtime ago [1962] !!!!
That salary is worth about £8,000 in today's money - but house prices were only £40,000 on average, compared with about £260,000 now.
In housing cost terms, you were earning about £55,000 in '24 prices.
Our first home in Edinburgh [1964] was an apartment in Comely Bank for £2 000 and we bought a new build semi detached bungalow here on Llandudno in 1965 for £3,250 so not sure about your figures
Indeed our present 4 bed detached cost £16,000 in April 1975 though I was earning more than £450pa by then
FPT: I was wrong then. In housing cost terms, you were earning the equivalent of £75,000, based on the current value of one-bed flats in Comely Bank and the proportion of your salary you spent in '64. That's over twice the current median salary.
a one bed flat in comely bank is more than 300K? Mental
He is simply wrong about the comparisons to 1964
He also did not know that we were loaned the money interest free from my my father in law
That doesn't make it any better...
Your salary:housing cost ratio in the 60s = 450/2000 = 0.225
Current cost of flat in Comely Bank = £315,000 to £435,000
£315,000*0.225 = £70,850.
This is borne out in aggregate data - house prices are roughly 9x average salaries now, compared with about 4x in the 60s. Unlike you, many new home owners are contending with average rates of around 5%.
One wrinkle when comparing houses to salaries is that the ratio falls when looking at household salaries, especially of married middle-class professionals.
Indeed women working full time and paid even after becoming mothers has been one of the biggest factors in rising house prices in recent decades as it increased funds for mortgages
Yet another tedious anti monarchy republican rant of an article by Liberal Radical non Tory TSE.
The Daily Star is a leftwing tabloid rag of a paper which hardly anybody reads nowadays and AN Wilson is just a historian who occasionally comments in the Daily Mail and likes being contrarian.
The fact is the coronation raised far more in tourist revenue than it cost, indeed when we went up to London for the spectacular event there were tourists from Europe, America and all over the world with us who had come specifically to the UK to watch it. It is not as if Presidents don't have costly inaugrations either, US presidential inaugrations cost over $100 milliion every 4 years and they don't even have an NHS at all as a bottomless pit to pour endless billions of taxpayers money into but a mostly private health insurance system
I am ambivalent about the monarchy but in the absence of an alternative then it will continue
I have no respect for subservience and bowing which I would refuse to do but treated with equal respect then OK
I expect in time the monarchy will lose most of the commonwealth to republics
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Indeed, if Farage wins most seats or the Tories need him to form a government in a hung parliament that is what we will get.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Indeed, if Farage wins most seats or the Tories need him to form a government in a hung parliament that is what we will get.
The way things are going, Farage will end up on the moderate wing of politics.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Errr: Carswell and Cameron were two socially liberal conservatives who differed only in their views on the EU.
Carswell has drunk the Kool-Aid now by the look of it, unless you have a very different idea of what socially liberal conservatism means.
He seems to be just another sad example of someone gradually radicalising themselves by living in an echo chamber.
The Heritage Foundation thinktank itself, whom Carswell's prescriptions somewhat resemble is a good example of this. Once a Reaganite thinktank that was de rigeur to quote in the Times and even among less radical Tories, and now, after years in first the Fox and now Twitter ecosystem, now full Trumpite.
It wrote pretty much the entire Project 2025 plan, which is basically a blueprint for Orban's Hungary in America, but with added Christian extremism.
You talk as if Trump enacted some kind of radicalist coup d'etat. He did not. He won the election, and he got the most votes, and his party took the Senate and the House. Americans knowingly voted for Trump, having already experienced him as president
Nothing radical as yet.
Either he will be mainly hot air as last time, or he will enact that Project 2025 malarkey.
Am I the only one who gets frightened when (small c) conservatives abandon the institutions they once held dear? It makes me feel unsettled and I fear it makes them unhinged.
Reform voters have rather high rates of Republicanism. It's not the lefties the monarchy needs to worry about.
Not really true, according to Yougov 81% of Reform voters want to keep the monarchy, higher than the 65% of voters overall who want to keep it if not quite as high as the 94% of Tories who want to keep the King.
LDs are about average, 60% for retaining the monarchy. It is Labour voters less supportive with 55% for a monarchy and 36% for an elected head of state
GBP72m seems quite a good deal given all the stuff associated with the coronation.
Doesn't it depend on how you account for indirect costs?
For example, how much does an extra Bank Holiday cost in terms of GDP?
The Coronation was on a Saturday, so there was no real point to the extra Bank Holiday
But many people will have valued the extra day off - what matters in cost-benefit analyses is welfare, not GDP, and when the two clash, usually because of non-quantifiable metrics the former wins.
Also not all the £72m will be lost to the country - it's not like climate aid. Much of it will be spent on goods and services in the UK stimulating the economy, and much of that will come back to the government in extra tax revenue.
And so on and so on and so on. Basically you can come to whatever answer you want.
But what isn't contestable is that it's an utterly trivial amount for a once-in-a-generation ceremony and if we really want to cut public spending, there are plenty of juicier and less justifiable targets to go after.
COP29, which started badly with plenty of no shows, is now on the verge of a complete breakdown, and that's on top of the Commonwealth hustle and FUBAR last month:
Plus Germany have said they wouldn’t execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Relatedly, this is Douglas Carswell's recipe for saving the UK (he was the Tory MP who shifted to UKIP)
To rescue Britain, the public need to demand: 1. Border controls. Remove illegal arrivals immediately, appeals heard overseas. 2. Large-scale deportation of those who entered illegally. No foreign courts holding jurisdiction. 3. Concerted assimilation, with a policy to deport radical imams and extreme Islamists. 4. End BBC licence fee. They lie. 5. Repeal Equality Act, Human Rights Act and close “supreme” court. None of these innovations have protected our natural liberties. 6. Give parents a legal right to control their share to local education budget. Parent power is the only way to counter woke indoctrination. 7. Abolish all renewable energy targets and restrictions on hydrocarbons. 8. Terminate QE and unwind monetary manipulation that has destroyed productivity. 9. 10 percent across the board cut in public spending to save the country from looming bankruptcy. Pain now so our children might not be poorer than us. 10. Department of Prime Minister to end the clown show of incompetence in Westminster
In the end, somthing like this will be tried, because, in the end, voters will vote for it, in their desperation
Carswell has settled in Mississippi. I can't imagine who or what has influenced his policy proposals, but some of them feel rather familiar.
If Labour fails, and I believe they will - the signs are already grim - then we will get a rightwing offer that is much closer to Carswell than Cameron. It's basically the last thing we haven't tried (apart from Marxism), and almost every other western nation is pursuing the same logic
Errr: Carswell and Cameron were two socially liberal conservatives who differed only in their views on the EU.
Carswell has drunk the Kool-Aid now by the look of it, unless you have a very different idea of what socially liberal conservatism means.
He seems to be just another sad example of someone gradually radicalising themselves by living in an echo chamber.
The Heritage Foundation thinktank itself, whom Carswell's prescriptions somewhat resemble is a good example of this. Once a Reaganite thinktank that was de rigeur to quote in the Times and even among less radical Tories, and now, after years in first the Fox and now Twitter ecosystem, now full Trumpite.
It wrote pretty much the entire Project 2025 plan, which is basically a blueprint for Orban's Hungary in America, but with added Christian extremism.
You talk as if Trump enacted some kind of radicalist coup d'etat. He did not. He won the election, and he got the most votes, and his party took the Senate and the House. Americans knowingly voted for Trump, having already experienced him as president
Nothing radical as yet.
Either he will be mainly hot air as last time, or he will enact that Project 2025 malarkey.
He can do as he wishes, he won
My guess is that he will be much more ruthless and clinical than last time, because it's his last term and he is surrounded by much more committed people, and has dudes like Musk behind him
Doubt we will see the full 2025 thingy, but it will likely be more radical than 2016
I've never heard a republican argument that wouldn't put the average voter into a coma. No upside for the average person for it to be a massive vote winner. It's an obsession of people with no joy in their lives.
I've never heard a republican argument that wouldn't put the average voter into a coma. No upside for the average person for it to be a massive vote winner. It's an obsession of people with no joy in their lives.
I for one would be very sad and quite concerned if we got rid of the monarchy. The Westminster System depends on it and it provides a logical basis for law. You can't take the keystone out of the arch.
We could end up like the French with the Government spending more on the Presidency than we do on the Monarchy, and more on maintaining the Disestablished Church Buildings than we prviously did on grants etc to the church institution.
For all my grumbling I think our system works pretty well despite failure to address some key problems (for which changing the governing system would not address, since it is a political issue not a result of the system), and so further fudges and tweaks can achieve some good ends without ostensibly dramatic changes which I doubt would have as much effect on things like general equality or meritocratic advancement as compared to now.
It's silly in its ceremonial aspect, naturally, but I've yet to be persuaded its such a big deal that we need big changes in that area. Not many of our problems could not be addressed without tackling it.
I would expect remaining Caribbean monarchies to end fairly soon (some have been working on it for seemingly decades, it's surprising more have not done so already), and possibly only your UK/Canada/Australia ones in the medium term, but I presently expect the monarchy to last my lifetime here.
However, these things can be more brittle than expected - if people don't really care to change it can continue on without much enthusiasm (eg Canada), but equally support can erode quickly if the wrong monarch messed up in a big way.
I keep thinking the monarchy must be doomed in places like Australia, and then I see positive polling that surprises me.
In Australia I think it is partly a desire from rural and suburban and small town Australia to tell the leftist liberal urban big city elite who want a republic and despise the Australian white working class who rejected the Voice for indigenous Australians last year to sod off
I've never heard a republican argument that wouldn't put the average voter into a coma. No upside for the average person for it to be a massive vote winner. It's an obsession of people with no joy in their lives.
I've never heard a republican argument that wouldn't put the average voter into a coma. No upside for the average person for it to be a massive vote winner. It's an obsession of people with no joy in their lives.
I for one would be very sad and quite concerned if we got rid of the monarchy. The Westminster System depends on it and it provides a logical basis for law. You can't take the keystone out of the arch.
We could end up like the French with the Government spending more on the Presidency than we do on the Monarchy, and more on maintaining the Disestablished Church Buildings than we prviously did on grants etc to the church institution.
For all my grumbling I think our system works pretty well despite failure to address some key problems (for which changing the governing system would not address, since it is a political issue not a result of the system), and so further fudges and tweaks can achieve some good ends without ostensibly dramatic changes which I doubt would have as much effect on things like general equality or meritocratic advancement as compared to now.
It's silly in its ceremonial aspect, naturally, but I've yet to be persuaded its such a big deal that we need big changes in that area. Not many of our problems could not be addressed without tackling it.
I would expect remaining Caribbean monarchies to end fairly soon (some have been working on it for seemingly decades, it's surprising more have not done so already), and possibly only your UK/Canada/Australia ones in the medium term, but I presently expect the monarchy to last my lifetime here.
However, these things can be more brittle than expected - if people don't really care to change it can continue on without much enthusiasm (eg Canada), but equally support can erode quickly if the wrong monarch messed up in a big way.
I keep thinking the monarchy must be doomed in places like Australia, and then I see positive polling that surprises me.
In Australia I think it is partly a desire from rural and suburban and small town Australia to tell the leftist liberal urban big city elite who want a republic and despise the Australian white working class who rejected the Voice last year to sod off
Yep. As happened in New Zealand on the flag referendum. The revenge of the overlooked
Yet another tedious anti monarchy republican rant of an article by Liberal Radical non Tory TSE.
The Daily Star is a leftwing tabloid rag of a paper which hardly anybody reads nowadays and AN Wilson is just a historian who occasionally comments in the Daily Mail and likes being contrarian.
The fact is the coronation raised far more in tourist revenue than it cost, indeed when we went up to London for the spectacular event there were tourists from Europe, America and all over the world with us who had come specifically to the UK to watch it. It is not as if Presidents don't have costly inaugrations either, US presidential inaugrations cost over $100 milliion every 4 years and they don't even have an NHS at all as a bottomless pit to pour endless billions of taxpayers money into but a mostly private health insurance system
Why should our taxes be poured into the London tourist industry's pockets? Even if your assertion is correct.
Unless the London tourist industry had so many extra tourists *over and above a normal period at the same time of year* that the extra tax amounted to markedly more than £72M over and above the additional take.
I've never heard a republican argument that wouldn't put the average voter into a coma. No upside for the average person for it to be a massive vote winner. It's an obsession of people with no joy in their lives.
King Harry and Queen Meghan.
I nearly put that forward but decided I didn’t want to go there.
Yet another tedious anti monarchy republican rant of an article by Liberal Radical non Tory TSE.
The Daily Star is a leftwing tabloid rag of a paper which hardly anybody reads nowadays and AN Wilson is just a historian who occasionally comments in the Daily Mail and likes being contrarian.
The fact is the coronation raised far more in tourist revenue than it cost, indeed when we went up to London for the spectacular event there were tourists from Europe, America and all over the world with us who had come specifically to the UK to watch it. It is not as if Presidents don't have costly inaugrations either, US presidential inaugrations cost over $100 milliion every 4 years and they don't even have an NHS at all as a bottomless pit to pour endless billions of taxpayers money into but a mostly private health insurance system
Why should our taxes be poured into the London tourist industry's pockets? Even if your assertion is correct.
Unless the London tourist industry had so many extra tourists *over and above a normal period at the same time of year* that the extra tax amounted to markedly more than £72M over and above the additional take.
I've never heard a republican argument that wouldn't put the average voter into a coma. No upside for the average person for it to be a massive vote winner. It's an obsession of people with no joy in their lives.
King Harry and Queen Meghan.
Without doxing myself, I used to work for the Royal Household. He was nice, I would not comment on her.
I for one would be very sad and quite concerned if we got rid of the monarchy. The Westminster System depends on it and it provides a logical basis for law. You can't take the keystone out of the arch.
We could end up like the French with the Government spending more on the Presidency than we do on the Monarchy, and more on maintaining the Disestablished Church Buildings than we prviously did on grants etc to the church institution.
For all my grumbling I think our system works pretty well despite failure to address some key problems (for which changing the governing system would not address, since it is a political issue not a result of the system), and so further fudges and tweaks can achieve some good ends without ostensibly dramatic changes which I doubt would have as much effect on things like general equality or meritocratic advancement as compared to now.
It's silly in its ceremonial aspect, naturally, but I've yet to be persuaded its such a big deal that we need big changes in that area. Not many of our problems could not be addressed without tackling it.
I would expect remaining Caribbean monarchies to end fairly soon (some have been working on it for seemingly decades, it's surprising more have not done so already), and possibly only your UK/Canada/Australia ones in the medium term, but I presently expect the monarchy to last my lifetime here.
However, these things can be more brittle than expected - if people don't really care to change it can continue on without much enthusiasm (eg Canada), but equally support can erode quickly if the wrong monarch messed up in a big way.
I keep thinking the monarchy must be doomed in places like Australia, and then I see positive polling that surprises me.
In Australia I think it is partly a desire from rural and suburban and small town Australia to tell the leftist liberal urban big city elite who want a republic and despise the Australian white working class who rejected the Voice for indigenous Australians last year to sod off
This is partly true, but I also have a big-city, liberal-ish, Australian friend, whose family love Kate and William.
There's actually still quite a lot of support for them there across the board, I think. Canada and New Zealand I don't know about.
Comments
You seem to have some very strange datasets and simply do not reflect my lived experience at the time
He also did not know that we were loaned the money interest free from my my father in law
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/articles/ckgzvlxyvxgo
Which bro-mance will last longer this one or Trump / Musk....
(FWIW, I like both Ramirez and Matt enough to have collections of each man's cartoons.)
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Cop29 is a cynical scam: technology and markets are already saving the planet
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/15/cop29-cynical-scam-technology-markets-saving-planet/
For one thing, he has driving passions that he's folded in to the more one-nation influence, architecture and the environment, and Starmer seems to be interested in his views on both.
He's very driven to do these particular kind of things.
Gradual change.
When do we want it?!
In due course.
All that's missing is the pledge to appoint Christian Fundamentalists to key public positions.
It is now unwinding.
But he does seem to be actually sane and not wanted by the FBI.
"Bessent then became a partner to George Soros at Soros Fund Management, where alongside Stanley Druckenmiller, he was a driving force behind perhaps Soros’ most famous trade, his 1992 shorting of the British pound which won Soros, Bessent and their team over $1 billion in profits."
https://time.com/7178829/why-ceos-are-cheering-donald-trump-bessent-pick-for-treasury-secretary/
The women says, "I demand a second opinion".
Dr: "Okay, you're ugly too."
I've asked Rachel and Keir to look into it.
Lot of client countries doing what they are being told to do.
No surprises there.
I should imagine there'll be some last minute concessions to get a deal of some description through, if not this amount.
Developing countries have dismissed an offer of $250bn (£199bn) per year to help them tackle climate change – some want a figure closer to $500bn
I am fairly sure though he isn't enjoying the job, and probably would prefer to be in Balmoral etc wandering about, talking to plants and shooting animals.
It just felt odd to have got so far down the operation process and then to be told it was not necessary. Having said that, I arrived at A&E in mid-afternoon and was discharged four hours later, so it all went rather quickly. I was an emergency, and then I was not...
That is not to say his ideas would be any good (just for starters, how would we deport 'radical imams and extreme islamists' if they are British citizens without even dual citizenship in some cases?), but I don't see that someone for or against Brexit should be disregarded solely because they live or moved abroad.
The one I don't really get is the Supreme Court hate. I only know one person for whom that is apparently a really big issue, and they seem to have a really warped view of it as some kind of US style court captured by liberals, when I don't get that impression at all.
It's like how some people would like to have parliament seating arrangements in a hemicycle like many other places, and rather ludicrously suggest this naturally lead to a less adversarial and confrontational style of politics, as though the shape of the chamber would inevitably affect the political culture so directly. Despite some parliaments having punch ups in those types of chambers.
The Medieval Church had *some* success in mediating disputes, and imposing limits on warfare. As its authority disintegrated in the 16th century, so warfare turned more murderous (climate change - global cooling - also played its part).
I don't think people who live overseas should be implied to lack patriotism merely by that fact, or indeed incapable of commenting about things. We see it on here occasionally about posters abroad, and I think it's unfair, and that would extend to Carswell. Unless by their words they essentially admit to it.
Slavery back on the cards? (Officially that is, obviously there are many effective slaves in the world).
It is Mattison's analysis of why Labour lost the red wall that I lean on when pointing out it is the big shop closures that are canaries in the coalmine.
ttps://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2023/dec/31/revisited-cost-of-the-crown-part-5-the-coronation-of-charles-iii-podcast
The £72m also works out at approximately £3 for every worker who got an extra day of holiday.
Bargain.
- Your salary:housing cost ratio in the 60s = 450/2000 = 0.225
- Current cost of flat in Comely Bank = £315,000 to £435,000
- £315,000*0.225 = £70,850.
This is borne out in aggregate data - house prices are roughly 9x average salaries now, compared with about 4x in the 60s. Unlike you, many new home owners are contending with average rates of around 5%.Aussie lamb on our shelves for Christmas - a direct result of the Tories’ post Brexit trade deals with Australia and NZ! They sold out Welsh farmers by undermining Welsh lamb - this is the result!
https://nitter.poast.org/cefincampbell/status/1860045610826760406#m
I suppose I'm not sufficiently sympathetic towards our farmers, but still. Presumably one reason Farage detested Carswell.
He seems to be just another sad example of someone gradually radicalising themselves by living in an echo chamber.
He used you be pretty actually liberal, but eurosceptic.
In that respect, being a back bench MP is akin to being a passenger on Cross Country Trains.
So, people like Carswell need to be careful what they wish for.
Though perhaps we don't need 650 MPs to begin with - these things vary wildly across the world, so there's no 'perfect' number.
example of this. Once a Reaganite thinktank that was de rigeur to quote in the Times and even among less radical Tories, and now, after years in first the Fox and now Twitter ecosystem, now full Trumpite.
It wrote pretty much the entire Project 2025 plan, which is basically a blueprint for Orban's Hungary in America, but with added Christian extremism.
For example, how much does an extra Bank Holiday cost in terms of GDP?
The Coronation was on a Saturday, so there was no real point to the extra Bank Holiday
You are completely out of touch, we could only afford it with an interest free loan from my father in law and my wife working as well
You did not live the reality
Indeed my father bought a brand new detached house in Fairmilehead at the same time for £6,500
Most of these stats are nonsense anyway, although the change has some relevance.
Also our actual flat sells circa £275,000 at present
The Daily Star is a leftwing tabloid rag of a paper which hardly anybody reads nowadays and AN Wilson is just a historian who occasionally comments in the Daily Mail and likes being contrarian.
The fact is the coronation raised far more in tourist revenue than it cost, indeed when we went up to London for the spectacular event there were tourists from Europe, America and all over the world with us who had come specifically to the UK to watch it. It is not as if Presidents don't have costly inaugrations either, US presidential inaugrations cost over $100 milliion every 4 years and they don't even have an NHS at all as a bottomless pit to pour endless billions of taxpayers money into but a mostly private health insurance system
The USA has just voted for Trump. Across Europe populist or even hard right parties are prospering, mightily
Why? The postwar globalist liberal consensus has broken down, and it is no longer delivering for a lot of people. Indeed quite a few westerners - in America and Europe - see the liberal state as acting AGAINST them, in favour of various minorities, migrants, and so on
If this continues we will see the alt.right in power across the West, and it won't be nice smiley Cameronism, it will have teeth and claws
"OMFG it never gets light!"
But that is different to an extra day off for salaried employees, though I gained a free day off myself.
I have no respect for subservience and bowing which I would refuse to do but treated with equal respect then OK
I expect in time the monarchy will lose most of the commonwealth to republics
I reckon SA will win this 54-12
Either he will be mainly hot air as last time, or he will enact that Project 2025 malarkey.
LDs are about average, 60% for retaining the monarchy. It is Labour voters less supportive with 55% for a monarchy and 36% for an elected head of state
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/Internal_RoyalFavourability_240815.pdf
Also not all the £72m will be lost to the country - it's not like climate aid. Much of it will be spent on goods and services in the UK stimulating the economy, and much of that will come back to the government in extra tax revenue.
And so on and so on and so on. Basically you can come to whatever answer you want.
But what isn't contestable is that it's an utterly trivial amount for a once-in-a-generation ceremony and if we really want to cut public spending, there are plenty of juicier and less justifiable targets to go after.
My guess is that he will be much more ruthless and clinical than last time, because it's his last term and he is surrounded by much more committed people, and has dudes like Musk behind him
Doubt we will see the full 2025 thingy, but it will likely be more radical than 2016
Unless the London tourist industry had so many extra tourists *over and above a normal period at the same time of year* that the extra tax amounted to markedly more than £72M over and above the additional take.
There's actually still quite a lot of support for them there across the board, I think. Canada and New Zealand I don't know about.