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Not Another One?! – politicalbetting.com
Not Another One?! – politicalbetting.com
With all the demands for yet another inquiry, let’s look at the history of previous ones.
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Surreal.
If x or y happens, was reasonably foreseeable, and was preventable had a or b (accepted) inquiry recommendation been followed through properly, then there ought to be implications.
Great article from @Cyclefree. The Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths system was started in 1952. Read them and it’s depressing how much they all say the same things, again and again. Another example of the problem.
May be he should stop lobbing rocks at Greenhaouse then!
He was after all was he not Chairman of Southampton Football Club?
May be he and Farage and Musk would therefore care t explain why LOWE turned a completely blind eye and ignored numerous warnings about a chap called Bob Higgins??..
You see, when you turn over Rocks of the gobshites, you find a lot of their own shite!
What happened to that twitter scandal regarding Starmer referenced umpteen times a few weeks ago. Turned out to be tosh.
Really guys get off twitter. It is full of conspiracy crap.
Serious question. You have some pathological fear
I seem to remember in Parkinson's Law, the book, he showed very effectively how executive groups are always expanded over time as to become useless so a subset then has to be convened to do the actual work, thus the King's advisors became a body, then the King's Council, then the Privy Council, then the close counsellors then the Cabal, then the Cabinet etc etc to the Kitchen Cabinet, then to No. 10 etc etc.
The same rule must be true for mechanisms for inquiry, vide the Post Office Inquiry or Blair's three Foot and Mouth Inquiries which were designed only to prove it didn't come from the government labs, chaired by a director of the government labs.
It would be like asking Gordon to chair an inquiry into what happened to the Government Gold reserves, or Sir Keir himself to chair an inquiry into East European Entryism before 1989.
Others will be seeing Twitter absolutely dominated by angry men talking grooming gangs, and will be sensing revolution in the air. Thus are all our personal echo chambers curated.
His biggest problem is not Starmer, Badenoch, Davey or any other UK Politician.
His biggest problem is Musks better mate TOMMY ROBINSON.
Robinson despises Farage as he sees Farage as "the establishment" . He sees Farage as a far bigger enemy to his plans than any main stream politician.
Apparently according to informed sources much of the Reform jamboree in Essex yesterday was drowned out by chants of "Tommee Tommee Robinson"....
Farage employed rock-star type bonehead security, not to protect him from lefties or greenies or climate or muslim threats ...but from Robinsons blackshirts....
That will be the real story on the right and far right of British Politics in 2025.
https://x.com/uapjames/status/1875550883079184760?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
The other day I had a discussion with @HYUFD on a topic where we disagreed strongly, but we didn't take over the forum nor make it unpleasant, which goes beyond banter. Foxy had already been driven away. I have no desire to comment when it gets like this. I'm sure it is the same for others. Hence the destroying of PB comment.
Can’t get my head around this
“Modern classical music can be a big ‘turn-off’, admits composer Mark-Anthony Turnage”
Perhaps write music that isn’t shit, and write music that people enjoy? If I knapped flints that everyone hated, I wouldn’t sell flints or have a flint agent. I wouldn’t be in a job. How can you have a job making art everyone hates??
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jan/05/modern-classical-music-can-be-a-big-turn-off-admits-composer-mark-anthony-turnage
You cannot win an argument by closing it down rather than addressing it, and this is a place for political debate and it will ebb and flow
I am more concerned how @TSE is going to administer this forum post the online safety act, as it is quite evident that some on all sides of the debate may well threaten the viability of PB betting with ill judged comments
We all need to bear in mind that we have a responsibility to @TSE and the site owners to post with due care
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I rarely agree with Mr Cumbria5, although I always read his (?her) comments with interest. However I agree with him on this, (although I have a caveat about what responsibility a 27 year junior barrister would have had over anything in 1989!) it is high time that the simple act of setting up an Inquiry was not treated as 'job done'; if significant action is deemed to be merited, then that action should be taken.
Edit; for sense.
An excellent, if depressing, read and the thing is nothing ever changes.
Institutions are about protecting themselves first and foremost. Nothing will change. A few post office scandal victims received gongs in the New Years awards. They have yet to receive justice.
Even given that no 1 in the rankings was only watched by 1 in 5 people and by the time you get to no 10 you are down to 1 in 20.
Each year more people ditch the licence because they feel its no longer of value to them.
Interestingly in the last few days I’ve noticed some people returning from Bluesky. Sheepishly. Not enough to declare a trend but Hmmm
Whenever I do visit Bluesky it is fun for about 20 minutes - archeology and astronomy - but there is zero argument. No debate. Sterile lefty agreement quite rigidly policed - which gets very boring. So I leave
"On Christmas Day, 2.35 million viewers watched ITV News, beating out the Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas special, which drew in 2.15 million viewers."
https://x.com/adamjschwarz/status/1875839076626231427?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
If this could be extended to modern architecture everyone hates, that would be great
Now foggy as all fuck (technical meteorological term), but 12 degrees.
The license fee portion that funds the state broadcaster is unsustainable. Fewer and fewer people watch the BBC especially younger people and fewer and fewer people value the BBC as an institution.
Let it fight for its funding.
https://bsky.app/profile/vicderbyshire.bsky.social/post/3lew7iokxjk2k
ROCHDALE 2013
Serious case review highlighted failures by 17 agencies who were meant to protect kids
GTR MANCHESTER 2020 - Manc-wide Independent Review commissioned by Mayor Andy Burnham (Part 1)
OLDHAM 2022 – Burnham review (Part 2)
ROCHDALE 2024 - Burnham review (Part 3)
ROTHERHAM 2014 - independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation by Alexis Jay which covered CSE in the town 1997-2013
ROTHERHAM 2015 - Louise Casey looked at whether Rotherham Coucil was ‘fit for purpose’ given their abdication of responsibility for vulnerable kids
TELFORD Jul 2022
UK-WIDE Child Sexual Exploitation - Home Affairs Select Committee June 2013
And of course the wide-ranging 468 page Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse which took 7 years to complete, published in 2022 & led by Prof Alexis Jay 👇
www.iicsa.org.uk
In 2023 Prof Jay and the Victims & Survivors Consultative Panel said:
‘We are deeply disappointed that the Conservative gov has not accepted the full package of recommendations made in the final report’
It's worth emphasising that Suella Braverman was Home Secretary at the time - so one of the main people calling for an inquiry is ignoring that the exact inquiry she called for has been done and she ignored the recommendations...
I wasn’t being flippant when I said this kind of stuff is going to get an MP killed. It is irresponsible to share it. Hence I will no longer be posting Tweets.
Arts at any depth have always worked by a synthesis of canonical tradition and illuminating genius. So, for example, Larkin is a genius but you can trace a line from him back to Edward Thomas, Hardy, John Clare etc.
Richard Strauss is a genius and you can trace a line back through Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart etc.
(As for novels, don't get me started.)
They knew where to go with what they inherited but on the whole have no successors.
The reasons have to be cultural and widespread. Opinions will vary!
I am not posting as frequently as I was last year but I still value this site a lot as it helps inform my discussions and thoughts on where politics is going.
*The irony is not lost on me that I am doing so by posting this.
We have a fair bit of snow in the Flatlands but it is so wet I don't think I'm going bother getting the XC skis out. Fortunately it is a Sunday so nobody is attempting to move anywhere.
But others survive and thrive. Movies, TV, some modern art is notably successful - both popular AND profitable (cf the career of Damien Hirst). Theatre seems to be doing ok
Right now “literary fiction” is in terrible shape but other novel genres are doing quite well
There was no space to include this - but the way the Aberfan families were treated in the decades after the tragedy was appalling - and this has been copied in scandals since. Absolutely nothing has been learnt.
And my rather depressing conclusion is that this is not just because of ineptitude. But because there has been a disdain, contempt even for the people who suffer. It is almost as if by being victims they are seen as not worthy of respect or care or basic human decency. Victims are seen as "little people" not worthy bothering about
From my conclusion -
"It is as if, bad as it is to have caused harm in the first place, it somehow also seems necessary to continue with the cruelty and the contempt and the indifference in order to …. well, what? To justify what was done? To enable the perpetrators to forget that the victims are human beings like them? If they can be dismissed or dehumanised in some way, maybe it makes it easier not to face up to what you have been in part responsible for.
As CS Lewis put it:
“The greatest evil is not now done in those “sordid dens of crime” that Dickens loves to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clean carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”
There is the indifference which can be one of the causes of a problem. But what is often worse is the indifference shown to victims after problems have arisen. It is hard to understand the callousness of some decisions. Perhaps its impulse is less the effect on the victims but more a desire to save face by those responsible. It harms an institution’s self-image and, often, of the people within it. “We got it wrong.” is hard to say. If “we get it wrong” what sort of a “we” are we, really? Avoiding the shame of having to admit that your actions or inactions have been responsible for the suffering of others is what drives this indifference and contempt.
What happened to the Aberfan families has happened to so many others who have found themselves unjustly treated: not just those contaminated with infected blood, not just subpostmasters, not just those living in a dangerous tower block. But those defrauded by badly regulated financial companies, football fans, Caribbean immigrants who have lived and worked here for decades, crime victims, those wrongly convicted, hospital patients. On and on. They are victims of abuses of power by those with power.
What happened to them could happen to any of us."
This last point is so often forgotten by those in power.
Yes, other novel genres are doing fine. Chandler and Christie have plenty of successors, if any recent ones are high art I have missed them; Trollope and Dickens fewer - like none?
(Will Hirst/Emin etc seem important in 500 years time?)
It’s not cause I dominate debate or divert things offensively its because he’s a fool - and he is - and I point that out in fairly brutal but sometimes amusing ways
I’m like the Flashman of PB
Hmm. Moment of self awareness here. Am I a bully? I do have a streak of sadism. Being a bully isn’t good. My argument is always that I take as much as I give (and I do) but…. Dunno
Maybe I shall strive to be nicer in 2025
What do they do?
Austen is much greater coz she wrote great plots AND great prose. That’s why Pride and Prejuduce is infinitely superior to any Dickens/Trollope - and is continuously remade
Have a great plot, then great characters. Your work will endure. And keep the books short if you can. 90,000 words is easily enough
Perhaps there are too many alternative distractions for 'commercially' minded composers, like film music (isn't that what Wagner's operas are?), computer games music etc etc.
I find it quite funny that someone like Peter Maxwell Davies can write all sorts of avant-garde nonsense but also a few 'throwaway' light pieces like "Farewell to Stromness" and "An Orkney Wedding" that get played all the time, much to his apparent annoyance.
We don't need an enquiry into Elon Musk's enfatuation with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Its a calamitous misstep which will see him put all of the politicians he supports on the wrong side of his arbitrary Free Speech line.
Perhaps we need worry less about Reform taking his cash after all. If he keeps ramping SYL they won't touch him with a pole.
PS I enjoyed your other reply and only didn't like, because I disagreed with your comment on Roger. He is big enough to look after himself
Labour 30
Conservatives 23
Reform 22
LibDems 12
Greens 8
SNP 4
Probably an outlier, but the Tories really should be doing a lot better given how unpopular the government is.
It made out like most voters thought SKS would resign in a year when in fact two thirds said he wouldn’t.
It made out they disagreed with the farming policy when most agreed.
The only really big opposition was to the WFA cut. But yet despite saying they will re-introduce it, the Tories are seven points behind.
Yes, SKS’s ratings are appalling. But would anyone like to have a stab at why Labour are on this poll, only a few points behind their 2024 landslide result?
Are we at risk of saying the government is much more unpopular than in reality it is? Or that perhaps the opposition(s) are toxic to much of the electorate?
The biggest thing it suggests to me, is that any replacement for Starmer would likely get a bounce and assuming competency and any charisma more than his, they might do quite well.
Certainly way better than Harrison frigging Birtwhistle
I remember being at the Proms when there was a Birtwhistle piece played in between two rather more popular works.
The bar was heaving!
[Perhaps that was a cunning plan to make more money for the Albert Hall]
Living in a house gifted by corrupt regime. Owns another house gifted by corrupt regime. Mum has house from regime people. Mum and sister previously lived in house gifted by same people. Broke rules through non-declaration.
She's always had a whiff about her, very unpleasant, surprised she has survived and prospered this long.
Real question on Starmer's judgement in making her anti-corruption minister.
The Times/Sunday Times will keep going on this. The story will grow.
https://x.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1875822444306473461
Seeing as you are, have you ever wondered why you keep getting banned? I have only been threatened with a ban twice and then frivolously so. Once for sucking up and once for being too reasonable. I can see the 3rd incoming.
They will understand the hatchet job being doing.
It's very telling that on a number of issues as an example Dan Hodges a Mail writer is absolutely outing his paymasters on X for their lies
I’ve never had a greater desire to return to heroin, and at half tine we ran to the nearest bar and found some of the ROH orchestra MUSICIANS necking shots. One of them - a cellist or whatever - said “yes we all hate it as well, we spend our evenings composing evil anagrams of his name Harrison Birtwhistle”
So, everyone hated him. Even musicians with great musical learning. Yet he managed to construct an entire career from awful music and ended up with a knighthood
This is a diseased artistic ecosystem
And, yes, I blame Cameron and Osborne for this as much as those since and now.