Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
If we redesigned the secondary school curriculum from scratch, we'd probably ditch most subjects, not just Latin. Aside from the 3Rs which are (ideally) covered in primary school, there is not a lot left that is useful to most people in the outside world.
Although there's a place for non-useful things. Life enrichment etc.
Really? But think of efficiency and humanity. If we simply converted all retired accountants to Soylent Green, we could provide a cheap, nutritious meal to every school child.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
If I was a Hamas fighter in danger of being killed by the IDF I might well teach my son to carry on my fight. And if I were the son or grandson of a fighter for Palestinian rights I might well be proud to carry on the family tradition.
Come to that, replace ‘son’ with ‘daughter’. Etc. See the IRA. And as far as most of Ireland, they won.
Really ?
over 6000 dead, 80 years of theocracy, permanent division.
If that's victory it wasnt worth it.
I didn’t suggest it was ‘victory’; I’m thinking about ‘revenge’.
Revenge doesnt get you that far.
So why would you want to teach it to your children ?
Where did I suggest it was desirable? However, if someone’s down and they’ve been persecuted they tend to become revengeful.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
If I was a Hamas fighter in danger of being killed by the IDF I might well teach my son to carry on my fight. And if I were the son or grandson of a fighter for Palestinian rights I might well be proud to carry on the family tradition.
Come to that, replace ‘son’ with ‘daughter’. Etc. See the IRA. And as far as most of Ireland, they won.
Really ?
over 6000 dead, 80 years of theocracy, permanent division.
If that's victory it wasnt worth it.
I didn’t suggest it was ‘victory’; I’m thinking about ‘revenge’.
What an odd thing to want your child to have.
I assume you support Israelis wanting that by the same principle or is it a one way street?
I wonder about the Israelis sometimes; the uncles etc of today’s IDF largely went resignedly into the gas chambers; this generation has fought like tigers.
In the event of an alien invasion, it turns out that the military had a side plan - get a bunch of SF authors to act as a think tank on what the aliens might want/do.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
It's all going to depend on your philosophy of education; and also on whether that philosophy allows for difference. To many people it is obvious that education is there to guess what you will need in the future to get a job etc. To others the heart of education is understanding that absolutely everything we are now is built by standing on the shoulders of giants, both individuals (Newton, Darwin, Aristotle etc) and cultures (classical, religious, empiricism etc) so that in a sense there is only one subject, embracing all the others, and that is history.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Not Britain but British people - far too many of whom are failing in life.
Now there are problems out involving inadequate education/training, housing affordability and the interaction of work with welfare.
There are things which government could and should do better in helping the people generally and the disadvantaged in particular.
Yet for all that how many of the millions of Britons with failing lives do so because of their own choices, their own behaviour.
Why can so many immigrants come to this country get jobs, work hard, buy homes, be successful while too many of our own people cannot ?
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
If I was a Hamas fighter in danger of being killed by the IDF I might well teach my son to carry on my fight. And if I were the son or grandson of a fighter for Palestinian rights I might well be proud to carry on the family tradition.
Come to that, replace ‘son’ with ‘daughter’. Etc. See the IRA. And as far as most of Ireland, they won.
Really ?
over 6000 dead, 80 years of theocracy, permanent division.
If that's victory it wasnt worth it.
I didn’t suggest it was ‘victory’; I’m thinking about ‘revenge’.
What an odd thing to want your child to have.
I assume you support Israelis wanting that by the same principle or is it a one way street?
I wonder about the Israelis sometimes; the uncles etc of today’s IDF largely went resignedly into the gas chambers; this generation has fought like tigers.
There was a time travel story (back to WWII), where a characters comments (something like) -
“So in your world, the Germans and Japanese are pacifists? And the Jews have founded a second Sparta?”
In the event of an alien invasion, it turns out that the military had a side plan - get a bunch of SF authors to act as a think tank on what the aliens might want/do.
Starmer's plan is to ask the Interstellar Aliens Regulatory Authority to ask the Martians for ideas about how to grow the economy.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
It's all going to depend on your philosophy of education; and also on whether that philosophy allows for difference. To many people it is obvious that education is there to guess what you will need in the future to get a job etc. To others the heart of education is understanding that absolutely everything we are now is built by standing on the shoulders of giants, both individuals (Newton, Darwin, Aristotle etc) and cultures (classical, religious, empiricism etc) so that in a sense there is only one subject, embracing all the others, and that is history.
It’s both. And the ratio of each and at what stage are an eternal battle without an answer. And differ for each human.
As to Latin, the cancelling (in effect) of GSCEs while pupils are about to do their mocks is bizarre. And rather cruel, in a thoughtless manner.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
Feels like a work smarter not harder situation. It's become evident over recent months that the strategy for achieving the goal of destroying Hamas has failed. I don't think that necessarily means that destroying Hamas is impossible, but either a different approach to achieving that end is required, or a different means of achieving long-term security for Israel is required.
Either way, there's still a job for the IDF to do, even if it's a different one to what they've been doing for the past year and a bit.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
It's all going to depend on your philosophy of education; and also on whether that philosophy allows for difference. To many people it is obvious that education is there to guess what you will need in the future to get a job etc. To others the heart of education is understanding that absolutely everything we are now is built by standing on the shoulders of giants, both individuals (Newton, Darwin, Aristotle etc) and cultures (classical, religious, empiricism etc) so that in a sense there is only one subject, embracing all the others, and that is history.
It’s both. And the ratio of each and at what stage are an eternal battle without an answer. And differ for each human.
As to Latin, the cancelling (in effect) of GSCEs while pupils are about to do their mocks is bizarre. And rather cruel, in a thoughtless manner.
It will be genuinely funny if any tutor sues them for breach of contract and wins.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
If I was a Hamas fighter in danger of being killed by the IDF I might well teach my son to carry on my fight. And if I were the son or grandson of a fighter for Palestinian rights I might well be proud to carry on the family tradition.
Come to that, replace ‘son’ with ‘daughter’. Etc. See the IRA. And as far as most of Ireland, they won.
Really ?
over 6000 dead, 80 years of theocracy, permanent division.
If that's victory it wasnt worth it.
I didn’t suggest it was ‘victory’; I’m thinking about ‘revenge’.
What an odd thing to want your child to have.
I assume you support Israelis wanting that by the same principle or is it a one way street?
I wonder about the Israelis sometimes; the uncles etc of today’s IDF largely went resignedly into the gas chambers; this generation has fought like tigers.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either ? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
If I was a Hamas fighter in danger of being killed by the IDF I might well teach my son to carry on my fight. And if I were the son or grandson of a fighter for Palestinian rights I might well be proud to carry on the family tradition.
Come to that, replace ‘son’ with ‘daughter’. Etc. See the IRA. And as far as most of Ireland, they won.
Really ?
over 6000 dead, 80 years of theocracy, permanent division.
If that's victory it wasnt worth it.
I didn’t suggest it was ‘victory’; I’m thinking about ‘revenge’.
What an odd thing to want your child to have.
I assume you support Israelis wanting that by the same principle or is it a one way street?
I wonder about the Israelis sometimes; the uncles etc of today’s IDF largely went resignedly into the gas chambers; this generation has fought like tigers.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
I did the same - 'Amo Amass Amat'
λύω: λύεις: λύει:
I did Latin and Greek to O-level though I did maths and sciences at A-Level.
I tried my Greek in Greece and it was like speaking Anglo-Saxon in England. At least I can read the letters and a few of the words are the same.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
If I was a Hamas fighter in danger of being killed by the IDF I might well teach my son to carry on my fight. And if I were the son or grandson of a fighter for Palestinian rights I might well be proud to carry on the family tradition.
Come to that, replace ‘son’ with ‘daughter’. Etc. See the IRA. And as far as most of Ireland, they won.
Really ?
over 6000 dead, 80 years of theocracy, permanent division.
If that's victory it wasnt worth it.
I didn’t suggest it was ‘victory’; I’m thinking about ‘revenge’.
What an odd thing to want your child to have.
I assume you support Israelis wanting that by the same principle or is it a one way street?
I wonder about the Israelis sometimes; the uncles etc of today’s IDF largely went resignedly into the gas chambers; this generation has fought like tigers.
The two are connected, the over-compensatory urge.
I have been thinking for quite a while how many parallels Brexit and Trump have
I voted Remain, largely because of Cameron, and was quite shocked at the result
We are being told continuously by those who regret Brexit, that it was won on lies and that they are far more educated and intelligent then those who voted leave
The Democrats in the US have much the same attitude, but in both cases they lost
Post the Brexit referendum it was incumbent on all mps to Brexit with the best deal possible ( which for me is staying in the single market whilst being outside the EU, and is still my position) but mps from all sides either wanted their own Brexit or even stop it
It is therefore the collective failure of all sides that we have a less than perfect solution
In the US the Democrats persisted with a failing President and completely misjudged the people
Todays release of prisoners in the Israel - Gaza war is widely being attributed to Trump, and I expect he will end the Ukraine conflict as well
Maybe politicians should listen more to the people, and not suggest they have the answer when clearly they haven’t
It may upset many, but Trump is bringing something completely different to politics and watching this unfold will be fascinating
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
I did the same - 'Amo Amass Amat'
Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant
I went for the short version !!!!!
I loved the logic and structure and declensions and conjugations. I suppose being a scientist helped understand it.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
I did the same - 'Amo Amass Amat'
λύω: λύεις: λύει:
I did Latin and Greek to O-level though I did maths and sciences at A-Level.
I tried my Greek in Greece and it was like speaking Anglo-Saxon in England. At least I can read the letters and a few of the words are the same.
Wasn’t there something like that in ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’?
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
I did the same - 'Amo Amass Amat'
Caesar adsum iam forte.
Ecce homo qui est faba!
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres
Can we keep it civilia please?
These days, the plan is that Gaul becomes
1) Screaming Eagles Land 2) Malmesbury Land 3) The bit no one wants.
I have been thinking for quite a while how many parallels Brexit and Trump have
I voted Remain, largely because of Cameron, and was quite shocked at the result
We are being told continuously by those who regret Brexit, that it was won on lies and that they are far more educated and intelligent then those who voted leave
The Democrats in the US have much the same attitude, but in both cases they lost
Post the Brexit referendum it was incumbent on all mps to Brexit with the best deal possible ( which for me is staying in the single market whilst being outside the EU, and is still my position) but mps from all sides either wanted their own Brexit or even stop it
It is therefore the collective failure of all sides that we have a less than perfect solution
In the US the Democrats persisted with a failing President and completely misjudged the people
Todays release of prisoners in the Israel - Gaza war is widely being attributed to Trump, and I expect he will end the Ukraine conflict as well
Maybe politicians should listen more to the people, and not suggest they have the answer when clearly they haven’t
It may upset many, but Trump is bringing something completely different to politics and watching this unfold will be fascinating
Don’t get too into Trump. You may need to do a rapid 180 in due course.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
I did the same - 'Amo Amass Amat'
λύω: λύεις: λύει:
I did Latin and Greek to O-level though I did maths and sciences at A-Level.
I tried my Greek in Greece and it was like speaking Anglo-Saxon in England. At least I can read the letters and a few of the words are the same.
Wasn’t there something like that in ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’?
We didn't do Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
Our set books were Xenophon's Anabasis and Euripides Medea.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
If I was a Hamas fighter in danger of being killed by the IDF I might well teach my son to carry on my fight. And if I were the son or grandson of a fighter for Palestinian rights I might well be proud to carry on the family tradition.
Come to that, replace ‘son’ with ‘daughter’. Etc. See the IRA. And as far as most of Ireland, they won.
Really ?
over 6000 dead, 80 years of theocracy, permanent division.
If that's victory it wasnt worth it.
I didn’t suggest it was ‘victory’; I’m thinking about ‘revenge’.
What an odd thing to want your child to have.
I assume you support Israelis wanting that by the same principle or is it a one way street?
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
I did the same - 'Amo Amass Amat'
Caesar adsum iam forte.
Ecce homo qui est faba!
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres
Can we keep it civilia please?
These days, the plan is that Gaul becomes
1) Screaming Eagles Land 2) Malmesbury Land 3) The bit no one wants.
I have been thinking for quite a while how many parallels Brexit and Trump have
I voted Remain, largely because of Cameron, and was quite shocked at the result
We are being told continuously by those who regret Brexit, that it was won on lies and that they are far more educated and intelligent then those who voted leave
The Democrats in the US have much the same attitude, but in both cases they lost
Post the Brexit referendum it was incumbent on all mps to Brexit with the best deal possible ( which for me is staying in the single market whilst being outside the EU, and is still my position) but mps from all sides either wanted their own Brexit or even stop it
It is therefore the collective failure of all sides that we have a less than perfect solution
In the US the Democrats persisted with a failing President and completely misjudged the people
Todays release of prisoners in the Israel - Gaza war is widely being attributed to Trump, and I expect he will end the Ukraine conflict as well
Maybe politicians should listen more to the people, and not suggest they have the answer when clearly they haven’t
It may upset many, but Trump is bringing something completely different to politics and watching this unfold will be fascinating
Don’t get too into Trump. You may need to do a rapid 180 in due course.
Funnily enough I expected that response from some on here
I am not into Trump but made an observation which I did 'qualify' when I said it may upset many
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
I did Latin for the first three years at Grammar School, then switched to Science, where it was off the curriculum. However I’d done enough to cope with medical/pharmaceutical dog Latin. No-one nowadays uses phrases like ‘cochlum amplum’ though.
I did the same - 'Amo Amass Amat'
λύω: λύεις: λύει:
I did Latin and Greek to O-level though I did maths and sciences at A-Level.
I tried my Greek in Greece and it was like speaking Anglo-Saxon in England. At least I can read the letters and a few of the words are the same.
Wasn’t there something like that in ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’?
Ah, Captain Corelli’s mandolin. The epitome of uncool middlebrow among my early adulthood acquaintances, but it’s actually a rollicking good read.
I have been thinking for quite a while how many parallels Brexit and Trump have
I voted Remain, largely because of Cameron, and was quite shocked at the result
We are being told continuously by those who regret Brexit, that it was won on lies and that they are far more educated and intelligent then those who voted leave
The Democrats in the US have much the same attitude, but in both cases they lost
Post the Brexit referendum it was incumbent on all mps to Brexit with the best deal possible ( which for me is staying in the single market whilst being outside the EU, and is still my position) but mps from all sides either wanted their own Brexit or even stop it
It is therefore the collective failure of all sides that we have a less than perfect solution
In the US the Democrats persisted with a failing President and completely misjudged the people
Todays release of prisoners in the Israel - Gaza war is widely being attributed to Trump, and I expect he will end the Ukraine conflict as well
Maybe politicians should listen more to the people, and not suggest they have the answer when clearly they haven’t
It may upset many, but Trump is bringing something completely different to politics and watching this unfold will be fascinating
Definitely upsets me. I strongly believe the world can do without the something completely different that Trump is bringing.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
You dont think thats anything to do with your policies being crap and your front bench worse ?
You'd say that regardless tbf.
That's certainly the case, but doesnt stop it being true. This is one of the worst starts to office in living memory.
You're not old enough to remember Thatcher?
Yes, and it was nowhere near this bad.
It was pretty bad BUT Thatcher had a plan - however brutal - and she was charismatic and clever and determined and politically gifted, and she was surrounded by some serious talent
Oh well
The times are very different though. In Thatcher's time, a Government's mandate was still respected, albeit grudgingly. Nobody disputed that Thatcher ran the country (though the Treasury was playing its own games even then).
These days, politicians are constrained by a thicket of obstruction consisting of the burgeoning civil service, independent arms length bodies, the judiciary, and the media. They really can't do anything. Consider a recent case where The High Court struck down a Government consultation on long term sick pay: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-the-high-court-ruling-on-political-consultations/ The Government had done a consultation (itself usually a civil service delaying tactic), decided to move ahead with the policy, Labour had come in and continued with it, but the High Court has ruled the consultation unlawful, effectively nullifying the policy. How the fuck is it their business?
Politicians over the last 30 years have had a habit of passing gestural, sweeping laws embedding broad principles into legislation. Do not blame the judiciary if judges then take these laws at face value.
The more things that governments have to comply with, the more on which they can be challenged - and the woollier the language in the Act, the greater the scope for judicial interpretation.
If you don't like the lengthiness of the process required, don't limit people's ability to go to court to enforce the law, reform the law to enable a swifter process. Of course, if that's what you do want, you'll have to also answer for the unanticipated consequences of removing or restricting rights.
Yes, of course these changes are down to legislation, much but not all of it from the Blair years, and yes it needs to be repealed.
1) Rework the company tax system to reward investment in plant and training, and make up the difference from taxing financialisation of companies. Buy a zillion quids worth of CNC machines - thumbs up. Borrow a zillion quid to strip the company of value - thumbs down.
2) Training. The universities take on training and the academic side of apprenticeships. Companies buy into this service, providing the hands on side of apprenticeships, and paying money towards the classroom side. This creates nationally recognised qualifications which represent transferable skills.
3) Create a series of experiments in helping the part time workers become full time workers. How to help them out of the tax/benefit trap.
There is a modern apprenticeship system that sort of does (2). It was introduced by the Tories. It is, however, a ridiculously complex system that stops it from being as useful as it should be.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
My favourite botanical name is Capsella bursa-pastoris (Shepherd's Purse). If that ain't dog Latin I don't know what is. My least favourite is Senecio squalidus (Oxford Ragwort). I assume translating Oxford as squalidus was some sort of feeble joke by a Cambridge chap, but if it made him happy it would be cruel to complain.
Wait until they see what JohnO and myself spend on our PB Tory lunches.
Seeing as you don’t drink alcohol I find it hard to believe you spend more than £150 a head, and that would be really hard almost anywhere but insane seafood places maybe. Food simply isn’t THAT expensive, unless you’re going to a top 20 world class restaurant for a tasting menu
Three course meal works out at around £150 a head from the a la carte menu based on what I ordered last time.
£35 starter
£50 main
£20 dessert
Add in non alcoholic drinks and 15% service charge
I like going out and having a *really* nice meal occasionally. Perhaps once or twice a year, as (or at) an event. I couldn't stand doing it regularly.
After my last visit to a chain restaurant in November I have vowed never again will I go to a chain restaurant or middling restaurant. I can cook better than that so it is a waste of money and it isn't cheap. I book Michelin star or Michelin recommended restaurants or good quality pubs. We did The Cat Inn is Sussex on Saturday for instance and 22 in Cambridge in November.
Twice the price, but then do it half as many times if money is an issue. And I can cook a decent meal so I do more at home with friends and I definitely can't do Michelin star cooking, but which I really enjoy. I am always so disappointed when leaving a bog standard restaurant. Not so much because of the food, but that I paid so much for it when I could have done better.
But I know what you mean re children. if you want to take them out it is very expensive. Thankfully I am past that now.
We did 22 in Cambridge a couple of years ago for my 50th. It was very nice.
Mrs J has a big birthday this year, and I'm thinking of afternoon tea at Fortnum and Masons (somewhere we love), followed by the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I'm all culture.
You can do "afternoon tea at" almost anywhere in London, all the top hotels and famous shops, and they have all been vlogged on YouTube for your previewing pleasure.
Yes. but we like F&M for various reasons.
Afternoon tea there (it used to be called St James') is a treat. Go for it.
I have been thinking for quite a while how many parallels Brexit and Trump have
I voted Remain, largely because of Cameron, and was quite shocked at the result
We are being told continuously by those who regret Brexit, that it was won on lies and that they are far more educated and intelligent then those who voted leave
The Democrats in the US have much the same attitude, but in both cases they lost
Post the Brexit referendum it was incumbent on all mps to Brexit with the best deal possible ( which for me is staying in the single market whilst being outside the EU, and is still my position) but mps from all sides either wanted their own Brexit or even stop it
It is therefore the collective failure of all sides that we have a less than perfect solution
In the US the Democrats persisted with a failing President and completely misjudged the people
Todays release of prisoners in the Israel - Gaza war is widely being attributed to Trump, and I expect he will end the Ukraine conflict as well
Maybe politicians should listen more to the people, and not suggest they have the answer when clearly they haven’t
It may upset many, but Trump is bringing something completely different to politics and watching this unfold will be fascinating
Don’t get too into Trump. You may need to do a rapid 180 in due course.
Funnily enough I expected that response from some on here
I am not into Trump but made an observation which I did 'qualify' when I said it may upset many
The thing is, in this pre-inauguration period, being positive about Trump is a majority position. Everyone’s jumping on that wagon. “Upsetting many” is the new in-thing.
The man is, was, and always will be a self-obsessed narcissist, a bully, a wannabe tyrant and a thoroughly unpleasant human being. Just as he was in 2016-20 (and particularly in January 2020).
Him winning doesn’t change that. Nor does fellow bully and narcissist Netanyahu finally accepting Biden’s ceasefire proposal from last May in time for the inauguration of his friend make Trump some grand peacemaker in our time.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
It's all going to depend on your philosophy of education; and also on whether that philosophy allows for difference. To many people it is obvious that education is there to guess what you will need in the future to get a job etc. To others the heart of education is understanding that absolutely everything we are now is built by standing on the shoulders of giants, both individuals (Newton, Darwin, Aristotle etc) and cultures (classical, religious, empiricism etc) so that in a sense there is only one subject, embracing all the others, and that is history.
It’s both. And the ratio of each and at what stage are an eternal battle without an answer. And differ for each human.
As to Latin, the cancelling (in effect) of GSCEs while pupils are about to do their mocks is bizarre. And rather cruel, in a thoughtless manner.
It will be genuinely funny if any tutor sues them for breach of contract and wins.
From the coverage I've seen, this is where the government initially put the breakpoint in their contract with the Latin Excellence people.
So blame everyone's favourite fireplace salesman and former ed sec for that one.
My understanding is that Greek has developed over the centuries less than English so that Classical Greek is the equivalent to Chaucerian English and New Testament Greek is the equivalent of Elizabethan English.
I have been thinking for quite a while how many parallels Brexit and Trump have
I voted Remain, largely because of Cameron, and was quite shocked at the result
We are being told continuously by those who regret Brexit, that it was won on lies and that they are far more educated and intelligent then those who voted leave
The Democrats in the US have much the same attitude, but in both cases they lost
Post the Brexit referendum it was incumbent on all mps to Brexit with the best deal possible ( which for me is staying in the single market whilst being outside the EU, and is still my position) but mps from all sides either wanted their own Brexit or even stop it
It is therefore the collective failure of all sides that we have a less than perfect solution
In the US the Democrats persisted with a failing President and completely misjudged the people
Todays release of prisoners in the Israel - Gaza war is widely being attributed to Trump, and I expect he will end the Ukraine conflict as well
Maybe politicians should listen more to the people, and not suggest they have the answer when clearly they haven’t
It may upset many, but Trump is bringing something completely different to politics and watching this unfold will be fascinating
Don’t get too into Trump. You may need to do a rapid 180 in due course.
Funnily enough I expected that response from some on here
I am not into Trump but made an observation which I did 'qualify' when I said it may upset many
I know what you mean though. Trump is a disruptor. He will break things. Some things may be better broken to possibly enable a better replacement. But most things won't. He is likely to be a disaster but there may be a faint silver lining.
My friends tell me that I'm a hopeless optimist. Happy but always disappointed.
I have been thinking for quite a while how many parallels Brexit and Trump have
I voted Remain, largely because of Cameron, and was quite shocked at the result
We are being told continuously by those who regret Brexit, that it was won on lies and that they are far more educated and intelligent then those who voted leave
The Democrats in the US have much the same attitude, but in both cases they lost
Post the Brexit referendum it was incumbent on all mps to Brexit with the best deal possible ( which for me is staying in the single market whilst being outside the EU, and is still my position) but mps from all sides either wanted their own Brexit or even stop it
It is therefore the collective failure of all sides that we have a less than perfect solution
In the US the Democrats persisted with a failing President and completely misjudged the people
Todays release of prisoners in the Israel - Gaza war is widely being attributed to Trump, and I expect he will end the Ukraine conflict as well
Maybe politicians should listen more to the people, and not suggest they have the answer when clearly they haven’t
It may upset many, but Trump is bringing something completely different to politics and watching this unfold will be fascinating
Definitely upsets me. I strongly believe the world can do without the something completely different that Trump is bringing.
You may be right but possiblty the world has not managed to find the different answer
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
If we redesigned the secondary school curriculum from scratch, we'd probably ditch most subjects, not just Latin. Aside from the 3Rs which are (ideally) covered in primary school, there is not a lot left that is useful to most people in the outside world.
Although there's a place for non-useful things. Life enrichment etc.
Really? But think of efficiency and humanity. If we simply converted all retired accountants to Soylent Green, we could provide a cheap, nutritious meal to every school child.
Oh do stop it, Malmesbury.
Ww know you're dissatisfied with your position and your place. But don't you understand it's not our problem.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
It's all going to depend on your philosophy of education; and also on whether that philosophy allows for difference. To many people it is obvious that education is there to guess what you will need in the future to get a job etc. To others the heart of education is understanding that absolutely everything we are now is built by standing on the shoulders of giants, both individuals (Newton, Darwin, Aristotle etc) and cultures (classical, religious, empiricism etc) so that in a sense there is only one subject, embracing all the others, and that is history.
It’s both. And the ratio of each and at what stage are an eternal battle without an answer. And differ for each human.
As to Latin, the cancelling (in effect) of GSCEs while pupils are about to do their mocks is bizarre. And rather cruel, in a thoughtless manner.
It will be genuinely funny if any tutor sues them for breach of contract and wins.
From the coverage I've seen, this is where the government initially put the breakpoint in their contract with the Latin Excellence people.
So blame everyone's favourite fireplace salesman and former ed sec for that one.
More than happy to. Even if they're not actually to blame, that would be karma.
It may be that he and his staff were so dim they thought nobody would exercise the option midway through a year.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
Easily the most impressive politician of his generation. This country would be a different and better place had he succeeded Thatcher.
I got into the habit of watching old politics/debate shows from the 1970s during #indyref and then the in the run up to #brexit. And I don't think I can remember Heseltine appearing in more than one or two out of the dozens or hundreds I might have watched.
Maybe he was working behind the scenes. On Sunday. In his head.
I have been thinking for quite a while how many parallels Brexit and Trump have
I voted Remain, largely because of Cameron, and was quite shocked at the result
We are being told continuously by those who regret Brexit, that it was won on lies and that they are far more educated and intelligent then those who voted leave
The Democrats in the US have much the same attitude, but in both cases they lost
Post the Brexit referendum it was incumbent on all mps to Brexit with the best deal possible ( which for me is staying in the single market whilst being outside the EU, and is still my position) but mps from all sides either wanted their own Brexit or even stop it
It is therefore the collective failure of all sides that we have a less than perfect solution
In the US the Democrats persisted with a failing President and completely misjudged the people
Todays release of prisoners in the Israel - Gaza war is widely being attributed to Trump, and I expect he will end the Ukraine conflict as well
Maybe politicians should listen more to the people, and not suggest they have the answer when clearly they haven’t
It may upset many, but Trump is bringing something completely different to politics and watching this unfold will be fascinating
Don’t get too into Trump. You may need to do a rapid 180 in due course.
Funnily enough I expected that response from some on here
I am not into Trump but made an observation which I did 'qualify' when I said it may upset many
I know what you mean though. Trump is a disruptor. He will break things. Some things may be better broken to possibly enable a better replacement. But most things won't. He is likely to be a disaster but there may be a faint silver lining.
My friends tell me that I'm a hopeless optimist. Happy but always disappointed.
My understanding is that Greek has developed over the centuries less than English so that Classical Greek is the equivalent to Chaucerian English and New Testament Greek is the equivalent of Elizabethan English.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
If we redesigned the secondary school curriculum from scratch, we'd probably ditch most subjects, not just Latin. Aside from the 3Rs which are (ideally) covered in primary school, there is not a lot left that is useful to most people in the outside world.
Subjects like history or philosophy may not be directly vocationally useful to most people, but they teach you skills like judging evidence and thinking logically that are, so there is definitely a strong case for keeping them.
The other thing I'd like to see more of in schools is directly useful life skills like the basics of plumbing, carpentry or law which everybody needs at some time in their lives.
You can save a fortune over a lifetime if you can plug a leak and draft your will without calling a professional.
Well, for a start, philosophy is not taught in most schools even if it should be, but agreed on the value of basic diy skills.
I wish 'proper' home cooking/DIY skills were taught. The main home-economics lessons I remember are "how to make a knitted pom-pom" and "making a pizza" (which was a bread roll, some tomato puree and grated cheddar under the grill). Metalwork was a sort of weird garden implement that made no sense at all. Basically cutting a triangle out of a rectangle but not calling it a 'shiv'.
They were cancelled by Thatcher when she was Education Secretary, weren't they?
I have been thinking for quite a while how many parallels Brexit and Trump have
I voted Remain, largely because of Cameron, and was quite shocked at the result
We are being told continuously by those who regret Brexit, that it was won on lies and that they are far more educated and intelligent then those who voted leave
The Democrats in the US have much the same attitude, but in both cases they lost
Post the Brexit referendum it was incumbent on all mps to Brexit with the best deal possible ( which for me is staying in the single market whilst being outside the EU, and is still my position) but mps from all sides either wanted their own Brexit or even stop it
It is therefore the collective failure of all sides that we have a less than perfect solution
In the US the Democrats persisted with a failing President and completely misjudged the people
Todays release of prisoners in the Israel - Gaza war is widely being attributed to Trump, and I expect he will end the Ukraine conflict as well
Maybe politicians should listen more to the people, and not suggest they have the answer when clearly they haven’t
It may upset many, but Trump is bringing something completely different to politics and watching this unfold will be fascinating
Don’t get too into Trump. You may need to do a rapid 180 in due course.
Funnily enough I expected that response from some on here
I am not into Trump but made an observation which I did 'qualify' when I said it may upset many
I know what you mean though. Trump is a disruptor. He will break things. Some things may be better broken to possibly enable a better replacement. But most things won't. He is likely to be a disaster but there may be a faint silver lining.
My friends tell me that I'm a hopeless optimist. Happy but always disappointed.
The problem is that when the Broligarchs spoke of "move fast and break things" we didn't expect them to start with democracy.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
Feels like a work smarter not harder situation. It's become evident over recent months that the strategy for achieving the goal of destroying Hamas has failed. I don't think that necessarily means that destroying Hamas is impossible, but either a different approach to achieving that end is required, or a different means of achieving long-term security for Israel is required.
Either way, there's still a job for the IDF to do, even if it's a different one to what they've been doing for the past year and a bit.
I don't think 'destroying Hamas' was the primary driver of what they've done to Gaza. I think it was vengeance.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
Easily the most impressive politician of his generation. This country would be a different and better place had he succeeded Thatcher.
I got into the habit of watching old politics/debate shows from the 1970s during #indyref and then the in the run up to #brexit. And I don't think I can remember Heseltine appearing in more than one or two out of the dozens or hundreds I might have watched.
Maybe he was working behind the scenes. On Sunday. In his head.
He was always on the Today Programme. Had the same knack as Salmond of being able to dismantle the interviewer while seeming to stay jocular and friendly.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
In Australia they speak Oz. British people can speak Oz quite well; what nearly all can't speak is French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish.
So of course they have to fuck off all the way to the southern hemisphere or the US to get jobs requiring speech.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
Feels like a work smarter not harder situation. It's become evident over recent months that the strategy for achieving the goal of destroying Hamas has failed. I don't think that necessarily means that destroying Hamas is impossible, but either a different approach to achieving that end is required, or a different means of achieving long-term security for Israel is required.
Either way, there's still a job for the IDF to do, even if it's a different one to what they've been doing for the past year and a bit.
I don't think 'destroying Hamas' was the primary driver of what they've done to Gaza. I think it was vengeance.
The traditional Israeli approach - seen to great effect vs Heszbollah - of a series of assassinations of the top brass, would surely have had a far better impact than the brutal collective punishment they’ve run with.
I assume the difference is in the psychology of vengeance. Hezbollah are seen as an organised political foe. Hamas are seen as the representatives of an entire hostile population.
1) Rework the company tax system to reward investment in plant and training, and make up the difference from taxing financialisation of companies. Buy a zillion quids worth of CNC machines - thumbs up. Borrow a zillion quid to strip the company of value - thumbs down.
2) Training. The universities take on training and the academic side of apprenticeships. Companies buy into this service, providing the hands on side of apprenticeships, and paying money towards the classroom side. This creates nationally recognised qualifications which represent transferable skills.
3) Create a series of experiments in helping the part time workers become full time workers. How to help them out of the tax/benefit trap.
There is a modern apprenticeship system that sort of does (2). It was introduced by the Tories. It is, however, a ridiculously complex system that stops it from being as useful as it should be.
It's also not really functioning as (I'd guess) intended. It's open to anyone over 16. We've had people in their 60s apply for it. Fine, in a way - you want to learn a new skill. But you're doing some youngster out of a rung on the ladder.
I wish the UK as a whole wasn't as 'snobby' about vocational training and qualifications. I've had amazing, eager people with college certificates apply for jobs and seen them not get offered a place as they didn't have a degree. You know. A proper qualification. It's really quite depressing.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
Easily the most impressive politician of his generation. This country would be a different and better place had he succeeded Thatcher.
I got into the habit of watching old politics/debate shows from the 1970s during #indyref and then the in the run up to #brexit. And I don't think I can remember Heseltine appearing in more than one or two out of the dozens or hundreds I might have watched.
Maybe he was working behind the scenes. On Sunday. In his head.
I am impressed with Heseltine for being alive - good for him. But if the above example of cliched reflexive unthinking euroloonery - "destroy him" is the makes him the most impressive politician of anything, God help us all.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
Feels like a work smarter not harder situation. It's become evident over recent months that the strategy for achieving the goal of destroying Hamas has failed. I don't think that necessarily means that destroying Hamas is impossible, but either a different approach to achieving that end is required, or a different means of achieving long-term security for Israel is required.
Either way, there's still a job for the IDF to do, even if it's a different one to what they've been doing for the past year and a bit.
I don't think 'destroying Hamas' was the primary driver of what they've done to Gaza. I think it was vengeance.
The traditional Israeli approach - seen to great effect vs Heszbollah - of a series of assassinations of the top brass, would surely have had a far better impact than the brutal collective punishment they’ve run with.
I assume the difference is in the psychology of vengeance. Hezbollah are seen as an organised political foe. Hamas are seen as the representatives of an entire hostile population.
I thought it wa a because the Hamas top brass cleared off to Qatar, whereas the Hezbollah leaders were dumb enough to stay in Lebanon.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
If we redesigned the secondary school curriculum from scratch, we'd probably ditch most subjects, not just Latin. Aside from the 3Rs which are (ideally) covered in primary school, there is not a lot left that is useful to most people in the outside world.
Subjects like history or philosophy may not be directly vocationally useful to most people, but they teach you skills like judging evidence and thinking logically that are, so there is definitely a strong case for keeping them.
The other thing I'd like to see more of in schools is directly useful life skills like the basics of plumbing, carpentry or law which everybody needs at some time in their lives.
You can save a fortune over a lifetime if you can plug a leak and draft your will without calling a professional.
Well, for a start, philosophy is not taught in most schools even if it should be, but agreed on the value of basic diy skills.
I wish 'proper' home cooking/DIY skills were taught. The main home-economics lessons I remember are "how to make a knitted pom-pom" and "making a pizza" (which was a bread roll, some tomato puree and grated cheddar under the grill). Metalwork was a sort of weird garden implement that made no sense at all. Basically cutting a triangle out of a rectangle but not calling it a 'shiv'.
They were cancelled by Thatcher when she was Education Secretary, weren't they?
More recently than that- in fact, learning to cook is still in the National Curriculum;
But one of the academy freedoms (so brought in under Blair and turbocharged by the coalition) is to be able to ignore the National Curriculum. Not wasting time or money on cooking lessons frees up time to get better GCSE results.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
We're also really good at filling in forms, and not very good at foreign languages.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
Feels like a work smarter not harder situation. It's become evident over recent months that the strategy for achieving the goal of destroying Hamas has failed. I don't think that necessarily means that destroying Hamas is impossible, but either a different approach to achieving that end is required, or a different means of achieving long-term security for Israel is required.
Either way, there's still a job for the IDF to do, even if it's a different one to what they've been doing for the past year and a bit.
I don't think 'destroying Hamas' was the primary driver of what they've done to Gaza. I think it was vengeance.
The traditional Israeli approach - seen to great effect vs Heszbollah - of a series of assassinations of the top brass, would surely have had a far better impact than the brutal collective punishment they’ve run with.
I assume the difference is in the psychology of vengeance. Hezbollah are seen as an organised political foe. Hamas are seen as the representatives of an entire hostile population.
I thought it wa a because the Hamas top brass cleared off to Qatar, whereas the Hezbollah leaders were dumb enough to stay in Lebanon.
Yes that’s probably part of the calculation. But I think there was also raw rage and the desire to meet out a punishment beating to Gaza, which was never there with Hezbollah.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
Easily the most impressive politician of his generation. This country would be a different and better place had he succeeded Thatcher.
I got into the habit of watching old politics/debate shows from the 1970s during #indyref and then the in the run up to #brexit. And I don't think I can remember Heseltine appearing in more than one or two out of the dozens or hundreds I might have watched.
Maybe he was working behind the scenes. On Sunday. In his head.
He was always on the Today Programme. Had the same knack as Salmond of being able to dismantle the interviewer while seeming to stay jocular and friendly.
Ah! I think the modern incarnation of the Today Programme has made me wipe it from my historical searches. I might see if I can find old recordings from interesting times.
All those lads in black balaclavas waving guns in the air. The IDF still has a job to do.
If they couldn't destroy Hamas after 16 months of total blockade, total bombardment and total surveillance, how much longer do you think the siege needs to go on?
Feels like a work smarter not harder situation. It's become evident over recent months that the strategy for achieving the goal of destroying Hamas has failed. I don't think that necessarily means that destroying Hamas is impossible, but either a different approach to achieving that end is required, or a different means of achieving long-term security for Israel is required.
Either way, there's still a job for the IDF to do, even if it's a different one to what they've been doing for the past year and a bit.
I don't think 'destroying Hamas' was the primary driver of what they've done to Gaza. I think it was vengeance.
If nations and peoples can have collective personalities, for Israel it’s definitely personal with Gaza, and Palestinians generally.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
In Australia they speak Oz. British people can speak Oz quite well; what nearly all can't speak is French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish.
So of course they have to fuck off all the way to the southern hemisphere or the US to get jobs requiring speech.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
If we redesigned the secondary school curriculum from scratch, we'd probably ditch most subjects, not just Latin. Aside from the 3Rs which are (ideally) covered in primary school, there is not a lot left that is useful to most people in the outside world.
Subjects like history or philosophy may not be directly vocationally useful to most people, but they teach you skills like judging evidence and thinking logically that are, so there is definitely a strong case for keeping them.
The other thing I'd like to see more of in schools is directly useful life skills like the basics of plumbing, carpentry or law which everybody needs at some time in their lives.
You can save a fortune over a lifetime if you can plug a leak and draft your will without calling a professional.
Well, for a start, philosophy is not taught in most schools even if it should be, but agreed on the value of basic diy skills.
I wish 'proper' home cooking/DIY skills were taught. The main home-economics lessons I remember are "how to make a knitted pom-pom" and "making a pizza" (which was a bread roll, some tomato puree and grated cheddar under the grill). Metalwork was a sort of weird garden implement that made no sense at all. Basically cutting a triangle out of a rectangle but not calling it a 'shiv'.
They were cancelled by Thatcher when she was Education Secretary, weren't they?
Not sure. Being in the wilds of Scotland at the time I'm not sure if her policies were in effect here or not.
Though I do remember being made to drink weird little cartons of warm milk. I wish those had been cancelled. Claggy, manky, warm heat-treated milk. Snatch away!
Sky saying Trump is to give a 90 minute victory speech
Live on Sky
I hope the autocue is working this time.
Or maybe not, as him babbling inanely about sharks and judges' sons who turn out to be New York Post reporters would add considerably to the gaiety of the nation and make the Yanks look even sillier than they already do.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
We're also really good at filling in forms, and not very good at foreign languages.
It’s entirely logical that we’re not good at foreign languages, because we don’t need to be. We speak the lingua franca already.
We are good at 2 other things our European and American counterparts are rubbish at: driving on the other side of the road when on holiday (its second nature to us but terrifying to Euro and US visitors to Britain), and converting effortlessly between imperial and metric.
I mean how many nations on earth would you find saying “I had to drive 25 miles to get to the start of my 10k run. It was bloody freezing, only 10 Celsius when we started. Last year it was in the 80s. Still, it’s all helping with the diet. I’ve shed 5 kilos since I started and my waistline is 2 inches smaller.”
1) Rework the company tax system to reward investment in plant and training, and make up the difference from taxing financialisation of companies. Buy a zillion quids worth of CNC machines - thumbs up. Borrow a zillion quid to strip the company of value - thumbs down.
2) Training. The universities take on training and the academic side of apprenticeships. Companies buy into this service, providing the hands on side of apprenticeships, and paying money towards the classroom side. This creates nationally recognised qualifications which represent transferable skills.
3) Create a series of experiments in helping the part time workers become full time workers. How to help them out of the tax/benefit trap.
There is a modern apprenticeship system that sort of does (2). It was introduced by the Tories. It is, however, a ridiculously complex system that stops it from being as useful as it should be.
It's also not really functioning as (I'd guess) intended. It's open to anyone over 16. We've had people in their 60s apply for it. Fine, in a way - you want to learn a new skill. But you're doing some youngster out of a rung on the ladder.
I wish the UK as a whole wasn't as 'snobby' about vocational training and qualifications. I've had amazing, eager people with college certificates apply for jobs and seen them not get offered a place as they didn't have a degree. You know. A proper qualification. It's really quite depressing.
Which is why I want to merge it with the Universities.
"So, you have a First in CNC operation and Elizabethan Poetry from Kings, Cambridge?"
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
We're also really good at filling in forms, and not very good at foreign languages.
It’s entirely logical that we’re not good at foreign languages, because we don’t need to be. We speak the lingua franca already.
We are good at 2 other things our European and American counterparts are rubbish at: driving on the other side of the road when on holiday (its second nature to us but terrifying to Euro and US visitors to Britain), and converting effortlessly between imperial and metric.
I mean how many nations on earth would you find saying “I had to drive 25 miles to get to the start of my 10k run. It was bloody freezing, only 10 Celsius when we started. Last year it was in the 80s. Still, it’s all helping with the diet. I’ve shed 5 kilos since I started and my waistline is 2 inches smaller.”
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
We're also really good at filling in forms, and not very good at foreign languages.
It’s entirely logical that we’re not good at foreign languages, because we don’t need to be. We speak the lingua franca already.
We are good at 2 other things our European and American counterparts are rubbish at: driving on the other side of the road when on holiday (its second nature to us but terrifying to Euro and US visitors to Britain), and converting effortlessly between imperial and metric.
I mean how many nations on earth would you find saying “I had to drive 25 miles to get to the start of my 10k run. It was bloody freezing, only 10 Celsius when we started. Last year it was in the 80s. Still, it’s all helping with the diet. I’ve shed 5 kilos since I started and my waistline is 2 inches smaller.”
It'll be interesting to see if the "Babel Fish" aspect of the LLM's being available have any effect on this. I'd guess not for a while as it's still really handy to be able to quickly say "Aye, some of those - ta!". But we're not that far off a universal translator in our ears.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
We're also really good at filling in forms, and not very good at foreign languages.
It’s entirely logical that we’re not good at foreign languages, because we don’t need to be. We speak the lingua franca already.
We are good at 2 other things our European and American counterparts are rubbish at: driving on the other side of the road when on holiday (its second nature to us but terrifying to Euro and US visitors to Britain), and converting effortlessly between imperial and metric.
I mean how many nations on earth would you find saying “I had to drive 25 miles to get to the start of my 10k run. It was bloody freezing, only 10 Celsius when we started. Last year it was in the 80s. Still, it’s all helping with the diet. I’ve shed 5 kilos since I started and my waistline is 2 inches smaller.”
How many furlongs was that? Also, many kids seem to use stones for weight. And kilos for everything else.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
We're also really good at filling in forms, and not very good at foreign languages.
It’s entirely logical that we’re not good at foreign languages, because we don’t need to be. We speak the lingua franca already.
We are good at 2 other things our European and American counterparts are rubbish at: driving on the other side of the road when on holiday (its second nature to us but terrifying to Euro and US visitors to Britain), and converting effortlessly between imperial and metric.
I mean how many nations on earth would you find saying “I had to drive 25 miles to get to the start of my 10k run. It was bloody freezing, only 10 Celsius when we started. Last year it was in the 80s. Still, it’s all helping with the diet. I’ve shed 5 kilos since I started and my waistline is 2 inches smaller.”
How many furlongs was that? Also, many kids seem to use stones for weight. And kilos for everything else.
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
Latin absolutely is worth studying. The question is whether it commands its place on the curriculum, which excludes as well as includes. More so than, say, Sanskrit, which I'm sure is also a fascinating subject?
This isn't a difficult question. One is more intimately linked with our own cultural history than the other and has ongoing relevance in various professional fields.
There's something in this. If you have to choose only one, you would choose Latin over Sanskrit. But would you choose either? Latin isn't that intimately linked with our culture.
In terms of current relevance to modern professions, one can discount classics teachers as they have skin in the game anyway - and RC priests don't need it now so much apart from their doctrinal studies? That leaves botanists.
Edit: and university lecturers in classics, just as one has them in Sanskrit.
My favourite botanical name is Capsella bursa-pastoris (Shepherd's Purse). If that ain't dog Latin I don't know what is. My least favourite is Senecio squalidus (Oxford Ragwort). I assume translating Oxford as squalidus was some sort of feeble joke by a Cambridge chap, but if it made him happy it would be cruel to complain.
I don't know - it seems perfectly sound classical Latin to me, but IANAE. Not like some of those mediaeval charters.
As for the ragwort, it's an original Linnean name, i.e. by Carl von Linne in the mid-C18, so can't be a Fenland joke unless there is some Swedish connexion I am missing. Maybe it just looked scrubby.
Never forgotten beiong taught at school about its seed being transported by the Victorian railways ...
Ed Davey likely would make a decent PM, certainly better than two others on that list.
He comes from a party that hasn't produced prime ministers for a hundred years however.
Ed Davey reminds me of Rory Kinnear who did make a decent PM.
On his last outing Kinnear came close to killing a former Tory campaign manager which might be considered by Sir Ed for his next stunt.
While I am partisan, I do genuinely think that Sir Ed is wildly underestimated. I think his clear move towards Rejoin is carving out unique territory for the Lib Dems, and he also has some very impressive people on the Lib Dem benches. People know that Farage is a media creature and Brexit is now an unambiguous failure. Few of the extremely partisan commentators in the media give him the time of day, but it is Sir Ed, not Farage, that has the Parliamentary advantage. Watch this space for astute and intelligent moves.
I’m surprised at the Lib Dem’s who want to dump their leader. In favour of whom exactly? By what metric do they think they are not doing well enough and who/how could this be improved?
Here's a metric:
Since the GE Labour have dropped from 35% to around 25%. But the LibDems have flatlined.
Not good enough.
The Lib Dem strategy has been totally and successfully focused on target seats. The national share was irrelevant. 100 seats at 50% and the rest at 5% gives a national share of about 13%, which is a meaningless measure.
However this strategy limits the Lib Dems to being a junior party in a coalition (hiss) or C&S.
I think there will be a change to a more national campaign (on top of the local campaigns) to broaden the ambition. Ed Davey's recent call for joining the customs union might a sign of that.
National share will then become an important metric.
While the targeting at the GE was, of course, very successful, you must be concerned that the LDs have failed to progress as Labour support has declined?
Labour supporters leaving the party are heading left to the Greens and the Gaza parties. Or going to Reform.
Not sure that the Lib Dens are fishing in either pool.
I do wish voters would stick to what they usually do rather than constantly moving around. You can't make plans when they're like this.
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Thing is, there is a serious point here. We (Labour) need 10 to 15 years to transform the country. But we only get 6 months before people start getting antsy, poring over polls, fretting about "lack of narratives" bla bla.
It's a recipe for perpetual frustration and disappointment. For everybody.
10 or 15 years to do….. what? What is the big plan? Where’s the vision, the lodestar, the exciting new route for the UK? What do you want to do with power? How are you going to change the UK for the better, and when, and how much will it cost?
Answer came there none, because Labour has No Fucking Clue. THIS is why your government is already historically unpopular, it’s not because voters are all short-attention-span idiots asking too much, it’s because they can rightly see that Labour’s big idea consists of overpaying public sector workers and punting a plan for social care to 2028 because they have no fucking idea what to do
We can all read the news. We all read that Sir Sheer Wanker was “unpleasantly surprised” to discover that, when he went into Number 10, “there was no plan”. Yeah, we noticed . You’d think the PM would be across these details, but not
One term government
But nobody has a better clue. So let's settle down and see how they get on.
So nobody has a better clue than *paying* £9bn of taxpayers money to give away a island to someone else it doesn't belong to?
Nobody has a better clue than vindictivly pulling Latin teaching from schools *mid school year*, thus messing up the education of a whole bunch of kids who happen to be studying it right now.
Nobody has a better clue for raising tax than taxing *employment* more.
Nobody has a better clue about energy than letting that fool Miliband blow £20bn on pointless carbon capture.
I could go on, but you get the picture. On most of these, doing nothing whatsoever would have been better.
But you don't expect people with tory brain chemistry to feel positive about what Labour governments do. That's only natural.
Are you really 100% happy with all those listed decisions? Every single one?
No. It's a mix of happy and unsure.
I'd love to know your reasoning to be happy or unsure about the CCS money or the cancelling latin funding for schools halfway through the year (yes, I know it's a little more complex than that, but even so).
Well that's easy. On the Latin, I enjoyed it, my best subject in fact, but is it a good fit these days? Is it something to continue with? Not sure. My heart says yes, my head says maybe not. And on carbon capture, I'm just not knowledgeable on the subject. I do not know if that's a good use of money.
If we redesigned the secondary school curriculum from scratch, we'd probably ditch most subjects, not just Latin. Aside from the 3Rs which are (ideally) covered in primary school, there is not a lot left that is useful to most people in the outside world.
Subjects like history or philosophy may not be directly vocationally useful to most people, but they teach you skills like judging evidence and thinking logically that are, so there is definitely a strong case for keeping them.
The other thing I'd like to see more of in schools is directly useful life skills like the basics of plumbing, carpentry or law which everybody needs at some time in their lives.
You can save a fortune over a lifetime if you can plug a leak and draft your will without calling a professional.
Well, for a start, philosophy is not taught in most schools even if it should be, but agreed on the value of basic diy skills.
I wish 'proper' home cooking/DIY skills were taught. The main home-economics lessons I remember are "how to make a knitted pom-pom" and "making a pizza" (which was a bread roll, some tomato puree and grated cheddar under the grill). Metalwork was a sort of weird garden implement that made no sense at all. Basically cutting a triangle out of a rectangle but not calling it a 'shiv'.
They were cancelled by Thatcher when she was Education Secretary, weren't they?
More recently than that- in fact, learning to cook is still in the National Curriculum;
But one of the academy freedoms (so brought in under Blair and turbocharged by the coalition) is to be able to ignore the National Curriculum. Not wasting time or money on cooking lessons frees up time to get better GCSE results.
There was a shift under Thatcher from cooking lessons to food technology, before all that.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
We're also really good at filling in forms, and not very good at foreign languages.
It’s entirely logical that we’re not good at foreign languages, because we don’t need to be. We speak the lingua franca already.
We are good at 2 other things our European and American counterparts are rubbish at: driving on the other side of the road when on holiday (its second nature to us but terrifying to Euro and US visitors to Britain), and converting effortlessly between imperial and metric.
I mean how many nations on earth would you find saying “I had to drive 25 miles to get to the start of my 10k run. It was bloody freezing, only 10 Celsius when we started. Last year it was in the 80s. Still, it’s all helping with the diet. I’ve shed 5 kilos since I started and my waistline is 2 inches smaller.”
How many furlongs was that? Also, many kids seem to use stones for weight. And kilos for everything else.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
We're also really good at filling in forms, and not very good at foreign languages.
It’s entirely logical that we’re not good at foreign languages, because we don’t need to be. We speak the lingua franca already.
We are good at 2 other things our European and American counterparts are rubbish at: driving on the other side of the road when on holiday (its second nature to us but terrifying to Euro and US visitors to Britain), and converting effortlessly between imperial and metric.
I mean how many nations on earth would you find saying “I had to drive 25 miles to get to the start of my 10k run. It was bloody freezing, only 10 Celsius when we started. Last year it was in the 80s. Still, it’s all helping with the diet. I’ve shed 5 kilos since I started and my waistline is 2 inches smaller.”
It'll be interesting to see if the "Babel Fish" aspect of the LLM's being available have any effect on this. I'd guess not for a while as it's still really handy to be able to quickly say "Aye, some of those - ta!". But we're not that far off a universal translator in our ears.
A number of people who I used to work with are scattered around Europe. They tell me that to an astonishing degree, business is conducted in English. Even in France, if the company is vaguely "forward looking", the meetings are held in English.
Easy to see why - English is the new lingua franca of the world, and expecting anyone from India to speak German (say) without years of training.....
1) Rework the company tax system to reward investment in plant and training, and make up the difference from taxing financialisation of companies. Buy a zillion quids worth of CNC machines - thumbs up. Borrow a zillion quid to strip the company of value - thumbs down.
2) Training. The universities take on training and the academic side of apprenticeships. Companies buy into this service, providing the hands on side of apprenticeships, and paying money towards the classroom side. This creates nationally recognised qualifications which represent transferable skills.
3) Create a series of experiments in helping the part time workers become full time workers. How to help them out of the tax/benefit trap.
There is a modern apprenticeship system that sort of does (2). It was introduced by the Tories. It is, however, a ridiculously complex system that stops it from being as useful as it should be.
It's also not really functioning as (I'd guess) intended. It's open to anyone over 16. We've had people in their 60s apply for it. Fine, in a way - you want to learn a new skill. But you're doing some youngster out of a rung on the ladder.
I wish the UK as a whole wasn't as 'snobby' about vocational training and qualifications. I've had amazing, eager people with college certificates apply for jobs and seen them not get offered a place as they didn't have a degree. You know. A proper qualification. It's really quite depressing.
Which is why I want to merge it with the Universities.
"So, you have a First in CNC operation and Elizabethan Poetry from Kings, Cambridge?"
OTOH the latter wouldn't date so quickly, at least in terms of content rather than developed skills.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
We're also really good at filling in forms, and not very good at foreign languages.
It’s entirely logical that we’re not good at foreign languages, because we don’t need to be. We speak the lingua franca already.
We are good at 2 other things our European and American counterparts are rubbish at: driving on the other side of the road when on holiday (its second nature to us but terrifying to Euro and US visitors to Britain), and converting effortlessly between imperial and metric.
I mean how many nations on earth would you find saying “I had to drive 25 miles to get to the start of my 10k run. It was bloody freezing, only 10 Celsius when we started. Last year it was in the 80s. Still, it’s all helping with the diet. I’ve shed 5 kilos since I started and my waistline is 2 inches smaller.”
How many furlongs was that? Also, many kids seem to use stones for weight. And kilos for everything else.
The hundredweight cwt is of course 112 pounds just to keep foreigners on their toes.
There is an interview with Michael Heseltine in The Times today. Among other things he talks about this
He recalls his own emergence as a public figure when the Tories went into opposition in 1974. “Who was leading the attack? Me. Every day. And on Sunday, I got up and did it all over again. That’s opposition. You never take time off. And it will rapidly emerge who’s any good at it.”
Someone who the polls suggest is clearly good at it is Nigel Farage. Virtually every conversation I have with a Conservative these days covers whether they should try to destroy Farage or do a deal with him.
“Destroy him,” Heseltine snaps. “Farage is about economic failure and immigration. It’s the worst stirring of the racial pot.
and this
He thinks some sort of mobility deal allowing under-30s to live and work in the EU, which even Starmer is wary of, is a “very good idea”.
“This is where you have to be prepared to take Farage on. Are you going to deny that to the young generations, the cultural opportunities of Europe, the social opportunities? You’ve got to be aggressive about it and paint it as an older generation denying the young what they have taken for granted all their adult lives.”
A good framing from Hezza there. Frozen out of home ownership. Can't go to uni without taking on a big debt. Oh and while we're at it, forget about moving freely around Europe.
The inability to 'freely' go and pick turnips in Transylvania must really cramp the lives of young Britons.
Lets deal with the reality here:
1) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe are going to be allowed to get a job in Europe.
The problem is that over 90% don't have the skillset to get a job in Europe because language skills are so mediocre in this country.
2) Any Britons who have the skillset to get a job in Europe will also have the skillset to get a job in this country and very likely find it easier to do so and get higher paid.
The problem is that there are too many who don't have the skillset to get a job in this country - note a skillset includes having a worthwhile work ethic.
There you go again, talking down Britain.
Talking up Britain. Young British people don't want to work in mainland Europe not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they can do better elsewhere already.
More British people went to work in Australia than the entire mainland EU combined, despite needing visas for the former and not for the latter.
We're also really good at filling in forms, and not very good at foreign languages.
It’s entirely logical that we’re not good at foreign languages, because we don’t need to be. We speak the lingua franca already.
We are good at 2 other things our European and American counterparts are rubbish at: driving on the other side of the road when on holiday (its second nature to us but terrifying to Euro and US visitors to Britain), and converting effortlessly between imperial and metric.
I mean how many nations on earth would you find saying “I had to drive 25 miles to get to the start of my 10k run. It was bloody freezing, only 10 Celsius when we started. Last year it was in the 80s. Still, it’s all helping with the diet. I’ve shed 5 kilos since I started and my waistline is 2 inches smaller.”
It'll be interesting to see if the "Babel Fish" aspect of the LLM's being available have any effect on this. I'd guess not for a while as it's still really handy to be able to quickly say "Aye, some of those - ta!". But we're not that far off a universal translator in our ears.
A number of people who I used to work with are scattered around Europe. They tell me that to an astonishing degree, business is conducted in English. Even in France, if the company is vaguely "forward looking", the meetings are held in English.
Easy to see why - English is the new lingua franca of the world, and expecting anyone from India to speak German (say) without years of training.....
I keep telling you - English is the best language in the world!
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In the event of an alien invasion, it turns out that the military had a side plan - get a bunch of SF authors to act as a think tank on what the aliens might want/do.
Now there are problems out involving inadequate education/training, housing affordability and the interaction of work with welfare.
There are things which government could and should do better in helping the people generally and the disadvantaged in particular.
Yet for all that how many of the millions of Britons with failing lives do so because of their own choices, their own behaviour.
Why can so many immigrants come to this country get jobs, work hard, buy homes, be successful while too many of our own people cannot ?
“So in your world, the Germans and Japanese are pacifists? And the Jews have founded a second Sparta?”
As to Latin, the cancelling (in effect) of GSCEs while pupils are about to do their mocks is bizarre. And rather cruel, in a thoughtless manner.
Either way, there's still a job for the IDF to do, even if it's a different one to what they've been doing for the past year and a bit.
I did Latin and Greek to O-level though I did maths and sciences at A-Level.
I tried my Greek in Greece and it was like speaking Anglo-Saxon in England. At least I can read the letters and a few of the words are the same.
I voted Remain, largely because of Cameron, and was quite shocked at the result
We are being told continuously by those who regret Brexit, that it was won on lies and that they are far more educated and intelligent then those who voted leave
The Democrats in the US have much the same attitude, but in both cases they lost
Post the Brexit referendum it was incumbent on all mps to Brexit with the best deal possible ( which for me is staying in the single market whilst being outside the EU, and is still my position) but mps from all sides either wanted their own Brexit or even stop it
It is therefore the collective failure of all sides that we have a less than perfect solution
In the US the Democrats persisted with a failing President and completely misjudged the people
Todays release of prisoners in the Israel - Gaza war is widely being attributed to Trump, and I expect he will end the Ukraine conflict as well
Maybe politicians should listen more to the people, and not suggest they have the answer when clearly they haven’t
It may upset many, but Trump is bringing something completely different to politics and watching this unfold will be fascinating
1) Screaming Eagles Land
2) Malmesbury Land
3) The bit no one wants.
This basically - https://youtu.be/X3b9t5IET5M?si=I3wFvo6103Ezahne
Our set books were Xenophon's Anabasis and Euripides Medea.
(Alright, you bloody try punning on Vercingetorix.)
I am not into Trump but made an observation which I did 'qualify' when I said it may upset many
The man is, was, and always will be a self-obsessed narcissist, a bully, a wannabe tyrant and a thoroughly unpleasant human being. Just as he was in 2016-20 (and particularly in January 2020).
Him winning doesn’t change that. Nor does fellow bully and narcissist Netanyahu finally accepting Biden’s ceasefire proposal from last May in time for the inauguration of his friend make Trump some grand peacemaker in our time.
So blame everyone's favourite fireplace salesman and former ed sec for that one.
My friends tell me that I'm a hopeless optimist. Happy but always disappointed.
Ww know you're dissatisfied with your position and your place. But don't you understand it's not our problem.
It may be that he and his staff were so dim they thought nobody would exercise the option midway through a year.
Maybe he was working behind the scenes. On Sunday. In his head.
Cavalier, Astra, Sierra, Granada, Cortina, Orion, Fiesta, Nova.
Then there was “Escort”. What an odd name for a car.
British people can speak Oz quite well; what nearly all can't speak is French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish.
So of course they have to fuck off all the way to the southern hemisphere or the US to get jobs requiring speech.
, in Europe they don't an
I assume the difference is in the psychology of vengeance. Hezbollah are seen as an organised political foe. Hamas are seen as the representatives of an entire hostile population.
I wish the UK as a whole wasn't as 'snobby' about vocational training and qualifications. I've had amazing, eager people with college certificates apply for jobs and seen them not get offered a place as they didn't have a degree. You know. A proper qualification. It's really quite depressing.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-design-and-technology-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-design-and-technology-programmes-of-study#key-stage-3
But one of the academy freedoms (so brought in under Blair and turbocharged by the coalition) is to be able to ignore the National Curriculum. Not wasting time or money on cooking lessons frees up time to get better GCSE results.
Though I do remember being made to drink weird little cartons of warm milk. I wish those had been cancelled. Claggy, manky, warm heat-treated milk. Snatch away!
Live on Sky
There was never a Ford Razzle IIRC.
Or maybe not, as him babbling inanely about sharks and judges' sons who turn out to be New York Post reporters would add considerably to the gaiety of the nation and make the Yanks look even sillier than they already do.
We are good at 2 other things our European and American counterparts are rubbish at: driving on the other side of the road when on holiday (its second nature to us but terrifying to Euro and US visitors to Britain), and converting effortlessly between imperial and metric.
I mean how many nations on earth would you find saying “I had to drive 25 miles to get to the start of my 10k run. It was bloody freezing, only 10 Celsius when we started. Last year it was in the 80s. Still, it’s all helping with the diet. I’ve shed 5 kilos since I started and my waistline is 2 inches smaller.”
"So, you have a First in CNC operation and Elizabethan Poetry from Kings, Cambridge?"
Can I also recommend this: https://youtu.be/JYqfVE-fykk?si=Z3uz_OxLt_6FFl_Y
I hope BBC news had better things to cover.
As for the ragwort, it's an original Linnean name, i.e. by Carl von Linne in the mid-C18, so can't be a Fenland joke unless there is some Swedish connexion I am missing. Maybe it just looked scrubby.
Never forgotten beiong taught at school about its seed being transported by the Victorian railways ...
https://archive.bsbi.org.uk/Wats24p31.pdf
https://botanicalepithets.net/dictionary/dictionary.170.html
Easy to see why - English is the new lingua franca of the world, and expecting anyone from India to speak German (say) without years of training.....