In a way, Brexit has been good for Scottish nationalism. It shows that there can be a working land border between two countries on the same isle. And a working land border between the EU and rUK. The 'United' Kingdom will be united until it's not.
Wonder if Cornwall will be first.
Cornwall is pro Farage
Where d'you get that from?
And Good Morning everyone.
Reform got a higher voteshare in Cornwall than the UK at the last GE
So did the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives if we're going to be pedantic.
Labour and the Conservatives both got 27% in Cornwall, the Liberal Democrats 24%, Reform 17% and the Greens roughly 5%.
Labour got fractionally more votes than the Conservatives but because the Conservative (and Reform) votes were evenly spread, FPTP meant they won no seats with Labour winning four and the Liberal Democrats two.
Slightly surprised to see in recent weeks people stressing the need for the UK to build up an independent nuclear armoury who previously campaigned to get nuclear weapons out of Faslane
Circumstances alter cases.
One of the more interesting ones was the pivot by previous Peace Pledge Union people in the run up to WW2.
We are living in the middle of one, as some groups understand what Trump is really doing, in addition to the threat posed by Russia.
It will be very interesting to find who is left. There are all sorts of reasons, of course - some of them quite good reasons in the previous set of circumstances. And some of us (I hope my view, for one) will be too pessimistic on the other side - for all we know the legal system in the USA may get Musk and Trump under control.
Perhaps the USA will allow their weapons to be putchased for Ukraine on commercial terms for Ukraine, rather than go all out to neuter the possibility of any European help getting to Ukraine by refusing to sell us Himars, which is not even made in Europe.
We built the Florence Nightingale hospitals (I think that was the name) during Covid and did not need them. Was that an unnecessary insurance policy or a wise contingency we did not need?
The Nightingale hospitals were really hospices - very little in the way of facilities. Staff would have been whoever they could scrounge up with a little bit of medical knowledge. Even airline staff.
Their purpose was to prevent people dying in the street if hospitals got overrun (see Greece and Spain). Pretty much an indoor bed with an oxygen supply.
What was interesting was the ravening resistance to them being built, from within the permanent system of government - I knew someone whose career was destroyed because she pushed through completion of the one she was working on.
They were pointless without a plan for staffing them.
One of the lessons of Covid should be more resilience in the NHS, and that should include not operating at 100% occupation at all times. Planned surgery is cancelled every day at my Trust for lack of beds/ITU beds. Apart from the individual misery, it is very inefficient of surgical productivity.
As to the staffing for the Nightingales - there was a plan. Whoever they could find to hold the hands of the sick. And dying…
For the NHS - What about creating more staff? We’ve tried this one round the world - the NHS knows it’s future size and it’s demented that we don’t train staff to match.
I note that the proposed expansion of Medical Schools has all gone quiet. Too expensive it seems, as there was no physical or training infrastructure in the NHS workforce plan.
Better too to improve retention rather than send in fresh meatwaves of rookies.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
That's PAWHP to you.
Allegedly sick? The current caseload is perfectly in line with a long-term trend from 2012 onward for physical and mental disability. I don't think there is any evidence that fraud has had a material impact on the numbers. This is just what happens when the NHS gets swamped by those with long-term chronic conditions, and fails to get working-age people back on their feet (or prevent them falling over in the first place via Public Health).
Spending on disability benefits has risen from around £1.1 billion in 1985-86 to £39.1 billion in 2023-24 in nominal terms, and from 0.3 to 1.4 per cent of GDP over the same period. Welfare spending: disability benefits - Office for Budget Responsibi… obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability-benefits/ obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability
Are we really that much sicker? Or did we just neglect a lot of people who needed help in 1985? Or a bit of both?
I agree that the gross inadequacies of the NHS is aggravating the situation. It is probably a reflection of my age but the number of people I know who have gone private for hip and knee replacements rather than living years in pain waiting their turn is remarkable.
This is a complicated mess but it will be so easy for the Nationalists to blame those awful London people and claim, once again, Nirvana is within reach. One thing is clear, the trend on this is not sustainable.
As a percentage of GDP, working-age incapacity spending has been roughly constant since the late 1970s. See Chart 1.3 from this: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Welfare-trends-report-October-2024.pdf Chart 3.7 also demonstrates that the benefits are either less generous or roughly the same as they have been since 2010.
There is a bit of a meme in the Spectator/Telegraph that this is all about younger people faking mental health problems. The evidence just doesn't stack up.
TBHJ there's not a lot in the Spectator/Telegraph bubble that is backed up by serious evidence.
Much of it is escapees from Wodehouse, perhaps with more influence than they are capable of handling, shouting at each other over Gin and Strawberries.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
That's PAWHP to you.
Allegedly sick? The current caseload is perfectly in line with a long-term trend from 2012 onward for physical and mental disability. I don't think there is any evidence that fraud has had a material impact on the numbers. This is just what happens when the NHS gets swamped by those with long-term chronic conditions, and fails to get working-age people back on their feet (or prevent them falling over in the first place via Public Health).
Spending on disability benefits has risen from around £1.1 billion in 1985-86 to £39.1 billion in 2023-24 in nominal terms, and from 0.3 to 1.4 per cent of GDP over the same period. Welfare spending: disability benefits - Office for Budget Responsibi… obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability-benefits/ obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability
Are we really that much sicker? Or did we just neglect a lot of people who needed help in 1985? Or a bit of both?
I agree that the gross inadequacies of the NHS is aggravating the situation. It is probably a reflection of my age but the number of people I know who have gone private for hip and knee replacements rather than living years in pain waiting their turn is remarkable.
This is a complicated mess but it will be so easy for the Nationalists to blame those awful London people and claim, once again, Nirvana is within reach. One thing is clear, the trend on this is not sustainable.
As a percentage of GDP, working-age incapacity spending has been roughly constant since the late 1970s. See Chart 1.3 from this: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Welfare-trends-report-October-2024.pdf Chart 3.7 also demonstrates that the benefits are either less generous or roughly the same as they have been since 2010.
There is a bit of a meme in the Spectator/Telegraph that this is all about younger people faking mental health problems. The evidence just doesn't stack up.
Yes, and surely the answer to increasing numbers on disability, particularly for mental health issues, is to improve the dire state of mental health services. Early intervention rather than interminable waiting lists as a way of preventing an acute crisis from becoming a lasting disability. There should be some societal change too, particularly on Social Media and screen time generally.
If you want to tackle the Disability benefit expense then tackle the cause rather than the victims.
My business partner is former head of CAHMS for Derbyshire and now teaches mental health nursing at University. His least favourite statistic is that 9% of the NHS beudget is spent on mental health but only 8% of that 9% is spent on child and young adult mental health. So the percentage of the NHS budget actually being spent on mental health care for anyne under 18 is 0.7%.
I wonder what the etiquette is about complaining about the temperature in someone else's house vs how many clothes one can take off. Im at a place and down to t-shirt already and still practically gasping with heat whilst the elderly owners are still fully wrapped up. Passing out would be a faux pax i suppose but if they're comfortable who am i to complain?
I wonder what the etiquette is about complaining about the temperature in someone else's house vs how many clothes one can take off. Im at a place and down to t-shirt already and still practically gasping with heat whilst the elderly owners are still fully wrapped up. Passing out would be a faux pax i suppose but if they're comfortable who am i to complain?
Slightly surprised to see in recent weeks people stressing the need for the UK to build up an independent nuclear armoury who previously campaigned to get nuclear weapons out of Faslane
Circumstances alter cases.
One of the more interesting ones was the pivot by previous Peace Pledge Union people in the run up to WW2.
We are living in the middle of one, as some groups understand what Trump is really doing, in addition to the threat posed by Russia.
It will be very interesting to find who is left. There are all sorts of reasons, of course - some of them quite good reasons in the previous set of circumstances. And some of us (I hope my view, for one) will be too pessimistic on the other side - for all we know the legal system in the USA may get Musk and Trump under control.
Perhaps the USA will allow their weapons to be putchased for Ukraine on commercial terms for Ukraine, rather than go all out to neuter the possibility of any European help getting to Ukraine by refusing to sell us Himars, which is not even made in Europe.
We built the Florence Nightingale hospitals (I think that was the name) during Covid and did not need them. Was that an unnecessary insurance policy or a wise contingency we did not need?
The Nightingale hospitals were really hospices - very little in the way of facilities. Staff would have been whoever they could scrounge up with a little bit of medical knowledge. Even airline staff.
Their purpose was to prevent people dying in the street if hospitals got overrun (see Greece and Spain). Pretty much an indoor bed with an oxygen supply.
What was interesting was the ravening resistance to them being built, from within the permanent system of government - I knew someone whose career was destroyed because she pushed through completion of the one she was working on.
They were pointless without a plan for staffing them.
One of the lessons of Covid should be more resilience in the NHS, and that should include not operating at 100% occupation at all times. Planned surgery is cancelled every day at my Trust for lack of beds/ITU beds. Apart from the individual misery, it is very inefficient of surgical productivity.
As to the staffing for the Nightingales - there was a plan. Whoever they could find to hold the hands of the sick. And dying…
For the NHS - What about creating more staff? We’ve tried this one round the world - the NHS knows it’s future size and it’s demented that we don’t train staff to match.
I thought the idea of the Nightingales was to move the non serious and routine cases out of the hospitals into the Nightingales and then use the reglar hospitals for the serious covid cases?
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
That's PAWHP to you.
Allegedly sick? The current caseload is perfectly in line with a long-term trend from 2012 onward for physical and mental disability. I don't think there is any evidence that fraud has had a material impact on the numbers. This is just what happens when the NHS gets swamped by those with long-term chronic conditions, and fails to get working-age people back on their feet (or prevent them falling over in the first place via Public Health).
Spending on disability benefits has risen from around £1.1 billion in 1985-86 to £39.1 billion in 2023-24 in nominal terms, and from 0.3 to 1.4 per cent of GDP over the same period. Welfare spending: disability benefits - Office for Budget Responsibi… obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability-benefits/ obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability
Are we really that much sicker? Or did we just neglect a lot of people who needed help in 1985? Or a bit of both?
I agree that the gross inadequacies of the NHS is aggravating the situation. It is probably a reflection of my age but the number of people I know who have gone private for hip and knee replacements rather than living years in pain waiting their turn is remarkable.
This is a complicated mess but it will be so easy for the Nationalists to blame those awful London people and claim, once again, Nirvana is within reach. One thing is clear, the trend on this is not sustainable.
As a percentage of GDP, working-age incapacity spending has been roughly constant since the late 1970s. See Chart 1.3 from this: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Welfare-trends-report-October-2024.pdf Chart 3.7 also demonstrates that the benefits are either less generous or roughly the same as they have been since 2010.
There is a bit of a meme in the Spectator/Telegraph that this is all about younger people faking mental health problems. The evidence just doesn't stack up.
Yes, and surely the answer to increasing numbers on disability, particularly for mental health issues, is to improve the dire state of mental health services. Early intervention rather than interminable waiting lists as a way of preventing an acute crisis from becoming a lasting disability. There should be some societal change too, particularly on Social Media and screen time generally.
If you want to tackle the Disability benefit expense then tackle the cause rather than the victims.
The DB system checks on a 3 year review that the conditions haven't improved. So there are ways to monitor each person on DB. Also the DWP will often default to refuse and make the recipient go to a Tribunal where the DWP mostly have lost. So staying on DB is not that easy unless you have a genuine case.
Slightly surprised to see in recent weeks people stressing the need for the UK to build up an independent nuclear armoury who previously campaigned to get nuclear weapons out of Faslane
Circumstances alter cases.
One of the more interesting ones was the pivot by previous Peace Pledge Union people in the run up to WW2.
We are living in the middle of one, as some groups understand what Trump is really doing, in addition to the threat posed by Russia.
It will be very interesting to find who is left. There are all sorts of reasons, of course - some of them quite good reasons in the previous set of circumstances. And some of us (I hope my view, for one) will be too pessimistic on the other side - for all we know the legal system in the USA may get Musk and Trump under control.
Perhaps the USA will allow their weapons to be putchased for Ukraine on commercial terms for Ukraine, rather than go all out to neuter the possibility of any European help getting to Ukraine by refusing to sell us Himars, which is not even made in Europe.
We built the Florence Nightingale hospitals (I think that was the name) during Covid and did not need them. Was that an unnecessary insurance policy or a wise contingency we did not need?
The Nightingale hospitals were really hospices - very little in the way of facilities. Staff would have been whoever they could scrounge up with a little bit of medical knowledge. Even airline staff.
Their purpose was to prevent people dying in the street if hospitals got overrun (see Greece and Spain). Pretty much an indoor bed with an oxygen supply.
What was interesting was the ravening resistance to them being built, from within the permanent system of government - I knew someone whose career was destroyed because she pushed through completion of the one she was working on.
They were pointless without a plan for staffing them.
One of the lessons of Covid should be more resilience in the NHS, and that should include not operating at 100% occupation at all times. Planned surgery is cancelled every day at my Trust for lack of beds/ITU beds. Apart from the individual misery, it is very inefficient of surgical productivity.
As to the staffing for the Nightingales - there was a plan. Whoever they could find to hold the hands of the sick. And dying…
For the NHS - What about creating more staff? We’ve tried this one round the world - the NHS knows it’s future size and it’s demented that we don’t train staff to match.
I thought the idea of the Nightingales was to move the non serious and routine cases out of the hospitals into the Nightingales and then use the reglar hospitals for the serious covid cases?
There were several plans, actually. One was to move non-critical COVID cases there. Another was to (as you say) empty the hospitals of those who didn’t need complex medical care.
What a gorgeous love in with Farage! My take away? Like Hitler in the song, Farage really does only have one ball!
I think it is not just the SNP that has a Trump problem. The comments under the Farage piece are brutal. OGH used to talk about polls being a lagging indicator. I think there has been a real shift in the past month and RefUK are now in serious trouble, which it may take the polls a little while to pick up.
Reform will not win the by-election. I think the only threat to Labour would be if the Lib Dems get a Shropshire North style pick up. Anecdotally the Lib Dems are picking up a bit of momentum elsewhere, maybe with a good candidate, Mark Pack might fancy his chances in Runcorn.
The interview was in the Times which is a Tory and LD or New Labour paper NOT a Reform paper so the comments would be hostile.
It is not pro Reform media like the Mail, Sun, Telegraph or GB news.
The Ashcroft poll had Reform winning the by election
When HYUFD is (although he hasn't realised it yet) throwing his weight behind Farage,- Reform the Tories are truly f***ed. Put a fork in them, the Tories are done!
Your post is a Damascene moment for me. Would HYUFD please put the lights out as he departs the Conservative Party.
I am a Tory but there is no chance of a Tory government without Reform support on current polls and vice versa
That's roughly the logic which led to the Republicans surrendering to Trump.
You don't want a Labour government. Fine- I'm not overjoyed, beyond a "least bad turkey left on the shelf" sense that he'll have to do.
But there comes a point where awfulness trumps right wing soundness, as the Chancellor-elect in Germany has recognised.
Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Israel and New Zealand all have centre right parties in government with the nationalist right, Spain in alliance and in Canada they merged
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
That's PAWHP to you.
Allegedly sick? The current caseload is perfectly in line with a long-term trend from 2012 onward for physical and mental disability. I don't think there is any evidence that fraud has had a material impact on the numbers. This is just what happens when the NHS gets swamped by those with long-term chronic conditions, and fails to get working-age people back on their feet (or prevent them falling over in the first place via Public Health).
Spending on disability benefits has risen from around £1.1 billion in 1985-86 to £39.1 billion in 2023-24 in nominal terms, and from 0.3 to 1.4 per cent of GDP over the same period. Welfare spending: disability benefits - Office for Budget Responsibi… obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability-benefits/ obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability
Are we really that much sicker? Or did we just neglect a lot of people who needed help in 1985? Or a bit of both?
I agree that the gross inadequacies of the NHS is aggravating the situation. It is probably a reflection of my age but the number of people I know who have gone private for hip and knee replacements rather than living years in pain waiting their turn is remarkable.
This is a complicated mess but it will be so easy for the Nationalists to blame those awful London people and claim, once again, Nirvana is within reach. One thing is clear, the trend on this is not sustainable.
As a percentage of GDP, working-age incapacity spending has been roughly constant since the late 1970s. See Chart 1.3 from this: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Welfare-trends-report-October-2024.pdf Chart 3.7 also demonstrates that the benefits are either less generous or roughly the same as they have been since 2010.
There is a bit of a meme in the Spectator/Telegraph that this is all about younger people faking mental health problems. The evidence just doesn't stack up.
Yes, and surely the answer to increasing numbers on disability, particularly for mental health issues, is to improve the dire state of mental health services. Early intervention rather than interminable waiting lists as a way of preventing an acute crisis from becoming a lasting disability. There should be some societal change too, particularly on Social Media and screen time generally.
If you want to tackle the Disability benefit expense then tackle the cause rather than the victims.
The darkly funny thing is that outfits like the Telegraph have been warning us for decades about the dangers of screen time, video gaming, social media etc etc - and now that there is an increase in mental health issues, they act as if it's fake.
But this is still a distraction from the fact the caseload is still dominated by older people - the prevalence is nearly 3x higher for people aged 50+ compared with people in their 20s. I think older men with physical issues was the highest group, from memory.
Extraordinary. I see that Thiel has even written a later foreward for Rees-Mogg's book, adding a touch of Nietszche, from the German right, as the son of a man who travelled from Germany to South Africa to become a uranium- mining businessman with black slaves ; and a touch of Mao.
You can almost hear the James Bond music playing in the background .
"Medieval men despaired of the will. They thought of humans as wounded and weak. But they respected the intellect. They thought even humans, if we think carefully, have the power to answer the most profound questions.
Modern men worship the will, but they despair of the intellect.
It is only through a unique long-term awareness that looks back to Lenin and Stalin as well as forward to the Information Age that the Chinese Communist Party's leaders prevailed amid the trends analyzed by this book.
Those trends-winner-take-all economics, jurisdictional competition, the shift away from mass production, and the arguable obsolescence of interstate warfare are still at work today.
In truth, the great conflict over our megapolitical future is only just beginning. On the dimension of technology, the conflict has two poles: Al and crypto.
Peter Thiel January 6, 2020 - Los Angeles
Outside the clergy, lawyers and aristocracy most medieval men were illiterate
My best recommendation for listening today, a Foreign Affairs interview with Fiona Hill (not Theresa May's Fiona Hill -the other one),
She's a Bishop Auckland lass (from a mining family) who was a senior adviser to the first Trump Administration as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs. She is now working as a key adviser to the British Government, and has been Chancellor of Durham Uni.
Very candid, and a lovely accent. @Taz will enjoy.
"Fiona Hill: What Does Trump See in Putin? | Foreign Affairs Interview"
What a gorgeous love in with Farage! My take away? Like Hitler in the song, Farage really does only have one ball!
I think it is not just the SNP that has a Trump problem. The comments under the Farage piece are brutal. OGH used to talk about polls being a lagging indicator. I think there has been a real shift in the past month and RefUK are now in serious trouble, which it may take the polls a little while to pick up.
Reform will not win the by-election. I think the only threat to Labour would be if the Lib Dems get a Shropshire North style pick up. Anecdotally the Lib Dems are picking up a bit of momentum elsewhere, maybe with a good candidate, Mark Pack might fancy his chances in Runcorn.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
That's PAWHP to you.
Allegedly sick? The current caseload is perfectly in line with a long-term trend from 2012 onward for physical and mental disability. I don't think there is any evidence that fraud has had a material impact on the numbers. This is just what happens when the NHS gets swamped by those with long-term chronic conditions, and fails to get working-age people back on their feet (or prevent them falling over in the first place via Public Health).
Spending on disability benefits has risen from around £1.1 billion in 1985-86 to £39.1 billion in 2023-24 in nominal terms, and from 0.3 to 1.4 per cent of GDP over the same period. Welfare spending: disability benefits - Office for Budget Responsibi… obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability-benefits/ obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability
Are we really that much sicker? Or did we just neglect a lot of people who needed help in 1985? Or a bit of both?
I agree that the gross inadequacies of the NHS is aggravating the situation. It is probably a reflection of my age but the number of people I know who have gone private for hip and knee replacements rather than living years in pain waiting their turn is remarkable.
This is a complicated mess but it will be so easy for the Nationalists to blame those awful London people and claim, once again, Nirvana is within reach. One thing is clear, the trend on this is not sustainable.
As a percentage of GDP, working-age incapacity spending has been roughly constant since the late 1970s. See Chart 1.3 from this: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Welfare-trends-report-October-2024.pdf Chart 3.7 also demonstrates that the benefits are either less generous or roughly the same as they have been since 2010.
There is a bit of a meme in the Spectator/Telegraph that this is all about younger people faking mental health problems. The evidence just doesn't stack up.
Yes, and surely the answer to increasing numbers on disability, particularly for mental health issues, is to improve the dire state of mental health services. Early intervention rather than interminable waiting lists as a way of preventing an acute crisis from becoming a lasting disability. There should be some societal change too, particularly on Social Media and screen time generally.
If you want to tackle the Disability benefit expense then tackle the cause rather than the victims.
The darkly funny thing is that outfits like the Telegraph have been warning us for decades about the dangers of screen time, video gaming, social media etc etc - and now that there is an increase in mental health issues, they act as if it's fake.
But this is still a distraction from the fact the caseload is still dominated by older people - the prevalence is nearly 3x higher for people aged 50+ compared with people in their 20s. I think older men with physical issues was the highest group, from memory.
Yes, for years the policy was to move folk from unemployment benefits to disability benefits in order to massage figures. We are seeing the legacy of that.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
That's PAWHP to you.
Allegedly sick? The current caseload is perfectly in line with a long-term trend from 2012 onward for physical and mental disability. I don't think there is any evidence that fraud has had a material impact on the numbers. This is just what happens when the NHS gets swamped by those with long-term chronic conditions, and fails to get working-age people back on their feet (or prevent them falling over in the first place via Public Health).
Spending on disability benefits has risen from around £1.1 billion in 1985-86 to £39.1 billion in 2023-24 in nominal terms, and from 0.3 to 1.4 per cent of GDP over the same period. Welfare spending: disability benefits - Office for Budget Responsibi… obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability-benefits/ obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability
Are we really that much sicker? Or did we just neglect a lot of people who needed help in 1985? Or a bit of both?
I agree that the gross inadequacies of the NHS is aggravating the situation. It is probably a reflection of my age but the number of people I know who have gone private for hip and knee replacements rather than living years in pain waiting their turn is remarkable.
This is a complicated mess but it will be so easy for the Nationalists to blame those awful London people and claim, once again, Nirvana is within reach. One thing is clear, the trend on this is not sustainable.
As a percentage of GDP, working-age incapacity spending has been roughly constant since the late 1970s. See Chart 1.3 from this: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Welfare-trends-report-October-2024.pdf Chart 3.7 also demonstrates that the benefits are either less generous or roughly the same as they have been since 2010.
There is a bit of a meme in the Spectator/Telegraph that this is all about younger people faking mental health problems. The evidence just doesn't stack up.
Yes, and surely the answer to increasing numbers on disability, particularly for mental health issues, is to improve the dire state of mental health services. Early intervention rather than interminable waiting lists as a way of preventing an acute crisis from becoming a lasting disability. There should be some societal change too, particularly on Social Media and screen time generally.
If you want to tackle the Disability benefit expense then tackle the cause rather than the victims.
Perhaps we need to reduce the 25k or so people who are hospitalised every year when they are put in hospital by motor vehicle collisions on our roads (and our pavements, pedestrian crossings, car parks, gardens, front rooms, shops, football pitches ...) !
That would save a lot of money, rather than taking the people who *have* been crippled like that, and hitting them harder.
Slightly surprised to see in recent weeks people stressing the need for the UK to build up an independent nuclear armoury who previously campaigned to get nuclear weapons out of Faslane
Circumstances alter cases.
One of the more interesting ones was the pivot by previous Peace Pledge Union people in the run up to WW2.
We are living in the middle of one, as some groups understand what Trump is really doing, in addition to the threat posed by Russia.
It will be very interesting to find who is left. There are all sorts of reasons, of course - some of them quite good reasons in the previous set of circumstances. And some of us (I hope my view, for one) will be too pessimistic on the other side - for all we know the legal system in the USA may get Musk and Trump under control.
Perhaps the USA will allow their weapons to be putchased for Ukraine on commercial terms for Ukraine, rather than go all out to neuter the possibility of any European help getting to Ukraine by refusing to sell us Himars, which is not even made in Europe.
We built the Florence Nightingale hospitals (I think that was the name) during Covid and did not need them. Was that an unnecessary insurance policy or a wise contingency we did not need?
The Nightingale hospitals were really hospices - very little in the way of facilities. Staff would have been whoever they could scrounge up with a little bit of medical knowledge. Even airline staff.
Their purpose was to prevent people dying in the street if hospitals got overrun (see Greece and Spain). Pretty much an indoor bed with an oxygen supply.
What was interesting was the ravening resistance to them being built, from within the permanent system of government - I knew someone whose career was destroyed because she pushed through completion of the one she was working on.
They were pointless without a plan for staffing them.
One of the lessons of Covid should be more resilience in the NHS, and that should include not operating at 100% occupation at all times. Planned surgery is cancelled every day at my Trust for lack of beds/ITU beds. Apart from the individual misery, it is very inefficient of surgical productivity.
As to the staffing for the Nightingales - there was a plan. Whoever they could find to hold the hands of the sick. And dying…
For the NHS - What about creating more staff? We’ve tried this one round the world - the NHS knows it’s future size and it’s demented that we don’t train staff to match.
I thought the idea of the Nightingales was to move the non serious and routine cases out of the hospitals into the Nightingales and then use the reglar hospitals for the serious covid cases?
There were several plans, actually. One was to move non-critical COVID cases there. Another was to (as you say) empty the hospitals of those who didn’t need complex medical care.
There was never a plan for staffing. That was why virtually no patients were treated there despite conventional hospitals bursting at the seams.
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
A world where regions seeking independence referendums get them blocked ie Spain and Catalonia or nations having broken away from their union with their big neighbour find that big neighbour later invading them ie Russia and Ukraine
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
That's PAWHP to you.
Allegedly sick? The current caseload is perfectly in line with a long-term trend from 2012 onward for physical and mental disability. I don't think there is any evidence that fraud has had a material impact on the numbers. This is just what happens when the NHS gets swamped by those with long-term chronic conditions, and fails to get working-age people back on their feet (or prevent them falling over in the first place via Public Health).
Spending on disability benefits has risen from around £1.1 billion in 1985-86 to £39.1 billion in 2023-24 in nominal terms, and from 0.3 to 1.4 per cent of GDP over the same period. Welfare spending: disability benefits - Office for Budget Responsibi… obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability-benefits/ obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability
Are we really that much sicker? Or did we just neglect a lot of people who needed help in 1985? Or a bit of both?
I agree that the gross inadequacies of the NHS is aggravating the situation. It is probably a reflection of my age but the number of people I know who have gone private for hip and knee replacements rather than living years in pain waiting their turn is remarkable.
This is a complicated mess but it will be so easy for the Nationalists to blame those awful London people and claim, once again, Nirvana is within reach. One thing is clear, the trend on this is not sustainable.
As a percentage of GDP, working-age incapacity spending has been roughly constant since the late 1970s. See Chart 1.3 from this: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Welfare-trends-report-October-2024.pdf Chart 3.7 also demonstrates that the benefits are either less generous or roughly the same as they have been since 2010.
There is a bit of a meme in the Spectator/Telegraph that this is all about younger people faking mental health problems. The evidence just doesn't stack up.
Yes, and surely the answer to increasing numbers on disability, particularly for mental health issues, is to improve the dire state of mental health services. Early intervention rather than interminable waiting lists as a way of preventing an acute crisis from becoming a lasting disability. There should be some societal change too, particularly on Social Media and screen time generally.
If you want to tackle the Disability benefit expense then tackle the cause rather than the victims.
Perhaps we need to reduce the 25k or so people who are hospitalised every year when they are put in hospital by motor vehicle collisions on our roads (and our pavements, pedestrian crossings, car parks, gardens, front rooms, shops, football pitches ...) !
That would save a lot of money, rather than taking the people who *have* been crippled like that, and hitting them harder.
Nice idea but not sure how you do that. We already have some of the safest roads in the Western world in terms of death and injury. The only countries in Europe with better records than the UK are Norway and Sweden.
Slightly surprised to see in recent weeks people stressing the need for the UK to build up an independent nuclear armoury who previously campaigned to get nuclear weapons out of Faslane
Circumstances alter cases.
One of the more interesting ones was the pivot by previous Peace Pledge Union people in the run up to WW2.
We are living in the middle of one, as some groups understand what Trump is really doing, in addition to the threat posed by Russia.
It will be very interesting to find who is left. There are all sorts of reasons, of course - some of them quite good reasons in the previous set of circumstances. And some of us (I hope my view, for one) will be too pessimistic on the other side - for all we know the legal system in the USA may get Musk and Trump under control.
Perhaps the USA will allow their weapons to be putchased for Ukraine on commercial terms for Ukraine, rather than go all out to neuter the possibility of any European help getting to Ukraine by refusing to sell us Himars, which is not even made in Europe.
We built the Florence Nightingale hospitals (I think that was the name) during Covid and did not need them. Was that an unnecessary insurance policy or a wise contingency we did not need?
The Nightingale hospitals were really hospices - very little in the way of facilities. Staff would have been whoever they could scrounge up with a little bit of medical knowledge. Even airline staff.
Their purpose was to prevent people dying in the street if hospitals got overrun (see Greece and Spain). Pretty much an indoor bed with an oxygen supply.
What was interesting was the ravening resistance to them being built, from within the permanent system of government - I knew someone whose career was destroyed because she pushed through completion of the one she was working on.
They were pointless without a plan for staffing them.
One of the lessons of Covid should be more resilience in the NHS, and that should include not operating at 100% occupation at all times. Planned surgery is cancelled every day at my Trust for lack of beds/ITU beds. Apart from the individual misery, it is very inefficient of surgical productivity.
As to the staffing for the Nightingales - there was a plan. Whoever they could find to hold the hands of the sick. And dying…
For the NHS - What about creating more staff? We’ve tried this one round the world - the NHS knows it’s future size and it’s demented that we don’t train staff to match.
I thought the idea of the Nightingales was to move the non serious and routine cases out of the hospitals into the Nightingales and then use the reglar hospitals for the serious covid cases?
There were several plans, actually. One was to move non-critical COVID cases there. Another was to (as you say) empty the hospitals of those who didn’t need complex medical care.
There was never a plan for staffing. That was why virtually no patients were treated there despite conventional hospitals bursting at the seams.
Without that it was castles on clouds.
They also fundamentally missed the evil genius of exponential growth.
Suppose the Nightingales had doubled NHS capacity- which for all sorts of reasons, they didn't and couldn't have.
That would have postponed disaster by about 3 days.
What a gorgeous love in with Farage! My take away? Like Hitler in the song, Farage really does only have one ball!
I think it is not just the SNP that has a Trump problem. The comments under the Farage piece are brutal. OGH used to talk about polls being a lagging indicator. I think there has been a real shift in the past month and RefUK are now in serious trouble, which it may take the polls a little while to pick up.
Reform will not win the by-election. I think the only threat to Labour would be if the Lib Dems get a Shropshire North style pick up. Anecdotally the Lib Dems are picking up a bit of momentum elsewhere, maybe with a good candidate, Mark Pack might fancy his chances in Runcorn.
Mark Pack is now Lord Pack - so no.
Unless he has changed, Lord Pack has also been very happily settled in inner South London for around 20 years now iirc. I still owe him lunch from quite a long time ago; he used to write a weekly column for me.
Extraordinary. I see that Thiel has even written a later foreward for Rees-Mogg's book, adding a touch of Nietszche, from the German right, as the son of a man who travelled from Germany to South Africa to become a uranium- mining businessman with black slaves ; and a touch of Mao.
You can almost hear the James Bond music playing in the background .
"Medieval men despaired of the will. They thought of humans as wounded and weak. But they respected the intellect. They thought even humans, if we think carefully, have the power to answer the most profound questions.
Modern men worship the will, but they despair of the intellect.
It is only through a unique long-term awareness that looks back to Lenin and Stalin as well as forward to the Information Age that the Chinese Communist Party's leaders prevailed amid the trends analyzed by this book.
Those trends-winner-take-all economics, jurisdictional competition, the shift away from mass production, and the arguable obsolescence of interstate warfare are still at work today.
In truth, the great conflict over our megapolitical future is only just beginning. On the dimension of technology, the conflict has two poles: Al and crypto.
Peter Thiel January 6, 2020 - Los Angeles
Outside the clergy, lawyers and aristocracy most medieval men were illiterate
Important not to confuse illiteracy with lack of intellect. Pre-literate cultures often had fantastic oral cultures of storytelling, debate and rich oral traditions. The Viking Sagas, the Iliad and Oddessy, the Mahabharata and may other epic poems dealt with subtle and complex intellectual themes, and kept alive by largely illiterate societies. They didn't just spend their days discussing turnips and goats.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
That's PAWHP to you.
Allegedly sick? The current caseload is perfectly in line with a long-term trend from 2012 onward for physical and mental disability. I don't think there is any evidence that fraud has had a material impact on the numbers. This is just what happens when the NHS gets swamped by those with long-term chronic conditions, and fails to get working-age people back on their feet (or prevent them falling over in the first place via Public Health).
Spending on disability benefits has risen from around £1.1 billion in 1985-86 to £39.1 billion in 2023-24 in nominal terms, and from 0.3 to 1.4 per cent of GDP over the same period. Welfare spending: disability benefits - Office for Budget Responsibi… obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability-benefits/ obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability
Are we really that much sicker? Or did we just neglect a lot of people who needed help in 1985? Or a bit of both?
I agree that the gross inadequacies of the NHS is aggravating the situation. It is probably a reflection of my age but the number of people I know who have gone private for hip and knee replacements rather than living years in pain waiting their turn is remarkable.
This is a complicated mess but it will be so easy for the Nationalists to blame those awful London people and claim, once again, Nirvana is within reach. One thing is clear, the trend on this is not sustainable.
As a percentage of GDP, working-age incapacity spending has been roughly constant since the late 1970s. See Chart 1.3 from this: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Welfare-trends-report-October-2024.pdf Chart 3.7 also demonstrates that the benefits are either less generous or roughly the same as they have been since 2010.
There is a bit of a meme in the Spectator/Telegraph that this is all about younger people faking mental health problems. The evidence just doesn't stack up.
Yes, and surely the answer to increasing numbers on disability, particularly for mental health issues, is to improve the dire state of mental health services. Early intervention rather than interminable waiting lists as a way of preventing an acute crisis from becoming a lasting disability. There should be some societal change too, particularly on Social Media and screen time generally.
If you want to tackle the Disability benefit expense then tackle the cause rather than the victims.
Perhaps we need to reduce the 25k or so people who are hospitalised every year when they are put in hospital by motor vehicle collisions on our roads (and our pavements, pedestrian crossings, car parks, gardens, front rooms, shops, football pitches ...) !
That would save a lot of money, rather than taking the people who *have* been crippled like that, and hitting them harder.
Nice idea but not sure how you do that. We already have some of the safest roads in the Western world in terms of death and injury. The only countries in Europe with better records than the UK are Norway and Sweden.
That's a header for another time .
You're correct that there's some unidentified dynamic which seems to make our roads inherently relatively safer than other places for reasons not clearly known. Personally I suspect one cause may be driving on the left, and perhaps having fewer people not from the UK driving here as we do not have 'drive over' borders - worked against by far more people now who did not learn here, eg 20 years experience in the USA or India. But I have not seen data on that. Eg we have had roads 2-3 times safer than eg the French since at least 1970, and still safer but perhaps with difference now.
We also had the safest roads in Europe in 2000, when the Govt decided to set a target to halve deaths in a decade, which was achieved.
I think a further halving is practical. Let's see what the actual numbers are from Wales as a first step.
They probably fund themselves - the clue's in the name.
There have been plenty of examples of philanthrophy - wealthy Victorian business men built schools, hospitals and houses for their workers. Now, it wasn't entirely philanthrophic - they knew a healthier and more educated work force would be a more productive and loyal work force thereby increasing profits.
There were plenty of "company towns" built in the 19th and 20th centuries - the nature of business is now very different of course and this group probably aren't looking at that as an example.
‘Probably’
Nothing stopping them doing any of this now instead of being part of a well funded lobbying group. There are several including one in the USA and one in Canada.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
That's PAWHP to you.
Allegedly sick? The current caseload is perfectly in line with a long-term trend from 2012 onward for physical and mental disability. I don't think there is any evidence that fraud has had a material impact on the numbers. This is just what happens when the NHS gets swamped by those with long-term chronic conditions, and fails to get working-age people back on their feet (or prevent them falling over in the first place via Public Health).
Spending on disability benefits has risen from around £1.1 billion in 1985-86 to £39.1 billion in 2023-24 in nominal terms, and from 0.3 to 1.4 per cent of GDP over the same period. Welfare spending: disability benefits - Office for Budget Responsibi… obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability-benefits/ obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability
Are we really that much sicker? Or did we just neglect a lot of people who needed help in 1985? Or a bit of both?
I agree that the gross inadequacies of the NHS is aggravating the situation. It is probably a reflection of my age but the number of people I know who have gone private for hip and knee replacements rather than living years in pain waiting their turn is remarkable.
This is a complicated mess but it will be so easy for the Nationalists to blame those awful London people and claim, once again, Nirvana is within reach. One thing is clear, the trend on this is not sustainable.
As a percentage of GDP, working-age incapacity spending has been roughly constant since the late 1970s. See Chart 1.3 from this: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Welfare-trends-report-October-2024.pdf Chart 3.7 also demonstrates that the benefits are either less generous or roughly the same as they have been since 2010.
There is a bit of a meme in the Spectator/Telegraph that this is all about younger people faking mental health problems. The evidence just doesn't stack up.
Yes, and surely the answer to increasing numbers on disability, particularly for mental health issues, is to improve the dire state of mental health services. Early intervention rather than interminable waiting lists as a way of preventing an acute crisis from becoming a lasting disability. There should be some societal change too, particularly on Social Media and screen time generally.
If you want to tackle the Disability benefit expense then tackle the cause rather than the victims.
Perhaps we need to reduce the 25k or so people who are hospitalised every year when they are put in hospital by motor vehicle collisions on our roads (and our pavements, pedestrian crossings, car parks, gardens, front rooms, shops, football pitches ...) !
That would save a lot of money, rather than taking the people who *have* been crippled like that, and hitting them harder.
Nice idea but not sure how you do that. We already have some of the safest roads in the Western world in terms of death and injury. The only countries in Europe with better records than the UK are Norway and Sweden.
If we're not at the "optimal" number of injuries in relation to cost, QALYs, foregone taxes and various other factors then there is work yet to do. I think the DfT have previously calculated the costs as £20 billion per year?
It's precisely that kind of preventative policy which is how we will reduce spending on healthcare and incapacity benefit, but because it typically requires a government intervention (particulary on something like obesity), people will instinctively oppose it. All the more frustrating when it's traumatic injuries to younger people, which are so rare otherwise.
Extraordinary. I see that Thiel has even written a later foreward for Rees-Mogg's book, adding a touch of Nietszche, from the German right, as the son of a man who travelled from Germany to South Africa to become a uranium- mining businessman with black slaves ; and a touch of Mao.
You can almost hear the James Bond music playing in the background .
"Medieval men despaired of the will. They thought of humans as wounded and weak. But they respected the intellect. They thought even humans, if we think carefully, have the power to answer the most profound questions.
Modern men worship the will, but they despair of the intellect.
It is only through a unique long-term awareness that looks back to Lenin and Stalin as well as forward to the Information Age that the Chinese Communist Party's leaders prevailed amid the trends analyzed by this book.
Those trends-winner-take-all economics, jurisdictional competition, the shift away from mass production, and the arguable obsolescence of interstate warfare are still at work today.
In truth, the great conflict over our megapolitical future is only just beginning. On the dimension of technology, the conflict has two poles: Al and crypto.
Peter Thiel January 6, 2020 - Los Angeles
Outside the clergy, lawyers and aristocracy most medieval men were illiterate
Which time period of medieval?
It covers many centuries and numerous changes.
For example, in the twelfth century almost all lawyers were clergy and almost all aristocratic men were illiterate.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
That's PAWHP to you.
Allegedly sick? The current caseload is perfectly in line with a long-term trend from 2012 onward for physical and mental disability. I don't think there is any evidence that fraud has had a material impact on the numbers. This is just what happens when the NHS gets swamped by those with long-term chronic conditions, and fails to get working-age people back on their feet (or prevent them falling over in the first place via Public Health).
Spending on disability benefits has risen from around £1.1 billion in 1985-86 to £39.1 billion in 2023-24 in nominal terms, and from 0.3 to 1.4 per cent of GDP over the same period. Welfare spending: disability benefits - Office for Budget Responsibi… obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability-benefits/ obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-disability
Are we really that much sicker? Or did we just neglect a lot of people who needed help in 1985? Or a bit of both?
I agree that the gross inadequacies of the NHS is aggravating the situation. It is probably a reflection of my age but the number of people I know who have gone private for hip and knee replacements rather than living years in pain waiting their turn is remarkable.
This is a complicated mess but it will be so easy for the Nationalists to blame those awful London people and claim, once again, Nirvana is within reach. One thing is clear, the trend on this is not sustainable.
As a percentage of GDP, working-age incapacity spending has been roughly constant since the late 1970s. See Chart 1.3 from this: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Welfare-trends-report-October-2024.pdf Chart 3.7 also demonstrates that the benefits are either less generous or roughly the same as they have been since 2010.
There is a bit of a meme in the Spectator/Telegraph that this is all about younger people faking mental health problems. The evidence just doesn't stack up.
Yes, and surely the answer to increasing numbers on disability, particularly for mental health issues, is to improve the dire state of mental health services. Early intervention rather than interminable waiting lists as a way of preventing an acute crisis from becoming a lasting disability. There should be some societal change too, particularly on Social Media and screen time generally.
If you want to tackle the Disability benefit expense then tackle the cause rather than the victims.
The darkly funny thing is that outfits like the Telegraph have been warning us for decades about the dangers of screen time, video gaming, social media etc etc - and now that there is an increase in mental health issues, they act as if it's fake.
But this is still a distraction from the fact the caseload is still dominated by older people - the prevalence is nearly 3x higher for people aged 50+ compared with people in their 20s. I think older men with physical issues was the highest group, from memory.
Yes, for years the policy was to move folk from unemployment benefits to disability benefits in order to massage figures. We are seeing the legacy of that.
I’m sure we can all remember which party/pm started those shenanigans.
My best recommendation for listening today, a Foreign Affairs interview with Fiona Hill (not Theresa May's Fiona Hill -the other one),
She's a Bishop Auckland lass (from a mining family) who was a senior adviser to the first Trump Administration as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs. She is now working as a key adviser to the British Government, and has been Chancellor of Durham Uni.
Very candid, and a lovely accent. @Taz will enjoy.
"Fiona Hill: What Does Trump See in Putin? | Foreign Affairs Interview"
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
A world where regions seeking independence referendums get them blocked ie Spain and Catalonia or nations having broken away from their union with their big neighbour find that big neighbour later invading them ie Russia and Ukraine
I’m certainly flabbergasted that the folk who for the last ten years have been saying that there will be no second referendum and Scottish Indy was dead are now saying *FANFARE* there will be no second referendum and Scottish Indy is dead.
Extraordinary. I see that Thiel has even written a later foreward for Rees-Mogg's book, adding a touch of Nietszche, from the German right, as the son of a man who travelled from Germany to South Africa to become a uranium- mining businessman with black slaves ; and a touch of Mao.
You can almost hear the James Bond music playing in the background .
"Medieval men despaired of the will. They thought of humans as wounded and weak. But they respected the intellect. They thought even humans, if we think carefully, have the power to answer the most profound questions.
Modern men worship the will, but they despair of the intellect.
It is only through a unique long-term awareness that looks back to Lenin and Stalin as well as forward to the Information Age that the Chinese Communist Party's leaders prevailed amid the trends analyzed by this book.
Those trends-winner-take-all economics, jurisdictional competition, the shift away from mass production, and the arguable obsolescence of interstate warfare are still at work today.
In truth, the great conflict over our megapolitical future is only just beginning. On the dimension of technology, the conflict has two poles: Al and crypto.
Peter Thiel January 6, 2020 - Los Angeles
Outside the clergy, lawyers and aristocracy most medieval men were illiterate
Which time period of medieval?
It covers many centuries and numerous changes.
For example, in the twelfth century almost all lawyers were clergy and almost all aristocratic men were illiterate.
Question: What place did Protestant religion have in changing that?
eg William Tyndale (Bible translator, around 1520):
I will cause a boy who drives a plow to know more of the scriptures than the pope.
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
A world where regions seeking independence referendums get them blocked ie Spain and Catalonia or nations having broken away from their union with their big neighbour find that big neighbour later invading them ie Russia and Ukraine
I’m certainly flabbergasted that the folk who for the last ten years have been saying that there will be no second referendum and Scottish Indy was dead are now saying *FANFARE* there will be no second referendum and Scottish Indy is dead.
Just getting Trump to support Yes or No could get a quick result the other way.
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
A world where regions seeking independence referendums get them blocked ie Spain and Catalonia or nations having broken away from their union with their big neighbour find that big neighbour later invading them ie Russia and Ukraine
I dont think rUK would do the latter in fairness, but then again we're doing the former instead.
My best recommendation for listening today, a Foreign Affairs interview with Fiona Hill (not Theresa May's Fiona Hill -the other one),
She's a Bishop Auckland lass (from a mining family) who was a senior adviser to the first Trump Administration as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs. She is now working as a key adviser to the British Government, and has been Chancellor of Durham Uni.
Very candid, and a lovely accent. @Taz will enjoy.
"Fiona Hill: What Does Trump See in Putin? | Foreign Affairs Interview"
She’s brilliant. Andrew Neil did an interview with her on The Tortoise. Very good. Bout a year ago.
She’s also not forgot her roots and funds scholarships in Durham.
If this is new from her certainly worth a listen.
This week. I'd put it as probable that she was working alongside Jonathan Powell (I think it was he) and Lord Mandelbrot in giving guidance to UK politicians and Zelenskyy in how to Trump-whisper.
Appointed a Defence Advisor to HMG upon Labour's election to Government in July 2024.
Her background sounds quite reminiscent of Lee Anderson.
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
A world where regions seeking independence referendums get them blocked ie Spain and Catalonia or nations having broken away from their union with their big neighbour find that big neighbour later invading them ie Russia and Ukraine
The one thing we've learnt from Ukraine is Scotland will need a good stockpile of NLAWs ready for the tanks coming up the M74.
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
A world where regions seeking independence referendums get them blocked ie Spain and Catalonia or nations having broken away from their union with their big neighbour find that big neighbour later invading them ie Russia and Ukraine
I dont think rUK would do the latter in fairness, but then again we're doing the former instead.
Who knows, if HYUFD climbs the greasy pole to head the Reformed Conservative Party, a SMO north of Gretna very much on.
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
A world where regions seeking independence referendums get them blocked ie Spain and Catalonia or nations having broken away from their union with their big neighbour find that big neighbour later invading them ie Russia and Ukraine
The one thing we've learnt from Ukraine is Scotland will need a good stockpile of NLAWs ready for the tanks coming up the M74.
Screw NLAWs, we’re told that Ukraine should have retained the nukes stationed in their country. I’m sure these lads will salute the renamed Cateran class operating out of Faslane as a smart move.
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
A world where regions seeking independence referendums get them blocked ie Spain and Catalonia or nations having broken away from their union with their big neighbour find that big neighbour later invading them ie Russia and Ukraine
The one thing we've learnt from Ukraine is Scotland will need a good stockpile of NLAWs ready for the tanks coming up the M74.
More generally, and ignoring HYUFD's regular expatiation in modo M. Porcii Catonis Censorii, PB seems to be forgetting that the Scottish Government under the SNP, and the SLDs and SGs (at Aberdeenshire at least) [edit] have had previous interactions with Mr Trump. What effect those may have on Mr Trump and on the wider body politic I should not care to predict.
Extraordinary. I see that Thiel has even written a later foreward for Rees-Mogg's book, adding a touch of Nietszche, from the German right, as the son of a man who travelled from Germany to South Africa to become a uranium- mining businessman with black slaves ; and a touch of Mao.
You can almost hear the James Bond music playing in the background .
"Medieval men despaired of the will. They thought of humans as wounded and weak. But they respected the intellect. They thought even humans, if we think carefully, have the power to answer the most profound questions.
Modern men worship the will, but they despair of the intellect.
It is only through a unique long-term awareness that looks back to Lenin and Stalin as well as forward to the Information Age that the Chinese Communist Party's leaders prevailed amid the trends analyzed by this book.
Those trends-winner-take-all economics, jurisdictional competition, the shift away from mass production, and the arguable obsolescence of interstate warfare are still at work today.
In truth, the great conflict over our megapolitical future is only just beginning. On the dimension of technology, the conflict has two poles: Al and crypto.
Peter Thiel January 6, 2020 - Los Angeles
Outside the clergy, lawyers and aristocracy most medieval men were illiterate
Illiterate is an inadequate and over-used word. It is a word of the modern world where "Reading and Writing" are attempted to be taught to everyone, from about three onwards. In fact, Reading and Writing are two distinct skills. They can be further broken down into Reading Printed Text, Reading handwriting (something some people still find taxing) Reading historic handwriting Reading Latin
and Writing a rough barely formed scrawl, Writing perfectly formed Secretary Hand, Writing Court Hand Writing Latin
Your ability which we miscall literacy was somewhere along these two scales. In the medieval period the first obviously did not apply but more than we imagine could achieve basic reading of formal text.
By the seventeenth century most could manage the first two elements of reading but barely manage any writing.
Why do I bring Latin into it - because a contemporary source considered herself illiterate as she "did not have the Latin". She also considered two yeoman as illiterate because they could not read handwriting of only one century earlier. Those two were in fact regularly witnessing wills and Wakefield Deed Registry entries which many contributers to this site, with the greatest respect could not read a word of.
My source was wife of the Master of a School currently but wrongly celebrating 500 years since it believes it was founded in the early 1700s.
Extraordinary. I see that Thiel has even written a later foreward for Rees-Mogg's book, adding a touch of Nietszche, from the German right, as the son of a man who travelled from Germany to South Africa to become a uranium- mining businessman with black slaves ; and a touch of Mao.
You can almost hear the James Bond music playing in the background .
"Medieval men despaired of the will. They thought of humans as wounded and weak. But they respected the intellect. They thought even humans, if we think carefully, have the power to answer the most profound questions.
Modern men worship the will, but they despair of the intellect.
It is only through a unique long-term awareness that looks back to Lenin and Stalin as well as forward to the Information Age that the Chinese Communist Party's leaders prevailed amid the trends analyzed by this book.
Those trends-winner-take-all economics, jurisdictional competition, the shift away from mass production, and the arguable obsolescence of interstate warfare are still at work today.
In truth, the great conflict over our megapolitical future is only just beginning. On the dimension of technology, the conflict has two poles: Al and crypto.
Peter Thiel January 6, 2020 - Los Angeles
Outside the clergy, lawyers and aristocracy most medieval men were illiterate
Illiterate is an inadequate and over-used word. It is a word of the modern world where "Reading and Writing" are attempted to be taught to everyone, from about three onwards. In fact, Reading and Writing are two distinct skills. They can be further broken down into Reading Printed Text, Reading handwriting (something some people still find taxing) Reading historic handwriting Reading Latin
and Writing a rough barely formed scrawl, Writing perfectly formed Secretary Hand, Writing Court Hand Writing Latin
Your ability which we miscall literacy was somewhere along these two scales. In the medieval period the first obviously did not apply but more than we imagine could achieve basic reading of formal text.
By the seventeenth century most could manage the first two elements of reading but barely manage any writing.
Why do I bring Latin into it - because a contemporary source considered herself illiterate as she "did not have the Latin". She also considered two yeoman as illiterate because they could not read handwriting of only one century earlier. Those two were in fact regularly witnessing wills and Wakefield Deed Registry entries which many contributers to this site, with the greatest respect could not read a word of.
My source was wife of the Master of a School currently but wrongly celebrating 500 years since it believes it was founded in the early 1700s.
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
A world where regions seeking independence referendums get them blocked ie Spain and Catalonia or nations having broken away from their union with their big neighbour find that big neighbour later invading them ie Russia and Ukraine
The one thing we've learnt from Ukraine is Scotland will need a good stockpile of NLAWs ready for the tanks coming up the M74.
More generally, and ignoring HYUFD's regular expatiation in modo M. Porcii Catonis Censorii, PB seems to be forgetting that the Scottish Government under the SNP, and the SLDs and SGs (at Aberdeenshire at least) [edit] have had previous interactions with Mr Trump. What effect those may have on Mr Trump and on the wider body politic I should not care to predict.
I remember the shenanigans over the planning permission.
It's one of the things I still hold against Alex Salmond's ghost. Russia Today (RT) is another.
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
A world where regions seeking independence referendums get them blocked ie Spain and Catalonia or nations having broken away from their union with their big neighbour find that big neighbour later invading them ie Russia and Ukraine
I dont think rUK would do the latter in fairness, but then again we're doing the former instead.
Who knows, if HYUFD climbs the greasy pole to head the Reformed Conservative Party, a SMO north of Gretna very much on.
I can think of one or two people who would have fun doing a Dr Knox on the resurrected corpses of his posts in re nuking NATO allies. Mind, that might appeal to his target (so to speak) voters for all I know.
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
A world where regions seeking independence referendums get them blocked ie Spain and Catalonia or nations having broken away from their union with their big neighbour find that big neighbour later invading them ie Russia and Ukraine
The one thing we've learnt from Ukraine is Scotland will need a good stockpile of NLAWs ready for the tanks coming up the M74.
More generally, and ignoring HYUFD's regular expatiation in modo M. Porcii Catonis Censorii, PB seems to be forgetting that the Scottish Government under the SNP, and the SLDs and SGs (at Aberdeenshire at least) [edit] have had previous interactions with Mr Trump. What effect those may have on Mr Trump and on the wider body politic I should not care to predict.
I remember the shenanigans over the planning permission.
It's one of the things I still hold against Alex Salmond's ghost. Russia Today (RT) is another.
But remember also, the planning permission demanded by the SLDs, for a businessman originally encouraged [edit] by the Labour-SLD administration - or at least Mr McConnell? And the windfarm promoted by Mr Salmond.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
My best recommendation for listening today, a Foreign Affairs interview with Fiona Hill (not Theresa May's Fiona Hill -the other one),
She's a Bishop Auckland lass (from a mining family) who was a senior adviser to the first Trump Administration as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs. She is now working as a key adviser to the British Government, and has been Chancellor of Durham Uni.
Very candid, and a lovely accent. @Taz will enjoy.
"Fiona Hill: What Does Trump See in Putin? | Foreign Affairs Interview"
She’s brilliant. Andrew Neil did an interview with her on The Tortoise. Very good. Bout a year ago.
She’s also not forgot her roots and funds scholarships in Durham.
If this is new from her certainly worth a listen.
This week. I'd put it as probable that she was working alongside Jonathan Powell (I think it was he) and Lord Mandelbrot in giving guidance to UK politicians and Zelenskyy in how to Trump-whisper.
Appointed a Defence Advisor to HMG upon Labour's election to Government in July 2024.
Her background sounds quite reminiscent of Lee Anderson.
Powell in particular seems to have had a very big role. He's got very long experience in negotiations, dating all the way back to Blair and Northern Ireland. Mandelson is also a similarly experienced fixer.
All much more experienced and adept, than Sunak, or Johnson's team.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Slightly surprised to see in recent weeks people stressing the need for the UK to build up an independent nuclear armoury who previously campaigned to get nuclear weapons out of Faslane
Circumstances alter cases.
One of the more interesting ones was the pivot by previous Peace Pledge Union people in the run up to WW2.
We are living in the middle of one, as some groups understand what Trump is really doing, in addition to the threat posed by Russia.
It will be very interesting to find who is left. There are all sorts of reasons, of course - some of them quite good reasons in the previous set of circumstances. And some of us (I hope my view, for one) will be too pessimistic on the other side - for all we know the legal system in the USA may get Musk and Trump under control.
Perhaps the USA will allow their weapons to be putchased for Ukraine on commercial terms for Ukraine, rather than go all out to neuter the possibility of any European help getting to Ukraine by refusing to sell us Himars, which is not even made in Europe.
We built the Florence Nightingale hospitals (I think that was the name) during Covid and did not need them. Was that an unnecessary insurance policy or a wise contingency we did not need?
The Nightingale hospitals were really hospices - very little in the way of facilities. Staff would have been whoever they could scrounge up with a little bit of medical knowledge. Even airline staff.
Their purpose was to prevent people dying in the street if hospitals got overrun (see Greece and Spain). Pretty much an indoor bed with an oxygen supply.
What was interesting was the ravening resistance to them being built, from within the permanent system of government - I knew someone whose career was destroyed because she pushed through completion of the one she was working on.
They were pointless without a plan for staffing them.
One of the lessons of Covid should be more resilience in the NHS, and that should include not operating at 100% occupation at all times. Planned surgery is cancelled every day at my Trust for lack of beds/ITU beds. Apart from the individual misery, it is very inefficient of surgical productivity.
As to the staffing for the Nightingales - there was a plan. Whoever they could find to hold the hands of the sick. And dying…
For the NHS - What about creating more staff? We’ve tried this one round the world - the NHS knows it’s future size and it’s demented that we don’t train staff to match.
I thought the idea of the Nightingales was to move the non serious and routine cases out of the hospitals into the Nightingales and then use the reglar hospitals for the serious covid cases?
There were several plans, actually. One was to move non-critical COVID cases there. Another was to (as you say) empty the hospitals of those who didn’t need complex medical care.
There was never a plan for staffing. That was why virtually no patients were treated there despite conventional hospitals bursting at the seams.
Without that it was castles on clouds.
I think they started building them when they didn't knew how bad it was going to be ? A 5% mortality rate, for example, would have required drastic measures.
Slightly surprised to see in recent weeks people stressing the need for the UK to build up an independent nuclear armoury who previously campaigned to get nuclear weapons out of Faslane
Circumstances alter cases.
One of the more interesting ones was the pivot by previous Peace Pledge Union people in the run up to WW2.
We are living in the middle of one, as some groups understand what Trump is really doing, in addition to the threat posed by Russia.
It will be very interesting to find who is left. There are all sorts of reasons, of course - some of them quite good reasons in the previous set of circumstances. And some of us (I hope my view, for one) will be too pessimistic on the other side - for all we know the legal system in the USA may get Musk and Trump under control.
Perhaps the USA will allow their weapons to be putchased for Ukraine on commercial terms for Ukraine, rather than go all out to neuter the possibility of any European help getting to Ukraine by refusing to sell us Himars, which is not even made in Europe.
We built the Florence Nightingale hospitals (I think that was the name) during Covid and did not need them. Was that an unnecessary insurance policy or a wise contingency we did not need?
The Nightingale hospitals were really hospices - very little in the way of facilities. Staff would have been whoever they could scrounge up with a little bit of medical knowledge. Even airline staff.
Their purpose was to prevent people dying in the street if hospitals got overrun (see Greece and Spain). Pretty much an indoor bed with an oxygen supply.
What was interesting was the ravening resistance to them being built, from within the permanent system of government - I knew someone whose career was destroyed because she pushed through completion of the one she was working on.
They were pointless without a plan for staffing them.
One of the lessons of Covid should be more resilience in the NHS, and that should include not operating at 100% occupation at all times. Planned surgery is cancelled every day at my Trust for lack of beds/ITU beds. Apart from the individual misery, it is very inefficient of surgical productivity.
As to the staffing for the Nightingales - there was a plan. Whoever they could find to hold the hands of the sick. And dying…
For the NHS - What about creating more staff? We’ve tried this one round the world - the NHS knows it’s future size and it’s demented that we don’t train staff to match.
I thought the idea of the Nightingales was to move the non serious and routine cases out of the hospitals into the Nightingales and then use the reglar hospitals for the serious covid cases?
There were several plans, actually. One was to move non-critical COVID cases there. Another was to (as you say) empty the hospitals of those who didn’t need complex medical care.
There was never a plan for staffing. That was why virtually no patients were treated there despite conventional hospitals bursting at the seams.
Without that it was castles on clouds.
I think they started building them when they didn't knew how bad it was going to be ? A 5% mortality rate, for example, would have required drastic measures.
Drastic measures still require staff (and indeed did, hence the stopping of most other work).
Otherwise might as well die at home.
What the Chinese did was interesting, and potentially useful. They used similar hospitals for all diagnosed patients, even the clinically well, thereby reducing spread. As the patients were essentially well, little healthcare input was needed. Rather authoritarian of course.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
Maybe partly true. Maybe not. Nobody is really sure where the markets' tolerance will run out. America, Italy and Japan have been able to spend like drunken sailors on shore leave, whereas Truss was defenestrated almost immediately.
But I've long thought that Truss has the exception not the rule. Truss's problem was spectacularly poor timing and communication, rather than the policies themselves. Poor timing, because she implemented them just as worldwide interest rates were rising from very low levels, and poor communication, because she didn't produce forecasts to show how they would boost economic growth and thereby partly pay for themselves. We'll never know, but had her tax cuts been better presented, and a few years earlier, I think they would have had a very different reaction.
The debt markets' reaction generally depends on lots of factors, in particular what the country's growth potential is. If you borrow money to cut payroll taxes or corporate profits taxes, for instance, which will generate growth going forward, the markets are likely to be much more forgiving than if you borrow it to increase welfare spending and dependency, or foreign climate aid, which would act as a drain on the country.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
They probably fund themselves - the clue's in the name.
There have been plenty of examples of philanthrophy - wealthy Victorian business men built schools, hospitals and houses for their workers. Now, it wasn't entirely philanthrophic - they knew a healthier and more educated work force would be a more productive and loyal work force thereby increasing profits.
There were plenty of "company towns" built in the 19th and 20th centuries - the nature of business is now very different of course and this group probably aren't looking at that as an example.
‘Probably’
Nothing stopping them doing any of this now instead of being part of a well funded lobbying group. There are several including one in the USA and one in Canada.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because Theresa May made a political play of slashing the budget on processing the people, as I recall, or a similar Tory leader.
Suggests Ashcroft has oversampled in more pro-Reform polls and under sampled in "commuter Cheshire" which would exaggerate the Labour lead and underestimate the Conservative vote (perhaps).
Suggests Ashcroft has oversampled in more pro-Reform polls and under sampled in "commuter Cheshire" which would exaggerate the Labour lead and underestimate the Conservative vote (perhaps).
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
Suggests Ashcroft has oversampled in more pro-Reform polls and under sampled in "commuter Cheshire" which would exaggerate the Labour lead and underestimate the Conservative vote (perhaps).
It would probably also exaggetate Reform.
The other interesting thing is the gap between "weighted by likelihood to vote" and "certain to vote", with the sexy 9 point Reform lead coming from the latter, and falling to 5 in the former.
Now, "certain to vote" might be the better filter for a low-turnout by-election. But- as with the Find Out Now polls, we might be confusing fervour for votes.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
The best and cheapest and most humane solution is immediate processing. About 30% will be returned and 70% will be accepted as genuine asylum seekers.
These will enter the jobs and housing markets, paying taxes and doing useful work, including, in some cases, helping to build houses.
Extraordinary. I see that Thiel has even written a later foreward for Rees-Mogg's book, adding a touch of Nietszche, from the German right, as the son of a man who travelled from Germany to South Africa to become a uranium- mining businessman with black slaves ; and a touch of Mao.
You can almost hear the James Bond music playing in the background .
"Medieval men despaired of the will. They thought of humans as wounded and weak. But they respected the intellect. They thought even humans, if we think carefully, have the power to answer the most profound questions.
Modern men worship the will, but they despair of the intellect.
It is only through a unique long-term awareness that looks back to Lenin and Stalin as well as forward to the Information Age that the Chinese Communist Party's leaders prevailed amid the trends analyzed by this book.
Those trends-winner-take-all economics, jurisdictional competition, the shift away from mass production, and the arguable obsolescence of interstate warfare are still at work today.
In truth, the great conflict over our megapolitical future is only just beginning. On the dimension of technology, the conflict has two poles: Al and crypto.
Peter Thiel January 6, 2020 - Los Angeles
Outside the clergy, lawyers and aristocracy most medieval men were illiterate
Which time period of medieval?
It covers many centuries and numerous changes.
For example, in the twelfth century almost all lawyers were clergy and almost all aristocratic men were illiterate.
Question: What place did Protestant religion have in changing that?
eg William Tyndale (Bible translator, around 1520):
I will cause a boy who drives a plow to know more of the scriptures than the pope.
(Thiel sounds massively arrogant.)
It was changing before the reformation but Protestantism had mass literacy as one of its aims (for the reason given) so it certainly gave it a major fillip.
For example, the development of Kirk schools in Scotland and circulating schools in Wales was linked to the Protestant churches, the latter with a special focus on reading.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
The best and cheapest and most humane solution is immediate processing. About 30% will be returned and 70% will be accepted as genuine asylum seekers.
These will enter the jobs and housing markets, paying taxes and doing useful work, including, in some cases, helping to build houses.
What do you suggest?
We should probably convert a couple of the detention centres into technical colleges for building trades.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
Watch the numbers on asylum seeker hotels, which are due out this month.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
So why are there any hotels?
Because we are insisting that they can't work until they are processed, and we're not processing them fast enough.
The interests of the local population seem to come last in either case. Either we put them up in hotels at great expense or let them compete against locals in the job and housing markets.
The best and cheapest and most humane solution is immediate processing. About 30% will be returned and 70% will be accepted as genuine asylum seekers.
These will enter the jobs and housing markets, paying taxes and doing useful work, including, in some cases, helping to build houses.
What do you suggest?
Why would about 70% be accepted? In France those percentages are reversed.
The fact remains that this is against the interests of the local population and if you believe in democracy then you can't ignore that.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Its not a great choice, though. Vance in turn is more tightly focused and fanatical, and is directlu the result of Peter Thiel's patronage and influence.
That could mean him being even worse, if that is possible.
Trump calls his opponents ‘scum’ and lawbreakers in bellicose speech at Justice Department For more than an hour, he delivered an insult-laden speech that shattered the traditional notion of DOJ independence.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/14/trump-doj-speech-prison-opponents-00231438 ...It was, even by Trump’s standards, a stunning show of disregard for decades of tradition observed by his predecessors, who worried about politicizing or appearing to exert too much control over the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency. Trump, instead, called himself the “chief law enforcement officer in our country” and accused the DOJ’s prior leadership of doing “everything within their power to prevent” him from becoming the president.
Trump charged the DOJ with spying on his campaign, raiding his home, persecuting his “family, staff and supporters,” launching “one hoax and disinformation campaign after the other” and breaking the law “on a colossal scale,” making clear the glee he has taken in undermining the department’s typical independence and wielding it to achieve the White House’s objectives...
Extraordinary. I see that Thiel has even written a later foreward for Rees-Mogg's book, adding a touch of Nietszche, from the German right, as the son of a man who travelled from Germany to South Africa to become a uranium- mining businessman with black slaves ; and a touch of Mao.
You can almost hear the James Bond music playing in the background .
"Medieval men despaired of the will. They thought of humans as wounded and weak. But they respected the intellect. They thought even humans, if we think carefully, have the power to answer the most profound questions.
Modern men worship the will, but they despair of the intellect.
It is only through a unique long-term awareness that looks back to Lenin and Stalin as well as forward to the Information Age that the Chinese Communist Party's leaders prevailed amid the trends analyzed by this book.
Those trends-winner-take-all economics, jurisdictional competition, the shift away from mass production, and the arguable obsolescence of interstate warfare are still at work today.
In truth, the great conflict over our megapolitical future is only just beginning. On the dimension of technology, the conflict has two poles: Al and crypto.
Peter Thiel January 6, 2020 - Los Angeles
Outside the clergy, lawyers and aristocracy most medieval men were illiterate
Illiterate is an inadequate and over-used word. It is a word of the modern world where "Reading and Writing" are attempted to be taught to everyone, from about three onwards. In fact, Reading and Writing are two distinct skills. They can be further broken down into Reading Printed Text, Reading handwriting (something some people still find taxing) Reading historic handwriting Reading Latin
and Writing a rough barely formed scrawl, Writing perfectly formed Secretary Hand, Writing Court Hand Writing Latin
Your ability which we miscall literacy was somewhere along these two scales. In the medieval period the first obviously did not apply but more than we imagine could achieve basic reading of formal text.
By the seventeenth century most could manage the first two elements of reading but barely manage any writing.
Why do I bring Latin into it - because a contemporary source considered herself illiterate as she "did not have the Latin". She also considered two yeoman as illiterate because they could not read handwriting of only one century earlier. Those two were in fact regularly witnessing wills and Wakefield Deed Registry entries which many contributers to this site, with the greatest respect could not read a word of.
My source was wife of the Master of a School currently but wrongly celebrating 500 years since it believes it was founded in the early 1700s.
Sorry to lecture.
When I went to the bar 25 years ago I first had to pass an exam in Roman Law. There was no classes or curriculum, other than a few past papers, so I wandered around the library to see what I could find. I came across a book by an Afrikaans Jurist which I have looked for since. It is probably the most erudite book I have ever read. The only problem was that although it contained a fair bit of Latin and ancient Greek it did not bother providing translations because, surely, all literate people could read them. It contained many other languages as well, Dutch, French and German as examples where Roman law principles were being used today. Once again translations were somewhat incomplete.
Its brilliance, compared with any other Roman law text book, was that it did not merely tell you what the law was in the classical period but why it was that way, what were the driving social pressures that caused the law to develop the way that it did and what problems that law was meant to resolve.
I was in awe and can only wish that Scots law was taught to such a standard at my University. And I never felt fully "literate" again.
What a gorgeous love in with Farage! My take away? Like Hitler in the song, Farage really does only have one ball!
I think it is not just the SNP that has a Trump problem. The comments under the Farage piece are brutal. OGH used to talk about polls being a lagging indicator. I think there has been a real shift in the past month and RefUK are now in serious trouble, which it may take the polls a little while to pick up.
Reform will not win the by-election. I think the only threat to Labour would be if the Lib Dems get a Shropshire North style pick up. Anecdotally the Lib Dems are picking up a bit of momentum elsewhere, maybe with a good candidate, Mark Pack might fancy his chances in Runcorn.
I don’t think the Lib Dems will make an effort in Runcorn.
The Ashcroft poll showed the LDs close behind the Conservatives - it would send a strong signal were the party able to knock the Tories down to fourth place. Again, worth noting of the top 30 LD target seats, 26 are currently held by the Conservatives.
If the LDs overtook the Tories in Runcorn it would see Reform win the seat with Tory tactical votes while LDs did not tactically vote Labour
That's how you can explain it - that's not how the media would report it.
They would report the winner ie Reform, the loser ie Labour and ignore the also rans like every by election
The second SDP was finished off by coming 7th in Bootle in 1990. Also rans sometimes make the news.
What a gorgeous love in with Farage! My take away? Like Hitler in the song, Farage really does only have one ball!
I think it is not just the SNP that has a Trump problem. The comments under the Farage piece are brutal. OGH used to talk about polls being a lagging indicator. I think there has been a real shift in the past month and RefUK are now in serious trouble, which it may take the polls a little while to pick up.
Reform will not win the by-election. I think the only threat to Labour would be if the Lib Dems get a Shropshire North style pick up. Anecdotally the Lib Dems are picking up a bit of momentum elsewhere, maybe with a good candidate, Mark Pack might fancy his chances in Runcorn.
Mark Pack is now Lord Pack - so no.
Unless he has changed, Lord Pack has also been very happily settled in inner South London for around 20 years now iirc. I still owe him lunch from quite a long time ago; he used to write a weekly column for me.
Mark, as the President of the party would be key in deciding whether resources would be committed. I'm not suggesting he's going to stand himself. 🙄
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Preferably sooner as that would mean this 3 or 4 years count as a term for him.
The effort to extinguish bureaucracy is doomed to failure.
A famous quote attributed to Petronius Arbiter, a Roman writer and advisor to Emperor Nero, about being reorganized is: "We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized"
What a gorgeous love in with Farage! My take away? Like Hitler in the song, Farage really does only have one ball!
I think it is not just the SNP that has a Trump problem. The comments under the Farage piece are brutal. OGH used to talk about polls being a lagging indicator. I think there has been a real shift in the past month and RefUK are now in serious trouble, which it may take the polls a little while to pick up.
Reform will not win the by-election. I think the only threat to Labour would be if the Lib Dems get a Shropshire North style pick up. Anecdotally the Lib Dems are picking up a bit of momentum elsewhere, maybe with a good candidate, Mark Pack might fancy his chances in Runcorn.
The interview was in the Times which is a Tory and LD or New Labour paper NOT a Reform paper so the comments would be hostile.
It is not pro Reform media like the Mail, Sun, Telegraph or GB news.
The Ashcroft poll had Reform winning the by election
When HYUFD is (although he hasn't realised it yet) throwing his weight behind Farage,- Reform the Tories are truly f***ed. Put a fork in them, the Tories are done!
Your post is a Damascene moment for me. Would HYUFD please put the lights out as he departs the Conservative Party.
I am a Tory but there is no chance of a Tory government without Reform support on current polls and vice versa
That's roughly the logic which led to the Republicans surrendering to Trump.
You don't want a Labour government. Fine- I'm not overjoyed, beyond a "least bad turkey left on the shelf" sense that he'll have to do.
But there comes a point where awfulness trumps right wing soundness, as the Chancellor-elect in Germany has recognised.
Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Israel and New Zealand all have centre right parties in government with the nationalist right, Spain in alliance and in Canada they merged
There are some differences between those different nationalist rights parties, e.g. more liberal in the Netherlands, less pro-Putin in Italy.
I would hope Israel is a warning, not a model to follow. The country is close to committing genocide and riding roughshod over international law in the West Bank and Syria.
I have conducted a quick review of Facebook and the narrative developing is that we should not be cutting incapacity benefits while we spend billions on asylum seeker hotels. I would guess that a very large proportion of the "middle-aged man on disability benefits" cohort are Reform voters (or soon to be so).
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
I had a bail appeal this week in respect of someone allegedly found with a serious quantity of cannabis, over £100k worth. He had come to the UK from China in 2007 and claimed asylum. His application, with appeals, was refused within a year. 17 years later, he is still here and causing mischief, no doubt because he is effectively living outwith our legal system in that anyone employing him or providing him with a tenancy or a bank account would be liable to substantial fines.
The immigration system is too slow in reaching determinations but the real problem is the complete and utter failure, under governments of both stripes, to actually enforce the decisions made. The direct and indirect costs of this are incalculable.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Preferably sooner as that would mean this 3 or 4 years count as a term for him.
He does seem to have a bit of a tin ear for the public, compared to Trump, which seems promising.
On the other hand, he could just try tol.be co-lercive instead. He's not someone worth trusting in any way.
What a gorgeous love in with Farage! My take away? Like Hitler in the song, Farage really does only have one ball!
I think it is not just the SNP that has a Trump problem. The comments under the Farage piece are brutal. OGH used to talk about polls being a lagging indicator. I think there has been a real shift in the past month and RefUK are now in serious trouble, which it may take the polls a little while to pick up.
Reform will not win the by-election. I think the only threat to Labour would be if the Lib Dems get a Shropshire North style pick up. Anecdotally the Lib Dems are picking up a bit of momentum elsewhere, maybe with a good candidate, Mark Pack might fancy his chances in Runcorn.
The interview was in the Times which is a Tory and LD or New Labour paper NOT a Reform paper so the comments would be hostile.
It is not pro Reform media like the Mail, Sun, Telegraph or GB news.
The Ashcroft poll had Reform winning the by election
When HYUFD is (although he hasn't realised it yet) throwing his weight behind Farage,- Reform the Tories are truly f***ed. Put a fork in them, the Tories are done!
Your post is a Damascene moment for me. Would HYUFD please put the lights out as he departs the Conservative Party.
I am a Tory but there is no chance of a Tory government without Reform support on current polls and vice versa
That's roughly the logic which led to the Republicans surrendering to Trump.
You don't want a Labour government. Fine- I'm not overjoyed, beyond a "least bad turkey left on the shelf" sense that he'll have to do.
But there comes a point where awfulness trumps right wing soundness, as the Chancellor-elect in Germany has recognised.
Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Israel and New Zealand all have centre right parties in government with the nationalist right, Spain in alliance and in Canada they merged
There are some differences between those different nationalist rights parties, e.g. more liberal in the Netherlands, less pro-Putin in Italy.
I would hope Israel is a warning, not a model to follow. The country is close to committing genocide and riding roughshod over international law in the West Bank and Syria.
In Italy Meloni and Brothers of Italy are anti Putin but Salvini and Lega Nord are pro Putin
Extraordinary. I see that Thiel has even written a later foreward for Rees-Mogg's book, adding a touch of Nietszche, from the German right, as the son of a man who travelled from Germany to South Africa to become a uranium- mining businessman with black slaves ; and a touch of Mao.
You can almost hear the James Bond music playing in the background .
"Medieval men despaired of the will. They thought of humans as wounded and weak. But they respected the intellect. They thought even humans, if we think carefully, have the power to answer the most profound questions.
Modern men worship the will, but they despair of the intellect.
It is only through a unique long-term awareness that looks back to Lenin and Stalin as well as forward to the Information Age that the Chinese Communist Party's leaders prevailed amid the trends analyzed by this book.
Those trends-winner-take-all economics, jurisdictional competition, the shift away from mass production, and the arguable obsolescence of interstate warfare are still at work today.
In truth, the great conflict over our megapolitical future is only just beginning. On the dimension of technology, the conflict has two poles: Al and crypto.
Peter Thiel January 6, 2020 - Los Angeles
Outside the clergy, lawyers and aristocracy most medieval men were illiterate
Illiterate is an inadequate and over-used word. It is a word of the modern world where "Reading and Writing" are attempted to be taught to everyone, from about three onwards. In fact, Reading and Writing are two distinct skills. They can be further broken down into Reading Printed Text, Reading handwriting (something some people still find taxing) Reading historic handwriting Reading Latin
and Writing a rough barely formed scrawl, Writing perfectly formed Secretary Hand, Writing Court Hand Writing Latin
Your ability which we miscall literacy was somewhere along these two scales. In the medieval period the first obviously did not apply but more than we imagine could achieve basic reading of formal text.
By the seventeenth century most could manage the first two elements of reading but barely manage any writing.
Why do I bring Latin into it - because a contemporary source considered herself illiterate as she "did not have the Latin". She also considered two yeoman as illiterate because they could not read handwriting of only one century earlier. Those two were in fact regularly witnessing wills and Wakefield Deed Registry entries which many contributers to this site, with the greatest respect could not read a word of.
My source was wife of the Master of a School currently but wrongly celebrating 500 years since it believes it was founded in the early 1700s.
Sorry to lecture.
When I went to the bar 25 years ago I first had to pass an exam in Roman Law. There was no classes or curriculum, other than a few past papers, so I wandered around the library to see what I could find. I came across a book by an Afrikaans Jurist which I have looked for since. It is probably the most erudite book I have ever read. The only problem was that although it contained a fair bit of Latin and ancient Greek it did not bother providing translations because, surely, all literate people could read them. It contained many other languages as well, Dutch, French and German as examples where Roman law principles were being used today. Once again translations were somewhat incomplete.
Its brilliance, compared with any other Roman law text book, was that it did not merely tell you what the law was in the classical period but why it was that way, what were the driving social pressures that caused the law to develop the way that it did and what problems that law was meant to resolve.
I was in awe and can only wish that Scots law was taught to such a standard at my University. And I never felt fully "literate" again.
Printed reading primers were on fairly widespread sale by the early 16thC.
What a gorgeous love in with Farage! My take away? Like Hitler in the song, Farage really does only have one ball!
I think it is not just the SNP that has a Trump problem. The comments under the Farage piece are brutal. OGH used to talk about polls being a lagging indicator. I think there has been a real shift in the past month and RefUK are now in serious trouble, which it may take the polls a little while to pick up.
Reform will not win the by-election. I think the only threat to Labour would be if the Lib Dems get a Shropshire North style pick up. Anecdotally the Lib Dems are picking up a bit of momentum elsewhere, maybe with a good candidate, Mark Pack might fancy his chances in Runcorn.
I don’t think the Lib Dems will make an effort in Runcorn.
The Ashcroft poll showed the LDs close behind the Conservatives - it would send a strong signal were the party able to knock the Tories down to fourth place. Again, worth noting of the top 30 LD target seats, 26 are currently held by the Conservatives.
If the LDs overtook the Tories in Runcorn it would see Reform win the seat with Tory tactical votes while LDs did not tactically vote Labour
That's how you can explain it - that's not how the media would report it.
They would report the winner ie Reform, the loser ie Labour and ignore the also rans like every by election
The second SDP was finished off by coming 7th in Bootle in 1990. Also rans sometimes make the news.
They weren’t polling over 20% in the polls like Kemi’s Tories
Suggests Ashcroft has oversampled in more pro-Reform polls and under sampled in "commuter Cheshire" which would exaggerate the Labour lead and underestimate the Conservative vote (perhaps).
Indeed, experience from the general election and local by elections in Essex is that while Reform poll strongly in less well off towns and areas with industry and are often the main challengers to Labour there now the Tories still generally outpoll Reform and Labour in villages and rural areas and the Tories and LDs do better in the more prosperous commuter belt
Extraordinary. I see that Thiel has even written a later foreward for Rees-Mogg's book, adding a touch of Nietszche, from the German right, as the son of a man who travelled from Germany to South Africa to become a uranium- mining businessman with black slaves ; and a touch of Mao.
You can almost hear the James Bond music playing in the background .
"Medieval men despaired of the will. They thought of humans as wounded and weak. But they respected the intellect. They thought even humans, if we think carefully, have the power to answer the most profound questions.
Modern men worship the will, but they despair of the intellect.
It is only through a unique long-term awareness that looks back to Lenin and Stalin as well as forward to the Information Age that the Chinese Communist Party's leaders prevailed amid the trends analyzed by this book.
Those trends-winner-take-all economics, jurisdictional competition, the shift away from mass production, and the arguable obsolescence of interstate warfare are still at work today.
In truth, the great conflict over our megapolitical future is only just beginning. On the dimension of technology, the conflict has two poles: Al and crypto.
Peter Thiel January 6, 2020 - Los Angeles
Outside the clergy, lawyers and aristocracy most medieval men were illiterate
Illiterate is an inadequate and over-used word. It is a word of the modern world where "Reading and Writing" are attempted to be taught to everyone, from about three onwards. In fact, Reading and Writing are two distinct skills. They can be further broken down into Reading Printed Text, Reading handwriting (something some people still find taxing) Reading historic handwriting Reading Latin
and Writing a rough barely formed scrawl, Writing perfectly formed Secretary Hand, Writing Court Hand Writing Latin
Your ability which we miscall literacy was somewhere along these two scales. In the medieval period the first obviously did not apply but more than we imagine could achieve basic reading of formal text.
By the seventeenth century most could manage the first two elements of reading but barely manage any writing.
Why do I bring Latin into it - because a contemporary source considered herself illiterate as she "did not have the Latin". She also considered two yeoman as illiterate because they could not read handwriting of only one century earlier. Those two were in fact regularly witnessing wills and Wakefield Deed Registry entries which many contributers to this site, with the greatest respect could not read a word of.
My source was wife of the Master of a School currently but wrongly celebrating 500 years since it believes it was founded in the early 1700s.
Sorry to lecture.
When I went to the bar 25 years ago I first had to pass an exam in Roman Law. There was no classes or curriculum, other than a few past papers, so I wandered around the library to see what I could find. I came across a book by an Afrikaans Jurist which I have looked for since. It is probably the most erudite book I have ever read. The only problem was that although it contained a fair bit of Latin and ancient Greek it did not bother providing translations because, surely, all literate people could read them. It contained many other languages as well, Dutch, French and German as examples where Roman law principles were being used today. Once again translations were somewhat incomplete.
Its brilliance, compared with any other Roman law text book, was that it did not merely tell you what the law was in the classical period but why it was that way, what were the driving social pressures that caused the law to develop the way that it did and what problems that law was meant to resolve.
I was in awe and can only wish that Scots law was taught to such a standard at my University. And I never felt fully "literate" again.
That reminds me of Roman Catholic Cardinals and conversational Latin, which I think is still an official language at the Vatican.
And *that* reminded me of Pope Benedict and his languages. Here he speaking English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Latin and Polish - with a slight accent.
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
If he kills Scottish Nationalism it will be because he shows beyond dispute what happens when people vote for populist policies espoused by egotistical politicians.
We see this happening in a number of countries, including England, where voters are tiptoeing away that brand of politics. Trump is an ill wind that maybe brings a little good.
Completely OT. I read the appeal court ruling in the Hanratti case that you posted a few days ago and found it fascinating. Whether or not he did it which isn't that interesting now he's dead the maze of evidence and separating the wheat from the chaff was compulsive. A long read though
Thanks Roger, it is a fascinating case. There is a very good blog that covers this and a number of other famous murder cases, notably Jack the Ripper, and I learned a great deal from following it. Rather like PB, most of the discussion tended to be intelligent and open-minded. I'm afraid I no longer have the link but I am sure you can find it if interested. I once gave a course on the subject and found the site invaluable, but there are few definite conclusions that can be drawn. Fwiw, I'll give you mine , but I promise you they are no more than a best guess.
Valerie Storie was having a very public love affair with Michael Gregsten, a married father of two. Mrs Gregston and some of her acquaintances and relatives were not happy about this and my guess is that they arranged for a hitman to scare Gregston off, but not kill him. The man they hired was probably Peter Louis Alphon, and he was probably supplied with a gun by a petty criminal living in the East End, Charles France. Storie and Gregston tended to frequent the same spots for their trysts and they were quite open about them, so it would have been easy for Alphon's sponsors to tell him where and when he could find them. They were parked up in a country lane near Eton when the gunman tapped on their window about 9pm on a late August evening and threatened them to let him into the back of the car. There followed a long and bizarre episode during which Gregston drove the three of them around North London and its surrounding counties, stopping a couple of times for petrol and milk, before pulling up in a lay by off the A6 not far from Bedford. At no stage did the gunman demand money or any other favours, and his motives remained obscure. It was now about 3am, and after being parked up for a while, the gunman noted a duffle back in the front of the car and told Gregston to pass it over. Whether he tried to use the opportunity to overcome the gunman or not is unclear. It may be that the gunman was startled by Gregston's sudden movement, but it is clear that the gunman then shot Gregsten twice in the head, killing him instantly. By Storie's account, she was then raped in the back of the car, but personally I do not believe it. It was a small car (a Morris Minor) and the presence of Gregsten's gory body in the front would have been a bit much, even for a strange and unstable individual like Alphon. (It would have been even more incompatible with Hanratty's character, but the rape allegation was not pursued by the police and barely mentioned at the trial so a lot questions concerning this aspect of the case went unanswered.)
.) The gunman and Storie then removed Gregston's body and dumped it about ten yards away. The gunman then got Storie to show him the controls of the car and how to drive it. (This tends to point the finger towards Alphon, who was a non-driver, rather than Hanratty, who was a car thief and therefore not surprisingly a competent driver.) Whilst he was acquainting himself with the controls, Storie went over to attend to Gregsten's dead body. Whilst she did so, the gunman shot her numerous time times before driving off erratically and leaving her for dead. He made for East London where he was spotted driving erratically by a number of witnesses, before parking the car near Redbridge Tube station. My guess is that he then went to see Charles France to return the gun and tell him what he had done.
The police investigation went well at first, and Alphon was quickly apprehended. The lead Inspector, Basil Acott, then made a mistake with far-reaching consequences. He put Alphon in an identification line-up and asked Storie, who had recovered sufficiently from her wounds to leave hospital, to see if she could pick him out. She emphatically selected someone who could not possibly have been the culprit. The problem for Acott was now that not only did he lack the evidence to charge Alphon, it would be difficult to pursue any line of inquiry involving him because it would seem prejudicial. He was under huge public pressure, so he began to look elsewhere. Fortuitously for him, or perhaps by design, the petty criminal Hanratty came to his attention. He fitted the bill somewhat and had a flaky alibi. Alphon ceased to be a suspect, and Hanratty was charged. He was undoubtedly an unpleasant little scrote, but he had no record of violence, or sexual misconduct, had never owned or handled a gun, and had no reason to be in the Eton and Slough area on the night of the crime, or to terrorise a courting couple with no plain objective in mind. He seems not to have taken the allegations against him particularly seriously and one suspects the alibi he gave at first was partly true but adjusted to protect himself and others from the petty criminal activities he was actually engaged in. About half way through the trial he seems to have realised there was a real chance he was going to hang, and then, unwisely, switched to an alibi which although true was not easily substantiated. It all actually turned on the evidence of a landlady in Rhyl, who was destroyed under cross examination by the prosecution barrister. The judge’s summing up was exemplary, and leaned if at all towards a not guilty verdict. Most of the Press and other professionals following the case thought he was likely to get off. The guilty verdict may well have been influenced by the fact the trial was heard in Bedford, where feelings were running high, rather than the Old Bailey.
Inviting his dad to be KIng of Scotland. After all, it worked with the Stuart dynasty. He'd want a new Glorious Revolution and MSGA.
Trump is quite similar to Idi Amin, so makes sense
He made a speech at the Department of Justice yesterday in front of an audience of prosecutors where he listed a whole series of people by name who he wants to target - people like Mark Elias (Democracy Docket) and Norm Eisen (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)).
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
It's better if Trump pops his clogs sooner rather than later - Vance may as bad or worse, but he won't be able to keep all the Republican party or half the US public with him like Trump can
Vance is far more intelligent than Trump though and doesn’t need to face the voters for 3 and a half years
I can't say I've seen much evidence of Vance's intelligence myself. Are we sure that this isn't one of those things that everyone says without stopping to think why it's the case?
@TSE is making the error of assuming that anything about Scottish independence is rational or responsive to reason. It's not. Its driven by emotion and a sense of identity and resentment. The current unpopularity of the Labour government in Scotland is a concern. Labour are, of course, finding out that the Tories didn't make cuts (just) because they were nasty but because they had no choice. We have already had the WFA and now Labour are going after the allegedly sick. Personally, I am expecting support for independence to rise somewhat.
Osborne chose austerity because he was heartless, why the LDs went along with it is another question.
Without increased taxation Labour are lumbered with austerity. Now that is a choice, a foolhardy one in my opinion. Good luck at the next election when deaf, dumb and blind kids are begging on the streets because Labour removed their PIP.
This Labour Government don't think on their feet. They could sell increased taxation (and borrowing) as a necessity post Russia-USA alignment .
Oh for pity's sake. Does the plight of the feckless Reeves show you nothing? Osborne chose austerity because the country was bankrupt with unpayable contingent liabilities for an overgrown banking sector and a complete collapse in revenues from that source. The Lib Dems went along because there was no choice. Just like Reeves is doing now.
Austerity was an ideological choice. Many commentators, and not necessarily from the left, are opining that austerity was a grave error. There were other options. There are now. One of Reeves and Starmer's biggest millstones is the spectre of the Truss-Kwarteng budget. The Germans are going balls deep into borrowing for defence investment. We could do the same.
Germany has an almost balanced and a lot of room to borrow. Osborne inherited a 10% deficit, 70% of which was structural. We are and never were in any way comparable to Germany, their financial foundations are far, far stronger than ours. If the government (Tory or Labour) tried to go on a gigantic unfunded borrowing binge the markets would enforce discipline just as they did to Truss. That you think we could do what Germany is doing wrt borrowing for defence and infrastructure just shows how little you understand how bad our financial position is and has been since 2008.
The financial state of the economy must have been pretty good in 2023. How else could the Chancellor have significantly cut NI (twice).*
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Labour have put taxes up, just on farmers and business owners
If Hanratty was innocent, as I suspect, he was probably framed. France, with whom Hanratty was lodging at the time, would in that case be implicated. The murder weapon was found soon after Hanratty became a suspect. It was wrapped in one of his handkerchiefs and found stuffed down the back seat of a local bus. France wrote a number of letters concerning the crime in the wake of Hanratty’s conviction. Some of these have never been made public. He committed suicide shortly before Hanratty was hanged. I am sure nobody will now ever know for certain who killed Michael Gregston. The DNA evidence does not, in my opinion, give a definitive answer on that one. It does however pretty much eliminate the possibility of enquiries ever being reopened. One the whole, I believe that is probably a good thing.
This must be my longest ever post on PB. Hope you enjoyed it.
Comments
Labour and the Conservatives both got 27% in Cornwall, the Liberal Democrats 24%, Reform 17% and the Greens roughly 5%.
Labour got fractionally more votes than the Conservatives but because the Conservative (and Reform) votes were evenly spread, FPTP meant they won no seats with Labour winning four and the Liberal Democrats two.
Better too to improve retention rather than send in fresh meatwaves of rookies.
No way Scots will vote to leave UK in this new uncertain world.
Much of it is escapees from Wodehouse, perhaps with more influence than they are capable of handling, shouting at each other over Gin and Strawberries.
Tough life decisions.
He's moving towards Idi Amin's attack on the Judiciary (see the ex-Archbishop of York, who he locked up when he was around the Supreme Court of Uganda, and had beaten to a pulp.) It's the big one - will the checks and balances of USA democracy hold.
Here's a summary commentary on the speech by Bryan Taylor-Cohen, with Mark Elias: (10 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UuDU-zvSWY
And here's the full speech (one hour):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VDmcrf1m1c
Which is pretty big
Listen to the medics and not the media.
But this is still a distraction from the fact the caseload is still dominated by older people - the prevalence is nearly 3x higher for people aged 50+ compared with people in their 20s. I think older men with physical issues was the highest group, from memory.
and aristocracy most
medieval men were illiterate
She's a Bishop Auckland lass (from a mining family) who was a senior adviser to the first Trump Administration as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs. She is now working as a key adviser to the British Government, and has been Chancellor of Durham Uni.
Very candid, and a lovely accent. @Taz will enjoy.
"Fiona Hill: What Does Trump See in Putin? | Foreign Affairs Interview"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxfrJ5smAU8
That would save a lot of money, rather than taking the people who *have* been crippled like that, and hitting them harder.
Without that it was castles on clouds.
Suppose the Nightingales had doubled NHS capacity- which for all sorts of reasons, they didn't and couldn't have.
That would have postponed disaster by about 3 days.
Plans for 5G mast submitted to council
What are the bets this one gets rejected?
You're correct that there's some unidentified dynamic which seems to make our roads inherently relatively safer than other places for reasons not clearly known. Personally I suspect one cause may be driving on the left, and perhaps having fewer people not from the UK driving here as we do not have 'drive over' borders - worked against by far more people now who did not learn here, eg 20 years experience in the USA or India. But I have not seen data on that. Eg we have had roads 2-3 times safer than eg the French since at least 1970, and still safer but perhaps with difference now.
We also had the safest roads in Europe in 2000, when the Govt decided to set a target to halve deaths in a decade, which was achieved.
I think a further halving is practical. Let's see what the actual numbers are from Wales as a first step.
Nothing stopping them doing any of this now instead of being part of a well funded lobbying group. There are several including one in the USA and one in Canada.
Background in bollocks like climate justice.
https://patrioticmillionaires.uk/who-we-are
Most of the middle class wealthy centrists here will love them.
It's precisely that kind of preventative policy which is how we will reduce spending on healthcare and incapacity benefit, but because it typically requires a government intervention (particulary on something like obesity), people will instinctively oppose it. All the more frustrating when it's traumatic injuries to younger people, which are so rare otherwise.
It covers many centuries and numerous changes.
For example, in the twelfth century almost all lawyers were clergy and almost all aristocratic men were illiterate.
She’s also not forgot her roots and funds scholarships in Durham.
If this is new from her certainly worth a listen.
eg William Tyndale (Bible translator, around 1520):
I will cause a boy who drives a plow to know more of the scriptures than the pope.
(Thiel sounds massively arrogant.)
Make Scotland Great Again !
Appointed a Defence Advisor to HMG upon Labour's election to Government in July 2024.
Her background sounds quite reminiscent of Lee Anderson.
They can be further broken down into
Reading Printed Text,
Reading handwriting (something some people still find taxing)
Reading historic handwriting
Reading Latin
and Writing a rough barely formed scrawl,
Writing perfectly formed Secretary Hand,
Writing Court Hand
Writing Latin
Your ability which we miscall literacy was somewhere along these two scales. In the medieval period the first obviously did not apply but more than we imagine could achieve basic reading of formal text.
By the seventeenth century most could manage the first two elements of reading but barely manage any writing.
Why do I bring Latin into it - because a contemporary source considered herself illiterate as she "did not have the Latin". She also considered two yeoman as illiterate because they could not read handwriting of only one century earlier. Those two were in fact regularly witnessing wills and Wakefield Deed Registry entries which many contributers to this site, with the greatest respect could not read a word of.
My source was wife of the Master of a School currently but wrongly celebrating 500 years since it believes it was founded in the early 1700s.
Sorry to lecture.
It's one of the things I still hold against Alex Salmond's ghost. Russia Today (RT) is another.
It's a complex and unhappy story.
All much more experienced and adept, than Sunak, or Johnson's team.
Also links being made to the assisted suicide bill, and waiting lists for operations. Former scaffolders with long-term injuries etc. This is going to be toxic.
A 5% mortality rate, for example, would have required drastic measures.
Otherwise might as well die at home.
What the Chinese did was interesting, and potentially useful. They used similar hospitals for all diagnosed patients, even the clinically well, thereby reducing spread. As the patients were essentially well, little healthcare input was needed. Rather authoritarian of course.
They are about 40% down from peak, but tbf they also came down under the Conservatives.
But the riposte will be "why are the ANY hotels".
That they are not 4 star hotels as claimed does not matter, because the narrative is about emotion not truth.
But I've long thought that Truss has the exception not the rule. Truss's problem was spectacularly poor timing and communication, rather than the policies themselves. Poor timing, because she implemented them just as worldwide interest rates were rising from very low levels, and poor communication, because she didn't produce forecasts to show how they would boost economic growth and thereby partly pay for themselves. We'll never know, but had her tax cuts been better presented, and a few years earlier, I think they would have had a very different reaction.
The debt markets' reaction generally depends on lots of factors, in particular what the country's growth potential is. If you borrow money to cut payroll taxes or corporate profits taxes, for instance, which will generate growth going forward, the markets are likely to be much more forgiving than if you borrow it to increase welfare spending and dependency, or foreign climate aid, which would act as a drain on the country.
https://britainelects.substack.com/p/ashcroft-poll-puts-reform-ahead-in
Suggests Ashcroft has oversampled in more pro-Reform polls and under sampled in "commuter Cheshire" which would exaggerate the Labour lead and underestimate the Conservative vote (perhaps).
Ancient Mesopotamian stone tablets show extraordinary detail and reach of government in cradle of world civilisations
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/15/stone-tablets-mesopotamia-iraq-red-tape-bureaucracy
The effort to extinguish bureaucracy is doomed to failure.
Now, "certain to vote" might be the better filter for a low-turnout by-election. But- as with the Find Out Now polls, we might be confusing fervour for votes.
These will enter the jobs and housing markets, paying taxes and doing useful work, including, in some cases, helping to build houses.
What do you suggest?
Yes it can expand too much and become unuseful, but some administration is far better than none.
For example, the development of Kirk schools in Scotland and circulating schools in Wales was linked to the Protestant churches, the latter with a special focus on reading.
The fact remains that this is against the interests of the local population and if you believe in democracy then you can't ignore that.
That could mean him being even worse, if that is possible.
For more than an hour, he delivered an insult-laden speech that shattered the traditional notion of DOJ independence.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/14/trump-doj-speech-prison-opponents-00231438
...It was, even by Trump’s standards, a stunning show of disregard for decades of tradition observed by his predecessors, who worried about politicizing or appearing to exert too much control over the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency. Trump, instead, called himself the “chief law enforcement officer in our country” and accused the DOJ’s prior leadership of doing “everything within their power to prevent” him from becoming the president.
Trump charged the DOJ with spying on his campaign, raiding his home, persecuting his “family, staff and supporters,” launching “one hoax and disinformation campaign after the other” and breaking the law “on a colossal scale,” making clear the glee he has taken in undermining the department’s typical independence and wielding it to achieve the White House’s objectives...
Its brilliance, compared with any other Roman law text book, was that it did not merely tell you what the law was in the classical period but why it was that way, what were the driving social pressures that caused the law to develop the way that it did and what problems that law was meant to resolve.
I was in awe and can only wish that Scots law was taught to such a standard at my University. And I never felt fully "literate" again.
Allegedly?
I would hope Israel is a warning, not a model to follow. The country is close to committing genocide and riding roughshod over international law in the West Bank and Syria.
The immigration system is too slow in reaching determinations but the real problem is the complete and utter failure, under governments of both stripes, to actually enforce the decisions made. The direct and indirect costs of this are incalculable.
On the other hand, he could just try tol.be co-lercive instead. He's not someone worth trusting in any way.
And *that* reminded me of Pope Benedict and his languages. Here he speaking English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Latin and Polish - with a slight accent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVRqzdpZ-Wo
* My tongue is firmly in my cheek.
If NI cuts were affordable then but they are not now, taxes need to rise. This Government's greatest folly was suggesting the status quo could continue without tax rises. Your Party/ Government's manifesto pledge was that taxes could continue to fall whilst services would continue to rise. Either they were lying or their economic understanding was as deficient as you claim mine to be.
One of my key concerns over austerity both
now and fifteen years ago has been the consistent misunderstanding between cost of a service and value added from that service.. Binning HS2 was a case in pointReeves/ Starmer are making this error.
I understand the difference between the structural and cyclical deficit, but I see no other way to pay for the nice things we want like military aircraft, nuclear warheads, boots on the ground and adequate housing without borrowing. Borrowing for defence and infrastructure is the last resort way to generate growth. How have the growth stats been since 2008 austerity kicked in? And growth whilst outside the largest single friction free trading block available to use is even more daunting. Remind me which side of that fence you were on over that event. As an economist help me understand why leaving the EU was optimal to domestic growth and the balance of payments deficit of the UK.
Valerie Storie was having a very public love affair with Michael Gregsten, a married father of two. Mrs Gregston and some of her acquaintances and relatives were not happy about this and my guess is that they arranged for a hitman to scare Gregston off, but not kill him. The man they hired was probably Peter Louis Alphon, and he was probably supplied with a gun by a petty criminal living in the East End, Charles France. Storie and Gregston tended to frequent the same spots for their trysts and they were quite open about them, so it would have been easy for Alphon's sponsors to tell him where and when he could find them. They were parked up in a country lane near Eton when the gunman tapped on their window about 9pm on a late August evening and threatened them to let him into the back of the car. There followed a long and bizarre episode during which Gregston drove the three of them around North London and its surrounding counties, stopping a couple of times for petrol and milk, before pulling up in a lay by off the A6 not far from Bedford. At no stage did the gunman demand money or any other favours, and his motives remained obscure. It was now about 3am, and after being parked up for a while, the gunman noted a duffle back in the front of the car and told Gregston to pass it over. Whether he tried to use the opportunity to overcome the gunman or not is unclear. It may be that the gunman was startled by Gregston's sudden movement, but it is clear that the gunman then shot Gregsten twice in the head, killing him instantly. By Storie's account, she was then raped in the back of the car, but personally I do not believe it. It was a small car (a Morris Minor) and the presence of Gregsten's gory body in the front would have been a bit much, even for a strange and unstable individual like Alphon. (It would have been even more incompatible with Hanratty's character, but the rape allegation was not pursued by the police and barely mentioned at the trial so a lot questions concerning this aspect of the case went unanswered.)
[more to follow....]
.) The gunman and Storie then removed Gregston's body and dumped it about ten yards away. The gunman then got Storie to show him the controls of the car and how to drive it. (This tends to point the finger towards Alphon, who was a non-driver, rather than Hanratty, who was a car thief and therefore not surprisingly a competent driver.) Whilst he was acquainting himself with the controls, Storie went over to attend to Gregsten's dead body. Whilst she did so, the gunman shot her numerous time times before driving off erratically and leaving her for dead. He made for East London where he was spotted driving erratically by a number of witnesses, before parking the car near Redbridge Tube station. My guess is that he then went to see Charles France to return the gun and tell him what he had done.
The police investigation went well at first, and Alphon was quickly apprehended. The lead Inspector, Basil Acott, then made a mistake with far-reaching consequences. He put Alphon in an identification line-up and asked Storie, who had recovered sufficiently from her wounds to leave hospital, to see if she could pick him out. She emphatically selected someone who could not possibly have been the culprit. The problem for Acott was now that not only did he lack the evidence to charge Alphon, it would be difficult to pursue any line of inquiry involving him because it would seem prejudicial. He was under huge public pressure, so he began to look elsewhere. Fortuitously for him, or perhaps by design, the petty criminal Hanratty came to his attention. He fitted the bill somewhat and had a flaky alibi. Alphon ceased to be a suspect, and Hanratty was charged. He was undoubtedly an unpleasant little scrote, but he had no record of violence, or sexual misconduct, had never owned or handled a gun, and had no reason to be in the Eton and Slough area on the night of the crime, or to terrorise a courting couple with no plain objective in mind. He seems not to have taken the allegations against him particularly seriously and one suspects the alibi he gave at first was partly true but adjusted to protect himself and others from the petty criminal activities he was actually engaged in. About half way through the trial he seems to have realised there was a real chance he was going to hang, and then, unwisely, switched to an alibi which although true was not easily substantiated. It all actually turned on the evidence of a landlady in Rhyl, who was destroyed under cross examination by the prosecution barrister.
The judge’s summing up was exemplary, and leaned if at all towards a not guilty verdict. Most of the Press and other professionals following the case thought he was likely to get off. The guilty verdict may well have been influenced by the fact the trial was heard in Bedford, where feelings were running high, rather than the Old Bailey.
(Last bit to follow...)
If Hanratty was innocent, as I suspect, he was probably framed. France, with whom Hanratty was lodging at the time, would in that case be implicated. The murder weapon was found soon after Hanratty became a suspect. It was wrapped in one of his handkerchiefs and found stuffed down the back seat of a local bus. France wrote a number of letters concerning the crime in the wake of Hanratty’s conviction. Some of these have never been made public. He committed suicide shortly before Hanratty was hanged.
I am sure nobody will now ever know for certain who killed Michael Gregston. The DNA evidence does not, in my opinion, give a definitive answer on that one. It does however pretty much eliminate the possibility of enquiries ever being reopened. One the whole, I believe that is probably a good thing.
This must be my longest ever post on PB. Hope you enjoyed it.
Also, Thiel rates him, and Thiel.is bright