Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
“We are just in the car back from focus groups this weekend in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe & Peterborough and without doubt the disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard, in every group it was anger; despondency or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
The whole thread is illuminating. Farage looking evermore likely to reap the benefits, despite the Trump connection
Do you know any of those places ?
The comment about the steelworks was also interesting. I get the sense that large swathes of the country outside the golden triangle think (not without good reason) that they've been left to rot, by successive governments ever since deindustrialization took hold in the 80s.
The idea that Reform offers any solutions is fanciful.
Reform do not have any solutions, but disillusionment with politics and politicians means NOTA and at present that is Reform
Akin to dark matter, its the 90% of woke that the right believe is present but that cannot be observed.
We need a betting market for the first time we hear Nigel & Kemi say “Dark Woke” or it appears in DT or DM headline.
There’s a touch of copy cat going on with some 😇
I understand Farage has indicated he is open to cooperating with the conservatives in local government
I thought he was out to destroy them
I reckon mark this as an important moment.
Vote Farage, get Tory One Million a Year Immigration figures. Vote Kemi, get Farages “sacked for Home Working” 😆
You really can’t add the party’s opinion poll numbers together and get the seat Forecast. Fools Gold.
I know somebody who does
But you are right
“I know somebody who does”
🤣
It’s straight forward. Life Long one nation Conservatives appalled at deals with Reform and getting pulled further to the right, who can so easily vote Lib Dem instead, and voters who have never voted Conservative who vote Reform because Farage attacks the One Million a Year immigration figure as unacceptable. You can’t add the parties polling figures together and get all those voters. Voters appalled to find themselves in bed with each other.
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
I think its easy to ignore the effects of living in a totalitarian state since 1933. The media was saturated with the lies that the Nazis told. And its also the case that an awful lot of Germans truly believed that (a) they were not responsible for the Great War (b) they didn't lose it (no foreign troops on German soil on 11th Nov 1918 and (c) they shouldn't have had to pay reparations.
Now we may disagree with all of those - the first is interesting and very much linked to the third. But we shouldn't ignore the lived experience of Germans in those times as it explains a lot of what happened in the 20's through to 1945.
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
“We are just in the car back from focus groups this weekend in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe & Peterborough and without doubt the disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard, in every group it was anger; despondency or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
The whole thread is illuminating. Farage looking evermore likely to reap the benefits, despite the Trump connection
Do you know any of those places ?
The comment about the steelworks was also interesting. I get the sense that large swathes of the country outside the golden triangle think (not without good reason) that they've been left to rot, by successive governments ever since deindustrialization took hold in the 80s.
The idea that Reform offers any solutions is fanciful.
Yup. Britian is in a mess. It was a mess to rule for the Tories. It is proving to be even more difficult for Labour, who boxed themselves in with unrealistic promises on taxation. Disillusionment under the Tories, even more so under Labour, flights of fancy under Reform.
Nobody is telling the voters the unpalatable truth: we can't afford what we have come to expect from our government. Admitting this is political poison - as May found out when wandering into the debate on care for the elderly in the 2017 general election. Denying it causes the voters to veer off ever further to the margins.
Kemi should offer to work with Starmer to tell the public what we can and cannot afford. If Starmer refuses, he can own the fallout. If he agrees, then there is the start of a way back with the voters.
Rejoice. Canada points the way to defeat the right.
Perhaps it is gradually dawning on people that focussing obsessively on "culture wars" simply ends up with people like Trump and Farage running things.
“We are just in the car back from focus groups this weekend in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe & Peterborough and without doubt the disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard, in every group it was anger; despondency or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
The whole thread is illuminating. Farage looking evermore likely to reap the benefits, despite the Trump connection
Do you know any of those places ?
The comment about the steelworks was also interesting. I get the sense that large swathes of the country outside the golden triangle think (not without good reason) that they've been left to rot, by successive governments ever since deindustrialization took hold in the 80s.
The idea that Reform offers any solutions is fanciful.
"Fanciful" is pretty mild compared to the utter mess RefUK would make if they got anywhere close. We´ve seen this simplistic populist crap so many times and it never leads anywhere good. Trump is merely the crowning turd on a fat berg of populist crap. So what´s the solution? I my view its being straight with the voters: we have got to go through blood sweat and toil to get to a better future. I think voters actually understand this and provided the pain is shared fairly they will give a leader who says this the benefit of the doubt. The problem is that Labour´s Ming vase strategy is seen as dishonest and the Tories have, quite rightly, got the the blame for the last decade of fuck ups- Farage looks better by contrast, right up until we understand that the guy is just Trump in the saloon bar.
“We are just in the car back from focus groups this weekend in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe & Peterborough and without doubt the disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard, in every group it was anger; despondency or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
The whole thread is illuminating. Farage looking evermore likely to reap the benefits, despite the Trump connection
Do you know any of those places ?
The comment about the steelworks was also interesting. I get the sense that large swathes of the country outside the golden triangle think (not without good reason) that they've been left to rot, by successive governments ever since deindustrialization took hold in the 80s.
The idea that Reform offers any solutions is fanciful.
Reform do not have any solutions, but disillusionment with politics and politicians means NOTA and at present that is Reform
It's quite obvious from the thread being discussed + PB + the media generally + politicians + Trump that there is a massive shortage of meaningful 'solutions' to what is perceived as all the problems. This has been the case for some time, reinforced by a disappointing Labour set of mistakes and PR uselessness.
When this happens, in the end either a charismatic autocracy will have a go, and of course crash and burn; or, more intelligently, the voting public will need to reframe their expectations of what constitutes a problem, and what constitutes a solution, and what constitutes intelligent long term progress, aims and aspirations.
For the great majority of humanity happiness lies in right expectations.
Tbh I think the bigger story here may be that apparently a US aircraft carrier had to make a hard turn to evade incoming fire—I’m guessing maybe for the first time in 80 or so years. Just how close did this incoming fire get? https://x.com/tshugart3/status/1916978293766574193
Don't know the facts so can't say for sure but it has the whiff of a story concocted to cover up somebody dropping a bollock.
There are hard and fast rules about handling aircraft based on the sea state and ship's condition. We used to spend days driving round the Atlantic looking for calm weather so we could change a Harrier engine.
Ultimately, the vast and powerful carrier strike group has the mission of protecting the carrier so even if the emergency maneuver story is true then there has been a lapse somewhere.
The carrier group has dropped several bollocks on this deployment, so that's pretty well a given. I was just curious as to whether the carrier might have been under any significant threat... taking on a bunch of 3rd world insurgents.
It's not a great look for what's supposed to be the apex of naval power.
"a bunch of 3rd world insurgents" being supplied by Iran; a country that has spent a fair few decades developing independent weapons systems. The Houthis are little more than Iranian proxies.
It's interesting to ask ourselves exactly what chemicals went up in that Iranian port last week, and how it might dent Iranian weapons production...
“We are just in the car back from focus groups this weekend in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe & Peterborough and without doubt the disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard, in every group it was anger; despondency or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
The whole thread is illuminating. Farage looking evermore likely to reap the benefits, despite the Trump connection
Do you know any of those places ?
The comment about the steelworks was also interesting. I get the sense that large swathes of the country outside the golden triangle think (not without good reason) that they've been left to rot, by successive governments ever since deindustrialization took hold in the 80s.
The idea that Reform offers any solutions is fanciful.
It may be fanciful, but nobody wants to hear that 'this country - like many others - cannot support everything you would like' even if it is the truth.
I had to wheel my mother in law into hospital this week (long story, stupid NHS wasting bed space and harming patients as usual) and the female porter asked if we'd seen Douglas Murray.
If even hospital staff have gone Reform adjacent in public, albeit at 3am, I think there's a good chance that we'll have a Reform mayor and possibly council too.
I give it 6 months before the in-fighting (this might be generous).
Rejoice. Canada points the way to defeat the right.
Perhaps it is gradually dawning on people that focussing obsessively on "culture wars" simply ends up with people like Trump and Farage running things.
Mass immigration is not a confabulated scare story, it is very real and very problematic and a lot of people in the West have had more than enough of it, and want it stopped. Maybe even reversed
Trump or no Trump this issue is not going away, indeed it is likely to get MORE venomous
It will be interesting to see how Carney handles it in Canada
A 40 minute documentary about campaigns over 75 years to defend Dartmoor. That may be of interest to some here.
It covers attempts to develop the moor, dump china clay waste on it, build reservoirs etc. There is a fair amount about Lady Sylvia Sayer, who was known as "Shield of the Moor".
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
Liz Truss has reason to be a little happy. In the other election yesterday, Stuart Young, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago lost so he'll have to resign today after only 45 days in charge.
Akin to dark matter, its the 90% of woke that the right believe is present but that cannot be observed.
We need a betting market for the first time we hear Nigel & Kemi say “Dark Woke” or it appears in DT or DM headline.
There’s a touch of copy cat going on with some 😇
I understand Farage has indicated he is open to cooperating with the conservatives in local government
I thought he was out to destroy them
I reckon mark this as an important moment.
Vote Farage, get Tory One Million a Year Immigration figures. Vote Kemi, get Farages “sacked for Home Working” 😆
You really can’t add the party’s opinion poll numbers together and get the seat Forecast. Fools Gold.
I know somebody who does
But you are right
“I know somebody who does”
🤣
It’s straight forward. Life Long one nation Conservatives appalled at deals with Reform and getting pulled further to the right, who can so easily vote Lib Dem instead, and voters who have never voted Conservative who vote Reform because Farage attacks the One Million a Year immigration figure as unacceptable. You can’t add the parties polling figures together and get all those voters. Voters appalled to find themselves in bed with each other.
Yes. Lifelong One Nation Tory GE voter, sometimes through gritted teeth, until 2024. Now, Tories not on the list of possibles (only LD and Labour are on the list) unless I had to vote Tory to beat Reform.
I am in one of the large number of seats (new boundaries) that was probably notionally Tory, went Labour in 2024 and it will be uncertain whether Lab or Tory is the one to beat Reform, who are currently predicted to win next time. There are I suspect many such seats.
Currently, there is a legal exemption from sex equality laws that means only women can work in the breast screening service. The radiographers' professional body has proposed ending this and letting men work too, given current staff shortages. Kemi Badenoch opposes the suggestion, saying "most if not all" women would prefer a female radiographer. This reminds me of my late mother, a doctor herself, who said she'd much rather have a male radiographer for a mammogram.
Given the way one's breasts are manipulated and smoothed, it would seem to leave men wide open to accusations of 'fondling'. A male might well need to have a chaperone too.
Reform are the NIMBY party, we’ve had pylons for decades and they want to stop them being built.
This is what I mean when I say whatever Labour try to do, the NIMBY establishment will oppose at any turn. They really need to tell them where to go.
And with that, fin.
I still don't get your 5 strikes and out thing.
WRT pylons, there are two ways to avoid them. 1) Build high-use energy industries near to the power generation source. Instead of cast pylons to carry energy from Scotland down to the Varsity Crescent for datacentres, build those in Aberdeenshire where the power is onshored 2) Build power generation where the pylons already are. As you can't build renewables in Nottinghamshire etc that means building coal / gas which takes time and leaves us reliant on the forrin
Fukkers have a third way - don't bother with woke things like AI datacentres or anything else which needs power. Nor do you have to actually reopen the coal mines or rebuild the coal power stations - you just chant Net Zero is woke and mysteriously we're transported back to 1978!
A party that opposes the pylons being built from Norwich to Tilbury will clean up. It’s the one thing that seems to unite people of all political persuasions round here. People would rather higher energy bills than the neighbourhood ruined
A year after they've been built nobody will even notice them any more.
Even if that were true, which I doubt, it doesn’t make it a good thing. Plenty of tragic things happen that people move on from, but it doesn’t mean life is not worse than it was before.
I play football in Grays, and as I turn into the road where the ground is, huge pylons start to dominate the sky. I find it quite depressing, and reminds me that Grays is a bit of a khazi. It doesn’t bother me to be a NIMBY, I’d rather pay higher energy bills than have the pylons spoil the beauty of the countryside
So the vision is a mixture of thatched cottages together with dark satanic mills but not electricity pylons.
Personally I prefer to live in the 21st century, not the 19th.
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
The idea that the ordinary Germans didn't know about the camps, or T4, or the murder of the Jews is for the birds. Of course you 'could' pretend about stuff, but news leaked out. It always does. The wave of suicides was largely about fear of the Russians. Germans know what had been done in the East and they knew what was coming. Who knows how many women were raped in Germany in 1945? Its impossible to ever know.
Currently, there is a legal exemption from sex equality laws that means only women can work in the breast screening service. The radiographers' professional body has proposed ending this and letting men work too, given current staff shortages. Kemi Badenoch opposes the suggestion, saying "most if not all" women would prefer a female radiographer. This reminds me of my late mother, a doctor herself, who said she'd much rather have a male radiographer for a mammogram.
Given the way one's breasts are manipulated and smoothed, it would seem to leave men wide open to accusations of 'fondling'. A male might well need to have a chaperone too.
The other problem would be training, just because someone is a trained sonographer, they wouldn't have done a mammogram before because they weren't allowed to. Maybe the answer should be to train more sonographers?
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
Didn't expect the Pollievre result, should have listened.
Last year there was talk about what our Tories could learn from him, and i believe he talked about housing a lot. Hopefulky any lessons ours take will not reflect on that point and go super nimby instead.
Sorry, but the housing thing is a dreadful idea. The Conservatives should stay well clear. From my observations of Facebook groups in Edinburgh, you get a toxic mix of:
destroying our green and pleasant land
you only need this housing because of our record immigration
depressing house values for "poor" pensioners
House building hurts every core Conservative demographic.
Well, the core Conservative demographic is now so small that the Tories will be most likely fourth on Thursday. They need new ideas to attract new voters, or the grim reaper will come for the Party itself, not just the membership.
I'm just not convinced a policy that simultaneously drives more people to Reform and to nimby Lib Dems is a brilliant idea. The renting, Labour/Green voting class does not strike me as an obvious source of new Conservatives to replace those voters.
It's very difficult to see a route out for the Conservatives.
The key is to get much more housing built so that the renting class have a route out of renting and can become home owners instead.
Let me give you my vision: A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master. These are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free country, and on that freedom all of our other freedoms depend.
How will renters afford to buy these putative new houses? They just as expensive as the existing housing stock.
Build enough & rents fall. It’s not rocket science.
That depends on who's bidding for the lovely new houses.
And even if it did happen, do we want current mortgage holders to fall into negative equity?
If a market clears (everyone gets one) then prices fall. At the moment we have a ton of unsatisfied demand.
To get to the stage where prices are rising below inflation - so prices *just stop going up* - would take a heroic amount of building. Whole new cities worth.
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
There was not that much focus on the Holocaust, for quite some time, after 1945. The Soviets, in particular, preferred to emphasise that the Germans had murdered millions of Soviet and Polish citizens who were Jewish, as opposed to murdering Jews.
A lot of Israelis themselves, disliked focusing on an event that emphasised Jewish victimhood. When compensation was mooted by West Germany, in the 1950's, there was widespread protest in Israel, by people who thought it wrong that money could ever make good what had happened.
Didn't expect the Pollievre result, should have listened.
Last year there was talk about what our Tories could learn from him, and i believe he talked about housing a lot. Hopefulky any lessons ours take will not reflect on that point and go super nimby instead.
Sorry, but the housing thing is a dreadful idea. The Conservatives should stay well clear. From my observations of Facebook groups in Edinburgh, you get a toxic mix of:
destroying our green and pleasant land
you only need this housing because of our record immigration
depressing house values for "poor" pensioners
House building hurts every core Conservative demographic.
Well, the core Conservative demographic is now so small that the Tories will be most likely fourth on Thursday. They need new ideas to attract new voters, or the grim reaper will come for the Party itself, not just the membership.
I'm just not convinced a policy that simultaneously drives more people to Reform and to nimby Lib Dems is a brilliant idea. The renting, Labour/Green voting class does not strike me as an obvious source of new Conservatives to replace those voters.
It's very difficult to see a route out for the Conservatives.
The key is to get much more housing built so that the renting class have a route out of renting and can become home owners instead.
Let me give you my vision: A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master. These are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free country, and on that freedom all of our other freedoms depend.
How will renters afford to buy these putative new houses? They just as expensive as the existing housing stock.
Build enough & rents fall. It’s not rocket science.
That depends on who's bidding for the lovely new houses.
And even if it did happen, do we want current mortgage holders to fall into negative equity?
Yes. All investments can go down as well as up.
I am entirely OK with personally going into negative equity, even if I fall into negative equity I will still own my own home and will be making my own repayments and any dip into negative equity is typically temporary at most. Whereas never-ending escalating prices are a horrendous alternative that have been an utter disaster.
Absolutely! One of the reasons our property market is so unnatural is that, whereas investments can go down as well as up, property investments don’t seem to be allowed to. As it would be good for the country for investors to invest in our businesses, the unnatural property market is acting as a drain on growth.
Rejoice. Canada points the way to defeat the right.
Perhaps it is gradually dawning on people that focussing obsessively on "culture wars" simply ends up with people like Trump and Farage running things.
Mass immigration is not a confabulated scare story, it is very real and very problematic and a lot of people in the West have had more than enough of it, and want it stopped. Maybe even reversed
Trump or no Trump this issue is not going away, indeed it is likely to get MORE venomous
It will be interesting to see how Carney handles it in Canada
Immigration is certainly an issue my point is that politicians like Trump just ride the grievance train to obtain power and we can all see how that ends up.
If Farage manages to ride it through to the next GE I would put money on his government being an unmitigated disaster. However I believe his bubble will have burst in 4 years time but if it hasn't we will see tactical voting on an unprecedented scale as we have just seen in Canada. As someone has pointed out upthread he might be loved by the 25% of voters that also love Trump but he is loathed by the other 75%.
Currently, there is a legal exemption from sex equality laws that means only women can work in the breast screening service. The radiographers' professional body has proposed ending this and letting men work too, given current staff shortages. Kemi Badenoch opposes the suggestion, saying "most if not all" women would prefer a female radiographer. This reminds me of my late mother, a doctor herself, who said she'd much rather have a male radiographer for a mammogram.
Given the way one's breasts are manipulated and smoothed, it would seem to leave men wide open to accusations of 'fondling'. A male might well need to have a chaperone too.
The other problem would be training, just because someone is a trained sonographer, they wouldn't have done a mammogram before because they weren't allowed to. Maybe the answer should be to train more sonographers?
(Screening mammography is an X-ray, so done by a radiographer. You can do breast sonograms, but those are not done in a screening context. They may be done as part of further assessment if the mammogram shows something. Sonographers are usually radiographers, I think, so it doesn't change anything here.)
I think the challenge with training more is that it's one of those healthcare jobs that requires lots of training but is relatively poorly paid.
Lol. I promised I'd be remarkably modest if all my bets came in, and I am sticking to that.
However, ALL HAIL MY BRILLIANCE.
I shall be treating myself to caviar at lunch with some of my winnings.
There was a book by Mark Coton, who created the Racing Post's Pricewise column during the Thatcher hegemony, in which he cautioned punters not to boast about their triumphs. The foreword mentioned he relaxed by drinking the fine wine he had bought in bulk after Nashwan won the Derby.
Which is why I try and be modest and self effacing in all circumstances, like this year I decided to be less conceited and my friends worried if I could manage it, I told them not to worry it would be easy for somebody as brilliant as me.
When you finally get a gong, it will be for services to modesty. You will probably have to pose for photographs in the Gold Room holding the Sapphire Sceptre of Imperial Modesty (which you are not allowed to take home with you).
May I add my thanks and appreciation to TSE for his rare but exceptional foray into the business of successful tipping. It's a shame the suggestion didn't come from someone else. I would have had more on. Nevertheless a tenner at 14/1 is not to be sniffed at and the proceeds should keep me in fine wine until at least 9pm.
Congrats also to Casino Royale who I believe also played his cards correctly.
As TSE is a lawyer, I assume that those of us benefiting from his advice will be receiving an invoice shortly?
Didn't expect the Pollievre result, should have listened.
Last year there was talk about what our Tories could learn from him, and i believe he talked about housing a lot. Hopefulky any lessons ours take will not reflect on that point and go super nimby instead.
Sorry, but the housing thing is a dreadful idea. The Conservatives should stay well clear. From my observations of Facebook groups in Edinburgh, you get a toxic mix of:
destroying our green and pleasant land
you only need this housing because of our record immigration
depressing house values for "poor" pensioners
House building hurts every core Conservative demographic.
Well, the core Conservative demographic is now so small that the Tories will be most likely fourth on Thursday. They need new ideas to attract new voters, or the grim reaper will come for the Party itself, not just the membership.
I'm just not convinced a policy that simultaneously drives more people to Reform and to nimby Lib Dems is a brilliant idea. The renting, Labour/Green voting class does not strike me as an obvious source of new Conservatives to replace those voters.
It's very difficult to see a route out for the Conservatives.
The key is to get much more housing built so that the renting class have a route out of renting and can become home owners instead.
Let me give you my vision: A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master. These are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free country, and on that freedom all of our other freedoms depend.
How will renters afford to buy these putative new houses? They just as expensive as the existing housing stock.
Build enough & rents fall. It’s not rocket science.
That depends on who's bidding for the lovely new houses.
And even if it did happen, do we want current mortgage holders to fall into negative equity?
If a market clears (everyone gets one) then prices fall. At the moment we have a ton of unsatisfied demand.
To get to the stage where prices are rising below inflation - so prices *just stop going up* - would take a heroic amount of building. Whole new cities worth.
And our levels of inward migration ensures that demand remains unsatisfied.
Rejoice. Canada points the way to defeat the right.
Perhaps it is gradually dawning on people that focussing obsessively on "culture wars" simply ends up with people like Trump and Farage running things.
We need a conservative government. Perhaps there is a party out there that has those values.
Some time ago when I was involved in local politics, UKIP got a few seats. Overwhelmingly they were off-the-wall nutjobs who couldn't carry out the functions of the roles their vote share gave them. Useless doesn't actually cover it.
There was a cadre of ex-Conservatives at the time who got so fed up with ConCentral they became Indies and they are a) still Indies and b) still run the local council very well. So there are competent conservative councillors out there but they don't need or want to associate with Conservatives - or Reform.
Likely if Reform do win a few local seats, history will repeat itself and we'll see what a bunch of timewasters they are.
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
For those crazy enough to be a genuine believer in Nazi ideology - the extermination of inferior races by means of war - defeat by Slavs would force an unavoidable logic on them.
Currently, there is a legal exemption from sex equality laws that means only women can work in the breast screening service. The radiographers' professional body has proposed ending this and letting men work too, given current staff shortages. Kemi Badenoch opposes the suggestion, saying "most if not all" women would prefer a female radiographer. This reminds me of my late mother, a doctor herself, who said she'd much rather have a male radiographer for a mammogram.
Given the way one's breasts are manipulated and smoothed, it would seem to leave men wide open to accusations of 'fondling'. A male might well need to have a chaperone too.
The other problem would be training, just because someone is a trained sonographer, they wouldn't have done a mammogram before because they weren't allowed to. Maybe the answer should be to train more sonographers?
(Screening mammography is an X-ray, so done by a radiographer. You can do breast sonograms, but those are not done in a screening context. They may be done as part of further assessment if the mammogram shows something. Sonographers are usually radiographers, I think, so it doesn't change anything here.)
I think the challenge with training more is that it's one of those healthcare jobs that requires lots of training but is relatively poorly paid.
Yes, it's a bit like that post about checking kids with gender dysphoria for autism and ADHD. It's a good idea but you can't magic the people needed to do that out of thin air. The solution might end up being like PIP assessments, outsource it to the cheapest provider who ends up not doing them correctly.
Tbh I think the bigger story here may be that apparently a US aircraft carrier had to make a hard turn to evade incoming fire—I’m guessing maybe for the first time in 80 or so years. Just how close did this incoming fire get? https://x.com/tshugart3/status/1916978293766574193
Don't know the facts so can't say for sure but it has the whiff of a story concocted to cover up somebody dropping a bollock.
There are hard and fast rules about handling aircraft based on the sea state and ship's condition. We used to spend days driving round the Atlantic looking for calm weather so we could change a Harrier engine.
Ultimately, the vast and powerful carrier strike group has the mission of protecting the carrier so even if the emergency maneuver story is true then there has been a lapse somewhere.
Or "somebody dropping a bollock" is a less embarrassing get out than under fire Hegseth having to admit the Houthis shot down a US plane...?
It would be very difficult to fake a jet going over the side (presumably through one of the deck elevators in the down position) because there are cameras everywhere on a CVN. If this Super Hornet went into the oggin then there is video of it.
Currently, there is a legal exemption from sex equality laws that means only women can work in the breast screening service. The radiographers' professional body has proposed ending this and letting men work too, given current staff shortages. Kemi Badenoch opposes the suggestion, saying "most if not all" women would prefer a female radiographer. This reminds me of my late mother, a doctor herself, who said she'd much rather have a male radiographer for a mammogram.
Given the way one's breasts are manipulated and smoothed, it would seem to leave men wide open to accusations of 'fondling'. A male might well need to have a chaperone too.
The person who must have the final say in who can examine a patient’s breasts must surely be the woman patient.
Will the Inuit take over Canada? Eventually, perhaps.
In learning a little about Nunavut, I found this: "In 2023, Nunavut had the highest total fertility rate (TFR) in Canada, at 2.48 children per woman. This was significantly higher than the national average of 1.26 children per woman, which was the lowest ever recorded for Canada." (Google AI overview)
British Columbia's TFR is about 1.0.
Granted, the population for this immense area is -- most likely -- less than 40K, but it is young: "The median age in Nunavut is 25.1 years, according to the 2016 census. This is significantly younger than the median age of Canada (41.2 years). Those aged 65 years and over account for 3.8% of the population."
(It might grow even faster, if the Canada government provided them with one or more SMRs, so they could grow food in greenhouses.).
I bet the Super Hornet into the Red Sea has caused some arseholes to be giving it hapenny bit - threepenny bit in the MoD over HMS PoW's transit through that area. The British "Carrier Strike Group" has nothing like the defensive capabilities and firepower of the Truman group.
The RAF's original plan was fly off the entire air wing in the Med and move them to Oman (or back to the UK) in case the Hooties blasted one (or more) F-35s off the deck as they passed Arabia Felix. The RN had a conniption and pointed out that there's not much point in a Naval Air Wing that you can't put into a hostile environment so the plan got shelved. The scheme may be ripe for reactivation now.
Reform are the NIMBY party, we’ve had pylons for decades and they want to stop them being built.
This is what I mean when I say whatever Labour try to do, the NIMBY establishment will oppose at any turn. They really need to tell them where to go.
And with that, fin.
I still don't get your 5 strikes and out thing.
WRT pylons, there are two ways to avoid them. 1) Build high-use energy industries near to the power generation source. Instead of cast pylons to carry energy from Scotland down to the Varsity Crescent for datacentres, build those in Aberdeenshire where the power is onshored 2) Build power generation where the pylons already are. As you can't build renewables in Nottinghamshire etc that means building coal / gas which takes time and leaves us reliant on the forrin
Fukkers have a third way - don't bother with woke things like AI datacentres or anything else which needs power. Nor do you have to actually reopen the coal mines or rebuild the coal power stations - you just chant Net Zero is woke and mysteriously we're transported back to 1978!
A party that opposes the pylons being built from Norwich to Tilbury will clean up. It’s the one thing that seems to unite people of all political persuasions round here. People would rather higher energy bills than the neighbourhood ruined
A year after they've been built nobody will even notice them any more.
Even if that were true, which I doubt, it doesn’t make it a good thing. Plenty of tragic things happen that people move on from, but it doesn’t mean life is not worse than it was before.
I play football in Grays, and as I turn into the road where the ground is, huge pylons start to dominate the sky. I find it quite depressing, and reminds me that Grays is a bit of a khazi. It doesn’t bother me to be a NIMBY, I’d rather pay higher energy bills than have the pylons spoil the beauty of the countryside
So the vision is a mixture of thatched cottages together with dark satanic mills but not electricity pylons.
Personally I prefer to live in the 21st century, not the 19th.
Hilarious
I do live in the 21st Century, happily with no big pylons near me and would like it to stay that way.
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
Quite recently I read this authoritative book on the exact subject
This result is a magnificent fuck you to Trump. I wasn't sure my admiration for Canada could have been any greater, but here we are. I didn't think Carney got everything right at the BOE but he was an effective Governor and in my limited interactions with him I found him a very impressive individual, smart without losing his sense of humour and without the airs and graces that holders of senior positions often have. I'm sure he will be a great PM for Canada and hopefully the UK-Canada relationship will deepen further.
By the way, is it racist to refer to white people in a derogatory way as "beige"?
Kinda feels like the same sort of language as "darkies" and I didn't think I'd see it in a national newspaper.
I think "gammon" is just the other side of the line, given that it's the sort of colour people change to after ranting energetically, and so refers to a behaviour and constitution as well as an immutable skin colour.
Looking at Canada, I can't help but wonder if this will turn out to be a pyrrhic victory.
The Libs gained seats and Poilievre lost his riding BUT:
- The left block of Lib/ND/Green lost seats - The ND's leader Singh who seemed amenable to the Libs has gone. The new leader will have to play hard ball for the party to survive and attack the Libs from the left. - Even if the NDs play ball, they would have a tiny combined majority vulnerable to by-elections - If Poilievre quits, then the Con leadership contest will be a festival of flag waving and Trump kicking, allowing the party to reposition.
How I can see this panning out is that Carney's honeymoon wears off, political gravity reasserts itself and then in a few years Con/ND/BQ find an excuse to no confidence the government, leading to another election, which the Libs lose heavily.
Historical note: Con/ND/BQ combined to bring down the Lib Government in 2006 following a scandal.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
Unless you're referring to 'a friend' in the 'a spy' meaning then I'd not place too much weight on it without other credentials.
I had a friend who believed in the power of crystals and that chlorination and fluoridation of drinking water were a plot to kill the masses*. I distanced myself a bit when I realised he was a total loon.
It will be interesting with the blackouts whether it turns out to be some stupid cockup somewhere or a rare and previously unexperienced manifestation of physics asserting itself over engineering.
*to be fair, chlorination is a mass murder exercise when it comes to waterbourne pathogens, but I don't think that's what he meant.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
Reform are the NIMBY party, we’ve had pylons for decades and they want to stop them being built.
This is what I mean when I say whatever Labour try to do, the NIMBY establishment will oppose at any turn. They really need to tell them where to go.
And with that, fin.
I still don't get your 5 strikes and out thing.
WRT pylons, there are two ways to avoid them. 1) Build high-use energy industries near to the power generation source. Instead of cast pylons to carry energy from Scotland down to the Varsity Crescent for datacentres, build those in Aberdeenshire where the power is onshored 2) Build power generation where the pylons already are. As you can't build renewables in Nottinghamshire etc that means building coal / gas which takes time and leaves us reliant on the forrin
Fukkers have a third way - don't bother with woke things like AI datacentres or anything else which needs power. Nor do you have to actually reopen the coal mines or rebuild the coal power stations - you just chant Net Zero is woke and mysteriously we're transported back to 1978!
A party that opposes the pylons being built from Norwich to Tilbury will clean up. It’s the one thing that seems to unite people of all political persuasions round here. People would rather higher energy bills than the neighbourhood ruined
A year after they've been built nobody will even notice them any more.
Even if that were true, which I doubt, it doesn’t make it a good thing. Plenty of tragic things happen that people move on from, but it doesn’t mean life is not worse than it was before.
I play football in Grays, and as I turn into the road where the ground is, huge pylons start to dominate the sky. I find it quite depressing, and reminds me that Grays is a bit of a khazi. It doesn’t bother me to be a NIMBY, I’d rather pay higher energy bills than have the pylons spoil the beauty of the countryside
So the vision is a mixture of thatched cottages together with dark satanic mills but not electricity pylons.
Personally I prefer to live in the 21st century, not the 19th.
Hilarious
I do live in the 21st Century, happily with no big pylons near me and would like it to stay that way.
They have to go somewhere; and that means they have to go near *someone*. Yet no-one wants them, and the alternatives, such as burying, are expensive and have their own issues.
“We are just in the car back from focus groups this weekend in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe & Peterborough and without doubt the disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard, in every group it was anger; despondency or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
The whole thread is illuminating. Farage looking evermore likely to reap the benefits, despite the Trump connection
Do you know any of those places ?
The comment about the steelworks was also interesting. I get the sense that large swathes of the country outside the golden triangle think (not without good reason) that they've been left to rot, by successive governments ever since deindustrialization took hold in the 80s.
The idea that Reform offers any solutions is fanciful.
"Fanciful" is pretty mild compared to the utter mess RefUK would make if they got anywhere close. We´ve seen this simplistic populist crap so many times and it never leads anywhere good. Trump is merely the crowning turd on a fat berg of populist crap. So what´s the solution? I my view its being straight with the voters: we have got to go through blood sweat and toil to get to a better future. I think voters actually understand this and provided the pain is shared fairly they will give a leader who says this the benefit of the doubt. The problem is that Labour´s Ming vase strategy is seen as dishonest and the Tories have, quite rightly, got the the blame for the last decade of fuck ups- Farage looks better by contrast, right up until we understand that the guy is just Trump in the saloon bar.
This post is a bit 'drunk broadcast from the bunker'.
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
Quite recently I read this authoritative book on the exact subject
It’s excellent if harrowing. Makes clear guilt about the Jews and the eastern front played a role
It’s a fine point of difference, but I’d still distinguish between guilt (we have done a terrible and evil thing) and fear of the consequences of being found to have done a a terrible and evil thing.
I still don't really get the Poilievre defeat in Carleton. In the new boundaries he had 52% of the vote, so in theory it didn't matter how much Fanjoy squeezed the NDP, Poilievre would be safe. Nationally the Conservatives gained 8% vote share. In Ontario the CPC gained 9%. Admittedly in the Ottawa region it was less, the other Conservative candidates in the region range from +1.0% to -0.5% but Poilievre was -5.7% compared to 2021.
Normally party leaders get a vote boost, they are on TV every day of the campaign and their opponents usually anonymous by comparison. Rishi Sunak only lost 15% vote share in Richmond and Northallerton in 2024, whereas in both Skipton and Ripon, and Thirsk and Melton the Tory candidates dropped 23%.
What happened there? What made him unpopular in his own riding?
I still don't really get the Poilievre defeat in Carleton. In the new boundaries he had 52% of the vote, so in theory it didn't matter how much Fanjoy squeezed the NDP, Poilievre would be safe. Nationally the Conservatives gained 8% vote share. In Ontario the CPC gained 9%. Admittedly in the Ottawa region it was less, the other Conservative candidates in the region range from +1.0% to -0.5% but Poilievre was -5.7% compared to 2021.
Normally party leaders get a vote boost, they are on TV every day of the campaign and their opponents usually anonymous by comparison. Rishi Sunak only lost 15% vote share in Richmond and Northallerton in 2024, whereas in both Skipton and Ripon, and Thirsk and Melton the Tory candidates dropped 23%.
What happened there? What made him unpopular in his own riding?
Carney's constituency is next door, so there might have been a halo effect.
I still don't really get the Poilievre defeat in Carleton. In the new boundaries he had 52% of the vote, so in theory it didn't matter how much Fanjoy squeezed the NDP, Poilievre would be safe. Nationally the Conservatives gained 8% vote share. In Ontario the CPC gained 9%. Admittedly in the Ottawa region it was less, the other Conservative candidates in the region range from +1.0% to -0.5% but Poilievre was -5.7% compared to 2021.
Normally party leaders get a vote boost, they are on TV every day of the campaign and their opponents usually anonymous by comparison. Rishi Sunak only lost 15% vote share in Richmond and Northallerton in 2024, whereas in both Skipton and Ripon, and Thirsk and Melton the Tory candidates dropped 23%.
What happened there? What made him unpopular in his own riding?
Maybe people seeing him on TV is the cause of the decline.....?
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
Blackouts have been caused in the past when *one* large 'conventional' power plant has gone off, causing cascade failures. The robust-yet-fragile concept of networks. And as ever, be careful of looking for a single cause over many causal factors.
Anyway, it'd be best to wait for more information, rather than believe people with 'friends' on t'Internet who just so happen to back up their own views...
By the way, is it racist to refer to white people in a derogatory way as "beige"?
Kinda feels like the same sort of language as "darkies" and I didn't think I'd see it in a national newspaper.
I think "gammon" is just the other side of the line, given that it's the sort of colour people change to after ranting energetically, and so refers to a behaviour and constitution as well as an immutable skin colour.
Nah. Those who use "gammon" do so knowingly as a term of abuse. You could hardly say "darkies" is the sort of colour people beome after living in sunny Johnny Foreigner Land.
People who use terms that they know their target objects to are on the wrong side of the line. (I'd also extend it to anybody who uses the term "Tory scum".)
I will freely acknowledge that I have only the vaguest knowledge of Canadian politics, all from PB.
My understanding is that Trudeau was considered a weak PM, and became deeply unpopular. And that there are deeper issues within Canada relating to housing shortages, and a growing resentment about well-off boomers who appear to be pulling up the drawbridge behind them (and who vote Liberal). It seems extraordinary to me that a country the size of Canada can have nimbyism, but I suppose everything is relative.
I do not see that Carney has signalled that he will depart significantly from the Trudeau path (and I would doubt it even if he had). He has been allowed to win because for enough people the election had effectively become an identity issue. That leaves all the problems under Trudeau still there, and unlikely to improve. While Carney's only merit is that he is anti-Trump, in a similar way to the fact that Starmer’s only merit is that he isn't the outgoing Tory Government. That didn't provide much of a honeymoon for Starmer, and I don't really see it doing the same for Carney.
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
Quite recently I read this authoritative book on the exact subject
It’s excellent if harrowing. Makes clear guilt about the Jews and the eastern front played a role
It’s a fine point of difference, but I’d still distinguish between guilt (we have done a terrible and evil thing) and fear of the consequences of being found to have done a a terrible and evil thing.
We cannot make windows into men’s souls. But the way the author phrases it, some Germans were able to suspend their shame and guilt as long as they were winning, but when it became clear they were going to lose, and that they would face Die Rechnung - then that made them face their own guilt, long hidden. And they couldn’t abide it
So many offed themselves it would be amazing if a proportion didn’t do it out of basic brutal remorse
Probably many more in the east did it out of abject fear of the Red Army, and for good reason
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
Blackouts have been caused in the past when *one* large 'conventional' power plant has gone off, causing cascade failures. The robust-yet-fragile concept of networks. And as ever, be careful of looking for a single cause over many causal factors.
Anyway, it'd be best to wait for more information, rather than believe people with 'friends' on t'Internet who just so happen to back up their own views...
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
NEWS in @punchbowlnews AM: @amazon will start displaying how much of an item’s cost is derived from tariffs – right next to the product’s total listed price.
I will freely acknowledge that I have only the vaguest knowledge of Canadian politics, all from PB.
My understanding is that Trudeau was considered a weak PM, and became deeply unpopular. And that there are deeper issues within Canada relating to housing shortages, and a growing resentment about well-off boomers who appear to be pulling up the drawbridge behind them (and who vote Liberal). It seems extraordinary to me that a country the size of Canada can have nimbyism, but I suppose everything is relative.
I do not see that Carney has signalled that he will depart significantly from the Trudeau path (and I would doubt it even if he had). He has been allowed to win because for enough people the election had effectively become an identity issue. That leaves all the problems under Trudeau still there, and unlikely to improve. While Carney's only merit is that he is anti-Trump, in a similar way to the fact that Starmer’s only merit is that he isn't the outgoing Tory Government. That didn't provide much of a honeymoon for Starmer, and I don't really see it doing the same for Carney.
Except Trump being Trump is going to provide all the ammunition and support that Carney needs to have a decent honeymoon.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
Blackouts have been caused in the past when *one* large 'conventional' power plant has gone off, causing cascade failures. The robust-yet-fragile concept of networks. And as ever, be careful of looking for a single cause over many causal factors.
Anyway, it'd be best to wait for more information, rather than believe people with 'friends' on t'Internet who just so happen to back up their own views...
One of my friends said it was sabotage by the same group that shot down MH17.
I will freely acknowledge that I have only the vaguest knowledge of Canadian politics, all from PB.
My understanding is that Trudeau was considered a weak PM, and became deeply unpopular. And that there are deeper issues within Canada relating to housing shortages, and a growing resentment about well-off boomers who appear to be pulling up the drawbridge behind them (and who vote Liberal). It seems extraordinary to me that a country the size of Canada can have nimbyism, but I suppose everything is relative.
I do not see that Carney has signalled that he will depart significantly from the Trudeau path (and I would doubt it even if he had). He has been allowed to win because for enough people the election had effectively become an identity issue. That leaves all the problems under Trudeau still there, and unlikely to improve. While Carney's only merit is that he is anti-Trump, in a similar way to the fact that Starmer’s only merit is that he isn't the outgoing Tory Government. That didn't provide much of a honeymoon for Starmer, and I don't really see it doing the same for Carney.
Except Trump being Trump is going to provide all the ammunition and support that Carney needs to have a decent honeymoon.
Anti Trump fervour might keep you warm, but you can't live in it.
“We are just in the car back from focus groups this weekend in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe & Peterborough and without doubt the disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard, in every group it was anger; despondency or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
The whole thread is illuminating. Farage looking evermore likely to reap the benefits, despite the Trump connection
Do you know any of those places ?
The comment about the steelworks was also interesting. I get the sense that large swathes of the country outside the golden triangle think (not without good reason) that they've been left to rot, by successive governments ever since deindustrialization took hold in the 80s.
The idea that Reform offers any solutions is fanciful.
I’ve worked in Peterborough and worked in Hull, visited Beverley a few times as its a lovely part of the world down there.
The idea any other party offers solutions is nonsensical given these places have voted for the other parties over the years and nothing really improves. Nothing changes. Managed decline.
May as well give Reform ago. Got nothing to lose.
Take Durham, people got fed up of Labour. Voted them out last time. And alot of tactical anti Labour voting too. We got a coalition and had great expectations based on what they said beforehand. They have hardly been a roaring success. So people feel why not Reform.
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
Quite recently I read this authoritative book on the exact subject
It’s excellent if harrowing. Makes clear guilt about the Jews and the eastern front played a role
It’s a fine point of difference, but I’d still distinguish between guilt (we have done a terrible and evil thing) and fear of the consequences of being found to have done a a terrible and evil thing.
We cannot make windows into men’s souls. But the way the author phrases it, some Germans were able to suspend their shame and guilt as long as they were winning, but when it became clear they were going to lose, and that they would face Die Rechnung - then that made them face their own guilt, long hidden. And they couldn’t abide it
So many offed themselves it would be amazing if a proportion didn’t do it out of basic brutal remorse
Probably many more in the east did it out of abject fear of the Red Army, and for good reason
No German could no where the Soviets were going to stop. They didn't know that the Allies had agreed a stop point, so its just as likely that some were fearing the Russians in the west too. Was there guilt? Almost certainly, but its hard to understate how widespread antisemetism was and the racial superiority view point. Many Germans did look down on Poles and the Slavs in general. They truly thought that the East should be German, and that it ought to be their India.
“We are just in the car back from focus groups this weekend in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe & Peterborough and without doubt the disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard, in every group it was anger; despondency or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
The whole thread is illuminating. Farage looking evermore likely to reap the benefits, despite the Trump connection
Do you know any of those places ?
The comment about the steelworks was also interesting. I get the sense that large swathes of the country outside the golden triangle think (not without good reason) that they've been left to rot, by successive governments ever since deindustrialization took hold in the 80s.
The idea that Reform offers any solutions is fanciful.
I’ve worked in Peterborough and worked in Hull, visited Beverley a few times as its a lovely part of the world down there.
The idea any other party offers solutions is nonsensical given these places have voted for the other parties over the years and nothing really improves. Nothing changes. Managed decline.
May as well give Reform ago. Got nothing to lose.
Take Durham, people got fed up of Labour. Voted them out last time. And alot of tactical anti Labour voting too. We got a coalition and had great expectations based on what they said beforehand. They have hardly been a roaring success. So people feel why not Reform.
The idea Reform in govt will naturally be clueless and spineless and laughably inept - maybe even as bad as Starmer and Co - is basic bigotry. A preformed negative idea
Yes they might be shit, they are untested. But there are plenty of ideas floating around
Eg take Carswell’s Plan for Britain. It’s detailed and costed and thorough. You can object to it ideologically but you can’t say it’s childish nonsense
I will freely acknowledge that I have only the vaguest knowledge of Canadian politics, all from PB.
My understanding is that Trudeau was considered a weak PM, and became deeply unpopular. And that there are deeper issues within Canada relating to housing shortages, and a growing resentment about well-off boomers who appear to be pulling up the drawbridge behind them (and who vote Liberal). It seems extraordinary to me that a country the size of Canada can have nimbyism, but I suppose everything is relative.
I do not see that Carney has signalled that he will depart significantly from the Trudeau path (and I would doubt it even if he had). He has been allowed to win because for enough people the election had effectively become an identity issue. That leaves all the problems under Trudeau still there, and unlikely to improve. While Carney's only merit is that he is anti-Trump, in a similar way to the fact that Starmer’s only merit is that he isn't the outgoing Tory Government. That didn't provide much of a honeymoon for Starmer, and I don't really see it doing the same for Carney.
Except Trump being Trump is going to provide all the ammunition and support that Carney needs to have a decent honeymoon.
Anti Trump fervour might keep you warm, but you can't live in it.
Your question was whether Carney will get a political honeymoon - with Trump around I suspect he will get one.
‘You sold it – now recycle it’: the protesters mailing worn-out clothes to the shops they bought them from
Guardian headline. A classic. No question of the headline 'I bought it so it is my responsibility'. That's not how buck passing works.
Good campaign gimmick to raise attention to the issue, though.
A lot of our clothes turnover go to others (still a lot outgrown by children rather than worn out). Those that do get worn out tend to become dirty-jobs clothes and/or rags for e.g. decorating/DIY purposes/augmenting dustsheets around non-linear obstacles, but then landfill.
Some items would be recyclable - some of the fairly pure synthetic fabrics, maybe? Others, such as cotton/wool etc can presumably be decomposed (could wool be treated and re-purposed into insulation?). It would be a good thing to have thought put into material composition to facilitate those options and appropriate labelling.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
Unless you're referring to 'a friend' in the 'a spy' meaning then I'd not place too much weight on it without other credentials.
I had a friend who believed in the power of crystals and that chlorination and fluoridation of drinking water were a plot to kill the masses*. I distanced myself a bit when I realised he was a total loon.
It will be interesting with the blackouts whether it turns out to be some stupid cockup somewhere or a rare and previously unexperienced manifestation of physics asserting itself over engineering.
*to be fair, chlorination is a mass murder exercise when it comes to waterbourne pathogens, but I don't think that's what he meant.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
I heard it on Sky last night but also this article refers to it
“We are just in the car back from focus groups this weekend in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe & Peterborough and without doubt the disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard, in every group it was anger; despondency or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
The whole thread is illuminating. Farage looking evermore likely to reap the benefits, despite the Trump connection
Do you know any of those places ?
The comment about the steelworks was also interesting. I get the sense that large swathes of the country outside the golden triangle think (not without good reason) that they've been left to rot, by successive governments ever since deindustrialization took hold in the 80s.
The idea that Reform offers any solutions is fanciful.
I’ve worked in Peterborough and worked in Hull, visited Beverley a few times as its a lovely part of the world down there.
The idea any other party offers solutions is nonsensical given these places have voted for the other parties over the years and nothing really improves. Nothing changes. Managed decline.
May as well give Reform ago. Got nothing to lose.
Take Durham, people got fed up of Labour. Voted them out last time. And alot of tactical anti Labour voting too. We got a coalition and had great expectations based on what they said beforehand. They have hardly been a roaring success. So people feel why not Reform.
The idea Reform in govt will naturally be clueless and spineless and laughably inept - maybe even as bad as Starmer and Co - is basic bigotry. A preformed negative idea
Yes they might be shit, they are untested. But there are plenty of ideas floating around
Eg take Carswell’s Plan for Britain. It’s detailed and costed and thorough. You can object to it ideologically but you can’t say it’s childish nonsense
“We are just in the car back from focus groups this weekend in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe & Peterborough and without doubt the disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard, in every group it was anger; despondency or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
The whole thread is illuminating. Farage looking evermore likely to reap the benefits, despite the Trump connection
Do you know any of those places ?
The comment about the steelworks was also interesting. I get the sense that large swathes of the country outside the golden triangle think (not without good reason) that they've been left to rot, by successive governments ever since deindustrialization took hold in the 80s.
The idea that Reform offers any solutions is fanciful.
I’ve worked in Peterborough and worked in Hull, visited Beverley a few times as its a lovely part of the world down there.
The idea any other party offers solutions is nonsensical given these places have voted for the other parties over the years and nothing really improves. Nothing changes. Managed decline.
May as well give Reform ago. Got nothing to lose.
Take Durham, people got fed up of Labour. Voted them out last time. And alot of tactical anti Labour voting too. We got a coalition and had great expectations based on what they said beforehand. They have hardly been a roaring success. So people feel why not Reform.
The idea Reform in govt will naturally be clueless and spineless and laughably inept - maybe even as bad as Starmer and Co - is basic bigotry. A preformed negative idea
Yes they might be shit, they are untested. But there are plenty of ideas floating around
Eg take Carswell’s Plan for Britain. It’s detailed and costed and thorough. You can object to it ideologically but you can’t say it’s childish nonsense
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
Quite recently I read this authoritative book on the exact subject
It’s excellent if harrowing. Makes clear guilt about the Jews and the eastern front played a role
It’s a fine point of difference, but I’d still distinguish between guilt (we have done a terrible and evil thing) and fear of the consequences of being found to have done a a terrible and evil thing.
We cannot make windows into men’s souls. But the way the author phrases it, some Germans were able to suspend their shame and guilt as long as they were winning, but when it became clear they were going to lose, and that they would face Die Rechnung - then that made them face their own guilt, long hidden. And they couldn’t abide it
So many offed themselves it would be amazing if a proportion didn’t do it out of basic brutal remorse
Probably many more in the east did it out of abject fear of the Red Army, and for good reason
“Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich” by Bartov, might be of some use.
He uses analyses of soldiers letters to provide evidence of his ideas. Because conscription was universal and so was mail censorship, there is a huge amount of data.
Essentially, Nazi propaganda had created a mindset that even *hardline opponents* of the regime had bought into. The war in Russia was characterised as Civilisation vs Barely Human Barbarians.
So even as they describe committing atrocities, soldiers would blame *the victims* - it was all down to the subhumans.
With the retreat at the end of the war, the assumption was that the “subhumans” would annihilate “civilisation”
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
It's the lack of a source other than 'a friend' in your post that has caused the comments. Without context, your friend could be the head of the Spanish electricity grid or a 5G/Covid vaccine chips nutter, which is why people are commenting on it (or, at least, why I did).
It may be that some design cock-up or very unexpected event relating to renewable energy integration is behind this. In the same way, as posted by others, that sudden power station failures have caused blackouts before.
ETA: Whether it's related to renewable energy generation and integration is an entirely legitimate question (in the sense of how can it be prevented from happening again).
I will freely acknowledge that I have only the vaguest knowledge of Canadian politics, all from PB.
My understanding is that Trudeau was considered a weak PM, and became deeply unpopular. And that there are deeper issues within Canada relating to housing shortages, and a growing resentment about well-off boomers who appear to be pulling up the drawbridge behind them (and who vote Liberal). It seems extraordinary to me that a country the size of Canada can have nimbyism, but I suppose everything is relative.
I do not see that Carney has signalled that he will depart significantly from the Trudeau path (and I would doubt it even if he had). He has been allowed to win because for enough people the election had effectively become an identity issue. That leaves all the problems under Trudeau still there, and unlikely to improve. While Carney's only merit is that he is anti-Trump, in a similar way to the fact that Starmer’s only merit is that he isn't the outgoing Tory Government. That didn't provide much of a honeymoon for Starmer, and I don't really see it doing the same for Carney.
My son’s girlfriend, who is Canadian, is normally a NDP supporter but she voted for Carney to stop the Conservatives. Her view is that Carney is a boring technocrat but maybe what is needed right now and certainly the best person to deal with economic chaos caused by Trump.
The polling suggests that she was very far from alone in that assessment. Whether the massive swing from the NDP to Liberal was a one off will probably determine where Canada goes from here.
A friend tells me renewable energy (namely failing to switch the grid over to gas supply for a rest period) is responsible for the Iberian blackouts.
If this anecdote happens to be true, then it its the "FAILING to switch the grid over" which was responsible, not that one of the generation methods was being renewable energy.
That would be the trigger, overreliance on renewables would be the cause.
I understand that energy generated from solar and wind is different from other sources of energy and needs turbine energy from other sources to protect the network
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Would you mind sharing your source @Big_G_NorthWales? I've just been ranted at by 3 PBers for saying exactly the same thing.
It's the lack of a source other than 'a friend' in your post that has caused the comments. Without context, your friend could be the head of the Spanish electricity grid or a 5G/Covid vaccine chips nutter, which is why people are commenting on it (or, at least, why I did).
It may be that some design cock-up or very unexpected event relating to renewable energy integration is behind this. In the same way, as posted by others, that sudden power station failures have caused blackouts before.
ETA: Whether it's related to renewable energy generation and integration is an entirely legitimate question (in the sense of how can it be prevented from happening again).
‘You sold it – now recycle it’: the protesters mailing worn-out clothes to the shops they bought them from
Guardian headline. A classic. No question of the headline 'I bought it so it is my responsibility'. That's not how buck passing works.
I thought I was the only person who wears clothes until they're worn out. Glad to hear there are more of us.
I try to but my wife has an irritating habit of spending our hard earned money on new clothes I do not need. I love her very much but it is one thing I hate. I dread birthdays and Fathers' Day for this reason.
The same people said "May as well give Brexit a go. Got nothing to lose." then couldn't understand why life got worse
Fucking Brexit again 🙄
Life was shit before for many, it was shit after. No Change
The parts of Brum I walked through going to the match on Saturday are run down, high density, small housing, grimy and grubby. It was no different last time I was there. Their lives have not got appreciably worse as they were shit anyway.
Who’s having a worst morning. Pierre Poilievre, Donald Trump or Liz Truss…
What’s Liz done now?
Taking a step back, I doubt its Trump. After all he is still the President of the USA, and will be for nearly four more years. He's won two (some say three) presidencies.
I wonder if Trump himself genuinely believes that Biden stole the election.
Its an interesting question. I'm currently reading KL - about the Nazi concentration camps (not a fun read) and listening to the Rest Is History on Munich. Two things play on my mind. I think a great many Germans believed that they were doing the right thing under the Nazis. The We Have Ways guys (Al Murray and James Holland) are doing stuff on 1945 currently and keep returning to ask 'why didn't Germans just give up?' For me its complex - fear of the Russian invader, fear of being shot if you didn't but also we miss the sense that Germans were defending their homeland, and often believed that they were in the right, and that all the world is against them, unfairly,
Now we may scoff at that idea, but we live in a time when we mostly accept that people can believe that they were born in the wrong body, billions still believe in God(s) and its entirely possible that Trump thinks that he did beat Biden and skullduggery prevented his win.
I went to a lecture/dinner by Professor Matthias Strohn, where he explained it.
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
Not sure that’s true
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Pretty sure if shame and guilt over the Jews were factors, they were deeply buried in the collective subconscious, there was a whole layer of denial about knowing anything about the camps to get through first. I may be wrong but I don't think there was a surge of suicides after the German population had their noses rubbed in the Holocaust, literally or via films. I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
Quite recently I read this authoritative book on the exact subject
It’s excellent if harrowing. Makes clear guilt about the Jews and the eastern front played a role
It’s a fine point of difference, but I’d still distinguish between guilt (we have done a terrible and evil thing) and fear of the consequences of being found to have done a a terrible and evil thing.
We cannot make windows into men’s souls. But the way the author phrases it, some Germans were able to suspend their shame and guilt as long as they were winning, but when it became clear they were going to lose, and that they would face Die Rechnung - then that made them face their own guilt, long hidden. And they couldn’t abide it
So many offed themselves it would be amazing if a proportion didn’t do it out of basic brutal remorse
Probably many more in the east did it out of abject fear of the Red Army, and for good reason
“Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich” by Bartov, might be of some use.
He uses analyses of soldiers letters to provide evidence of his ideas. Because conscription was universal and so was mail censorship, there is a huge amount of data.
Essentially, Nazi propaganda had created a mindset that even *hardline opponents* of the regime had bought into. The war in Russia was characterised as Civilisation vs Barely Human Barbarians.
So even as they describe committing atrocities, soldiers would blame *the victims* - it was all down to the subhumans.
With the retreat at the end of the war, the assumption was that the “subhumans” would annihilate “civilisation”
‘So even as they describe committing atrocities, soldiers would blame *the victims* - it was all down to the subhumans.’
“We are just in the car back from focus groups this weekend in Beverley, Hull, Scunthorpe & Peterborough and without doubt the disillusionment was the worst I’ve heard, in every group it was anger; despondency or misery about the state of Britain that doesn’t feel sustainable.”
The whole thread is illuminating. Farage looking evermore likely to reap the benefits, despite the Trump connection
Do you know any of those places ?
The comment about the steelworks was also interesting. I get the sense that large swathes of the country outside the golden triangle think (not without good reason) that they've been left to rot, by successive governments ever since deindustrialization took hold in the 80s.
The idea that Reform offers any solutions is fanciful.
I’ve worked in Peterborough and worked in Hull, visited Beverley a few times as its a lovely part of the world down there.
The idea any other party offers solutions is nonsensical given these places have voted for the other parties over the years and nothing really improves. Nothing changes. Managed decline.
May as well give Reform ago. Got nothing to lose.
Take Durham, people got fed up of Labour. Voted them out last time. And alot of tactical anti Labour voting too. We got a coalition and had great expectations based on what they said beforehand. They have hardly been a roaring success. So people feel why not Reform.
The idea Reform in govt will naturally be clueless and spineless and laughably inept - maybe even as bad as Starmer and Co - is basic bigotry. A preformed negative idea
Yes they might be shit, they are untested. But there are plenty of ideas floating around
Eg take Carswell’s Plan for Britain. It’s detailed and costed and thorough. You can object to it ideologically but you can’t say it’s childish nonsense
And remember, Carswell was a UKIP MP and therefore quite close to Farage. I suspect a reform government might do something like his “plan for Britain”
Anyone who thinks replacing VAT with a local sales tax is an idiot.
And at least half the other ideas are equally stupid - reducing corporation tax solves what problem exactly?
A flood of UK companies domiciling elsewhere?
It’s tax policy time at PB again!
Replacing VAT with sales tax will probably happen eventually, once cash has disappeared from the economy and all transactions are instantaneously logged with HMRC. Then the principal reason for VAT over consumer sales tax (countering supply chain fraud) will no longer be here.
Reform are the NIMBY party, we’ve had pylons for decades and they want to stop them being built.
This is what I mean when I say whatever Labour try to do, the NIMBY establishment will oppose at any turn. They really need to tell them where to go.
And with that, fin.
I still don't get your 5 strikes and out thing.
WRT pylons, there are two ways to avoid them. 1) Build high-use energy industries near to the power generation source. Instead of cast pylons to carry energy from Scotland down to the Varsity Crescent for datacentres, build those in Aberdeenshire where the power is onshored 2) Build power generation where the pylons already are. As you can't build renewables in Nottinghamshire etc that means building coal / gas which takes time and leaves us reliant on the forrin
Fukkers have a third way - don't bother with woke things like AI datacentres or anything else which needs power. Nor do you have to actually reopen the coal mines or rebuild the coal power stations - you just chant Net Zero is woke and mysteriously we're transported back to 1978!
A party that opposes the pylons being built from Norwich to Tilbury will clean up. It’s the one thing that seems to unite people of all political persuasions round here. People would rather higher energy bills than the neighbourhood ruined
A year after they've been built nobody will even notice them any more.
Even if that were true, which I doubt, it doesn’t make it a good thing. Plenty of tragic things happen that people move on from, but it doesn’t mean life is not worse than it was before.
I play football in Grays, and as I turn into the road where the ground is, huge pylons start to dominate the sky. I find it quite depressing, and reminds me that Grays is a bit of a khazi. It doesn’t bother me to be a NIMBY, I’d rather pay higher energy bills than have the pylons spoil the beauty of the countryside
Grays is hardly typical, though.
It's one mile from the two tallest pylons in the entire country, which are 600+ft tall (ie taller than the Post Office Tower) and used to bring 400kV wires across the Thames just below the QE bridge !
The vast majority of transmission pylons are under a quarter of that height, at 120 to 150 ft - despite the shit shovelled by the Daily Telegraph about 600ft pylons appearing all over Essex.
If the people of Essex believe the Telegraph, then no disrespect but that is entirely their own problem.
I will freely acknowledge that I have only the vaguest knowledge of Canadian politics, all from PB.
My understanding is that Trudeau was considered a weak PM, and became deeply unpopular. And that there are deeper issues within Canada relating to housing shortages, and a growing resentment about well-off boomers who appear to be pulling up the drawbridge behind them (and who vote Liberal). It seems extraordinary to me that a country the size of Canada can have nimbyism, but I suppose everything is relative.
I do not see that Carney has signalled that he will depart significantly from the Trudeau path (and I would doubt it even if he had). He has been allowed to win because for enough people the election had effectively become an identity issue. That leaves all the problems under Trudeau still there, and unlikely to improve. While Carney's only merit is that he is anti-Trump, in a similar way to the fact that Starmer’s only merit is that he isn't the outgoing Tory Government. That didn't provide much of a honeymoon for Starmer, and I don't really see it doing the same for Carney.
Except Trump being Trump is going to provide all the ammunition and support that Carney needs to have a decent honeymoon.
Anti Trump fervour might keep you warm, but you can't live in it.
Your question was whether Carney will get a political honeymoon - with Trump around I suspect he will get one.
And my argument is that he won't, because whilst sticking it to Trump is undoubtedly a thing, those who actually changed their vote will quickly realise that the bread and butter issues that initially moved them away from the Liberals still remain.
Comments
He said that most Germans (even those who were anti-Nazi), were convinced that they were fighting a defensive war, and that remained the predominant view in Germany up until the 1970's.
🤣
It’s straight forward. Life Long one nation Conservatives appalled at deals with Reform and getting pulled further to the right, who can so easily vote Lib Dem instead, and voters who have never voted Conservative who vote Reform because Farage attacks the One Million a Year immigration figure as unacceptable. You can’t add the parties polling figures together and get all those voters. Voters appalled to find themselves in bed with each other.
https://x.com/LiberalAus/status/1916756770552263027
Now we may disagree with all of those - the first is interesting and very much linked to the third. But we shouldn't ignore the lived experience of Germans in those times as it explains a lot of what happened in the 20's through to 1945.
Cf the huge wave of suicides in Germany - even, especially western Germany - as the end of the war approached. Entire families, staff rooms at schools, the employees of local companies, they all topped themselves en masse, to the extent you could hop-scotch across a German river by stepping on the corpses
And this happened in the West where there was no threat of Red Army rape and plunder
The best explanation I’ve read for this is vast national shame and guilt. “We have done terrible things and now the world will see us for what we are”
I”m not saying you’re entirely wrong but I question your phrase “predominant view”
Nobody is telling the voters the unpalatable truth: we can't afford what we have come to expect from our government. Admitting this is political poison - as May found out when wandering into the debate on care for the elderly in the 2017 general election. Denying it causes the voters to veer off ever further to the margins.
Kemi should offer to work with Starmer to tell the public what we can and cannot afford. If Starmer refuses, he can own the fallout. If he agrees, then there is the start of a way back with the voters.
When this happens, in the end either a charismatic autocracy will have a go, and of course crash and burn; or, more intelligently, the voting public will need to reframe their expectations of what constitutes a problem, and what constitutes a solution, and what constitutes intelligent long term progress, aims and aspirations.
For the great majority of humanity happiness lies in right expectations.
It's interesting to ask ourselves exactly what chemicals went up in that Iranian port last week, and how it might dent Iranian weapons production...
I had to wheel my mother in law into hospital this week (long story, stupid NHS wasting bed space and harming patients as usual) and the female porter asked if we'd seen Douglas Murray.
If even hospital staff have gone Reform adjacent in public, albeit at 3am, I think there's a good chance that we'll have a Reform mayor and possibly council too.
I give it 6 months before the in-fighting (this might be generous).
Trump or no Trump this issue is not going away, indeed it is likely to get MORE venomous
It will be interesting to see how Carney handles it in Canada
It covers attempts to develop the moor, dump china clay waste on it, build reservoirs etc. There is a fair amount about Lady Sylvia Sayer, who was known as "Shield of the Moor".
Dartmoor Calling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-VCdC71rZQ
I picked it up from the Open Spaces Society mailing.
I'd say shame about a national defeat even more disastrous than 1918, justified fear about what the Soviets would do to them and and for many a genuine belief in the Hitler dream would be motivations for many of the suicides.
I am in one of the large number of seats (new boundaries) that was probably notionally Tory, went Labour in 2024 and it will be uncertain whether Lab or Tory is the one to beat Reform, who are currently predicted to win next time. There are I suspect many such seats.
Personally I prefer to live in the 21st century, not the 19th.
To get to the stage where prices are rising below inflation - so prices *just stop going up* - would take a heroic amount of building. Whole new cities worth.
A lot of Israelis themselves, disliked focusing on an event that emphasised Jewish victimhood. When compensation was mooted by West Germany, in the 1950's, there was widespread protest in Israel, by people who thought it wrong that money could ever make good what had happened.
If Farage manages to ride it through to the next GE I would put money on his government being an unmitigated disaster. However I believe his bubble will have burst in 4 years time but if it hasn't we will see tactical voting on an unprecedented scale as we have just seen in Canada. As someone has pointed out upthread he might be loved by the 25% of voters that also love Trump but he is loathed by the other 75%.
I think the challenge with training more is that it's one of those healthcare jobs that requires lots of training but is relatively poorly paid.
Congrats also to Casino Royale who I believe also played his cards correctly.
As TSE is a lawyer, I assume that those of us benefiting from his advice will be receiving an invoice shortly?
Thanks to @TheScreamingEagles
Some time ago when I was involved in local politics, UKIP got a few seats. Overwhelmingly they were off-the-wall nutjobs who couldn't carry out the functions of the roles their vote share gave them. Useless doesn't actually cover it.
There was a cadre of ex-Conservatives at the time who got so fed up with ConCentral they became Indies and they are a) still Indies and b) still run the local council very well. So there are competent conservative councillors out there but they don't need or want to associate with Conservatives - or Reform.
Likely if Reform do win a few local seats, history will repeat itself and we'll see what a bunch of timewasters they are.
In learning a little about Nunavut, I found this: "In 2023, Nunavut had the highest total fertility rate (TFR) in Canada, at 2.48 children per woman. This was significantly higher than the national average of 1.26 children per woman, which was the lowest ever recorded for Canada." (Google AI overview)
British Columbia's TFR is about 1.0.
Granted, the population for this immense area is -- most likely -- less than 40K, but it is young: "The median age in Nunavut is 25.1 years, according to the 2016 census. This is significantly younger than the median age of Canada (41.2 years). Those aged 65 years and over account for 3.8% of the population."
(It might grow even faster, if the Canada government provided them with one or more SMRs, so they could grow food in greenhouses.).
The RAF's original plan was fly off the entire air wing in the Med and move them to Oman (or back to the UK) in case the Hooties blasted one (or more) F-35s off the deck as they passed Arabia Felix. The RN had a conniption and pointed out that there's not much point in a Naval Air Wing that you can't put into a hostile environment so the plan got shelved. The scheme may be ripe for reactivation now.
Hilarious
I do live in the 21st Century, happily with no big pylons near me and would like it to stay that way.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/29/promise-me-youll-shoot-yourself-the-downfall-of-ordinary-germans-in-1945-florian-huber-review
It’s excellent if harrowing. Makes clear guilt about the Jews and the eastern front played a role
I didn't think Carney got everything right at the BOE but he was an effective Governor and in my limited interactions with him I found him a very impressive individual, smart without losing his sense of humour and without the airs and graces that holders of senior positions often have. I'm sure he will be a great PM for Canada and hopefully the UK-Canada relationship will deepen further.
Kinda feels like the same sort of language as "darkies" and I didn't think I'd see it in a national newspaper.
I think "gammon" is just the other side of the line, given that it's the sort of colour people change to after ranting energetically, and so refers to a behaviour and constitution as well as an immutable skin colour.
The Libs gained seats and Poilievre lost his riding BUT:
- The left block of Lib/ND/Green lost seats
- The ND's leader Singh who seemed amenable to the Libs has gone. The new leader will have to play hard ball for the party to survive and attack the Libs from the left.
- Even if the NDs play ball, they would have a tiny combined majority vulnerable to by-elections
- If Poilievre quits, then the Con leadership contest will be a festival of flag waving and Trump kicking, allowing the party to reposition.
How I can see this panning out is that Carney's honeymoon wears off, political gravity reasserts itself and then in a few years Con/ND/BQ find an excuse to no confidence the government, leading to another election, which the Libs lose heavily.
Historical note: Con/ND/BQ combined to bring down the Lib Government in 2006 following a scandal.
Normally party leaders get a vote boost, they are on TV every day of the campaign and their opponents usually anonymous by comparison. Rishi Sunak only lost 15% vote share in Richmond and Northallerton in 2024, whereas in both Skipton and Ripon, and Thirsk and Melton the Tory candidates dropped 23%.
What happened there? What made him unpopular in his own riding?
Donald Trump should “serve as an inspiration,” says Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. 🤔
https://bsky.app/profile/helenebismarck.bsky.social/post/3lnx5ynzvys26
It seems Spain and Portugal have been exposed to too much reliance on solar and wind which in turn is a lesson that may be needed to be learnt.
I would say I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert on energy production
Guardian headline. A classic. No question of the headline 'I bought it so it is my responsibility'. That's not how buck passing works.
Anyway, it'd be best to wait for more information, rather than believe people with 'friends' on t'Internet who just so happen to back up their own views...
People who use terms that they know their target objects to are on the wrong side of the line. (I'd also extend it to anybody who uses the term "Tory scum".)
My understanding is that Trudeau was considered a weak PM, and became deeply unpopular. And that there are deeper issues within Canada relating to housing shortages, and a growing resentment about well-off boomers who appear to be pulling up the drawbridge behind them (and who vote Liberal). It seems extraordinary to me that a country the size of Canada can have nimbyism, but I suppose everything is relative.
I do not see that Carney has signalled that he will depart significantly from the Trudeau path (and I would doubt it even if he had). He has been allowed to win because for enough people the election had effectively become an identity issue. That leaves all the problems under Trudeau still there, and unlikely to improve. While Carney's only merit is that he is anti-Trump, in a similar way to the fact that Starmer’s only merit is that he isn't the outgoing Tory Government. That didn't provide much of a honeymoon for Starmer, and I don't really see it doing the same for Carney.
So many offed themselves it would be amazing if a proportion didn’t do it out of basic brutal remorse
Probably many more in the east did it out of abject fear of the Red Army, and for good reason
https://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2025/04/guest-post-256-local-councillors-have.html
Ref 26%
Lab 23%
Con 20%
LD 15%
Grn 9%
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1917173312691581216
They also sell decent coffee
NEWS in
@punchbowlnews
AM:
@amazon
will start displaying how much of an item’s cost is derived from tariffs – right next to the product’s total listed price.
https://x.com/JakeSherman/status/1917167638234431879
How long before Donny signs an EO saying this is illegal...
The idea any other party offers solutions is nonsensical given these places have voted for the other parties over the years and nothing really improves. Nothing changes. Managed decline.
May as well give Reform ago. Got nothing to lose.
Take Durham, people got fed up of Labour. Voted them out last time. And alot of tactical anti Labour voting too. We got a coalition and had great expectations based on what they said beforehand. They have hardly been a roaring success. So people feel why not Reform.
Yes they might be shit, they are untested. But there are plenty of ideas floating around
Eg take Carswell’s Plan for Britain. It’s detailed and costed and thorough. You can object to it ideologically but you can’t say it’s childish nonsense
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/22/my-plan-to-get-britain-back-on-track-growth-services-border/
And remember, Carswell was a UKIP MP and therefore quite close to Farage. I suspect a reform government might do something like his “plan for Britain”
A lot of our clothes turnover go to others (still a lot outgrown by children rather than worn out). Those that do get worn out tend to become dirty-jobs clothes and/or rags for e.g. decorating/DIY purposes/augmenting dustsheets around non-linear obstacles, but then landfill.
Some items would be recyclable - some of the fairly pure synthetic fabrics, maybe? Others, such as cotton/wool etc can presumably be decomposed (could wool be treated and re-purposed into insulation?). It would be a good thing to have thought put into material composition to facilitate those options and appropriate labelling.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/29/grid-operator-investigates-unusual-activity-spain-blackouts/
And at least half the other ideas are equally stupid - reducing corporation tax solves what problem exactly?
He uses analyses of soldiers letters to provide evidence of his ideas. Because conscription was universal and so was mail censorship, there is a huge amount of data.
Essentially, Nazi propaganda had created a mindset that even *hardline opponents* of the regime had bought into. The war in Russia was characterised as Civilisation vs Barely Human Barbarians.
So even as they describe committing atrocities, soldiers would blame *the victims* - it was all down to the subhumans.
With the retreat at the end of the war, the assumption was that the “subhumans” would annihilate “civilisation”
It may be that some design cock-up or very unexpected event relating to renewable energy integration is behind this. In the same way, as posted by others, that sudden power station failures have caused blackouts before.
ETA: Whether it's related to renewable energy generation and integration is an entirely legitimate question (in the sense of how can it be prevented from happening again).
The polling suggests that she was very far from alone in that assessment. Whether the massive swing from the NDP to Liberal was a one off will probably determine where Canada goes from here.
Life was shit before for many, it was shit after. No Change
The parts of Brum I walked through going to the match on Saturday are run down, high density, small housing, grimy and grubby. It was no different last time I was there. Their lives have not got appreciably worse as they were shit anyway.
Plus ça change.
Replacing VAT with sales tax will probably happen eventually, once cash has disappeared from the economy and all transactions are instantaneously logged with HMRC. Then the principal reason for VAT over consumer sales tax (countering supply chain fraud) will no longer be here.
It's one mile from the two tallest pylons in the entire country, which are 600+ft tall (ie taller than the Post Office Tower) and used to bring 400kV wires across the Thames just below the QE bridge !
The vast majority of transmission pylons are under a quarter of that height, at 120 to 150 ft - despite the shit shovelled by the Daily Telegraph about 600ft pylons appearing all over Essex.
If the people of Essex believe the Telegraph, then no disrespect but that is entirely their own problem.
Rang up the tax office expecting at least a 30 minute call.
After going through the automated shite got to speak to a person straight away.
Jurassic Park !!