You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
It's legitimate for people to oppose immigration regardless of whether it is or isn't causing some particular economic problem. If you don't accept this then you are not a democrat.
You could respond to half the posts on PB by saying, "It's legitimate for people to oppose X regardless of whether it is or isn't causing some particular economic problem. If you don't accept this then you are not a democrat." We're having a political discussion, William. People are putting forward different views. That's how democracy works. We talk about immigration here, and in wider political discourse, all the bloody time. No-one is being oppressed by what I've posted.
“We’re having a political discussion, William”
Why do I imagine this being said by the most annoying, half witted woman in the History of Condescension?
Sometime in the tone of voice. The voice of a deputy head mistress halfway through the menopause
When I was at school I tried convoluted comedy until someone one day told me to stfu as I was not remotely funny.
Take a tip. Keep it simple squire.
I wrote a condescending post to William, which seems the best response when he's being so silly. Leon noticed it was condescending. I think he wants some sort of gold star for basic reading comprehension because of this?
I wasn't critical of Leon's admonishment of your condescending post, and if you feel the cap fits, wear it. It was the woeful attempt at comedy that raised my eyebrow.
Comedy ?
I thought it was genuine, if over-effusive appreciation of a nice piece of performative condescension, of which Leon was envious.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
It's legitimate for people to oppose immigration regardless of whether it is or isn't causing some particular economic problem. If you don't accept this then you are not a democrat.
You could respond to half the posts on PB by saying, "It's legitimate for people to oppose X regardless of whether it is or isn't causing some particular economic problem. If you don't accept this then you are not a democrat." We're having a political discussion, William. People are putting forward different views. That's how democracy works. We talk about immigration here, and in wider political discourse, all the bloody time. No-one is being oppressed by what I've posted.
“We’re having a political discussion, William”
Why do I imagine this being said by the most annoying, half witted woman in the History of Condescension?
Sometime in the tone of voice. The voice of a deputy head mistress halfway through the menopause
When I was at school I tried convoluted comedy until someone one day told me to stfu as I was not remotely funny.
Take a tip. Keep it simple squire.
I wrote a condescending post to William, which seems the best response when he's being so silly. Leon noticed it was condescending. I think he wants some sort of gold star for basic reading comprehension because of this?
I wasn't critical of Leon's admonishment of your condescending post, and if you feel the cap fits, wear it. It was the woeful attempt at comedy that raised my eyebrow.
Comedy ?
I thought it was genuine, if over-effusive appreciation of a nice piece of performative condescension, of which Leon was envious.
I've just read that Gatwick airport management are putting up the drop off charge to 7quid from 2 May. There is no possible justification apart from some bullshit about the eco footprint bollocks so often spoken about. If Gatwick was worried about it's eco footprintbolocks they'd reduce the no of flights not try for a second runway. The whole business is shambolic and designed to fleece the traveller.
To get the runway they need to increase the number of people arriving by train which means it’s going to get even more expensive as time as go
Trump on GDP numbers : “You probably saw some numbers today. I have to start off by saying that's Biden, not Trump. Because we came in on January, these are quarterly numbers” https://x.com/PolymarketIntel/status/1917606152285602084
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
It's legitimate for people to oppose immigration regardless of whether it is or isn't causing some particular economic problem. If you don't accept this then you are not a democrat.
You could respond to half the posts on PB by saying, "It's legitimate for people to oppose X regardless of whether it is or isn't causing some particular economic problem. If you don't accept this then you are not a democrat." We're having a political discussion, William. People are putting forward different views. That's how democracy works. We talk about immigration here, and in wider political discourse, all the bloody time. No-one is being oppressed by what I've posted.
“We’re having a political discussion, William”
Why do I imagine this being said by the most annoying, half witted woman in the History of Condescension?
Sometime in the tone of voice. The voice of a deputy head mistress halfway through the menopause
When I was at school I tried convoluted comedy until someone one day told me to stfu as I was not remotely funny.
Take a tip. Keep it simple squire.
I wrote a condescending post to William, which seems the best response when he's being so silly. Leon noticed it was condescending. I think he wants some sort of gold star for basic reading comprehension because of this?
I wasn't critical of Leon's admonishment of your condescending post, and if you feel the cap fits, wear it. It was the woeful attempt at comedy that raised my eyebrow.
Comedy ?
I thought it was genuine, if over-effusive appreciation of a nice piece of performative condescension, of which Leon was envious.
I've just read that Gatwick airport management are putting up the drop off charge to 7quid from 2 May. There is no possible justification apart from some bullshit about the eco footprint bollocks so often spoken about. If Gatwick was worried about it's eco footprintbolocks they'd reduce the no of flights not try for a second runway. The whole business is shambolic and designed to fleece the traveller.
You get 2 hrs pick up and drop off at the long stay foc and the airport buses are every few minutes and only take a few minutes so it is a bit of an unnecessary luxury to be delivered or picked up directly from the terminal to be honest.
I would have put the charge up even further. People complaining about this probably have a bad case of CarBrain, they can't comprehend doing anything but using a car to drive right to the door of the place they need to be.
I normally get the train to Gatwick, unless I have a particularly early flight - and I tend not to book those. Partly because I can't get there, partly because getting up in the middle of the night starts a trip on a bum note
We use a taxi as we live in the country. It's an outrage. We don't drive to Gatwivk nor leave a car there. Punish the car parkers if you have to.
I've just read that Gatwick airport management are putting up the drop off charge to 7quid from 2 May. There is no possible justification apart from some bullshit about the eco footprint bollocks so often spoken about. If Gatwick was worried about it's eco footprintbolocks they'd reduce the no of flights not try for a second runway. The whole business is shambolic and designed to fleece the traveller.
You get 2 hrs pick up and drop off at the long stay foc and the airport buses are every few minutes and only take a few minutes so it is a bit of an unnecessary luxury to be delivered or picked up directly from the terminal to be honest.
I would have put the charge up even further. People complaining about this probably have a bad case of CarBrain, they can't comprehend doing anything but using a car to drive right to the door of the place they need to be.
I normally get the train to Gatwick, unless I have a particularly early flight - and I tend not to book those. Partly because I can't get there, partly because getting up in the middle of the night starts a trip on a bum note
The couple of times I’ve had an early flight from Gatwick it’s been travel down the night before and the premier inn by the airport isn’t that expensive in the scheme of things
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
Of course we're too full. Look at the really nice parts of the country, (eg. Derbyshire Dales) and they have one thing in common. Low population density. I've lived in umpteen different places, the pleasantness of every place has been pretty much inversely proportional to the number of people who get to live there.
My attractive market town of around 20k inhabitants has gained over 1000 new houses in the last 5 years. That's an extraordinary rate of growth, and completely unsustainable. The result has been to collapse the transport infrastructure (ten years ago I never sat in traffic ever - now half the day it's a snarled up hell-hole).
There have been zero new doctors surgeries, they've run down and partially closed the cottage hospital (so for anything serious, including maternity services it's a 45 min drive). No new supermarkets. We are apparently getting a McDonald's though, so it's all good. Oh, and house prices have doubled in ten years, which would be great for a homeowner like me, if it wasn't for the fact that I need a house to live in, so the notional value is meaningless.
The problem is simple - too many people for the space. The fix - stop letting more in.
And yes, birth rates, death rates etc are relevant. But when we're importing a net million people a year, that's the place to look first and most urgently.
I don't think net zero immigration it will even fix much - it's going to take years of building masses of houses to make them affordable again even with the population static, but it will at least reduce the rate at which time are getting rapidly worse, which is where it is headed at the moment.
I live in north London. It's fantastic. I'd hate to live in the Derbyshire Dales. Just because you like living in places of lower population density doesn't prove anything.
Your NHS services are poorer because the Tories underfunded the NHS. The hold-ups in house building are not caused by immigrants existing.
I'm pretty sure you're the outlier here, I'm quite confident that far more of those living in North London would live in the Derbyshire Dales (work permitting, which is why they don't) than the other way round. Anyway, if you want to pile more immigrants into North London, be my guest, but we need to start issuing visas before any of you North Londoners are allowed to flee outside the M25 as a result. We don't want or need either you or them.
My point is that there aren't hold ups in house building - my town is currently growing by about 10% every five years, which is raging insanity, considering that it probably only grew by 20% over the whole 20th century. The problem is that demand massively outsrips supply (in no small part southerners fleeing the dump that is the SE, based at least on who all the new people rocking up at church at the moment), because we have too many people for the availabile housing stock.
There aren't less roads in my town now than ten years ago - but now they are all snarled up. Why? Too many people. There isn't room for any new roads, so it's now all just permanently stuffed. And they are still building houses and importing people like crazy.
Do you not get why people are angry? My quality is life is being downgraded, because of bleeding heart liberals like you, filling the country with people we neither want or need.
And because the government is run by people like you, who don't understand this either, it looks increasingly likely Reform will win the next GE. I hope you all enjoy the ride.
It's WORSE than that. People in government DO understand that stuffing the country with evermore migrants is probably a disaster for the natives, but they don't care, because it makes them feel temporarily good and artificially boosts GDP, even if it makes individuals poorer
Worse, quite a few of them want the disaster, as they believe you deserve it, for being white, or British, or native, or working class, or a racist, or all of these and more
However, I'm not sure @bondegezou is smart enough to be in either of these categories. I suspect @bondegezou is quite dim, very narrow minded, and simply doesn't grasp the issues
Trump: "We took over on January 20. These are quarterly reports. The tariffs haven't kicked in yet. I know that -- and I don't want this to happen -- I know that China is doing very poorly right now ... the biggest boats in the world carrying cargo like nobody has ever seen are turning around."
Trump: "We took over on January 20. These are quarterly reports. The tariffs haven't kicked in yet. I know that -- and I don't want this to happen -- I know that China is doing very poorly right now ... the biggest boats in the world carrying cargo like nobody has ever seen are turning around."
Trump on GDP numbers : “You probably saw some numbers today. I have to start off by saying that's Biden, not Trump. Because we came in on January, these are quarterly numbers” https://x.com/PolymarketIntel/status/1917606152285602084
Trump on GDP numbers : “You probably saw some numbers today. I have to start off by saying that's Biden, not Trump. Because we came in on January, these are quarterly numbers” https://x.com/PolymarketIntel/status/1917606152285602084
It’s a drawback of electoral politics that someone with a long-term vision has to engage in this kind of discussion about short-term movements. The Chinese stock market hasn’t performed well over the last couple of decades but few would deny it’s been an economic success.
Tom Harris in the Telegraph today still upset about Ed Miliband winning the 2010 Labour leadership election.
After all, this is the man who chose to stand against his older, more experienced, more popular brother for the leadership in 2010, an act of familial disloyalty that earned him the long-lasting enmity of much of the electorate and which, arguably, cost his party the 2015 election.
I was there as well Tom, and David could have acted like he wanted to win rather than swan around assuming it was in the bag already.
Trump on GDP numbers : “You probably saw some numbers today. I have to start off by saying that's Biden, not Trump. Because we came in on January, these are quarterly numbers” https://x.com/PolymarketIntel/status/1917606152285602084
It’s a drawback of electoral politics that someone with a long-term vision has to engage in this kind of discussion about short-term movements. The Chinese stock market hasn’t performed well over the last couple of decades but few would deny it’s been an economic success.
A bellwether industry re uncertainty, tariffs aside. I had a friend who worked for Volvo construction equipment. When the 2007 financial crisis hit, their sales went down 95%. Because you can just keep using the equipment you have.
Why the FUCK is this in French? Seriously? Why? Everything on the net all the time should be in English, always. French???? What's the point in that?
Fuck all that. Reform should put it in their manifesto, alongside temporarily blinding litterbugs, "we will introduce legislation so that English is spoken all places and Belgian monks will be publicly castrated and free cakes for British Mums on Tuesdays"
It's times like this, full of vigour and insight, that I feel my head turning - turning towards the light - towards the light that is my future, and I hear a soft but certain voice saying: "Yes Leon, POLITICS. Now is your moment"
Tom Harris in the Telegraph today still upset about Ed Miliband winning the 2010 Labour leadership election.
After all, this is the man who chose to stand against his older, more experienced, more popular brother for the leadership in 2010, an act of familial disloyalty that earned him the long-lasting enmity of much of the electorate and which, arguably, cost his party the 2015 election.
I was there as well Tom, and David could have acted like he wanted to win rather than swan around assuming it was in the bag already.
Ed Miliband had to run, to prove he was due a place in shadow cabinet on merit.
Why the FUCK is this in French? Seriously? Why? Everything on the net all the time should be in English, always. French???? What's the point in that?
Fuck all that. Reform should put it in their manifesto, alongside temporarily blinding litterbugs, "we will introduce legislation so that English is spoken all places and Belgian monks will be publicly castrated and free cakes for British Mums on Tuesdays"
It's times like this, full of vigour and insight, that I feel my head turning - turning towards the light - towards the light that is my future, and I hear a soft but certain voice saying: "Yes Leon, POLITICS. Now is your moment"
If they blind fly-tippers how will they be able to place their cross against the Reform candidate... you're not thinking this through
ETA a brand new line and they forgot about summer.
I don't think any of the Heathrow to Paddington bit is new - the Lizzie line trains replaced the ones Heathrow Connect (i.e. the none Heathrow Express trains from Paddington).
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Why the FUCK is this in French? Seriously? Why? Everything on the net all the time should be in English, always. French???? What's the point in that?
Fuck all that. Reform should put it in their manifesto, alongside temporarily blinding litterbugs, "we will introduce legislation so that English is spoken all places and Belgian monks will be publicly castrated and free cakes for British Mums on Tuesdays"
It's times like this, full of vigour and insight, that I feel my head turning - turning towards the light - towards the light that is my future, and I hear a soft but certain voice saying: "Yes Leon, POLITICS. Now is your moment"
A new party, or will you be a shot in the arm for an existing one?
Why the FUCK is this in French? Seriously? Why? Everything on the net all the time should be in English, always. French???? What's the point in that?
Fuck all that. Reform should put it in their manifesto, alongside temporarily blinding litterbugs, "we will introduce legislation so that English is spoken all places and Belgian monks will be publicly castrated and free cakes for British Mums on Tuesdays"
It's times like this, full of vigour and insight, that I feel my head turning - turning towards the light - towards the light that is my future, and I hear a soft but certain voice saying: "Yes Leon, POLITICS. Now is your moment"
If they blind fly-tippers how will they be able to place their cross against the Reform candidate... you're not thinking this through
No, I am donning the mantle, buttoning the old uniform, and pulling the musket from the thatch. Excalibur glitters, drawn from its sheath of muted stone
READY
It's not even something I want, but it is a duty. It is a higher calling. Someone has to Taser the Litterbugs, throw everyone foreign into the Walbrook, and make blackface compulsory for all primary school teachers
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Not really, the Tories might get into government with Reform next time if Reform win seats like Runcorn they were second in at the GE and the Tories win seats they were second.
The Tories are certainly not getting into government again at the next GE if Labour hold most of their seats and either win outright again or propped up by the LDs in a hung parliament
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Not really, the Tories might get into government with Reform next time if Reform win seats like Runcorn they were second in at the GE and the Tories win seats they were second.
The Tories are certainly not getting into government again at the next GE if Labour hold most of their seats and either win outright again or propped up by the LDs in a hung parliament
Hasn't the rapid turnaround in the Canadian election result not opened your eyes to the possibility that a lot might change between the current polling and the next UK election?
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
This article suggests that is exactly the aim. Although Labour trying to squeeze the Tory vote will probably cause an aneurysm in Epping, it tallies with exactly what I've been picking up. Labour may well win the wealthiest wards. Expect Reform to squeak it. Wouldn't be shocked if Labour held. Tory share should be sold and sold again. It will be a number to behold.
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Not really, the Tories might get into government with Reform next time if Reform win seats like Runcorn they were second in at the GE and the Tories win seats they were second.
The Tories are certainly not getting into government again at the next GE if Labour hold most of their seats and either win outright again or propped up by the LDs in a hung parliament
Hasn't the rapid turnaround in the Canadian election result not opened your eyes to the possibility that a lot might change between the current polling and the next UK election?
Trump will no longer be in power at either the next UK or Canadian election as a foil against for Labour and the Liberals and in Canada a united right still prevented a Liberal majority and gained seats and over 40% voteshare
Tom Harris in the Telegraph today still upset about Ed Miliband winning the 2010 Labour leadership election.
After all, this is the man who chose to stand against his older, more experienced, more popular brother for the leadership in 2010, an act of familial disloyalty that earned him the long-lasting enmity of much of the electorate and which, arguably, cost his party the 2015 election.
I was there as well Tom, and David could have acted like he wanted to win rather than swan around assuming it was in the bag already.
I just find the Miliband stuff still being a thing quite weird.
In the real world, people go for promotion if they think they've got a good shout and a good case to make. I might not throw my hat in the ring if I think Sally has the manager's job in the bag and applying would just embarrass me. But very few people say, "I reckon I've got a good chance and would be good at it but, after extensive soul-searching, I've decided Sally would be slightly better on an objective level so I'll stand aside". And nobody really expects them to. It's interesting in terms of the Xmas dinner conversation if Sally is my sister, but it doesn't really change the situation.
It's also bizarre because David Miliband was hardly a modern day Garibaldi. He was a pretty standard New Labour politician - he had his merits, but come on. Presumably those who rate him feel he'd have had a better chance in the 2015 election. Maybe he would, but the fact he lost to his "younger, less experienced, less popular" brother (to reverse Harris's point) in the leadership contest hardly inspires confidence in his supposed political Midas touch.
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Not really, the Tories might get into government with Reform next time if Reform win seats like Runcorn they were second in at the GE and the Tories win seats they were second.
The Tories are certainly not getting into government again at the next GE if Labour hold most of their seats and either win outright again or propped up by the LDs in a hung parliament
Hasn't the rapid turnaround in the Canadian election result not opened your eyes to the possibility that a lot might change between the current polling and the next UK election?
Trump will no longer be in power at either the next UK or Canadian election as a foil against for Labour and the Liberals and in Canada a united right still prevented a Liberal majority and gained seats and over 40% voteshare
So why rule out the possibility of the Tories winning a majority?
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Not really, the Tories might get into government with Reform next time if Reform win seats like Runcorn they were second in at the GE and the Tories win seats they were second.
The Tories are certainly not getting into government again at the next GE if Labour hold most of their seats and either win outright again or propped up by the LDs in a hung parliament
Hasn't the rapid turnaround in the Canadian election result not opened your eyes to the possibility that a lot might change between the current polling and the next UK election?
Trump will no longer be in power at either the next UK or Canadian election as a foil against for Labour and the Liberals and in Canada a united right still prevented a Liberal majority and gained seats and over 40% voteshare
Just a shame that the centre and left got over 50% of the vote.
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
The polling so far seems to show the Lib Dem and Green vote share edging up so doesn’t show any tactical voting . Surely Labour must be targeting those voters . Farage is a total fraud who seems to have duped a lot of thick low information voters .
ETA a brand new line and they forgot about summer.
Only the section from Westbourne Park (near Paddington) to Whitechapel, plus the branches to Pudding Mill Lane (near Stratford), and to Abbey Wood were brand new-build.
I'm not one for grandiosity, but I can't help feeling a certain similarity - almost fraternality - with a certain young Israeli chap, name of "Jesus", nigh on 2000 years ago
Just imagine how unbearably smug I will be if a 100/1 winner comes in.
No chance he becomes leader again . Why on earth would Labour want that loser to return. Indeed he’s partly to blame for Brexit , backstabbing his brother . If David Miliband had won the leadership the Tories wouldn’t have got that majority and there would never have been that idiotic referendum.
I'm not one for grandiosity, but I can't help feeling a certain similarity - almost fraternality - with a certain young Israeli chap, name of "Jesus", nigh on 2000 years ago
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
I have a few pints on tomorrow's elections, but one is for Greens to beat LDs (at evens on Ladbrokes). The logic is that LD voters are much more willing to support Labour and keep out Reform. I think the Greens are less tactical and also much less willing to support Starmer, even if it risks Reform getting in.. Think BJO on here.
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
I have a few pints on tomorrow's elections, but one is for Greens to beat LDs (at evens on Ladbrokes). The logic is that LD voters are much more willing to support Labour and keep out Reform. I think the Greens are less tactical and also much less willing to support Starmer, even if it risks Reform getting in.. Think BJO on here.
The Greens get on my nerves . Enabling a party that has zero interest in fighting climate change .
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Not really, the Tories might get into government with Reform next time if Reform win seats like Runcorn they were second in at the GE and the Tories win seats they were second.
The Tories are certainly not getting into government again at the next GE if Labour hold most of their seats and either win outright again or propped up by the LDs in a hung parliament
Hasn't the rapid turnaround in the Canadian election result not opened your eyes to the possibility that a lot might change between the current polling and the next UK election?
Trump will no longer be in power at either the next UK or Canadian election as a foil against for Labour and the Liberals and in Canada a united right still prevented a Liberal majority and gained seats and over 40% voteshare
Firstly, that doesn't really answer the point that a lot can change in a short time period. Even if there are crumbs of comfort for the Canadian Conservatives in denying the Liberals a majority and making a net gain of seats, the fact is they looked for all the world as if they were cruising for a crushing landslide win as recently as January. But they lost and, to put a cherry on it, their leader was decapitated (albeit he'll probably come back in a by-election and fight another day). That's a lot changing fast.
Secondly, there is a pretty reasonable prospect of Trump being a foil at the next Canadian AND British elections. Neither has fixed term Parliaments, Canada has a minority Government, and Britain will be past the typical four year mark by the time of the next US Presidential election (I'll leave aside any of the stuff about Trump going on past that, which strikes me as a little fanciful although margnally less fanciful than I'd ideally like).
Watching the Trump cabinet - there's no difference between it and Putin's or Hitler's goings on. (Obviously I'm just imagining the latter based on dramatisations)
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Not really, the Tories might get into government with Reform next time if Reform win seats like Runcorn they were second in at the GE and the Tories win seats they were second.
The Tories are certainly not getting into government again at the next GE if Labour hold most of their seats and either win outright again or propped up by the LDs in a hung parliament
Hasn't the rapid turnaround in the Canadian election result not opened your eyes to the possibility that a lot might change between the current polling and the next UK election?
Trump will no longer be in power at either the next UK or Canadian election as a foil against for Labour and the Liberals and in Canada a united right still prevented a Liberal majority and gained seats and over 40% voteshare
Just a shame that the centre and left got over 50% of the vote.
No change at Province/Territory level:
Majority Radical Left Lunatics:
British Columbia Manitoba Ontario Quebec New Brunswick Newfoundland & Labrador Nova Scotia Prince Edward Island Yukon NW Territories Nunavut
I'm not one for grandiosity, but I can't help feeling a certain similarity - almost fraternality - with a certain young Israeli chap, name of "Jesus", nigh on 2000 years ago
Just imagine how unbearably smug I will be if a 100/1 winner comes in.
No chance he becomes leader again . Why on earth would Labour want that loser to return. Indeed he’s partly to blame for Brexit , backstabbing his brother . If David Miliband had won the leadership the Tories wouldn’t have got that majority and there would never have been that idiotic referendum.
Oh yes, dear old David would've crushed it as Labour leader.
Leaving aside bottling challenging Brown when he had the chance, playing his part as a very senior cabinet minister in the 2010 election Labour lost, losing to his little brother in a leadership contest in which he was red hot favourite, and then buggering off in a huff never to be seen again, I've seen nothing to suggest David Miliband wasn't a political genius. The great lost leader.
I've been asked to do a paid photo shoot. I can only assume it is a before and after shot for some hideously deforming disease or a road traffic accident.
Just imagine how unbearably smug I will be if a 100/1 winner comes in.
No chance he becomes leader again . Why on earth would Labour want that loser to return. Indeed he’s partly to blame for Brexit , backstabbing his brother . If David Miliband had won the leadership the Tories wouldn’t have got that majority and there would never have been that idiotic referendum.
Oh yes, dear old David would've crushed it as Labour leader.
Leaving aside bottling challenging Brown when he had the chance, playing his part as a very senior cabinet minister in the 2010 election Labour lost, losing to his little brother in a leadership contest in which he was red hot favourite, and then buggering off in a huff never to be seen again, I've seen nothing to suggest David Miliband wasn't a political genius. The great lost leader.
Just imagine how unbearably smug I will be if a 100/1 winner comes in.
No chance he becomes leader again . Why on earth would Labour want that loser to return. Indeed he’s partly to blame for Brexit , backstabbing his brother . If David Miliband had won the leadership the Tories wouldn’t have got that majority and there would never have been that idiotic referendum.
I've never cared that Ed backstabbed his brother. Indeed, I don't think he did backstab him, bad choice or not. And it's impressive he's returned to senior level after all the years of opposition.
But politics moves fast now. He's been involved in it at one level or another for 20 years as an MP already, and for many years before that as an adviser and bag carrier. Unless there was something transformative about him I don't think he's the answer.
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
Many of them will not have a choice of Labour to pick from. I don't.
I assumed @nico67 was referring specifically to the Runcorn by-election.
Ah yes, makes more sense. Voters do tend to tactical vote pretty well, whether the parties tacitly encourage it or not, so LD and Green votes could collapse entirely - but there's not much to squeeze there anyway?
Just imagine how unbearably smug I will be if a 100/1 winner comes in.
No chance he becomes leader again . Why on earth would Labour want that loser to return. Indeed he’s partly to blame for Brexit , backstabbing his brother . If David Miliband had won the leadership the Tories wouldn’t have got that majority and there would never have been that idiotic referendum.
Oh yes, dear old David would've crushed it as Labour leader.
Leaving aside bottling challenging Brown when he had the chance, playing his part as a very senior cabinet minister in the 2010 election Labour lost, losing to his little brother in a leadership contest in which he was red hot favourite, and then buggering off in a huff never to be seen again, I've seen nothing to suggest David Miliband wasn't a political genius. The great lost leader.
I wonder if even half the people who voted for David remembered him just a few years later, even as online political nerds kept bringing him up for damn near a decade.
He seems to have realised he was done and decided to move on from that phase of his life, like Clegg, but some people just never could do the same and have crafted an imaginary David instead.
I've been asked to do a paid photo shoot. I can only assume it is a before and after shot for some hideously deforming disease or a road traffic accident.
Cmon, don't be like that about yourself. Bet we're talking "distinguished".
Why the FUCK is this in French? Seriously? Why? Everything on the net all the time should be in English, always. French???? What's the point in that?
Fuck all that. Reform should put it in their manifesto, alongside temporarily blinding litterbugs, "we will introduce legislation so that English is spoken all places and Belgian monks will be publicly castrated and free cakes for British Mums on Tuesdays"
It's times like this, full of vigour and insight, that I feel my head turning - turning towards the light - towards the light that is my future, and I hear a soft but certain voice saying: "Yes Leon, POLITICS. Now is your moment"
May I be the first to say that I think you might surprise on the upside.
Actually Tony Blair shows how lots of money from Saudi Arabia to his institute leads to a conclusion we need more fossil fuels.
Nah, I think that's a conspiracy theory. A fair few people are quizzing if this is possible, now, or if we're just fruitlessly beggaring ourselves.
The catch with that question is that solar/wind/battery are cheaper than fossil fuels + CCS right now and have the massive advantage of already existing at scale. The price factor has changed a lot in recent years, as OGH Jr points out; and lots of people haven't noticed yet.
The main downside is the balance of initial and ongoing costs. Gas is like an inkjet printer; cheap upfront but expensive to run (which is why it's OK to keep them as backup for a few days a year). Renewable + storage is a laser printer- more expensive upfront, but cheaper over the lifetime.
Getting that sort of decision right is something humans find hard and British humans almost impossible. Hence the scrambling by some for other reasons not to do this.
Sorry but that is simply not true. The strike price of gas is artificially elevated by being on constant stop start due to the intermittency of shite renewables of the type you describe. You don't do your side any favours when you speciously omit key facts because the don't support 'the transition'.
Are you saying if we used more gas the gas would be cheaper?
I am saying that if we used gas consistently it would be cheaper. The cost of constantly restarting gas plants is high, and that cost is placed artificially on the strike price of gas.
If we got rid of "shite renewables" we'd have to produce that electricity in another way. Suggestions?
Also - do you have a citation for how much restarting gas plants adds to the cost of gas?
Dependable renewables like tidal. SMR nuclear. UK produced oil, gas, and potentially coal. And ensure that unreliable intermittent sources (which are a feature now whether I would like it or not) are incentivised to store energy to even out their supply.
No, I don't have prices figures on what percent of the gas price is due to renewable intermittency, but I will try to get some later.
Nuclear is unreliably intermittent...
"The outages of four reactors - two at Heysham and two in Hartlepool - were unplanned, prompted by a part failure in the boiler pipework at Heysham 1 in Lancashire."
I'm in favour of nuclear. I'm in favour of O&G. I'm in favour of renewables. We need a mix, not one thing, all working together to get us security of supply.
And O&G does *not* give us security of supply, and AIUI will automagically not even if we maximise North Sea output. And the thought of going back to coal is laughable.
Large nuclear plants going offline is going to cause an issue (though it's nothing like as intermittent as wind or solar). Many more smaller SMR stations would provide a far more even supply not affected catastrophically by outages (would be my surmise). We need to pivot toward SMRs and away from costly too-big-to-fail nuclear projects with France and China.
I agree we need a mix.
I disagree. There are huge reserves in the North Sea - we need to properly incentivise getting it out. We also need to progress with fracking.
Coal is not 'laughable' when the world's biggest industrial economy is opening coal stations at a rate of knots to supply our windmills. And when even Germany has added more coal to its mix. Neither have particularly laughable approaches to their needs. The only laughable energy policy is our energy policy.
Coal is laughable for a number of reasons: We have zero mines, and they are massively costly to open (and controversial...) we have zero coal-fire power stations left. We have zero coal-handling infrastructure left (even the old MGR trains...)
I'd strongly argue that money spent correcting these would be much better spent elsewhere; even nuclear.
But my main reason is environmental, but not the gasses. I was born and raised a couple of miles from a large coal-fired power station, and it was impossible to hang washing out if the wind was blowing from that direction, as it would get covered in particles from the coal burning. IMV one of the best pieces of post-war legislation were the various clean air acts, and burning coal - even in power stations - is bad for air quality. (*)
You appear to hate renewables; but going back to coal would be the worst of all worlds.
(*) Orders of magnitude more radiation is released into the environment from burning coal than from nuclear power stations, for the same power generated...
Things not existing doesn't make them laughable - otherwise anything new would be laughable. There was a big plan for a large clean coal power station 15 years or so ago. Alec Salmond was interested for Scotland.
Clearly I don't hate renewables, because tidal is included in my list. I hate undependable, intermittent, and unsuitable renewables whose primary purpose is to farm subsidies.
Tidal is predictable. It's still super intermittent; you have slack tides that change time during the week, and the difference in generation between a spring and neap tide is over 50%. There is very little scope for storage even with lagoons, and utilising the Severn estuary to its full extent would only generate about 10 GW.
To put that into perspective, Scotland alone currently has nearly 50 GW of renewables operating, under construction or in planning. Only 5% of UK households have solar, yet we're generating 12 GW right now.
Perhaps my understanding of this is flawed, and @MarqueeMark may wish to weigh in, but don't the lagoons create electricity both when the water is flooding into it, and when it's flooding out of it? To me that doesn't leave a huge gap in service, and it is, as you say, utterly predictable. There really is no case against it, except that there's little subsidy cash to be spaffed around, due to the inherent workability of the concept. It is certainly nothing like the intermittency, unreliability and unsuitability (solar power at its highest when it's least needed/wind dropping down when it's cold) of wind and solar.
As for that 50GW, how much is actually providing power, not being constrained, or becalmed because the weather isn't right? We have abundant oil and gas, we have coal, we have tides for days. So we're using solar and wind.
"At some point he wants to get back home to his cars" -- it certainly sounds like Trump is trying to nudge Elon out the door
Even Trump is capable of a sensible decision on occasion.
Elon no longer seems the golden boy but wasn't his DOGE role time-limited to three months anyway?
I don't recall if they made it clear just what the time limit would be, but it feels like everyone always thought it'd be temporary?
What I cannot really gather is what Musk got out of it that he wasn't already getting from bankrolling Trump, unless he's walked away with masses of data he shouldn't have.
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Not really, the Tories might get into government with Reform next time if Reform win seats like Runcorn they were second in at the GE and the Tories win seats they were second.
The Tories are certainly not getting into government again at the next GE if Labour hold most of their seats and either win outright again or propped up by the LDs in a hung parliament
Hasn't the rapid turnaround in the Canadian election result not opened your eyes to the possibility that a lot might change between the current polling and the next UK election?
Trump will no longer be in power at either the next UK or Canadian election as a foil against for Labour and the Liberals and in Canada a united right still prevented a Liberal majority and gained seats and over 40% voteshare
Voters continued to vote against Thatcherism long after she’d gone, and a significant part of your party’s problem nowadays is people still voting against Boris. The way Trump is going, his shadow is going to fall over US politics for a long time.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
Of course we're too full. Look at the really nice parts of the country, (eg. Derbyshire Dales) and they have one thing in common. Low population density. I've lived in umpteen different places, the pleasantness of every place has been pretty much inversely proportional to the number of people who get to live there.
My attractive market town of around 20k inhabitants has gained over 1000 new houses in the last 5 years. That's an extraordinary rate of growth, and completely unsustainable. The result has been to collapse the transport infrastructure (ten years ago I never sat in traffic ever - now half the day it's a snarled up hell-hole).
There have been zero new doctors surgeries, they've run down and partially closed the cottage hospital (so for anything serious, including maternity services it's a 45 min drive). No new supermarkets. We are apparently getting a McDonald's though, so it's all good. Oh, and house prices have doubled in ten years, which would be great for a homeowner like me, if it wasn't for the fact that I need a house to live in, so the notional value is meaningless.
The problem is simple - too many people for the space. The fix - stop letting more in.
And yes, birth rates, death rates etc are relevant. But when we're importing a net million people a year, that's the place to look first and most urgently.
I don't think net zero immigration it will even fix much - it's going to take years of building masses of houses to make them affordable again even with the population static, but it will at least reduce the rate at which time are getting rapidly worse, which is where it is headed at the moment.
I live in north London. It's fantastic. I'd hate to live in the Derbyshire Dales. Just because you like living in places of lower population density doesn't prove anything.
Your NHS services are poorer because the Tories underfunded the NHS. The hold-ups in house building are not caused by immigrants existing.
People want different lifestyles shock.
The Tories poured more money than ever into the NHS and it still wasn't enough because we are older, fatter, lazier, sicker than ever and there are more of us. No-one asked the country if they wanted us to have immigration running at the rates it is now. The Tories promised to cut it to the tens of thousands. Its this kind of dishonesty that leads to the rise of reform. Don't get me wrong - Reform are a bunch of racist fuckwits with no answers to the countries problems, but they will still get votes because the common people of the country have had enough of the main parties (and that includes the Lib Dems).
It remains one of the great mysteries in political history why the Conservatives campaigned on bringing immigration down while greatly increasing immigration. Whether you think immigration should be higher or lower, it makes no sense. Either argue it's a good thing and have it higher, or argue it should be lower and make it lower. But why did they make it higher while saying it needed to be lower?
PS: Healthcare funding rose much lower under the Tories than under the previous Labour government.
I know that healthcare funding rose more slowly - it still increased though. In reality there will never be enough funding for the NHS.
I also cannot understand why the Tories did what they did with immigration other than sheer incompetence. Its electoral suicide - its partly what has enabled Reform to thrive. And its just so stupid. Make the case for it and say how you will welcome people to the UK and what will be done for housing and services. Or say it will be less than 100,000 a year and deliver that.
I am stuck in the locals. The Greens have a candidate who did not turn up to hustings, nor have they given any information on what they would do. Literally an empty space in the paper. The Tories are idiots nationally, and need to look at why they lost. Labour are not even standing and that leaves Reform and the Lib Dems, who haven't bothered to leaflet us. I genuinely might spoil my ballot.
A number of people on PB have suggested that they, or spouses, won't vote for a party that hasn't leafletted them. It's good if a party does leaflet you, but that leafletting is done by volunteers. It seems to me overly harsh to rule out a party that hasn't managed to leaflet you.
You as a voter don't have to be passive and await leaflets. I'm sure your local Reform UK and LibDem parties have some sort of web presence. The national parties have websites with their general principles. Even without a leaflet through the door (or hustings appearance), you can work out what candidates believe in.
I won't vote for a party that knocks on my door as its a major irritation and interruption making me answer the door to be lied blatantly too.
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Not really, the Tories might get into government with Reform next time if Reform win seats like Runcorn they were second in at the GE and the Tories win seats they were second.
The Tories are certainly not getting into government again at the next GE if Labour hold most of their seats and either win outright again or propped up by the LDs in a hung parliament
Hasn't the rapid turnaround in the Canadian election result not opened your eyes to the possibility that a lot might change between the current polling and the next UK election?
Trump will no longer be in power at either the next UK or Canadian election as a foil against for Labour and the Liberals and in Canada a united right still prevented a Liberal majority and gained seats and over 40% voteshare
Voters continued to vote against Thatcherism long after she’d gone, and a significant part of your party’s problem nowadays is people still voting against Boris. The way Trump is going, his shadow is going to fall over US politics for a long time.
I suspect that outcome would not entirely upset him.
Reeves under investigation over 'registration of interests'
Why do you sensationalise like this!!!!
For context.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being investigated by the parliamentary standards watchdog over one of her registrations of interest.
Sky News understands the probe relates to the receipt of tickets from the National Theatre, which were declared late on the MPs register.
It is understood they were declared on time on a separate register for government ministers.
An investigation being launched does not necessarily mean rules have been broken, and a spokesperson for Reeves said: "The chancellor's interests are fully declared and up to date."
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
I have a few pints on tomorrow's elections, but one is for Greens to beat LDs (at evens on Ladbrokes). The logic is that LD voters are much more willing to support Labour and keep out Reform. I think the Greens are less tactical and also much less willing to support Starmer, even if it risks Reform getting in.. Think BJO on here.
Yet the LibDems’ campaigning nouse, especially in a by-election and even in first gear, knocks the Greens into the shade. And whereas the LDs have at least started to carve out some distinctive stances in opposition to the government, the Greens haven’t, and find themselves on the less popular side of the toilets farrago.
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
There is currently Zero evidence that the world will achieve net zero by 2050, and at the moment CO2 emissions are both continuing and at a rate faster than previously (USA, Russia, China, India etc). The world is saying it is trying to decrease something while increasing it.
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
Of course we're too full. Look at the really nice parts of the country, (eg. Derbyshire Dales) and they have one thing in common. Low population density. I've lived in umpteen different places, the pleasantness of every place has been pretty much inversely proportional to the number of people who get to live there.
My attractive market town of around 20k inhabitants has gained over 1000 new houses in the last 5 years. That's an extraordinary rate of growth, and completely unsustainable. The result has been to collapse the transport infrastructure (ten years ago I never sat in traffic ever - now half the day it's a snarled up hell-hole).
There have been zero new doctors surgeries, they've run down and partially closed the cottage hospital (so for anything serious, including maternity services it's a 45 min drive). No new supermarkets. We are apparently getting a McDonald's though, so it's all good. Oh, and house prices have doubled in ten years, which would be great for a homeowner like me, if it wasn't for the fact that I need a house to live in, so the notional value is meaningless.
The problem is simple - too many people for the space. The fix - stop letting more in.
And yes, birth rates, death rates etc are relevant. But when we're importing a net million people a year, that's the place to look first and most urgently.
I don't think net zero immigration it will even fix much - it's going to take years of building masses of houses to make them affordable again even with the population static, but it will at least reduce the rate at which time are getting rapidly worse, which is where it is headed at the moment.
I live in north London. It's fantastic. I'd hate to live in the Derbyshire Dales. Just because you like living in places of lower population density doesn't prove anything.
Your NHS services are poorer because the Tories underfunded the NHS. The hold-ups in house building are not caused by immigrants existing.
People want different lifestyles shock.
The Tories poured more money than ever into the NHS and it still wasn't enough because we are older, fatter, lazier, sicker than ever and there are more of us. No-one asked the country if they wanted us to have immigration running at the rates it is now. The Tories promised to cut it to the tens of thousands. Its this kind of dishonesty that leads to the rise of reform. Don't get me wrong - Reform are a bunch of racist fuckwits with no answers to the countries problems, but they will still get votes because the common people of the country have had enough of the main parties (and that includes the Lib Dems).
It remains one of the great mysteries in political history why the Conservatives campaigned on bringing immigration down while greatly increasing immigration. Whether you think immigration should be higher or lower, it makes no sense. Either argue it's a good thing and have it higher, or argue it should be lower and make it lower. But why did they make it higher while saying it needed to be lower?
PS: Healthcare funding rose much lower under the Tories than under the previous Labour government.
I know that healthcare funding rose more slowly - it still increased though. In reality there will never be enough funding for the NHS.
I also cannot understand why the Tories did what they did with immigration other than sheer incompetence. Its electoral suicide - its partly what has enabled Reform to thrive. And its just so stupid. Make the case for it and say how you will welcome people to the UK and what will be done for housing and services. Or say it will be less than 100,000 a year and deliver that.
I am stuck in the locals. The Greens have a candidate who did not turn up to hustings, nor have they given any information on what they would do. Literally an empty space in the paper. The Tories are idiots nationally, and need to look at why they lost. Labour are not even standing and that leaves Reform and the Lib Dems, who haven't bothered to leaflet us. I genuinely might spoil my ballot.
A number of people on PB have suggested that they, or spouses, won't vote for a party that hasn't leafletted them. It's good if a party does leaflet you, but that leafletting is done by volunteers. It seems to me overly harsh to rule out a party that hasn't managed to leaflet you.
You as a voter don't have to be passive and await leaflets. I'm sure your local Reform UK and LibDem parties have some sort of web presence. The national parties have websites with their general principles. Even without a leaflet through the door (or hustings appearance), you can work out what candidates believe in.
I won't vote for a party that knocks on my door as its a major irritation and interruption making me answer the door to be lied blatantly too.
Just imagine how unbearably smug I will be if a 100/1 winner comes in.
No chance he becomes leader again . Why on earth would Labour want that loser to return. Indeed he’s partly to blame for Brexit , backstabbing his brother . If David Miliband had won the leadership the Tories wouldn’t have got that majority and there would never have been that idiotic referendum.
Oh yes, dear old David would've crushed it as Labour leader.
Leaving aside bottling challenging Brown when he had the chance, playing his part as a very senior cabinet minister in the 2010 election Labour lost, losing to his little brother in a leadership contest in which he was red hot favourite, and then buggering off in a huff never to be seen again, I've seen nothing to suggest David Miliband wasn't a political genius. The great lost leader.
He was rather better at enriching himself than he was at enriching the people of South Shields:
On 21 December 2010, the Office of David Miliband Limited was formed with Miliband and his wife Louise as directors.[81]
According to the Financial Times, "much of Mr Miliband's time has been spent on his lucrative directorships and speaking roles, which he would be expected to give up if he returned to frontline politics…as of January 2013, David Miliband has made just short of £1m on top of his MP's salary since he failed to win the Labour leadership in the summer of 2010."[82]
According to a March 2013 article in the Huffington Post UK, Miliband had earned almost £1m since the 2010 election. The article listed sources of income from speaking (where he had earned up to £20,000 per event), advisory and teaching roles, journalism, gifts, hospitality and overseas visits.[83]
Miliband is one of six members of the Global Advisory Board of Macro Advisory Partners, which advises multinational corporations, sovereign wealth funds, investors and governments.[84]
In January 2012, David Miliband joined the Board of Directors of Mauritius-based private equity group, Indus Basin Holdings.[85] IBH operates Rice Partners [86] in the Punjab region of Pakistan which specialises in managing the end-to-end supply chain for major global users of rice.[87][88]
According to the Financial Times,[82] "Mr Miliband's jobs include advisory roles with VantagePoint Capital Partners, a Californian group; Oxford Analytica, a UK advisory company; and Indus Basin Holdings, a Pakistani agrochemical group. He is also a member of the advisory board to the Sir Bani Yas academic forum, which is hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates. Despite supporting Arsenal, Mr Miliband was vice-chairman and a non-executive director of Sunderland from 2011 until 2013. As a speaker he commands a fee of up to £20,000."
I’ve never seen anywhere with quite so many hairdressers and barbers. There must be something in the water up here that makes their hair grow quick.
Money laundering, obviously. Top tip - avoid the "city centre".
Do we get a dog for scale in the local woods, or is the pooch languishing on South Island?
There’s nothing worth photographing in Doncaster, so you will have to wait until tomorrow when we will be further north
The minster was Gilbert Scott and isn't terrible and the mansion house is OK but the centre is generally a bit bereft, yes. You could probably take some "edgy" street photographs of spice heads.
The racecourse isn't far from the station but the new hotel at the end of the finishing straight is ugly as sin and spoils the ambiance.
[The biggest local attraction is well out of town and is full of things that would like to eat small dogs]
"At some point he wants to get back home to his cars" -- it certainly sounds like Trump is trying to nudge Elon out the door
Even Trump is capable of a sensible decision on occasion.
Elon no longer seems the golden boy but wasn't his DOGE role time-limited to three months anyway?
I don't recall if they made it clear just what the time limit would be, but it feels like everyone always thought it'd be temporary?
What I cannot really gather is what Musk got out of it that he wasn't already getting from bankrolling Trump, unless he's walked away with masses of data he shouldn't have.
That and cutting the IRS division that collects taxes from squillionaires.
Reeves under investigation over 'registration of interests'
Why do you sensationalise like this!!!!
For context.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being investigated by the parliamentary standards watchdog over one of her registrations of interest.
Sky News understands the probe relates to the receipt of tickets from the National Theatre, which were declared late on the MPs register.
It is understood they were declared on time on a separate register for government ministers.
An investigation being launched does not necessarily mean rules have been broken, and a spokesperson for Reeves said: "The chancellor's interests are fully declared and up to date."
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
You have to laugh . Reform saying we should give preference to immigrants who are net beneficiaries to the treasury and are less likely to put a strain on services.
So basically that would be people from Europe !
As has been pointed out repeatedly people are against immigration.
But they are not against immigration for high earners who contribute high taxes. They are not against immigration for students who pay high fees and tend to leave after 3 years. They are not against immigration for care workers looking after their parents or grandparents. They are not against immigration for doctors and nurses who can speed up their hip operation.
The above is about 80% of the immigration that people are against........governments can't fix the incoherent and inconsistent policy preferences of voters.
The reality is that people are not against immigration. Immigration is just people moving around and people have always moved around.
People think they are against immigration because they have been riled up and led to believe that immigrants are the source of all problems. They're not.
The argument that "People believe immigration is the source of all the problems" thing is an attempt to engage in a fallacy which says "this thing isn't the whole cause of the problem, therefore we shouldn't bother fixing it". This is nonsense on stilts - even if immigration is only the cause of 5% of our problems, a 5% improvement is much better than a 0% improvement.
I wonder whether the only way to resolve this argument is to give the Ultras what they want. Announce a moratorium on immigration for say 2 years, No Immigration At All, and use the time to clear the entire backlog, reduce the pressure on housing and identify those areas where we really do need immigration.
But I think the most useful thing will be to hear the screams of the Ultras as they can't get GP appointments, have to pay double for social care, or they or their (grand)children can't bring their Australian partners into the country.
Then we can have a proper grown up discussion about what sort of immigration is beneficial, and what isn't. Probably we will find we still need a lot of what we currently have. Maybe we will also find out that if employers pay a proper wage rate for delivery drivers and baristas in places like London, they might be able to recruit locally after all.
But we do have to find all this out, because until we do, no level of reduction of immigration will be enough for Reform and the extreme right.
Even I don't think we should have zero immigration - that's unworkable for lots of reasons.
However, the country is fundamentally full. We're building houses at an astonishing pace, the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, and we're not even keeping up with the growth in demand driven by immigration alone. We already have too many people for the country to remain a pleasant place to live, so we should stop adding more.
The fix? We should have an net zero immigration rule - for simplicity we permit in as a maximum, the number of people who left the year before. The best part of half a million people left last year, so it's not like we won't have many spaces available.
We then prioritise for visas relatives/partners of British citizens, probably once they've been British citizens for a minimum qualifying period (say 15 years) to make it really difficult to game the system by immigrating, aquiring citizenship and then importing your extended family.
And then we should auction the remaining visas to the highest bidder, with a substantial price floor (£50k?). If your business really needs someone high value to come from abroad, you'll pay. But it won't be worth it to import Deliveroo Drivers.
Oh and the students, before people raise that boggieman. Take them out of the system, and the numbers, but three conditions. 1) No dependants 2) The cannot work or access social security 3) There is no route for them to remain once their course is finished other than bidding for visas like everyone else.
None of this is hard to do. Yes, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those whose business model is run on cheap imported labour, or who expect a McDonald's delivered in 5 mins at and time of the day or night - but tough. We're currently running an immigration ponzi scheme. It always hurts to drop out of one, but the longer you stay in, the worse the pain when it finally ends.
The number of people in the country depends on multiple factors: immigration, emigration, birth rate, death rate. If the real problem is that we're "creaking at the seams" (and it isn't), then having a policy that tackles immigration but ignores births and deaths doesn't make sense. Why not discourage births? Or, why not encourage emigration?
But the bigger issue is that we're not creaking at the seams. That's just a story that those opposed to immigration have propagated. Plenty of countries have higher population densities and work fine. We are not remotely building houses "at an astonishing pace". That's laughable. We're building way fewer than at many points in the past.
We should be building more houses. We should be investing in infrastructure. Those are real problems. Fix those. Stop blaming immigration.
Of course we're too full. Look at the really nice parts of the country, (eg. Derbyshire Dales) and they have one thing in common. Low population density. I've lived in umpteen different places, the pleasantness of every place has been pretty much inversely proportional to the number of people who get to live there.
My attractive market town of around 20k inhabitants has gained over 1000 new houses in the last 5 years. That's an extraordinary rate of growth, and completely unsustainable. The result has been to collapse the transport infrastructure (ten years ago I never sat in traffic ever - now half the day it's a snarled up hell-hole).
There have been zero new doctors surgeries, they've run down and partially closed the cottage hospital (so for anything serious, including maternity services it's a 45 min drive). No new supermarkets. We are apparently getting a McDonald's though, so it's all good. Oh, and house prices have doubled in ten years, which would be great for a homeowner like me, if it wasn't for the fact that I need a house to live in, so the notional value is meaningless.
The problem is simple - too many people for the space. The fix - stop letting more in.
And yes, birth rates, death rates etc are relevant. But when we're importing a net million people a year, that's the place to look first and most urgently.
I don't think net zero immigration it will even fix much - it's going to take years of building masses of houses to make them affordable again even with the population static, but it will at least reduce the rate at which time are getting rapidly worse, which is where it is headed at the moment.
I live in north London. It's fantastic. I'd hate to live in the Derbyshire Dales. Just because you like living in places of lower population density doesn't prove anything.
Your NHS services are poorer because the Tories underfunded the NHS. The hold-ups in house building are not caused by immigrants existing.
People want different lifestyles shock.
The Tories poured more money than ever into the NHS and it still wasn't enough because we are older, fatter, lazier, sicker than ever and there are more of us. No-one asked the country if they wanted us to have immigration running at the rates it is now. The Tories promised to cut it to the tens of thousands. Its this kind of dishonesty that leads to the rise of reform. Don't get me wrong - Reform are a bunch of racist fuckwits with no answers to the countries problems, but they will still get votes because the common people of the country have had enough of the main parties (and that includes the Lib Dems).
It remains one of the great mysteries in political history why the Conservatives campaigned on bringing immigration down while greatly increasing immigration. Whether you think immigration should be higher or lower, it makes no sense. Either argue it's a good thing and have it higher, or argue it should be lower and make it lower. But why did they make it higher while saying it needed to be lower?
PS: Healthcare funding rose much lower under the Tories than under the previous Labour government.
I know that healthcare funding rose more slowly - it still increased though. In reality there will never be enough funding for the NHS.
I also cannot understand why the Tories did what they did with immigration other than sheer incompetence. Its electoral suicide - its partly what has enabled Reform to thrive. And its just so stupid. Make the case for it and say how you will welcome people to the UK and what will be done for housing and services. Or say it will be less than 100,000 a year and deliver that.
I am stuck in the locals. The Greens have a candidate who did not turn up to hustings, nor have they given any information on what they would do. Literally an empty space in the paper. The Tories are idiots nationally, and need to look at why they lost. Labour are not even standing and that leaves Reform and the Lib Dems, who haven't bothered to leaflet us. I genuinely might spoil my ballot.
A number of people on PB have suggested that they, or spouses, won't vote for a party that hasn't leafletted them. It's good if a party does leaflet you, but that leafletting is done by volunteers. It seems to me overly harsh to rule out a party that hasn't managed to leaflet you.
You as a voter don't have to be passive and await leaflets. I'm sure your local Reform UK and LibDem parties have some sort of web presence. The national parties have websites with their general principles. Even without a leaflet through the door (or hustings appearance), you can work out what candidates believe in.
No rule is hard and fast, so there is something in what you say. But if they cannot get any volunteers to hand out leaflets for them at all, especially as parties manage it all the time, does still say something. Independents get elected all the time, sometimes without any meaningful support, as they can put in the work themselves too.
You're also not entirely correct about web presence, as they often done have any. I tried to find out things about my local parties and websites were usually dead or clearly abandoned, and even Facebook pages were usually thin on information if they existed at all - some of my local parties still don't even list all their candidates in the election taking place tomorrow!
So the power of the leaflet remains, as you really cannot work out what candidates believe in in many cases - especially if they are a paper candidate.
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
There is currently Zero evidence that the world will achieve net zero by 2050, and at the moment CO2 emissions are both continuing and at a rate faster than previously (USA, Russia, China, India etc). The world is saying it is trying to decrease something while increasing it.
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
We could set an example by offshoring our remaining industry so all our emissions get booked against another country's total. Ed Miliband would be able to go to global meetings with his head held high.
Reeves under investigation over 'registration of interests'
Why do you sensationalise like this!!!!
For context.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being investigated by the parliamentary standards watchdog over one of her registrations of interest.
Sky News understands the probe relates to the receipt of tickets from the National Theatre, which were declared late on the MPs register.
It is understood they were declared on time on a separate register for government ministers.
An investigation being launched does not necessarily mean rules have been broken, and a spokesperson for Reeves said: "The chancellor's interests are fully declared and up to date."
Not sensationalised- just reported a breaking story
I don't think we'll achieve it either, but I still think we should.
Interesting discussion on the radio earlier. Kemi Farage and the right wing press are saying the UK are committing Hara-Kiri and should stop now yet the public by quite a margin think we should keep going as quickly as we can.
The Lib Dem’s and Greens really should be holding their nose and voting for Labour tomorrow .
This is not the time for self indulgence .
In Runcorn?
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Not really, the Tories might get into government with Reform next time if Reform win seats like Runcorn they were second in at the GE and the Tories win seats they were second.
The Tories are certainly not getting into government again at the next GE if Labour hold most of their seats and either win outright again or propped up by the LDs in a hung parliament
Hasn't the rapid turnaround in the Canadian election result not opened your eyes to the possibility that a lot might change between the current polling and the next UK election?
Trump will no longer be in power at either the next UK or Canadian election as a foil against for Labour and the Liberals and in Canada a united right still prevented a Liberal majority and gained seats and over 40% voteshare
Voters continued to vote against Thatcherism long after she’d gone, and a significant part of your party’s problem nowadays is people still voting against Boris. The way Trump is going, his shadow is going to fall over US politics for a long time.
I suspect that outcome would not entirely upset him.
Boris likewise. He’s probably enjoying that none of his successors have managed to escape from the poisoned mess that he gifted them.
Reeves under investigation over 'registration of interests'
Why do you sensationalise like this!!!!
For context.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being investigated by the parliamentary standards watchdog over one of her registrations of interest.
Sky News understands the probe relates to the receipt of tickets from the National Theatre, which were declared late on the MPs register.
It is understood they were declared on time on a separate register for government ministers.
An investigation being launched does not necessarily mean rules have been broken, and a spokesperson for Reeves said: "The chancellor's interests are fully declared and up to date."
Simultaneously late and up to date? Interesting.
It sounds like an admin cock up in this case, but the rules are not as confusing and difficult as MPs pretend they are, especially as they often fake ignorance of the rules.
Still, it's usually better than a US Supreme Court Justice, where the rules appear to be 'I do what I want, so f*ck you about conflicts'.
Comments
I thought it was genuine, if over-effusive appreciation of a nice piece of performative condescension, of which Leon was envious.
This is not the time for self indulgence .
Trump on GDP numbers : “You probably saw some numbers today. I have to start off by saying that's Biden, not Trump. Because we came in on January, these are quarterly numbers”
https://x.com/PolymarketIntel/status/1917606152285602084
https://www.ornithomedia.com/breves/premiere-preuve-documentee-de-predation-dun-thon-rouge-de-latlantique-sur-un-oiseau-marin/
Worse, quite a few of them want the disaster, as they believe you deserve it, for being white, or British, or native, or working class, or a racist, or all of these and more
However, I'm not sure @bondegezou is smart enough to be in either of these categories. I suspect @bondegezou is quite dim, very narrow minded, and simply doesn't grasp the issues
Conspiracist lie machine running about the lack of elections in West Yorkshire, which are simply on the off year of a 3 in 4 cycle.
I guess we've participated in 6 election rounds in a row, as the last fallow year was 2021 and hosted the delayed 2020 round.
Greens still leafleted us with a 'No Election Special'
BBC News - Why are there no local elections in West Yorkshire this year? - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1jxy4px78ro
In the locals, it depends on your ward.
It says (and I'm paraphrasing here): "oh, the biggest reason for the drop in GDP was the increase in imports". Which is true. And hugely misleading.
Because when (say) Mercedes Benz imports a car, then the GDP balance sheet show:
Imports -$100,000
Inventories +$100,000
So, an increase in imports that leads to higher inventories because people want to beat the tariffs has no negative impact on GDP at all.
Severe delays between Paddington and Heathrow Terminals due to heat-related temporary speed restrictions.
https://tfl.gov.uk/tube-dlr-overground/status/#elizabeth
ETA a brand new line and they forgot about summer.
@Reuters
Caterpillar misses first-quarter estimates, flags tariff hit to annual sales
https://x.com/Reuters/status/1917616198365098430
I can't post clips here pre-lagershed
Fuck all that. Reform should put it in their manifesto, alongside temporarily blinding litterbugs, "we will introduce legislation so that English is spoken all places and Belgian monks will be publicly castrated and free cakes for British Mums on Tuesdays"
It's times like this, full of vigour and insight, that I feel my head turning - turning towards the light - towards the light that is my future, and I hear a soft but certain voice saying: "Yes Leon, POLITICS. Now is your moment"
Ironically, on purely party political grounds, perhaps it's more the Tories who should be holding their noses and voting Labour in Runcorn.
RefUK are an existential threat to the Tories. It's more of a mixed picture for the Lib Dems (and Greens) - absolutely no doubt those parties don't want Farage getting the keys to Number 10. But for RefUK to split the right wing vote and drag the Tories to the right leaving the centre clear... well, that's a different story.
I'm not saying that as a prediction, by the way. On the ground, a lot of Lib Dem inclined voters will vote tactically to stop Farage, and that's understandable. And I doubt people will be trooping out of the Conservative Club to back Keir in practice. I'm just saying that, looking at the wider political advantage, perhaps that'd be the better play.
Even the latter is quite a long-term project.
READY
It's not even something I want, but it is a duty. It is a higher calling. Someone has to Taser the Litterbugs, throw everyone foreign into the Walbrook, and make blackface compulsory for all primary school teachers
If not me, who? Tell me, who? WHO? WHOM WHO?
Exactly. Tis I. This is IT
The Tories are certainly not getting into government again at the next GE if Labour hold most of their seats and either win outright again or propped up by the LDs in a hung parliament
Although Labour trying to squeeze the Tory vote will probably cause an aneurysm in Epping, it tallies with exactly what I've been picking up.
Labour may well win the wealthiest wards.
Expect Reform to squeak it. Wouldn't be shocked if Labour held.
Tory share should be sold and sold again. It will be a number to behold.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/apr/30/tactical-voting-to-stop-reform-may-hamper-farage-in-local-elections
"At some point he wants to get back home to his cars" -- it certainly sounds like Trump is trying to nudge Elon out the door
In the real world, people go for promotion if they think they've got a good shout and a good case to make. I might not throw my hat in the ring if I think Sally has the manager's job in the bag and applying would just embarrass me. But very few people say, "I reckon I've got a good chance and would be good at it but, after extensive soul-searching, I've decided Sally would be slightly better on an objective level so I'll stand aside". And nobody really expects them to. It's interesting in terms of the Xmas dinner conversation if Sally is my sister, but it doesn't really change the situation.
It's also bizarre because David Miliband was hardly a modern day Garibaldi. He was a pretty standard New Labour politician - he had his merits, but come on. Presumably those who rate him feel he'd have had a better chance in the 2015 election. Maybe he would, but the fact he lost to his "younger, less experienced, less popular" brother (to reverse Harris's point) in the leadership contest hardly inspires confidence in his supposed political Midas touch.
https://x.com/MattCartoonist/status/1917623660954935687
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/09/26/will-ed-milibands-time-finally-arrive/
Today Tom Harris writing in the Telegraph says
Mark my words, Miliband has a shot at becoming PM
The Energy Secretary is popular among Labour Party members. If Starmer falls, Ed will be a favourite to replace him
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/09/26/will-ed-milibands-time-finally-arrive/
Just imagine how unbearably smug I will be if a 100/1 winner comes in.
I've also decided to re-train as a "Forensic Botanist". Imagine explaining that at the pub.
Poisons I, II, and III would kill you instantly.
Poison IV would just make you itchy.
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1917593627963928846?t=thZuLXShs6g6z9AicteO5Q&s=19
ΛΟΥΚΑΝ 22:42 εἰ βούλει παρένεγκε τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον ἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ: πλὴν μὴ τὸ θέλημά μου ἀλλὰ τὸ σὸν γινέσθω. ἀλλὰ τὸ σὸν γινέσθω
I won't be entirely surprised it [the Sycamore chopping] was done as pure vandalism as all the other explanations seemed a bit thin.
Worked for Herostratus, I suppose.
Secondly, there is a pretty reasonable prospect of Trump being a foil at the next Canadian AND British elections. Neither has fixed term Parliaments, Canada has a minority Government, and Britain will be past the typical four year mark by the time of the next US Presidential election (I'll leave aside any of the stuff about Trump going on past that, which strikes me as a little fanciful although margnally less fanciful than I'd ideally like).
Majority Radical Left Lunatics:
British Columbia
Manitoba
Ontario
Quebec
New Brunswick
Newfoundland & Labrador
Nova Scotia
Prince Edward Island
Yukon
NW Territories
Nunavut
Majority Radical Right Lunatics:
Alberta
Saskatchewan
Leaving aside bottling challenging Brown when he had the chance, playing his part as a very senior cabinet minister in the 2010 election Labour lost, losing to his little brother in a leadership contest in which he was red hot favourite, and then buggering off in a huff never to be seen again, I've seen nothing to suggest David Miliband wasn't a political genius. The great lost leader.
7,457 votes this time, only 6,085 votes in 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_Party
But politics moves fast now. He's been involved in it at one level or another for 20 years as an MP already, and for many years before that as an adviser and bag carrier. Unless there was something transformative about him I don't think he's the answer.
He seems to have realised he was done and decided to move on from that phase of his life, like Clegg, but some people just never could do the same and have crafted an imaginary David instead.
Reeves under investigation over 'registration of interests'
As for that 50GW, how much is actually providing power, not being constrained, or becalmed because the weather isn't right? We have abundant oil and gas, we have coal, we have tides for days. So we're using solar and wind.
What I cannot really gather is what Musk got out of it that he wasn't already getting from bankrolling Trump, unless he's walked away with masses of data he shouldn't have.
For context.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being investigated by the parliamentary standards watchdog over one of her registrations of interest.
Sky News understands the probe relates to the receipt of tickets from the National Theatre, which were declared late on the MPs register.
It is understood they were declared on time on a separate register for government ministers.
An investigation being launched does not necessarily mean rules have been broken, and a spokesperson for Reeves said: "The chancellor's interests are fully declared and up to date."
So the real question, being political and pragmatic, is: When everyone stops fooling themselves and realises this, will there be any political will in the UK (or any other country) to 'go it alone' when it makes no substantial difference?
On 21 December 2010, the Office of David Miliband Limited was formed with Miliband and his wife Louise as directors.[81]
According to the Financial Times, "much of Mr Miliband's time has been spent on his lucrative directorships and speaking roles, which he would be expected to give up if he returned to frontline politics…as of January 2013, David Miliband has made just short of £1m on top of his MP's salary since he failed to win the Labour leadership in the summer of 2010."[82]
According to a March 2013 article in the Huffington Post UK, Miliband had earned almost £1m since the 2010 election. The article listed sources of income from speaking (where he had earned up to £20,000 per event), advisory and teaching roles, journalism, gifts, hospitality and overseas visits.[83]
Miliband is one of six members of the Global Advisory Board of Macro Advisory Partners, which advises multinational corporations, sovereign wealth funds, investors and governments.[84]
In January 2012, David Miliband joined the Board of Directors of Mauritius-based private equity group, Indus Basin Holdings.[85] IBH operates Rice Partners [86] in the Punjab region of Pakistan which specialises in managing the end-to-end supply chain for major global users of rice.[87][88]
According to the Financial Times,[82] "Mr Miliband's jobs include advisory roles with VantagePoint Capital Partners, a Californian group; Oxford Analytica, a UK advisory company; and Indus Basin Holdings, a Pakistani agrochemical group. He is also a member of the advisory board to the Sir Bani Yas academic forum, which is hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates. Despite supporting Arsenal, Mr Miliband was vice-chairman and a non-executive director of Sunderland from 2011 until 2013. As a speaker he commands a fee of up to £20,000."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Miliband#Business_interests
The racecourse isn't far from the station but the new hotel at the end of the finishing straight is ugly as sin and spoils the ambiance.
[The biggest local attraction is well out of town and is full of things that would like to eat small dogs]
You're also not entirely correct about web presence, as they often done have any. I tried to find out things about my local parties and websites were usually dead or clearly abandoned, and even Facebook pages were usually thin on information if they existed at all - some of my local parties still don't even list all their candidates in the election taking place tomorrow!
So the power of the leaflet remains, as you really cannot work out what candidates believe in in many cases - especially if they are a paper candidate.
https://news.sky.com/story/politics-latest-local-elections-labour-reform-starmer-farage-tories-lib-dems-greens-12593360
Still, it's usually better than a US Supreme Court Justice, where the rules appear to be 'I do what I want, so f*ck you about conflicts'.
He became a....