Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I find these sort of charts incredibly annoying because they are misleading, gdp per capita is a useful measure for individual countries to use to see if on the whole they are getting better. Between countries however I think they are actually not only useless but detrimental.
My reasoning for this is that is for instance you use the basket of goods we use to calculate cpih you may well find
Country A gdp per capita 50000$ basket of goods value = 1000$ Country B gdp per capita 100000$ basket of goods value = 3000$
So by purely gdp per capita measures people in country B are twice as well off whereas in reality because they have a cost of living 3 times higher
Therefore for how far the working wage goes
Country A realistically is 50 Country B realistically is 33.33
Is there a gap in the market for PPP adjusted GDP per capita?
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
It's difference between GDP and living standards. The economic right enjoy quoting GDP, but it's on certain measure of living standards that some parts of Eastern Europe are set to overtake the UK soon, not GDP.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I find these sort of charts incredibly annoying because they are misleading, gdp per capita is a useful measure for individual countries to use to see if on the whole they are getting better. Between countries however I think they are actually not only useless but detrimental.
My reasoning for this is that is for instance you use the basket of goods we use to calculate cpih you may well find
Country A gdp per capita 50000$ basket of goods value = 1000$ Country B gdp per capita 100000$ basket of goods value = 3000$
So by purely gdp per capita measures people in country B are twice as well off whereas in reality because they have a cost of living 3 times higher
Therefore for how far the working wage goes
Country A realistically is 50 Country B realistically is 33.33
Is there a gap in the market for PPP adjusted GDP per capita?
PPP Adjusted GDP per Capita for European Countries (2025)
Country
GDP per Capita (PPP, Int. $)
Luxembourg
154,915
Ireland
131,548
Norway
106,540
Switzerland
98,145
Denmark
85,789
Netherlands
83,823
San Marino
82,579
Iceland
80,318
Sweden
74,143
Austria
74,976
Belgium
75,187
Malta
75,822
Germany
72,660
Finland
67,074
France
67,658
United Kingdom
64,384
Italy
62,603
Slovenia
58,153
Spain
56,659
Lithuania
55,995
Czech Republic
59,205
Cyprus
59,858
Estonia
49,697
Portugal
51,257
Poland
54,498
Slovakia
47,439
Romania
49,944
Hungary
49,147
Latvia
45,447
Croatia
51,224
Greece
43,801
Bulgaria
41,506
Montenegro
33,620
Belarus
33,603
Serbia
30,909
North Macedonia
28,720
Albania
22,730
Bosnia and Herzegovina
22,611
Moldova
19,909
Ukraine
20,757
Kosovo
17,835
Ah. Just catching up with the thread
That matches the “feel” of what I experience when abroad. France is slightly richer than us, Germany notably richer
The tax havens at the top are clear distortions, however
That's because a lot of the wealth doesn't accrue to the locals. If you look at *most* countries, then biggest component of GDP is wages. If you look at Ireland or Malta, a disproportionate amount is corporate profits.
So, GDP per capita (less corporate profits) adjusted for PPP is probably the best rough and ready measure.
This feels a bit like self-employed Times/Spectator writers trying to make lanyards a thing when to a vast proportion of people employed by others, they’re just a routine part of daily working life.
They never used to be..the civil service is not a template for the rest of the workforce..🧐🥴
I've worked in offices all my working life, and in nearly every one there was some kind of card with my picture on it that I had to show/swipe to gain entry/exit. Sometimes it was attached to my clothing. Now it's on a lanyard round my neck. This "lanyard-class" silliness just goes to show that the Times and Spectator are staffed by spoilt idiots who have never done a day's work in their life. What are they going to go after next? Yearly assessments? Passwords? Laptop usage?
Better to keep the pass in your jacket pocket. If it happens to be warm then your trouser pocket. Pockets on shirts are to be avoided, and not the place for your pass. The absolute greatest sin is a short sleeved shirt with a pocket and pens in the pocket plus a lanyard flapping around too.
(In reality I confess though since I started wearing glasses I have been tempted by the merits of shirt pockets, but fortunately any quality shirt - double cuffed, proper collar - is unlikely to have such a thing, and thus I've avoided such things)
We are obliged to have our ID on display at all times. Hence the PITA lanyard.
That is harsh!
(I'm retired now, but I think I just ignored similar directives, but was goody-goody on others that I could live with to placate the wrath of the clip-counters.)
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
French median income (PPP) and disposable income is a bit higher. On most other measures we are very similar, and both countries have fallen off quite a bit compared with other European countries.
I think your urban realm theory could be true, but it will be very difficult to prove with financial information. There's not much available on local government.
Hello all. I see Trump os whining this morning that Putins acting a bit nasty. Oh dear it seems Trumps Putins bitch now. Oh and Trump has once again backed down on his tariff hard man talk with the EU. Pathetic.
Blimey, even Putin's bots are fed up with Trump.
The ghost of James Buchanan must be happy for the first time in nigh on two centuries.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
It's difference between GDP and living standards. The economic right enjoy quoting GDP, but it's on certain measure of living standards that some parts of Eastern Europe are set to overtake the UK soon, not GDP.
Well I am economically of the right but I was saying in this thread that gdp per capita was worthless for comparing between countries
And I agree with you, France and Germany clearly have higher living standards than the modern UK, post-1980's.
I don’t think it’s post-1980s
It’s happened in the last 20 years. Up until the GFC Britain was doing well, overtaking many EU countries. After that we flatlined - understandably, our biggest industry was walloped
Austerity made it worse. Brexit didn’t help. Covid dealt a fearsome blow to our towns. On top of that, mass migration has been a disaster for the UK (and other European countries)
The terrifying thing is that Britain’s decline feels like it is speeding up. But that is just “a feel”. I hope I’m wrong
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I find these sort of charts incredibly annoying because they are misleading, gdp per capita is a useful measure for individual countries to use to see if on the whole they are getting better. Between countries however I think they are actually not only useless but detrimental.
My reasoning for this is that is for instance you use the basket of goods we use to calculate cpih you may well find
Country A gdp per capita 50000$ basket of goods value = 1000$ Country B gdp per capita 100000$ basket of goods value = 3000$
So by purely gdp per capita measures people in country B are twice as well off whereas in reality because they have a cost of living 3 times higher
Therefore for how far the working wage goes
Country A realistically is 50 Country B realistically is 33.33
Is there a gap in the market for PPP adjusted GDP per capita?
PPP Adjusted GDP per Capita for European Countries (2025)
Country
GDP per Capita (PPP, Int. $)
Luxembourg
154,915
Ireland
131,548
Norway
106,540
Switzerland
98,145
Denmark
85,789
Netherlands
83,823
San Marino
82,579
Iceland
80,318
Sweden
74,143
Austria
74,976
Belgium
75,187
Malta
75,822
Germany
72,660
Finland
67,074
France
67,658
United Kingdom
64,384
Italy
62,603
Slovenia
58,153
Spain
56,659
Lithuania
55,995
Czech Republic
59,205
Cyprus
59,858
Estonia
49,697
Portugal
51,257
Poland
54,498
Slovakia
47,439
Romania
49,944
Hungary
49,147
Latvia
45,447
Croatia
51,224
Greece
43,801
Bulgaria
41,506
Montenegro
33,620
Belarus
33,603
Serbia
30,909
North Macedonia
28,720
Albania
22,730
Bosnia and Herzegovina
22,611
Moldova
19,909
Ukraine
20,757
Kosovo
17,835
Ah. Just catching up with the thread
That matches the “feel” of what I experience when abroad. France is slightly richer than us, Germany notably richer
The tax havens at the top are clear distortions, however
That's because a lot of the wealth doesn't accrue to the locals. If you look at *most* countries, then biggest component of GDP is wages. If you look at Ireland or Malta, a disproportionate amount is corporate profits.
So, GDP per capita (less corporate profits) adjusted for PPP is probably the best rough and ready measure.
Very slow bank holiday. Feels like a usual Monday.
Not at Tesco. Hell of a scrum in poultry.
Another scrum at Aldi apparently, where some sort of pilates gadget is flying (or has already flown) off the shelves at £150 because traditional ones cost ten times that.
Hmm wonder how good it can be at that price. My wife's proper one was well north of £3K
"Fans of viral Labubu dolls have reacted angrily online after its maker pulled the toys from all UK stores following reports of customers fighting over them.
Pop Mart, which makes the monster bag charms, told the BBC it had paused selling them in all 16 of its shops until June to "prevent any potential safety issues".
Labubu fan Victoria Calvert said she witnessed chaos in the Stratford store in London. "It was just getting ridiculous to be in that situation where people were fighting and shouting and you felt scared.""
"I accused men of being responsible for a social breakdown which is costing us all, as taxpayers, £9.1 billion per year, and which is producing a generation of ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate children.
"With £90 billion currently spent on welfare, the great economic issues of our time are social. They are moral. And yet the Government is virtually incapacitated from utterance by its own bumbling.
"The modern British male is useless. If he is blue collar, he is likely to be drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless, and perhaps claiming to suffer from low self-esteem brought on by unemployment. If he is white collar, he is likely to be little better.
"Something must be found, first, to restore women's desire to be married. That means addressing the feebleness of the modern Briton, his reluctance or inability to take control of his woman and be head of a household."
- Boris: "The male sex is to blame for the appalling proliferation of single mothers", The Spectator, 19 August 1995.
Was he talking about himself there and projecting?
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
It's difference between GDP and living standards. The economic right enjoy quoting GDP, but it's on certain measure of living standards that some parts of Eastern Europe are set to overtake the UK soon, not GDP.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
It's difference between GDP and living standards. The economic right enjoy quoting GDP, but it's on certain measure of living standards that some parts of Eastern Europe are set to overtake the UK soon, not GDP.
Many already well ahead.
The problem with the UK numbers is that they're pulled down by drunken, feckless Scots.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I find these sort of charts incredibly annoying because they are misleading, gdp per capita is a useful measure for individual countries to use to see if on the whole they are getting better. Between countries however I think they are actually not only useless but detrimental.
My reasoning for this is that is for instance you use the basket of goods we use to calculate cpih you may well find
Country A gdp per capita 50000$ basket of goods value = 1000$ Country B gdp per capita 100000$ basket of goods value = 3000$
So by purely gdp per capita measures people in country B are twice as well off whereas in reality because they have a cost of living 3 times higher
Therefore for how far the working wage goes
Country A realistically is 50 Country B realistically is 33.33
Is there a gap in the market for PPP adjusted GDP per capita?
PPP Adjusted GDP per Capita for European Countries (2025)
Country
GDP per Capita (PPP, Int. $)
Luxembourg
154,915
Ireland
131,548
Norway
106,540
Switzerland
98,145
Denmark
85,789
Netherlands
83,823
San Marino
82,579
Iceland
80,318
Sweden
74,143
Austria
74,976
Belgium
75,187
Malta
75,822
Germany
72,660
Finland
67,074
France
67,658
United Kingdom
64,384
Italy
62,603
Slovenia
58,153
Spain
56,659
Lithuania
55,995
Czech Republic
59,205
Cyprus
59,858
Estonia
49,697
Portugal
51,257
Poland
54,498
Slovakia
47,439
Romania
49,944
Hungary
49,147
Latvia
45,447
Croatia
51,224
Greece
43,801
Bulgaria
41,506
Montenegro
33,620
Belarus
33,603
Serbia
30,909
North Macedonia
28,720
Albania
22,730
Bosnia and Herzegovina
22,611
Moldova
19,909
Ukraine
20,757
Kosovo
17,835
Ah. Just catching up with the thread
That matches the “feel” of what I experience when abroad. France is slightly richer than us, Germany notably richer
The tax havens at the top are clear distortions, however
That's because a lot of the wealth doesn't accrue to the locals. If you look at *most* countries, then biggest component of GDP is wages. If you look at Ireland or Malta, a disproportionate amount is corporate profits.
So, GDP per capita (less corporate profits) adjusted for PPP is probably the best rough and ready measure.
GDP per capita can hide a lot inequality though.
Consumption per capita reduces these differences to give a better idea of the median situation.
Although that can be affected if countries over or under consumer.
France has better infrastructure, amenities, cultural life in its broadcasting and media, and collective social life.
It has very bad polarisation between ethnic groups, though, worse than the UK. It's ghettos are much more deprived, but its rural, provincial and post-industrial towns are also much less deprived, than ours.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
It's difference between GDP and living standards. The economic right enjoy quoting GDP, but it's on certain measure of living standards that some parts of Eastern Europe are set to overtake the UK soon, not GDP.
Many already well ahead.
The problem with the UK numbers is that they're pulled down by drunken, feckless Scots.
You would be in even bigger doodoo without us for sure.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
"Fans of viral Labubu dolls have reacted angrily online after its maker pulled the toys from all UK stores following reports of customers fighting over them.
Pop Mart, which makes the monster bag charms, told the BBC it had paused selling them in all 16 of its shops until June to "prevent any potential safety issues".
Labubu fan Victoria Calvert said she witnessed chaos in the Stratford store in London. "It was just getting ridiculous to be in that situation where people were fighting and shouting and you felt scared.""
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
France has better infrastructure, amenities, cultural life in its broadcasting and media, and collective social life.
It has very bad polarisation between ethnic groups, though, worse than the UK. It's ghettos are much more deprived, but its rural, provincial and post-industrial towns are also much less deprived, than ours.
You can find deprivation of various types in France and affluence of various types in France.
And similarly in this country.
There are lots of differences even down to the local level.
In any case, living in somewhere 'deprived' also tends to be cheap. The thing to do is to live in a nice part of a deprived area which has good communications and nice countryside.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
France has better infrastructure, amenities, cultural life in its broadcasting and media, and collective social life.
It has very bad polarisation between ethnic groups, though, worse than the UK. It's ghettos are much more deprived, but its rural, provincial and post-industrial towns are also much less deprived, than ours.
You can find deprivation of various types in France and affluence of various types in France.
And similarly in this country.
There are lots of differences even down to the local level.
In any case, living in somewhere 'deprived' also tends to be cheap. The thing to do is to live in a nice part of a deprived area which has good communications and nice countryside.
Do you ever travel? You never mention it, so I’m not convinced of your foreign experiences
If you are secretly PB’s Bruce Chatwin, I apologise
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
And I agree with you, France and Germany clearly have higher living standards than the modern UK, post-1980's.
I don’t think it’s post-1980s
It’s happened in the last 20 years. Up until the GFC Britain was doing well, overtaking many EU countries. After that we flatlined - understandably, our biggest industry was walloped
Austerity made it worse. Brexit didn’t help. Covid dealt a fearsome blow to our towns. On top of that, mass migration has been a disaster for the UK (and other European countries)
The terrifying thing is that Britain’s decline feels like it is speeding up. But that is just “a feel”. I hope I’m wrong
Housing costs perhaps? The French have more disposable income because less goes on keeping a roof over their head.
France has better infrastructure, amenities, cultural life in its broadcasting and media, and collective social life.
It has very bad polarisation between ethnic groups, though, worse than the UK. It's ghettos are much more deprived, but its rural, provincial and post-industrial towns are also much less deprived, than ours.
That's fair:
I would also note that it's high social charges mean that those with low skills are essentially unemployable. And - while its primary and secondary education is very good - its universities are pretty average.
On the other hand, if you have an average salary, and live in an average town, then your quality of life is probably going to be meaningfully better than in the UK.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Thanks for proving my point.
You think a bit of driving around makes you an expert on everything in a country.
It really, really doesn't.
Go and live in a place for a year and then move to somewhere near which is either much more or much less affluent and experience living there for a year and understand what the differences are.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Some of the banlieues around Paris are pretty shit.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
And I agree with you, France and Germany clearly have higher living standards than the modern UK, post-1980's.
I don’t think it’s post-1980s
It’s happened in the last 20 years. Up until the GFC Britain was doing well, overtaking many EU countries. After that we flatlined - understandably, our biggest industry was walloped
Austerity made it worse. Brexit didn’t help. Covid dealt a fearsome blow to our towns. On top of that, mass migration has been a disaster for the UK (and other European countries)
The terrifying thing is that Britain’s decline feels like it is speeding up. But that is just “a feel”. I hope I’m wrong
Housing costs perhaps? The French have more disposable income because less goes on keeping a roof over their head.
There should be a PB Law that discussions usually come back to the cost of housing.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Thanks for proving my point.
You think a bit of driving around makes you an expert on everything in a country.
It really, really doesn't.
Go and live in a place for a year and then move to somewhere near which is either much more or much less affluent and experience living there for a year and understand what the differences are.
Yes, good plan. He could then report back in two years and it would have real authority.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Thanks for proving my point.
You think a bit of driving around makes you an expert on everything in a country.
It really, really doesn't.
Go and live in a place for a year and then move to somewhere near which is either much more or much less affluent and experience living there for a year and understand what the differences are.
My travels mean I’m vastly more experienced in these things, than you, and notably better informed
And I agree with you, France and Germany clearly have higher living standards than the modern UK, post-1980's.
I don’t think it’s post-1980s
It’s happened in the last 20 years. Up until the GFC Britain was doing well, overtaking many EU countries. After that we flatlined - understandably, our biggest industry was walloped
Austerity made it worse. Brexit didn’t help. Covid dealt a fearsome blow to our towns. On top of that, mass migration has been a disaster for the UK (and other European countries)
The terrifying thing is that Britain’s decline feels like it is speeding up. But that is just “a feel”. I hope I’m wrong
Housing costs perhaps? The French have more disposable income because less goes on keeping a roof over their head.
This is the best I can do on public realm, and it's badly out of date (it won't pick up the effect of austerity on council finances):
Really interesting. We have a tiny rural population, and most of us live in densely urban areas, yet have the lowest rates of living in flats anywhere in Europe. The Nordic countries have excellent urban public spaces.
And I agree with you, France and Germany clearly have higher living standards than the modern UK, post-1980's.
I don’t think it’s post-1980s
It’s happened in the last 20 years. Up until the GFC Britain was doing well, overtaking many EU countries. After that we flatlined - understandably, our biggest industry was walloped
Austerity made it worse. Brexit didn’t help. Covid dealt a fearsome blow to our towns. On top of that, mass migration has been a disaster for the UK (and other European countries)
The terrifying thing is that Britain’s decline feels like it is speeding up. But that is just “a feel”. I hope I’m wrong
Housing costs perhaps? The French have more disposable income because less goes on keeping a roof over their head.
Housing costs are roughly the same as ours as a proportion of income.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Some of the banlieues around Paris are pretty shit.
I know, I’ve been to them as well. Likewise in Marseilles
Pretty fucking grim. But honestly, are they as grim as the grottiest towns in northern England? The worst burbs of Birmingham? Hmm
One “rich” western country which DOES have towns and hoods worse than the UK is Italy. I’ve been to some places in Sicily, Calabria and Puglia which could easily be in North Africa. And by that I don’t mean nicer parts of Tunisia
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
How about cost of living, most of the eastern european countries you get a pint for a pound compared to the Dick Turpin rates here.
Well that's what happens if you frequent the posho places of Ayrshire.
You can get a pint for two quid at Wetherspoons or £1 for a 500ml bottle at most supermarkets.
£1.47 on Mondays.
Even in Hampstead ???
No, we don't have one. But there's a couple within striking distance.
I remember when the Chandos used to have really cheap beer by London standards.
Then Sam Smiths put the prices up to tourist levels.
London's most expensive pub is probably the Spaniards Inn in Ham/High. It's closing in on the ten pound pint there. When I first started drinking you could get 40 pints for that and have enough left for some chips.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
How about cost of living, most of the eastern european countries you get a pint for a pound compared to the Dick Turpin rates here.
Well that's what happens if you frequent the posho places of Ayrshire.
You can get a pint for two quid at Wetherspoons or £1 for a 500ml bottle at most supermarkets.
£1.47 on Mondays.
Even in Hampstead ???
No, we don't have one. But there's a couple within striking distance.
I remember when the Chandos used to have really cheap beer by London standards.
Then Sam Smiths put the prices up to tourist levels.
London's most expensive pub is probably the Spaniards Inn in Ham/High. It's closing in on the ten pound pint there. When I first started drinking you could get 40 pints for that and have enough left for some chips.
To be fair it is also one of the nicest pubs in London. Maybe even the UK
Indeed, on a warm summer’s day, with that lovely beer garden and all that history and all of Kenwood and Hampstead Heath right outside, the Spaniard’s is one of the nicest places to drink IN THE WORLD
You're all not going to believe me but I promise you this is true...... Chatting whilst out today to a vague/not well known acquaintance at an event and politics came up via some lame joke I told about the current state of the Tories. I've no idea this guys allegiances but he jumped in, unbidden, with 'Boris back. That's what I want to see' I'm half expecting to find out someone here paid him to say it to me!
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Thanks for proving my point.
You think a bit of driving around makes you an expert on everything in a country.
It really, really doesn't.
Go and live in a place for a year and then move to somewhere near which is either much more or much less affluent and experience living there for a year and understand what the differences are.
My travels mean I’m vastly more experienced in these things, than you, and notably better informed
C’est tout
You are mistaking passing, superficial experience for deep, profound experience.
A comical example was when you tried to impress PBers by boasting about having shakshuka, without realising that Wetherspoons offer them.
Few of us are experts on anything more than our own lives, lived day after day, year after year.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
How about cost of living, most of the eastern european countries you get a pint for a pound compared to the Dick Turpin rates here.
Well that's what happens if you frequent the posho places of Ayrshire.
You can get a pint for two quid at Wetherspoons or £1 for a 500ml bottle at most supermarkets.
£1.47 on Mondays.
Even in Hampstead ???
No, we don't have one. But there's a couple within striking distance.
I remember when the Chandos used to have really cheap beer by London standards.
Then Sam Smiths put the prices up to tourist levels.
London's most expensive pub is probably the Spaniards Inn in Ham/High. It's closing in on the ten pound pint there. When I first started drinking you could get 40 pints for that and have enough left for some chips.
Back in the mid 1980s I used to drink at the Samuelson Lighting Production Village pub in Cricklewood. Guiness was on a long term special price of a pound a pint, so although i preferred lager it was too tempting an offer. I can't remember the last time I had a Guinness, it's vile!
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Thanks for proving my point.
You think a bit of driving around makes you an expert on everything in a country.
It really, really doesn't.
Go and live in a place for a year and then move to somewhere near which is either much more or much less affluent and experience living there for a year and understand what the differences are.
My travels mean I’m vastly more experienced in these things, than you, and notably better informed
C’est tout
You are mistaking passing, superficial experience for deep, profound experience.
A comical example was when you tried to impress PBers by boasting about having shakshuka, without realising that Wetherspoons offer them.
Few of us are experts on anything more than our own lives, lived day after day, year after year.
lol. I was making a point about eating shakshuka, not because it’s a particularly exotic dish, but because I was eating it in a Mediterranean themed tented brasserie in a park in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan - which really IS an exotic and fantastic collision of cultures
That sailed right over your head because, let’s face it, you’re not the brightest, are you?
"Fans of viral Labubu dolls have reacted angrily online after its maker pulled the toys from all UK stores following reports of customers fighting over them.
Pop Mart, which makes the monster bag charms, told the BBC it had paused selling them in all 16 of its shops until June to "prevent any potential safety issues".
Labubu fan Victoria Calvert said she witnessed chaos in the Stratford store in London. "It was just getting ridiculous to be in that situation where people were fighting and shouting and you felt scared.""
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Thanks for proving my point.
You think a bit of driving around makes you an expert on everything in a country.
It really, really doesn't.
Go and live in a place for a year and then move to somewhere near which is either much more or much less affluent and experience living there for a year and understand what the differences are.
My travels mean I’m vastly more experienced in these things, than you, and notably better informed
C’est tout
Not really, since you seem utterly unable to put anything that you see in any sort of analytical context. The only reason you are regularly sent travelling is because of a superficial ability to come back and turn in an interesting phrase for people half asleep to read of a Sunday morning. Your insight into the way the world works, despite all the places you’ve been shown around, is as good as worthless.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Thanks for proving my point.
You think a bit of driving around makes you an expert on everything in a country.
It really, really doesn't.
Go and live in a place for a year and then move to somewhere near which is either much more or much less affluent and experience living there for a year and understand what the differences are.
My travels mean I’m vastly more experienced in these things, than you, and notably better informed
C’est tout
You are mistaking passing, superficial experience for deep, profound experience.
A comical example was when you tried to impress PBers by boasting about having shakshuka, without realising that Wetherspoons offer them.
Few of us are experts on anything more than our own lives, lived day after day, year after year.
lol. I was making a point about eating shakshuka, not because it’s a particularly exotic dish, but because I was eating it in a Mediterranean themed tented brasserie in a park in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan - which really IS an exotic and fantastic collision of cultures
That sailed right over your head because, let’s face it, you’re not the brightest, are you?
I looked at Tingley on Google Maps and it seemed okay to me.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
How about cost of living, most of the eastern european countries you get a pint for a pound compared to the Dick Turpin rates here.
Well that's what happens if you frequent the posho places of Ayrshire.
You can get a pint for two quid at Wetherspoons or £1 for a 500ml bottle at most supermarkets.
£1.47 on Mondays.
Even in Hampstead ???
No, we don't have one. But there's a couple within striking distance.
I remember when the Chandos used to have really cheap beer by London standards.
Then Sam Smiths put the prices up to tourist levels.
London's most expensive pub is probably the Spaniards Inn in Ham/High. It's closing in on the ten pound pint there. When I first started drinking you could get 40 pints for that and have enough left for some chips.
I've been in the Spaniards, the cars going past the narrow gap were an unusual form of live entertainment.
Is the government really thinking of equalising the tax rates on dividends and employment income?
They don't seem to realise or care that companies pay dividends out of post-tax profits whereas wages are from pre-tax profits. That's why dividend tax rates are lower. Otherwise companies have a big tax incentive to load up yet further on debt, unless of course you allowed companies tax relief on dividends.
It would cripple corporate investment, and what's left of our equity markets and pension funds.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Some of the banlieues around Paris are pretty shit.
I know, I’ve been to them as well. Likewise in Marseilles
Pretty fucking grim. But honestly, are they as grim as the grottiest towns in northern England? The worst burbs of Birmingham? Hmm
One “rich” western country which DOES have towns and hoods worse than the UK is Italy. I’ve been to some places in Sicily, Calabria and Puglia which could easily be in North Africa. And by that I don’t mean nicer parts of Tunisia
That's true: there are only two places in Europe I've ever felt really unsafe - Palermo and a shitty estate in Dublin about 30 years ago. In some of the French banlieues, it's felt a bit edgy. But I didn't feel like I was in imminent danger of being smashed over the head for my wallet and cellphone.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Thanks for proving my point.
You think a bit of driving around makes you an expert on everything in a country.
It really, really doesn't.
Go and live in a place for a year and then move to somewhere near which is either much more or much less affluent and experience living there for a year and understand what the differences are.
My travels mean I’m vastly more experienced in these things, than you, and notably better informed
C’est tout
Not really, since you seem utterly unable to put anything that you see in any sort of analytical context. The only reason you are regularly sent travelling is because of a superficial ability to come back and turn in an interesting phrase for people half asleep to read of a Sunday morning. Your insight into the way the world works, despite all the places you’ve been shown around, is as good as worthless.
Except it’s literally not “as good as worthless” is it? Because (unlike you) I am literally paid to go abroad and report what I see, because lots of people want to read it. That’s the opposite of “worthless”
Furthermore, I am now paid to report on the sociopolitics of the places I visit, not just the travel stuff - and these articles prove so popular they are widely syndicated. So, again, not worthless - the opposite. My opinions are worth money
If I had to compare what I now do to anyone, it would be my old stalker on here, who does similar stuff. Here he is writing about his experience of median ages in Central Asia
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Thanks for proving my point.
You think a bit of driving around makes you an expert on everything in a country.
It really, really doesn't.
Go and live in a place for a year and then move to somewhere near which is either much more or much less affluent and experience living there for a year and understand what the differences are.
My travels mean I’m vastly more experienced in these things, than you, and notably better informed
C’est tout
Not really, since you seem utterly unable to put anything that you see in any sort of analytical context. The only reason you are regularly sent travelling is because of a superficial ability to come back and turn in an interesting phrase for people half asleep to read of a Sunday morning. Your insight into the way the world works, despite all the places you’ve been shown around, is as good as worthless.
Except it’s literally not “as good as worthless” is it? Because (unlike you) I am literally paid to go abroad and report what I see, because lots of people want to read it. That’s the opposite of “worthless”
Furthermore, I am now paid to report on the sociopolitics of the places I visit, not just the travel stuff - and these articles prove so popular they are widely syndicated. So, again, not worthless - the opposite. My opinions are worth money
If I had to compare what I now do to anyone, it would be my old stalker on here, who does similar stuff. Here he is writing about his experience of median ages in Central Asia
France has better infrastructure, amenities, cultural life in its broadcasting and media, and collective social life.
It has very bad polarisation between ethnic groups, though, worse than the UK. It's ghettos are much more deprived, but its rural, provincial and post-industrial towns are also much less deprived, than ours.
That's fair:
I would also note that it's high social charges mean that those with low skills are essentially unemployable. And - while its primary and secondary education is very good - its universities are pretty average.
On the other hand, if you have an average salary, and live in an average town, then your quality of life is probably going to be meaningfully better than in the UK.
Thinking more about this, all countries have their strengths and their weaknesses.
Take Germany and Switzerland: their greatest strengths are that they have really good vocational training. It's quite hard to get to 21 with no marketable skills whatsoever: the system will have identified that you need to learn bricklaying, or whatever, and you will have been put through that apprenticeship process.
On the other hand, because of extremely consensual political systems, the importance of "fitting in" (otherwise known as a willingness to "obey orders"), and a lack of availability of risk capital, they're both very poor for startups.
Look at the US: it's big weaknesses are that (a) large parts of the interior are economic wastelands, where transport costs to the coasts are higher than getting a container from China, and (b) poor educational systems that leave too many without any route out of low wage, low skilled jobs.
Conversely, they have great universities, lots of risk capital, and people prepared to take flyers on new business ideas.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Some of the banlieues around Paris are pretty shit.
I know, I’ve been to them as well. Likewise in Marseilles
Pretty fucking grim. But honestly, are they as grim as the grottiest towns in northern England? The worst burbs of Birmingham? Hmm
One “rich” western country which DOES have towns and hoods worse than the UK is Italy. I’ve been to some places in Sicily, Calabria and Puglia which could easily be in North Africa. And by that I don’t mean nicer parts of Tunisia
That's true: there are only two places in Europe I've ever felt really unsafe - Palermo and a shitty estate in Dublin about 30 years ago. In some of the French banlieues, it's felt a bit edgy. But I didn't feel like I was in imminent danger of being smashed over the head for my wallet and cellphone.
Dublin can be really menacing. And apparently it’s got worse - if social media is to be believed (I know, I know)
Is the government really thinking of equalising the tax rates on dividends and employment income?
They don't seem to realise or care that companies pay dividends out of post-tax profits whereas wages are from pre-tax profits. That's why dividend tax rates are lower. Otherwise companies have a big tax incentive to load up yet further on debt, unless of course you allowed companies tax relief on dividends.
It would cripple corporate investment, and what's left of our equity markets and pension funds.
Unbelievable stupidity, even for this shower.
In the old days, the income tax rate on dividends was basically the difference between corporate tax rates and higher rate income tax for exactly this reason.
That T. rex in episode 1 should've been more feathered. We have a close relative of T. rex covered in feathers, although a species living at higher latitudes, so this might be an elephant/mammoth situation. Still, you'd expect some feathers on T. rex, just as an elephant has some hair.
France has better infrastructure, amenities, cultural life in its broadcasting and media, and collective social life.
It has very bad polarisation between ethnic groups, though, worse than the UK. It's ghettos are much more deprived, but its rural, provincial and post-industrial towns are also much less deprived, than ours.
That's fair:
I would also note that it's high social charges mean that those with low skills are essentially unemployable. And - while its primary and secondary education is very good - its universities are pretty average.
On the other hand, if you have an average salary, and live in an average town, then your quality of life is probably going to be meaningfully better than in the UK.
Thinking more about this, all countries have their strengths and their weaknesses.
Take Germany and Switzerland: their greatest strengths are that they have really good vocational training. It's quite hard to get to 21 with no marketable skills whatsoever: the system will have identified that you need to learn bricklaying, or whatever, and you will have been put through that apprenticeship process.
On the other hand, because of extremely consensual political systems, the importance of "fitting in" (otherwise known as a willingness to "obey orders"), and a lack of availability of risk capital, they're both very poor for startups.
Look at the US: it's big weaknesses are that (a) large parts of the interior are economic wastelands, where transport costs to the coasts are higher than getting a container from China, and (b) poor educational systems that leave too many without any route out of low wage, low skilled jobs.
Conversely, they have great universities, lots of risk capital, and people prepared to take flyers on new business ideas.
Nowhere is perfect. Everywhere has its problems.
Nowhere is perfect but some places are obviously better than others
To take your two examples, Switzerland is doing an awful lot better than Germany
And now I must hie to the shoppes, thereto buy porpoise tonggue
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Some of the banlieues around Paris are pretty shit.
I know, I’ve been to them as well. Likewise in Marseilles
Pretty fucking grim. But honestly, are they as grim as the grottiest towns in northern England? The worst burbs of Birmingham? Hmm
One “rich” western country which DOES have towns and hoods worse than the UK is Italy. I’ve been to some places in Sicily, Calabria and Puglia which could easily be in North Africa. And by that I don’t mean nicer parts of Tunisia
That's true: there are only two places in Europe I've ever felt really unsafe - Palermo and a shitty estate in Dublin about 30 years ago. In some of the French banlieues, it's felt a bit edgy. But I didn't feel like I was in imminent danger of being smashed over the head for my wallet and cellphone.
Dublin can be really menacing. And apparently it’s got worse - if social media is to be believed (I know, I know)
I haven’t been in a decade
I worked in Dublin in 2007, at that time it was the height of the European migration/free movement stuff with the rural Irish loving the fortune they were making on the housing market boom. Loads of eastern European shops opening in areas like Drumcondra from memory but a very overall identifiable Irish identity in the city. Recent video I've seen looks very different but I've not been there to see how much of that is showing what they want to show
Never go anywhere "family-orientated" on a bank holiday Monday with kids.
I should now be working. I'm actually having a stiff drink.
Where did you go ?
Made sandwiches for lunch at the "Butterfly house" today, the lunch queue on a BH is always bonkers at these sorts of things, also managed to swerve the little one eyeing up anything too closely in the shop so (As we're members) didn't spend a penny out !
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Some of the banlieues around Paris are pretty shit.
I know, I’ve been to them as well. Likewise in Marseilles
Pretty fucking grim. But honestly, are they as grim as the grottiest towns in northern England? The worst burbs of Birmingham? Hmm
One “rich” western country which DOES have towns and hoods worse than the UK is Italy. I’ve been to some places in Sicily, Calabria and Puglia which could easily be in North Africa. And by that I don’t mean nicer parts of Tunisia
That's true: there are only two places in Europe I've ever felt really unsafe - Palermo and a shitty estate in Dublin about 30 years ago. In some of the French banlieues, it's felt a bit edgy. But I didn't feel like I was in imminent danger of being smashed over the head for my wallet and cellphone.
That sound as your head caved would have been the craic.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
You're all not going to believe me but I promise you this is true...... Chatting whilst out today to a vague/not well known acquaintance at an event and politics came up via some lame joke I told about the current state of the Tories. I've no idea this guys allegiances but he jumped in, unbidden, with 'Boris back. That's what I want to see' I'm half expecting to find out someone here paid him to say it to me!
Can't say I'm surprised. The idea of Boris is still attractive, and everyone likes it at first. The catch is the Max Hastings (?) point- sooner or later he betrays everyone and everyone eventually regrets dealing with him. Unfortunately, for all the gifts the good fairy gave him, the bad fairy made him a selfish lying shit; he can't help himself.
It's not difficult to see that some people haven't reached that betrayal point yet. It's an individual thing. But I suspect we're well past the tipping point.
A search and rescue specialist hired to recover a downed research balloon in what was supposed be a four-day job has finally returned home after spending more than 100 days in a West African prison.
Paul Inch, 50, from Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, and colleague Richard Perham, 29, from Bristol, had gone to Guinea to recover the equipment for a firm when they were arrested and accused of spying.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
Thanks for proving my point.
You think a bit of driving around makes you an expert on everything in a country.
It really, really doesn't.
Go and live in a place for a year and then move to somewhere near which is either much more or much less affluent and experience living there for a year and understand what the differences are.
My travels mean I’m vastly more experienced in these things, than you, and notably better informed
C’est tout
We appreciate your sacrifice to entertain us. When are you leaving and to where?
You're all not going to believe me but I promise you this is true...... Chatting whilst out today to a vague/not well known acquaintance at an event and politics came up via some lame joke I told about the current state of the Tories. I've no idea this guys allegiances but he jumped in, unbidden, with 'Boris back. That's what I want to see' I'm half expecting to find out someone here paid him to say it to me!
Can't say I'm surprised. The idea of Boris is still attractive, and everyone likes it at first. The catch is the Max Hastings (?) point- sooner or later he betrays everyone and everyone eventually regrets dealing with him. Unfortunately, for all the gifts the good fairy gave him, the bad fairy made him a selfish lying shit; he can't help himself.
It's not difficult to see that some people haven't reached that betrayal point yet. It's an individual thong. But I suspect we're well past the tipping point.
I was taken aback that it just came up today when this was the thread I'd left to this morning! The chap that made the comment tbf I wouldn't be surprised to find has been a Norfolk Tory voter for 50 years, he 'looks' like a Norfolk County Tory, so interesting he's into Boris really. I mentioned something about Farage as an aside and he was utterly disinterested so not a Refom convert there. We moved swiftly on to important matters of state (drink)
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
I don’t quite buy these figures. France looks, feels, seems to be richer than the UK - not vastly, but enough that you sense it. Likewise Germany
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
Travel can give a partial picture but never a full one and you really haven't travelled everywhere in France.
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
This just isn’t true. I spent eight weeks in France last year. And I deliberately went to some of the poorest places - in central Brittany, depressed towns on the coasts, forgotten chunks of the “empty diagonal”, post industrial places in the north and east. Burbs of Marseilles
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
Never go anywhere "family-orientated" on a bank holiday Monday with kids.
I should now be working. I'm actually having a stiff drink.
We’ve had a nice walk in the local woods and I bumped into an old colleague and had a chat. We spent the rest of the day inside. A family orientated bank holiday is my idea of Hell.
Now retired, as I said earlier, I hate bank holidays.
Given the MoreinCommon poll has a Boris led Conservatives retaking the lead on 26% to 23% for Reform and 22% for Labour you would expect him to not only win any by election he fights in a Tory held seat but also to increase the Conservative majority.
However I cannot see him becoming a contender for the leadership before he is back in Parliament. If Kemi lost a VONC next autumn and was replaced by Cleverly or Jenrick they would see themselves as having that mandate not Boris to lead the party until the next GE
The tories need Johnson to survive. We'll see if they have the will and guile to engineer it.
I think you are right.
Declaration: I am no fan of Boris and voted for Hunt against him for leader. I think I was right to at the time, and I certainly accept the many criticisms of Boris expressed in this thread. But what's the alternative? PM Farage?
So far as BJ is concerned, he does have a few good characteristics.
1. I don't believe he is personally prejudiced or racialist 2. He has been absolutely solid on Ukraine and a great friend to President Zelenskyy
These are things I care about. And can you say the same for Farage and Reform? I don't think so.
So, if you don't want to see the British Right-of-Centre go the same way as the US, then Boris may be the only realistic solution. Fight fire with fire when it comes to competing with Farage. Do what Farage least wants to happen - the re-emergence of Boris as a competitor. Throw over the card table.
Hardly ideal. But there we are. Pragmatism is the British way, after all.
Boris coming back would be the end of Britain as a serious country.
Britain is a serious country?
Well yes quite. We are falling well behind now. Bucharest in Romania is as rich as Yorkshire now. Take London and the SE away and we are basically eastern european standards of living
Yet there are thousands of eastern Europeans who live in Yorkshire and near zero Yorkshiremen who live in eastern Europe.
Not to mention that London has a lower standard of living than Yorkshire:
How about cost of living, most of the eastern european countries you get a pint for a pound compared to the Dick Turpin rates here.
Well that's what happens if you frequent the posho places of Ayrshire.
You can get a pint for two quid at Wetherspoons or £1 for a 500ml bottle at most supermarkets.
£1.47 on Mondays.
Even in Hampstead ???
No, we don't have one. But there's a couple within striking distance.
I remember when the Chandos used to have really cheap beer by London standards.
Then Sam Smiths put the prices up to tourist levels.
London's most expensive pub is probably the Spaniards Inn in Ham/High. It's closing in on the ten pound pint there. When I first started drinking you could get 40 pints for that and have enough left for some chips.
A pint of what though ?
Probably need to compare one pint. Like they compare a Big Mac cost wherever you go.
We could have the Madri index. Named after a fantastic, authentic, Spanish beer. The spirit of Madrid.
There is a great bar in Durham where a pint can cost around £18.00. But it is some craft shite that is £6 a third.
You're all not going to believe me but I promise you this is true...... Chatting whilst out today to a vague/not well known acquaintance at an event and politics came up via some lame joke I told about the current state of the Tories. I've no idea this guys allegiances but he jumped in, unbidden, with 'Boris back. That's what I want to see' I'm half expecting to find out someone here paid him to say it to me!
Can't say I'm surprised. The idea of Boris is still attractive, and everyone likes it at first. The catch is the Max Hastings (?) point- sooner or later he betrays everyone and everyone eventually regrets dealing with him. Unfortunately, for all the gifts the good fairy gave him, the bad fairy made him a selfish lying shit; he can't help himself.
It's not difficult to see that some people haven't reached that betrayal point yet. It's an individual thing. But I suspect we're well past the tipping point.
When Boris was PM I had a heated discussion about him with some of his admirers. I was outnumbered and in the end cooler heads present suggested we put it aside and talk about something else. But those admirers have now moved on to Reform and are contemptuous of Boris. Yes, there are probably still some in the Boris zone, but it's emptying and I doubt those who leave will ever return.
Is the government really thinking of equalising the tax rates on dividends and employment income?
They don't seem to realise or care that companies pay dividends out of post-tax profits whereas wages are from pre-tax profits. That's why dividend tax rates are lower. Otherwise companies have a big tax incentive to load up yet further on debt, unless of course you allowed companies tax relief on dividends.
It would cripple corporate investment, and what's left of our equity markets and pension funds.
Unbelievable stupidity, even for this shower.
In the old days, the income tax rate on dividends was basically the difference between corporate tax rates and higher rate income tax for exactly this reason.
I recall, when Amazon first did it, something close to anger - “If these scum refuse to make a profit, how can we tax them properly?”.
For a number of years, now, in many Western countries, making a profit and paying dividends has been going out of fashion.
You're all not going to believe me but I promise you this is true...... Chatting whilst out today to a vague/not well known acquaintance at an event and politics came up via some lame joke I told about the current state of the Tories. I've no idea this guys allegiances but he jumped in, unbidden, with 'Boris back. That's what I want to see' I'm half expecting to find out someone here paid him to say it to me!
Can't say I'm surprised. The idea of Boris is still attractive, and everyone likes it at first. The catch is the Max Hastings (?) point- sooner or later he betrays everyone and everyone eventually regrets dealing with him. Unfortunately, for all the gifts the good fairy gave him, the bad fairy made him a selfish lying shit; he can't help himself.
It's not difficult to see that some people haven't reached that betrayal point yet. It's an individual thing. But I suspect we're well past the tipping point.
When Boris was PM I had a heated discussion about him with some of his admirers. I was outnumbered and in the end cooler heads present suggested we put it aside and talked about something else. But those admirers have now moved on to Reform and are contemptuous of Boris. Yes, there are probably still some in the Boris zone, but it's emptying and I doubt those who leave will ever return.
I suppose the trade off is if there are 20% that still love him and 15% that will tolerate him the Tories would bite your arm off for it. The 35% support he was on when he left office would see them very very comfortable (I know they wouldnt jump to 35% it's more that they are so In the doldrums any sort of popularity must seem attractive )
Comments
And I’ve travelled everywhere in France - not just nice places
Am I suffering some optical illusion because France is more beautiful and spacious, and maintains the urban realm much better; or are the stats somehow deceptive?
Genuine question
That matches the “feel” of what I experience when abroad. France is slightly richer than us, Germany notably richer
The tax havens at the top are clear distortions, however
Part 2: https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west-part-ii-strategic-realities/
So, GDP per capita (less corporate profits) adjusted for PPP is probably the best rough and ready measure.
(I'm retired now, but I think I just ignored similar directives, but was goody-goody on others that I could live with to placate the wrath of the clip-counters.)
I think your urban realm theory could be true, but it will be very difficult to prove with financial information. There's not much available on local government.
The ghost of James Buchanan must be happy for the first time in nigh on two centuries.
It’s happened in the last 20 years. Up until the GFC Britain was doing well, overtaking many EU countries. After that we flatlined - understandably, our biggest industry was walloped
Austerity made it worse. Brexit didn’t help. Covid dealt a fearsome blow to our towns. On top of that, mass migration has been a disaster for the UK (and other European countries)
The terrifying thing is that Britain’s decline feels like it is speeding up. But that is just “a feel”. I hope I’m wrong
Don't.
Pop Mart, which makes the monster bag charms, told the BBC it had paused selling them in all 16 of its shops until June to "prevent any potential safety issues".
Labubu fan Victoria Calvert said she witnessed chaos in the Stratford store in London. "It was just getting ridiculous to be in that situation where people were fighting and shouting and you felt scared.""
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgvwvvlnv3o
Are people getting more stupid?
Social Media is working...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0024qbn
You can drive around a district in this country and get an impression of its affluence and living standards, you can then go a different route through the same district and get a very different impression.
It might even be weather related - people tend to go on holiday in summer and travel in good weather. The same places might look a lot less beautiful on a rainy day in November.
And travel through a place isn't the same as living there either.
There are also non-economic issues - GDP is not the same as living standards which are not the same as quality of life.
RFK's famous speech:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FAmr1la6w0
As a practical example when they shut the pits they reduced GDP and the living standards of some but it improved my quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating lots of new country parks for me to walk though.
Consumption per capita reduces these differences to give a better idea of the median situation.
Although that can be affected if countries over or under consumer.
It has very bad polarisation between ethnic groups, though, worse than the UK. It's ghettos are much more deprived, but its rural, provincial and post-industrial towns are also much less deprived, than ours.
You can get a pint for two quid at Wetherspoons or £1 for a 500ml bottle at most supermarkets.
Also I went to many lovely places, because France is blessed with many of those
Two days ago I accidentally drove through ONE distant suburb of Leeds. Tingley. It was more depressingly run down and grotty - burned out houses on the Main Street - than any single place I saw in France in two months
And I’ve been researching and it seems Tingley isn’t even regarded as the worst bit of Leeds. Just “a bit rough but there are plenty worse”
I don’t like reporting this, but it is what I see
And similarly in this country.
There are lots of differences even down to the local level.
In any case, living in somewhere 'deprived' also tends to be cheap. The thing to do is to live in a nice part of a deprived area which has good communications and nice countryside.
If you are secretly PB’s Bruce Chatwin, I apologise
Boris Johnson brands Starmer ‘the orange ball-chewing gimp of Brussels’
Former PM criticises ‘appalling sell-out of a deal’ with EU
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/05/19/boris-johnson-starmer-orange-ball-chewing-gimp-brussels/
I would also note that it's high social charges mean that those with low skills are essentially unemployable. And - while its primary and secondary education is very good - its universities are pretty average.
On the other hand, if you have an average salary, and live in an average town, then your quality of life is probably going to be meaningfully better than in the UK.
You think a bit of driving around makes you an expert on everything in a country.
It really, really doesn't.
Go and live in a place for a year and then move to somewhere near which is either much more or much less affluent and experience living there for a year and understand what the differences are.
Then Sam Smiths put the prices up to tourist levels.
C’est tout
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7020151/3-05102015-BP-EN.pdf/bf18a8b3-998c-476d-b3af-58292b89939b
Really interesting. We have a tiny rural population, and most of us live in densely urban areas, yet have the lowest rates of living in flats anywhere in Europe. The Nordic countries have excellent urban public spaces.
I should now be working. I'm actually having a stiff drink.
Pretty fucking grim. But honestly, are they as grim as the grottiest towns in northern England? The worst burbs of Birmingham? Hmm
One “rich” western country which DOES have towns and hoods worse than the UK is Italy. I’ve been to some places in Sicily, Calabria and Puglia which could easily be in North Africa. And by that I don’t mean nicer parts of Tunisia
Indeed, on a warm summer’s day, with that lovely beer garden and all that history and all of Kenwood and Hampstead Heath right outside, the Spaniard’s is one of the nicest places to drink IN THE WORLD
Chatting whilst out today to a vague/not well known acquaintance at an event and politics came up via some lame joke I told about the current state of the Tories. I've no idea this guys allegiances but he jumped in, unbidden, with 'Boris back. That's what I want to see'
I'm half expecting to find out someone here paid him to say it to me!
A comical example was when you tried to impress PBers by boasting about having shakshuka, without realising that Wetherspoons offer them.
Few of us are experts on anything more than our own lives, lived day after day, year after year.
That sailed right over your head because, let’s face it, you’re not the brightest, are you?
They don't seem to realise or care that companies pay dividends out of post-tax profits whereas wages are from pre-tax profits. That's why dividend tax rates are lower. Otherwise companies have a big tax incentive to load up yet further on debt, unless of course you allowed companies tax relief on dividends.
It would cripple corporate investment, and what's left of our equity markets and pension funds.
Unbelievable stupidity, even for this shower.
Furthermore, I am now paid to report on the sociopolitics of the places I visit, not just the travel stuff - and these articles prove so popular they are widely syndicated. So, again, not worthless - the opposite. My opinions are worth money
If I had to compare what I now do to anyone, it would be my old stalker on here, who does similar stuff. Here he is writing about his experience of median ages in Central Asia
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-wild-optimism-of-a-young-society/
Take Germany and Switzerland: their greatest strengths are that they have really good vocational training. It's quite hard to get to 21 with no marketable skills whatsoever: the system will have identified that you need to learn bricklaying, or whatever, and you will have been put through that apprenticeship process.
On the other hand, because of extremely consensual political systems, the importance of "fitting in" (otherwise known as a willingness to "obey orders"), and a lack of availability of risk capital, they're both very poor for startups.
Look at the US: it's big weaknesses are that (a) large parts of the interior are economic wastelands, where transport costs to the coasts are higher than getting a container from China, and (b) poor educational systems that leave too many without any route out of low wage, low skilled jobs.
Conversely, they have great universities, lots of risk capital, and people prepared to take flyers on new business ideas.
Nowhere is perfect. Everywhere has its problems.
I haven’t been in a decade
To take your two examples, Switzerland is doing an awful lot better than Germany
And now I must hie to the shoppes, thereto buy porpoise tonggue
Recent video I've seen looks very different but I've not been there to see how much of that is showing what they want to show
Made sandwiches for lunch at the "Butterfly house" today, the lunch queue on a BH is always bonkers at these sorts of things, also managed to swerve the little one eyeing up anything too closely in the shop so (As we're members) didn't spend a penny out !
It's not difficult to see that some people haven't reached that betrayal point yet. It's an individual thing. But I suspect we're well past the tipping point.
A search and rescue specialist hired to recover a downed research balloon in what was supposed be a four-day job has finally returned home after spending more than 100 days in a West African prison.
Paul Inch, 50, from Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, and colleague Richard Perham, 29, from Bristol, had gone to Guinea to recover the equipment for a firm when they were arrested and accused of spying.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0jvj84dgjo
https://x.com/JohnRentoul/status/1926998028155535417?s=19
Sounds like the disability rebellion is hardening and will be impactful
Now retired, as I said earlier, I hate bank holidays.
Probably need to compare one pint. Like they compare a Big Mac cost wherever you go.
We could have the Madri index. Named after a fantastic, authentic, Spanish beer. The spirit of Madrid.
There is a great bar in Durham where a pint can cost around £18.00. But it is some craft shite that is £6 a third.
Get onto the Bank of England. Fire up the printer.
For a number of years, now, in many Western countries, making a profit and paying dividends has been going out of fashion.