For those broadly on the left things aren't looking too bad. Kemi has chosen to stay in lockstep with Reform which leaves the centre a big beautiful gaping hole with plenty of attractive options depending on constituency. The only certainty at the moment is that Reform can't win. 30% won't do it when for the 70% they are the worst possible option.
I'm slightly confident about Starmer raising his game. He's quite a fast learner and by now he will realise that chasing populism is a fools errand. He's smart enough to know that people want authenticity and now he's tried the rest that should be next on his list. I saw an early interview with him and there's definitely something there.
Ok that’s it. This is a self parody. And a rather good one
I like to think of your chuckling over your crème de menthe frappe in sunny Villefranche as you typed out that ludicrously Roger-esque bilge, perfectly replete with imbecile non-facts and absurd non sequiturs
For those broadly on the left things aren't looking too bad. Kemi has chosen to stay in lockstep with Reform which leaves the centre a big beautiful gaping hole with plenty of attractive options depending on constituency. The only certainty at the moment is that Reform can't win. 30% won't do it when for the 70% they are the worst possible option.
I'm slightly confident about Starmer raising his game. He's quite a fast learner and by now he will realise that chasing populism is a fools errand. He's smart enough to know that people want authenticity and now he's tried the rest that should be next on his list. I saw an early interview with him and there's definitely something there.
Ok that’s it. This is a self parody. And a rather good one
I like to think of your chuckling over your crème de menthe frappe in sunny Villefranche as you typed out that ludicrously Roger-esque bilge, perfectly replete with imbecile non-facts and absurd non sequiturs
I’m in Villefranche-sur-Mer at the moment and it’s most sunny
Le Photo, bitte schone!
The old biddy with the phone is sharing her call with us all. What a twit
But Dan Neidle, often accused of being Labour’s tax man, is sinking his teeth into Starmer over his ‘trust’
When Keir Starmer gave a field to his parents, he used a "life interest trust". This meant that, as its value grew from £20k to £300k, it was outside their inheritance tax estate.
If you read the thread, there is nothing much in this. Interests in land that are not freehold are a routine part of life (eg renting); possession and use (the term 'ownership' is highly misleading) that ends on death is common for land tenure and has been since William the Conqueror; IHT planning is normal, almost everyone who needs to do it does so; buried in the story is that no advantage (which would have been completely proper) was actually gained.
Golf. The Racing Post's stick-ball correspondent predicts a comeback for the home team in today's singles, but not enough.
SPotY. The problem is the BBC's eccentric shortlisting. Good luck to Stocky (fpt) on his Fleetwood bet, but it depends on the BBC looking past Rory McIlroy for the golf slot after his major win (the US Masters) last April brought up his career grand slam – only the sixth golfer to achieve this.
ETA Ellie Kildunne actually drifted in the SPotY betting after yesterday's World Cup win, in which she scored an (apparently) outstanding first try. I can only imagine that in leaving the car park, she ran over a young orphan taking her poorly kitten to the vet. Or maybe punters started to wonder if she too would be nominated.
It’s quite sad really the lack of fanfare the English Ladies rugby people are getting compared to the footballers. I think with Ellie Kildunne she was the most recognisable player in the team but now with the final won it might be harder to select one player from a minority sport. They hopefully will get the team award.
Trouble is, giving the Red Roses the team award hurts Ellie's chances in the main SPotY event. Of course, now the Ryder Cup golfers might get the team award which puts Ellie back in play at around 20/1. It is a bit of a shame that both happen on the same weekend.
I wonder if, should Lando win the F1 championship, he will leap into favourite space as season finishes nearer the SPOTY date.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
And people don't like to be seen backing a loser.
Yup, we'll end up with a donors' strike, that'll end Kemi's leadership.
I am almost regretting vote for her.
A fie on the parliamentary Tory Party for giving me a choice between Badenoch and Jenrick.
Just disband the party. It’s over. Nothing is forever. Soft dads like you can join the LDs - and improve their offering - and harder types can join Reform, giving them gravitas
Win win
The next election should ideally be LDs versus Reform. That would be a good clear choice for the people. The two big parties need to go extinct now
I could never join a party that supports the WASPI women.
The fact that Wera Hobhouse hasn't been expelled for pushing 5G conspiracy theories is another black mark.
Only she wasn't pushing 5g conspiracy theories at all. She supported the local party and people in their opposition to the mast due to it being in an AONB. You are just parroting a distorted view of the council meeting from a local newspaper reporter.
In a submission to the council about the planned mast, Bath's MP said she was concerned about "the threat to human health, to tree health and to wildlife and biodiversity". Asked by the BBC to detail her concerns about health, Ms Hobhouse said she had spent time weighing up the available evidence and conceded that all the official guidance was that it was safe. But she said that "given the widespread concern and conversations I have had with Bath residents who claim to be extra vulnerable, I believe it may be worth applying a precautionary principle on where masts are located whilst further studies are being undertaken".
Kemi has jumped into two foot on tw@tter about Starmer "failing" to rule out VAT rises, all because he does he weird lawyerly answering to a fairly straight forward question.
I think it is higher unlikely Labour raise VAT as the "regressive" nature of it will be a non-starter for most Labour MPs. And as Osborne found trying to tinker around the edges, the inconsistencies in VAT is a minefield.
For those broadly on the left things aren't looking too bad. Kemi has chosen to stay in lockstep with Reform which leaves the centre a big beautiful gaping hole with plenty of attractive options depending on constituency. The only certainty at the moment that Reform can't win. 30% won't do it when for 70% they are the worst possible option.
I'm slightly confident about Starmer raising his game. He's quite a fast learner and by now he will realise that chasing populism is a fools errand. He's smart enough to know that people want authenticity and now he's tried the rest that should be next on his list. I saw an early interview with him and there's definitely something there.
He was quite good on Laura K this morning. Positive, cheerful, practical.
In the early interview I saw with him he was quite self effacing which suited him well. I would like to think that this robotic character we've all become accustomed to isn't the real thing. His wife is attractive and by all accounts smart. Not someone likely to be attracted to a robot.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
And people don't like to be seen backing a loser.
Yup, we'll end up with a donors' strike, that'll end Kemi's leadership.
I am almost regretting vote for her.
A fie on the parliamentary Tory Party for giving me a choice between Badenoch and Jenrick.
Just disband the party. It’s over. Nothing is forever. Soft dads like you can join the LDs - and improve their offering - and harder types can join Reform, giving them gravitas
Win win
The next election should ideally be LDs versus Reform. That would be a good clear choice for the people. The two big parties need to go extinct now
The Ultras said the same. And kept the Tories from power for a generation. But ultimately society moved on and the voters realised that tariffs on corn were not a good thing and the Ultras disappeared.
A moderate right of centre party is a good thing. The Tories are not delivering at the moment and seem irrelevant in the face of the howling bot-amplified screams from Reform. But ultimately they will be back.
These are not moderate times. I’m not sure moderate times will ever return
And now I must drink coffee and do some work on this grey cool Sunday. Later
You may be right. Moderation requires a population who believe that happiness consists in right expectations + the belief that a moral political order can protect, defend and sustain them. This also requires a political order that can produce reasonably honest manifestos at elections. This is a little way off, though we may get there once all else has been tried.
IMHO the largest problem in the way of this is not the future but the past. Older voters (I am 70) have two perceptions about the past. Firstly that it was, on the whole, a happier place for young people, and secondly that the accumulated baggage of the world on the 21st century (Twin Towers, Iraq, GFC, NHS, migration, Brexit etc) mean that any government starts off needing 500 to win with three wickets left because of how the earlier batsmen failed.
The last analogy is spot on I think. The world - specifically the developed world - has suffered a series of economic and political calamities that any country would struggle to shake off. Those you list, but in particular also the vastly expensive Covid pandemic and the upheaval of the global energy market triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Alongside the insidious bad news of ageing populations and a changing climate that is itself triggering wars, unrest and migration. And the self-fulfilling prophesy of this all bringing a populist to power in the US who is now upending global trade with his tariff policy.
So there’s been a middle order batting collapse. It’s one of the reasons I feel the world really needs a few years of calm more than anything else. Each crisis eats away at GDP, productivity and the assets of governments, and in so doing further erodes the foundations of liberal democracy.
There is not going to be any calm, it is all going to get even more hyped. Without being too specific - there are several technologies heading our way that are going to transform society in ways we cannot even conceive. This is already happening but most people don't realise
Check the robot videos coming out of China, NOW. Robots can NOW do many physical tasks, and they will do them quicker, better, cheaper than humans quite soon
Then there's self driving autos - as @MaxPB notes. This alone will revolutionise our lives and reorder our cities, but also put swathes of people out of work...
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
And people don't like to be seen backing a loser.
Yup, we'll end up with a donors' strike, that'll end Kemi's leadership.
I am almost regretting vote for her.
A fie on the parliamentary Tory Party for giving me a choice between Badenoch and Jenrick.
Just disband the party. It’s over. Nothing is forever. Soft dads like you can join the LDs - and improve their offering - and harder types can join Reform, giving them gravitas
Win win
The next election should ideally be LDs versus Reform. That would be a good clear choice for the people. The two big parties need to go extinct now
I could never join a party that supports the WASPI women.
The fact that Wera Hobhouse hasn't been expelled for pushing 5G conspiracy theories is another black mark.
Only she wasn't pushing 5g conspiracy theories at all. She supported the local party and people in their opposition to the mast due to it being in an AONB. You are just parroting a distorted view of the council meeting from a local newspaper reporter.
In a submission to the council about the planned mast, Bath's MP said she was concerned about "the threat to human health, to tree health and to wildlife and biodiversity". Asked by the BBC to detail her concerns about health, Ms Hobhouse said she had spent time weighing up the available evidence and conceded that all the official guidance was that it was safe. But she said that "given the widespread concern and conversations I have had with Bath residents who claim to be extra vulnerable, I believe it may be worth applying a precautionary principle on where masts are located whilst further studies are being undertaken".
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Utter tripe. No doubt come from Gove, a bitter political failure who cannot conceive of anyone not as spineless as he was.
Speaking of which, a hideous ad banner has appeared which they graciously take off when you log in. It's very tacky.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
Always been puzzled by this argument. If an American can learn to drive on British roads, then so can an AI that is able to drive on US roads.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
And people don't like to be seen backing a loser.
Yup, we'll end up with a donors' strike, that'll end Kemi's leadership.
I am almost regretting vote for her.
A fie on the parliamentary Tory Party for giving me a choice between Badenoch and Jenrick.
Just disband the party. It’s over. Nothing is forever. Soft dads like you can join the LDs - and improve their offering - and harder types can join Reform, giving them gravitas
Win win
The next election should ideally be LDs versus Reform. That would be a good clear choice for the people. The two big parties need to go extinct now
I could never join a party that supports the WASPI women.
The fact that Wera Hobhouse hasn't been expelled for pushing 5G conspiracy theories is another black mark.
Only she wasn't pushing 5g conspiracy theories at all. She supported the local party and people in their opposition to the mast due to it being in an AONB. You are just parroting a distorted view of the council meeting from a local newspaper reporter.
In a submission to the council about the planned mast, Bath's MP said she was concerned about "the threat to human health, to tree health and to wildlife and biodiversity". Asked by the BBC to detail her concerns about health, Ms Hobhouse said she had spent time weighing up the available evidence and conceded that all the official guidance was that it was safe. But she said that "given the widespread concern and conversations I have had with Bath residents who claim to be extra vulnerable, I believe it may be worth applying a precautionary principle on where masts are located whilst further studies are being undertaken".
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
Interestingly enough, Waymo has concentrated on urban areas. You still can’t get a private run between the LA and SF deployments.
Apparently Denver and Seattle are next - and their climates are closer to us than LA.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
One of the challenges must surely be managing country lane etiquette. You come round the corner and there’s a vehicle driving in your direction. It’s a single track road. One of you must decide to reverse a few metres up into the brambly hedge to allow the other to pass. The parking sensors are beeping continuously. What does a Waymo do in that situation?
But Dan Neidle, often accused of being Labour’s tax man, is sinking his teeth into Starmer over his ‘trust’
When Keir Starmer gave a field to his parents, he used a "life interest trust". This meant that, as its value grew from £20k to £300k, it was outside their inheritance tax estate.
It would have made no difference anyway as the whole estate including the land meant the kids wouldn’t have paid inheritance tax . The whole story is just trying to find wrong doing when there’s no evidence he tried to avoid any tax and goes down a number of what ifs .
Why wouldn't they have paid inheritence tax?
I don't think Dan Neidle is out to get Starmer. He is a Labour member and says he just saw a wrinkle in Starmer's story that he couldn't ignore
SFAICS there is no IHT liable because once dead you no longer have the field to be inherited. Just as if you die living in a house you don't have a continuing legal interest in, it isn't part of the estate.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Am I the only person who prefers to use traditional cabs where the driver knows where to go without using a satnav?
Golf. The Racing Post's stick-ball correspondent predicts a comeback for the home team in today's singles, but not enough.
SPotY. The problem is the BBC's eccentric shortlisting. Good luck to Stocky (fpt) on his Fleetwood bet, but it depends on the BBC looking past Rory McIlroy for the golf slot after his major win (the US Masters) last April brought up his career grand slam – only the sixth golfer to achieve this.
ETA Ellie Kildunne actually drifted in the SPotY betting after yesterday's World Cup win, in which she scored an (apparently) outstanding first try. I can only imagine that in leaving the car park, she ran over a young orphan taking her poorly kitten to the vet. Or maybe punters started to wonder if she too would be nominated.
It’s quite sad really the lack of fanfare the English Ladies rugby people are getting compared to the footballers. I think with Ellie Kildunne she was the most recognisable player in the team but now with the final won it might be harder to select one player from a minority sport. They hopefully will get the team award.
Trouble is, giving the Red Roses the team award hurts Ellie's chances in the main SPotY event. Of course, now the Ryder Cup golfers might get the team award which puts Ellie back in play at around 20/1. It is a bit of a shame that both happen on the same weekend.
I wonder if, should Lando win the F1 championship, he will leap into favourite space as season finishes nearer the SPOTY date.
Possibly, though bagging the F1 title is a big if, and another question is how many have even heard of Lando Norris – Lewis Hamilton makes headlines when his dog is unwell; Lando, not so much.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
These cars are now phenomenal, they are coming. They will be taken up universally as they will save millions of lives - these cars are orders of magnitude safer than flawed-human driven cars, with drivers who get drunk, have fights, and use their phones while speeding
Expect automated tuk-tuks soon, as I once predicted on here
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
That isn't true of China. Their urban roads are highly congested, they are ever changing due to the rapid development, people drive really badly / aggressively, and loads of inconsistencies. They are really difficult driving conditions.
Their home grown self driving are known for mimicking the local driving style as it was felt the much more cautious driving style of Waymo just wouldn't work in China.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
One of the challenges must surely be managing country lane etiquette. You come round the corner and there’s a vehicle driving in your direction. It’s a single track road. One of you must decide to reverse a few metres up into the brambly hedge to allow the other to pass. The parking sensors are beeping continuously. What does a Waymo do in that situation?
The car doesn’t mind reversing, remember. Unlike humans.
The prime minister, whose party is polling 16-22% has just called all the supporters of the party polling 30-34% - ie one third of the nation - “the enemy”
This is such bad politics it’s farcical. He will only entrench the opposition and harden the hearts of those who already dislike him. And it won’t win him a single vote
But are they Enemies of the People? Enquiring minds demand to know.
Because, as Blair told us, the Labour Party is "nothing less than the political wing of the British people".
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
One of the challenges must surely be managing country lane etiquette. You come round the corner and there’s a vehicle driving in your direction. It’s a single track road. One of you must decide to reverse a few metres up into the brambly hedge to allow the other to pass. The parking sensors are beeping continuously. What does a Waymo do in that situation?
This is often held up as an argument about why humans are so special that they can’t ever be replaced on uk roads. Most learner drivers need to encounter this problem a mere handful of times to become proficient in dealing with this obstacle. The algorithm approach will be trained on this specific problem using tens of thousands of examples. It will be clear to all by around early 2027 I think.
But Dan Neidle, often accused of being Labour’s tax man, is sinking his teeth into Starmer over his ‘trust’
When Keir Starmer gave a field to his parents, he used a "life interest trust". This meant that, as its value grew from £20k to £300k, it was outside their inheritance tax estate.
It’s a little convoluted but essentially fine. It meant that he didn’t give the field to his parents outright but that they owned it for their lifetime.
The only question I would have - and may. E someone who uses X can ask Dan Neidle - is what would the capital gains impact have been?
If he bought it for £20k and sold it for £295k he’d have a capital gains liability. However on a typical inheritance the probate value becomes the new base cost for the inheritor. How does it work in this case? Did Starmer have a step up in his cost base to the probate value or did his cost base stay at £20k?
Golf. The Racing Post's stick-ball correspondent predicts a comeback for the home team in today's singles, but not enough.
SPotY. The problem is the BBC's eccentric shortlisting. Good luck to Stocky (fpt) on his Fleetwood bet, but it depends on the BBC looking past Rory McIlroy for the golf slot after his major win (the US Masters) last April brought up his career grand slam – only the sixth golfer to achieve this.
ETA Ellie Kildunne actually drifted in the SPotY betting after yesterday's World Cup win, in which she scored an (apparently) outstanding first try. I can only imagine that in leaving the car park, she ran over a young orphan taking her poorly kitten to the vet. Or maybe punters started to wonder if she too would be nominated.
It’s quite sad really the lack of fanfare the English Ladies rugby people are getting compared to the footballers. I think with Ellie Kildunne she was the most recognisable player in the team but now with the final won it might be harder to select one player from a minority sport. They hopefully will get the team award.
Trouble is, giving the Red Roses the team award hurts Ellie's chances in the main SPotY event. Of course, now the Ryder Cup golfers might get the team award which puts Ellie back in play at around 20/1. It is a bit of a shame that both happen on the same weekend.
I wonder if, should Lando win the F1 championship, he will leap into favourite space as season finishes nearer the SPOTY date.
Possibly, though bagging the F1 title is a big if, and another question is how many have even heard of Lando Norris – Lewis Hamilton makes headlines when his dog is unwell; Lando, not so much.
In 2003, Wilkinson won SPOTY, and England Rugby won team of the year.
The prime minister, whose party is polling 16-22% has just called all the supporters of the party polling 30-34% - ie one third of the nation - “the enemy”
This is such bad politics it’s farcical. He will only entrench the opposition and harden the hearts of those who already dislike him. And it won’t win him a single vote
They look to be following the Democrat 2024 playbook. This doesn’t bode well.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
One of the challenges must surely be managing country lane etiquette. You come round the corner and there’s a vehicle driving in your direction. It’s a single track road. One of you must decide to reverse a few metres up into the brambly hedge to allow the other to pass. The parking sensors are beeping continuously. What does a Waymo do in that situation?
The car doesn’t mind reversing, remember. Unlike humans.
And, of course, two autonomous vehicles can resolve their differences in ways people cannot. And quicker. Micropayments and the like.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Am I the only person who prefers to use traditional cabs where the driver knows where to go without using a satnav?
That's the dilemma.
There are many ways that the Old Ways were better. There is something wonderful and inspiring about requiring would-be taxi drivers to memorise a map of inner London.
But putting that memory in a satnav is undoubtedly cheaper, and probably better at doing the necessary job. (And that's a good case- usually tech wins by behind worse but cheaper.)
FPT - you need to smile, be confident, comfortable in your own skin, have some sense of humour/fun, and ideally (although few women admit this) not too short.
And meet people in real-life. And listen to them - and ask curious questions about them - rather than bore their socks off by just talking about yourself. I've never done the dating app/tinder thing, and never needed to do so.
But the endless list of characteristics of the "perfect man" (GSOH etc) goes back decades to the lonely hearts section of newspapers and magazines in the 80s and 90s.
They were only limited then by a printed word limit, so I'm not convinced that's anything new.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
One of the challenges must surely be managing country lane etiquette. You come round the corner and there’s a vehicle driving in your direction. It’s a single track road. One of you must decide to reverse a few metres up into the brambly hedge to allow the other to pass. The parking sensors are beeping continuously. What does a Waymo do in that situation?
The car doesn’t mind reversing, remember. Unlike humans.
It’ll need to overcome the fear of reversing into undergrowth or hedges, because at the moment cars see these as a barrier. In some cases it may need to accept a bit of light scratching. It’ll also need to get comfortable going off the road and partially into a ditch, in some cases.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Utter tripe. No doubt come from Gove, a bitter political failure who cannot conceive of anyone not as spineless as he was.
Speaking of which, a hideous ad banner has appeared which they graciously take off when you log in. It's very tacky.
I have sympathy for Reform, combined with scepticism. It's hard to believe that a party can go from 5 MPs to 350, in one go, without electing some pretty awful people, and/or people who are utterly clueless. Such a result could end up doing great damage to the Right.
I would far rather see Reform move to being official Opposition than government, next time.
Gove had his chance. The things that annoyed Conservatives about new Labour (woke, defence, justice, immigration), got worse on Gove's watch.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Am I the only person who prefers to use traditional cabs where the driver knows where to go without using a satnav?
That's the dilemma.
There are many ways that the Old Ways were better. There is something wonderful and inspiring about requiring would-be taxi drivers to memorise a map of inner London.
But putting that memory in a satnav is undoubtedly cheaper, and probably better at doing the necessary job. (And that's a good case- usually tech wins by behind worse but cheaper.)
The mistake people make, with Satnav, as with computers, is in the belief that they don't make errors.
You need to think for yourself, and have a reasonably good idea what the final result ought to be, even if you let the technology work out the details.
The prime minister, whose party is polling 16-22% has just called all the supporters of the party polling 30-34% - ie one third of the nation - “the enemy”
This is such bad politics it’s farcical. He will only entrench the opposition and harden the hearts of those who already dislike him. And it won’t win him a single vote
They look to be following the Democrat 2024 playbook. This doesn’t bode well.
He might be following a strategy to rally middle-class / establishment centrists around him.
It's possible that if he can polarise Reform he can lift his vote back up to c.30% or so in GE conditions.
I've been reading a little further about the minor party - National Distributionist Party, which I mentioned last night. Can anyone interpret their symbol? The Hound with a Flaming Torch is St Dominic / the Dominican Order, who are known as the "Dogs of the Lord." .
They draw their inspiration explicitly from Belloc and Chesterton (ie Edwardian and afterwards Roman Catholic men of letters, formed by RC social teaching), who coined "Distributionism". They say they are socially conservative.
In modern terms, it is reactionary and looking to the past, decisively rejecting neoliberalism and internationalism (incl. cut off both NATO and the UN, but wanting 0.7% international aid). And a Tolkien-like romantic attachment to 'Merrie England' and 'Christian England'), and a 'peaceful nationalism'. Slightly Farage style they want lots of support for everyone, but are not sure where the money will come from. They are also keen on "Trade Guilds" being recreated, sustainable food production, rewilding 30% of the country, and a focus of needs of veterans. And a Right-ish obsession with personal morality.
They also have one town councillor, who got a vacant spot by being the one candidate. They emphasize "being useful locally", so things like community litter picks. That's a 'non-political' promotional technique used by minor parties across the spectrum. The social media activity is more Charlie Kirk / NatCon like.
But Dan Neidle, often accused of being Labour’s tax man, is sinking his teeth into Starmer over his ‘trust’
When Keir Starmer gave a field to his parents, he used a "life interest trust". This meant that, as its value grew from £20k to £300k, it was outside their inheritance tax estate.
I think he bought it in 1996 and sold it around 2018. To be fair, reading the thread, Neidle hints at skullduggery but seems to come to the conclusion that all is above board, other than Sir Keir flip flopping on whether it was a trust or not. Usual stuff really, he probably did something against the spirit of the rules, but technically he can say he obeyed the law
Repeating myself, he was very clear on Laura K this morning that there wasn't a trust involved; it was simply a gift to his parents.
It was not a gift to his parents. If it were, it would have been part of their estate. He owned the property the entire time but gave them the right to use it during their lifetime. That is in effect a trust, I understand. When they died the land was not part of their estate as he always owned it. When he sold it he paid CGT.
I don't really see the issue or wrongdoing here. But technically his answer to Laura K is not accurate.
Hope Starmer hasn't done his classic lawyer stuff of well it wasn't called a trust, but it acts like one. Dan Neidle does have a bit of a reputation for not missing. The story is nonsense in terms of tax planning angle, but Starmer has got himself in trouble before by giving his lawyerly answers which opens more questions and makes himself look worse than it should.
I've been reading a little further about the minor party - National Distributionist Party, which I mentioned last night. Can anyone interpret their symbol? The Hound with a Flaming Torch is St Dominic / the Dominican Order, who are known as the "Dogs of the Lord." .
They draw their inspiration explicitly from Belloc and Chesterton (ie Edwardian and afterwards Roman Catholic men of letters, formed by RC social teaching), who coined "Distributionism". They say they are socially conservative.
In modern terms, it is reactionary and looking to the past, decisively rejecting neoliberalism and internationalism (incl. cut off both NATO and the UN, but wanting 0.7% international aid). And a Tolkien-like romantic attachment to 'Merrie England' and 'Christian England'), and a 'peaceful nationalism'. Slightly Farage style they want lots of support for everyone, but are not sure where the money will come from. They are also keen on "Trade Guilds" being recreated, sustainable food production, rewilding 30% of the country, and a focus of needs of veterans. And a Right-ish obsession with personal morality.
They also have one town councillor, who got a vacant spot by being the one candidate. They emphasize "being useful locally", so things like community litter picks. That's a 'non-political' promotional technique used by minor parties across the spectrum. The social media activity is more Charlie Kirk / NatCon like.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Utter tripe. No doubt come from Gove, a bitter political failure who cannot conceive of anyone not as spineless as he was.
Speaking of which, a hideous ad banner has appeared which they graciously take off when you log in. It's very tacky.
I have sympathy for Reform, combined with scepticism. It's hard to believe that a party can go from 5 MPs to 350, in one go, without electing some pretty awful people, and/or people who are utterly clueless. Such a result could end up doing great damage to the Right.
I would far rather see Reform move to being official Opposition than government, next time.
Gove had his chance. The things that annoyed Conservatives about new Labour (woke, defence, justice, immigration), got worse on Gove's watch.
The Conservatives essentially accepted New Labour's socio-cultural consensus, and just wanted slightly lower taxes. Feather-bedding their core vote to stay in office did the rest.
Hope Starmer hasn't done his classic lawyer stuff of well it wasn't called a trust, but it acts like one. Dan Neidle does have a bit of a reputation for not missing.
This is all complex stuff shrouded in legalese to a mere son of a toolmaker. If he had been a top top top lawyer then you could expect him to appreciate the importance of accuracy.
Hope Starmer hasn't done his classic lawyer stuff of well it wasn't called a trust, but it acts like one. Dan Neidle does have a bit of a reputation for not missing.
This is all complex stuff shrouded in legalese to a mere son of a toolmaker. If he had been a top top top lawyer then you could expect him to appreciate the importance of accuracy.
Lawyers specialise. I know trusts lawyers who couldn't define theft and criminal lawyers who can't tell a constructive trust from market overt.
BTW, if it's a life interest, it's a trust, but I wouldn't expect a DPP to know or care. He probably thinks its impartible gavelkind or an instance of frankalmoign.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
Always been puzzled by this argument. If an American can learn to drive on British roads, then so can an AI that is able to drive on US roads.
I don't particularly think it's correct, but the argument as an argument is logical enough. We know already that the human brain is able to cope with the complexities of British road conditions, and since American human brains are the same system as British human brains, all that is required is for the American to get some local experience. But we *don't* know in advance that the self driving car AI can cope with a more complex environment until somebody tries it, so it's possible that in fact the systems have a ceiling of complexity below which they're fine and above which they fail, such that they are OK on wide dry US highways and can't handle snowy one lane Scottish mountain roads.
In practice I think this argument has become steadily less justifiable over the years as the technology has advanced.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Utter tripe. No doubt come from Gove, a bitter political failure who cannot conceive of anyone not as spineless as he was.
Speaking of which, a hideous ad banner has appeared which they graciously take off when you log in. It's very tacky.
I have sympathy for Reform, combined with scepticism. It's hard to believe that a party can go from 5 MPs to 350, in one go, without electing some pretty awful people, and/or people who are utterly clueless. Such a result could end up doing great damage to the Right.
I would far rather see Reform move to being official Opposition than government, next time.
Gove had his chance. The things that annoyed Conservatives about new Labour (woke, defence, justice, immigration), got worse on Gove's watch.
It remains unclear to me if Reform is really a movement or Farage's ego trip. Are they still Farage plc? The fact he praised Gordon Brown for bringing in people outside politics to government feels ominous. Suggests he wants to be a Presidential figure. What he ought to understand is that remaining PM means maintaining the goodwill of all Reform's MPs.
Hope Starmer hasn't done his classic lawyer stuff of well it wasn't called a trust, but it acts like one. Dan Neidle does have a bit of a reputation for not missing.
This is all complex stuff shrouded in legalese to a mere son of a toolmaker. If he had been a top top top lawyer then you could expect him to appreciate the importance of accuracy.
Lawyers specialise. I know trusts lawyers who couldn't define theft and criminal lawyers who can't tell a constructive trust from market overt.
BTW, if it's a life interest, it's a trust, but I wouldn't expect a DPP to know or care. He probably thinks its impartible gavelkind or an instance of frankalmoign.+
"Keir Starmer has just said to Laura Kuenssberg that he did not put the donkey land into trust.
He said to the Parliamentary Commissioner "I immediately gifted the land to my parents for as long as they should live but I did not transfer the legal title - that remained with me."
That is a trust. The two statements above are directly contradictory. Either he misstated things to the Parliamentary Commissioner (which seems unlikely) or he just misled LK. I have no idea why he would do that."
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
Where is there any evidence that Starmer believes he can't do the job and will admit to it?
I'm afraid the current Labour administration really is inept.
Last the week there was a discernible backlash to Farsge's attacks on migrants settlec here, which also seemed to have been reflected in the polls.
There was a sense of Farage being on uncertain ground.
But then this week, the tmuch bigger backlash to the I..D. card project seems to have locked back in the social acceptability of Farage's moving the Overton window ever further to the right, on the grounds of "freedom", and I can see the results of this all over social media. An oppor6nity lost, and pure foolishness.
Always been puzzled by this argument. If an American can learn to drive on British roads, then so can an AI that is able to drive on US roads.
People seem to think an AI is just a blank void that gets filled up with training, but that's not true. A lot of the behaviour is hard-coded in to the model when it is created. Most of that would need to be manually recreated to suit British roads, and the training data itself would also be mostly worthless given the obvious differences between US and UK roads.
Can US style full self-driving be replicated in the UK? Yes, but it's almost a case of starting from scratch. The main thing that would transfer over is institutional memory among the developers of difficult corner cases they had to deal with in the US, some of which would apply on this side of the Atlantic.
The UK and Ireland is not a big enough market to warrant this level of investment right away, so we're likely to get self-driving a fair bit later than the US, China and mainland Europe. I do not expect to be walking out of my home in rural Scotland and getting into a fully self-driving car any time before about 2040.
I'm afraid the current Labour administration really is inept.
Last the week there was a discernible backlash to Farsge's attacks on migrants settlec here, which also seemed to have been reflected in the polls.
There was a sense of Farage potentially on uncertain ground.
But this week, the then much bigger backlash to the I..D. card seems to have locked back in the social acceptability of Farage's moving things ever further to the right, on the grounds of "freedom", and I can see the results of this all over social media. An oppor6nity lost, and purely foolish.
Its what happens when you are making it up as you go along rather than coming into government with a clear long term plan.
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
Where is there any evidence that Starmer believes he can't do the job and will admit to it?
With current PMs it is in the nature of the job that there isn't direct evidence until there is, at which point he is no longer PM.
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
Where is there any evidence that Starmer believes he can't do the job and will admit to it?
With current PMs it is in the nature of the job that there isn't direct evidence until there is, at which point he is no longer PM.
Sunak I think packed it in without admitting that really the job wasn't for him but I think he realised it wasn't. But the rest weren't going anywhere without being shoved and even to this day are arguing I was well go at the job or the deep state stopped me being well good.
Hope Starmer hasn't done his classic lawyer stuff of well it wasn't called a trust, but it acts like one. Dan Neidle does have a bit of a reputation for not missing.
This is all complex stuff shrouded in legalese to a mere son of a toolmaker. If he had been a top top top lawyer then you could expect him to appreciate the importance of accuracy.
Lawyers specialise. I know trusts lawyers who couldn't define theft and criminal lawyers who can't tell a constructive trust from market overt.
BTW, if it's a life interest, it's a trust, but I wouldn't expect a DPP to know or care. He probably thinks its impartible gavelkind or an instance of frankalmoign.
I’m not being overly serious, to be honest I’m being a little bit of an annoying dick because I’m finding all the little difficulties Starmer gets into to be very fun after his piety pre election. I think it’s fair for a bit of mockery aimed at the grown ups.
I suspect the Starmer story is like the Farage story wrt house purchase. Nothing at all in it but used by opponents to try to harm them
There is nothing in it in terms of him having done anything wrong and everybody with half a brain plans their affairs with tax in mind. However, journalist / tax specialists do seem to be saying though that was a trust or a trust in all but name. Its a bad habit Starmer has in which he seems to treat all interviews of trying to win a court case, but it isn't about winning in law, it is about public opinion.
Always been puzzled by this argument. If an American can learn to drive on British roads, then so can an AI that is able to drive on US roads.
People seem to think an AI is just a blank void that gets filled up with training, but that's not true. A lot of the behaviour is hard-coded in to the model when it is created. Most of that would need to be manually recreated to suit British roads, and the training data itself would also be mostly worthless given the obvious differences between US and UK roads.
Can US style full self-driving be replicated in the UK? Yes, but it's almost a case of starting from scratch. The main thing that would transfer over is institutional memory among the developers of difficult corner cases they had to deal with in the US, some of which would apply on this side of the Atlantic.
The UK and Ireland is not a big enough market to warrant this level of investment right away, so we're likely to get self-driving a fair bit later than the US, China and mainland Europe. I do not expect to be walking out of my home in rural Scotland and getting into a fully self-driving car any time before about 2040.
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
No, he's going to come out fighting.
"Reform might be leading the polls but they still have to go out there and get something in a general election. They're going to fail and I will luv it - luv it - when they do."
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Utter tripe. No doubt come from Gove, a bitter political failure who cannot conceive of anyone not as spineless as he was.
Speaking of which, a hideous ad banner has appeared which they graciously take off when you log in. It's very tacky.
I have sympathy for Reform, combined with scepticism. It's hard to believe that a party can go from 5 MPs to 350, in one go, without electing some pretty awful people, and/or people who are utterly clueless. Such a result could end up doing great damage to the Right.
I would far rather see Reform move to being official Opposition than government, next time.
Gove had his chance. The things that annoyed Conservatives about new Labour (woke, defence, justice, immigration), got worse on Gove's watch.
It remains unclear to me if Reform is really a movement or Farage's ego trip. Are they still Farage plc? The fact he praised Gordon Brown for bringing in people outside politics to government feels ominous. Suggests he wants to be a Presidential figure. What he ought to understand is that remaining PM means maintaining the goodwill of all Reform's MPs.
I certainly don’t see Reform and its supporters as “the enemy”. I don’t agree with their vision of Britain as is my right and I worry there is an undercurrent of unwillingness to countenance opposing views but in a plural democracy you have to expect people who will not share your views or ideals.
I also appreciate Reform is hoovering up the anger and frustration of a lot of people across a range of issues and that works as long as the tent is big enough to contain the anger. You can’t in Government be all things to all people and I’ve seen little articulation of what a Reform run Britain would look like. There are many dependent on key public services who rightly fear the Thatcherites at the top of the party will take an axe to those services and give tax cutting largesse only to the very wealthy. That policy, if it is Reform policy, would be unwise.
I think there’s a paradox at work - many people would argue we have too much Government or State interference in our lives but the corollary of that is many also seem to see the Government and its money as the baseline solution to many of the country’s problems. Too much Government or not enough?
FPT: About sixty years ago, I was at a party and had just met a young, single woman. She told me that she was looking for a man who could support her in the way she was accustomed to live. Surprised, I said something innocuous, and moved on to another person.
(At that time, it was not an unusual thing for a woman from a wealthy family to say -- but not to a single man she had just met.)
I suspect the Starmer story is like the Farage story wrt house purchase. Nothing at all in it but used by opponents to try to harm them
The one difference I can see is that Dan Neidle is not an opponent of Starmer's (or is he a Corbynite type Labour person? If so, then I can see why. But he is a Labour member)
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Am I the only person who prefers to use traditional cabs where the driver knows where to go without using a satnav?
No, but if I'm using a London cab at all I'm on expenses...
The way to get around if you're paying yourself is on two wheels.
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
Where is there any evidence that Starmer believes he can't do the job and will admit to it?
It's at the stage where good friends of his should be taking him to one side and whispering in his ear: "Mate, you're not up to it. Another few years of this will do you, your family, or the country no good."
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
Where is there any evidence that Starmer believes he can't do the job and will admit to it?
Yes, I can't see anything like that degree of insight.
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
Pb ahead of the curve again (assuming Starmer does retire, like Wilson).
Gosh, there's some snowflakes on here. Of course Reform are Labour's 'enemy', just as the Tories have always been Labour's enemy. And vice versa. It's political, not personal, obviously.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
One of the challenges must surely be managing country lane etiquette. You come round the corner and there’s a vehicle driving in your direction. It’s a single track road. One of you must decide to reverse a few metres up into the brambly hedge to allow the other to pass. The parking sensors are beeping continuously. What does a Waymo do in that situation?
Why couldn't the AI just have that etiquette built into its training data set? It doesn't strike me as an insurmountable problem.
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
Where is there any evidence that Starmer believes he can't do the job and will admit to it?
It's at the stage where good friends of his should be taking him to one side and whispering in his ear: "Mate, you're not up to it. Another few years of this will do you, your family, or the country no good."
As a veteran of John Major's lemming march, all it needs is someone clearly better available to take over.
"Keir Starmet condemned Reform's 'racist' plans for cracking down on immigration today as he squirmed over how his digital ID plan will curb illegal arrivals.".
The many dissenting voices about Farage"s plan on their comments last week are much quieter. Most of the anger is directed at Starmer, and the idea of him as an overbearing leader.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
One of the challenges must surely be managing country lane etiquette. You come round the corner and there’s a vehicle driving in your direction. It’s a single track road. One of you must decide to reverse a few metres up into the brambly hedge to allow the other to pass. The parking sensors are beeping continuously. What does a Waymo do in that situation?
Why couldn't the AI just have that etiquette built into its training data set? It doesn't strike me as an insurmountable problem.
Waymo have already demonstrated, in production, the urban version. Two cars in a street, one car wide. One has to reverse.
Always been puzzled by this argument. If an American can learn to drive on British roads, then so can an AI that is able to drive on US roads.
People seem to think an AI is just a blank void that gets filled up with training, but that's not true. A lot of the behaviour is hard-coded in to the model when it is created. Most of that would need to be manually recreated to suit British roads, and the training data itself would also be mostly worthless given the obvious differences between US and UK roads.
Can US style full self-driving be replicated in the UK? Yes, but it's almost a case of starting from scratch. The main thing that would transfer over is institutional memory among the developers of difficult corner cases they had to deal with in the US, some of which would apply on this side of the Atlantic.
The UK and Ireland is not a big enough market to warrant this level of investment right away, so we're likely to get self-driving a fair bit later than the US, China and mainland Europe. I do not expect to be walking out of my home in rural Scotland and getting into a fully self-driving car any time before about 2040.
And, of course, most people don't live in rural Scotland.
I love Waymo.
But don't forget, it's only available in a small part of a small number of places in the US. And often it won't go on the freeway, or won't go to places which are more ... tricky. Like the airport.
Bear in mind, too, that I first used Waymo in Phoenix back on 2021.
So, yes, it will come to the UK. But these things always take longer than you think (but then have more impact when they do eventually launch).
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
That's because he is eroding support for their world view at an alarming rate. Tee hee.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
One of the challenges must surely be managing country lane etiquette. You come round the corner and there’s a vehicle driving in your direction. It’s a single track road. One of you must decide to reverse a few metres up into the brambly hedge to allow the other to pass. The parking sensors are beeping continuously. What does a Waymo do in that situation?
Why couldn't the AI just have that etiquette built into its training data set? It doesn't strike me as an insurmountable problem.
Residents living next to the NC500 will be looking forward to self driving motorhomes that are capable of using passing places correctly. Ideally, they will also be programmed not to empty the toilet cassette in the nearest hedge or burn.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
One of the challenges must surely be managing country lane etiquette. You come round the corner and there’s a vehicle driving in your direction. It’s a single track road. One of you must decide to reverse a few metres up into the brambly hedge to allow the other to pass. The parking sensors are beeping continuously. What does a Waymo do in that situation?
Why couldn't the AI just have that etiquette built into its training data set? It doesn't strike me as an insurmountable problem.
Waymo have already demonstrated, in production, the urban version. Two cars in a street, one car wide. One has to reverse.
In theory, self diving cars have an advantage over humans in this situation because they can communicate with each other, amd quickly arrive at an understanding of which car it is least inconvenient for to reverse. Also, neither will share the condition of many human drivers of being fundamentally unable to accurately steer a car backwards.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
One of the challenges must surely be managing country lane etiquette. You come round the corner and there’s a vehicle driving in your direction. It’s a single track road. One of you must decide to reverse a few metres up into the brambly hedge to allow the other to pass. The parking sensors are beeping continuously. What does a Waymo do in that situation?
Why couldn't the AI just have that etiquette built into its training data set? It doesn't strike me as an insurmountable problem.
Did not Tesla train its autopilot (or whatever) using the recorded driving manner of its customers?
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
Where is there any evidence that Starmer believes he can't do the job and will admit to it?
With current PMs it is in the nature of the job that there isn't direct evidence until there is, at which point he is no longer PM.
Sunak I think packed it in without admitting that really the job wasn't for him but I think he realised it wasn't. But the rest weren't going anywhere without being shoved and even to this day are arguing I was well go at the job or the deep state stopped me being well good.
He did the most cowardly thing of all - he plunged the Tory Party into an unnecessary General Election and the country into the disaster of the Starmer Government, precisely because he couldn't admit it wasn't for him.
I suspect the Starmer story is like the Farage story wrt house purchase. Nothing at all in it but used by opponents to try to harm them
There is nothing in it in terms of him having done anything wrong and everybody with half a brain plans their affairs with tax in mind. However, journalist / tax specialists do seem to be saying though that was a trust or a trust in all but name. Its a bad habit Starmer has in which he seems to treat all interviews of trying to win a court case, but it isn't about winning in law, it is about public opinion.
There are a lot of journalists and PB Tories that I assume would never use a trust, and would rather pay IHT, because trusts are morally wrong and bad people like Starmer and Rayner use them. However, the moral high ground can be an expensive piece of real estate.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
And people don't like to be seen backing a loser.
Yup, we'll end up with a donors' strike, that'll end Kemi's leadership.
I am almost regretting vote for her.
A fie on the parliamentary Tory Party for giving me a choice between Badenoch and Jenrick.
Just disband the party. It’s over. Nothing is forever. Soft dads like you can join the LDs - and improve their offering - and harder types can join Reform, giving them gravitas
Win win
The next election should ideally be LDs versus Reform. That would be a good clear choice for the people. The two big parties need to go extinct now
The Ultras said the same. And kept the Tories from power for a generation. But ultimately society moved on and the voters realised that tariffs on corn were not a good thing and the Ultras disappeared.
A moderate right of centre party is a good thing. The Tories are not delivering at the moment and seem irrelevant in the face of the howling bot-amplified screams from Reform. But ultimately they will be back.
These are not moderate times. I’m not sure moderate times will ever return
And now I must drink coffee and do some work on this grey cool Sunday. Later
You may be right. Moderation requires a population who believe that happiness consists in right expectations + the belief that a moral political order can protect, defend and sustain them. This also requires a political order that can produce reasonably honest manifestos at elections. This is a little way off, though we may get there once all else has been tried.
IMHO the largest problem in the way of this is not the future but the past. Older voters (I am 70) have two perceptions about the past. Firstly that it was, on the whole, a happier place for young people, and secondly that the accumulated baggage of the world on the 21st century (Twin Towers, Iraq, GFC, NHS, migration, Brexit etc) mean that any government starts off needing 500 to win with three wickets left because of how the earlier batsmen failed.
The last analogy is spot on I think. The world - specifically the developed world - has suffered a series of economic and political calamities that any country would struggle to shake off. Those you list, but in particular also the vastly expensive Covid pandemic and the upheaval of the global energy market triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Alongside the insidious bad news of ageing populations and a changing climate that is itself triggering wars, unrest and migration. And the self-fulfilling prophesy of this all bringing a populist to power in the US who is now upending global trade with his tariff policy.
So there’s been a middle order batting collapse. It’s one of the reasons I feel the world really needs a few years of calm more than anything else. Each crisis eats away at GDP, productivity and the assets of governments, and in so doing further erodes the foundations of liberal democracy.
There is not going to be any calm, it is all going to get even more hyped. Without being too specific - there are several technologies heading our way that are going to transform society in ways we cannot even conceive. This is already happening but most people don't realise
Check the robot videos coming out of China, NOW. Robots can NOW do many physical tasks, and they will do them quicker, better, cheaper than humans quite soon
Then there's self driving autos - as @MaxPB notes. This alone will revolutionise our lives and reorder our cities, but also put swathes of people out of work...
BRACE
I saw that one of the robot dog. Useless. All that running around and it never even found the ball, let alone brought it back.
I suspect the Starmer story is like the Farage story wrt house purchase. Nothing at all in it but used by opponents to try to harm them
No one is interested in Farage dodginess. He's a bit of a geezer. An Arthur Daly style lovable rogue.
Voters on the other hand are interested in posho Starmer corruption and this is about the 45th major corruption charge against the Labour Party since Thursday. It chips away at Starmer's already negligible credibility.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
And people don't like to be seen backing a loser.
Yup, we'll end up with a donors' strike, that'll end Kemi's leadership.
I am almost regretting vote for her.
A fie on the parliamentary Tory Party for giving me a choice between Badenoch and Jenrick.
Just disband the party. It’s over. Nothing is forever. Soft dads like you can join the LDs - and improve their offering - and harder types can join Reform, giving them gravitas
Win win
The next election should ideally be LDs versus Reform. That would be a good clear choice for the people. The two big parties need to go extinct now
The Ultras said the same. And kept the Tories from power for a generation. But ultimately society moved on and the voters realised that tariffs on corn were not a good thing and the Ultras disappeared.
A moderate right of centre party is a good thing. The Tories are not delivering at the moment and seem irrelevant in the face of the howling bot-amplified screams from Reform. But ultimately they will be back.
These are not moderate times. I’m not sure moderate times will ever return
And now I must drink coffee and do some work on this grey cool Sunday. Later
You may be right. Moderation requires a population who believe that happiness consists in right expectations + the belief that a moral political order can protect, defend and sustain them. This also requires a political order that can produce reasonably honest manifestos at elections. This is a little way off, though we may get there once all else has been tried.
IMHO the largest problem in the way of this is not the future but the past. Older voters (I am 70) have two perceptions about the past. Firstly that it was, on the whole, a happier place for young people, and secondly that the accumulated baggage of the world on the 21st century (Twin Towers, Iraq, GFC, NHS, migration, Brexit etc) mean that any government starts off needing 500 to win with three wickets left because of how the earlier batsmen failed.
The last analogy is spot on I think. The world - specifically the developed world - has suffered a series of economic and political calamities that any country would struggle to shake off. Those you list, but in particular also the vastly expensive Covid pandemic and the upheaval of the global energy market triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Alongside the insidious bad news of ageing populations and a changing climate that is itself triggering wars, unrest and migration. And the self-fulfilling prophesy of this all bringing a populist to power in the US who is now upending global trade with his tariff policy.
So there’s been a middle order batting collapse. It’s one of the reasons I feel the world really needs a few years of calm more than anything else. Each crisis eats away at GDP, productivity and the assets of governments, and in so doing further erodes the foundations of liberal democracy.
There is not going to be any calm, it is all going to get even more hyped. Without being too specific - there are several technologies heading our way that are going to transform society in ways we cannot even conceive. This is already happening but most people don't realise
Check the robot videos coming out of China, NOW. Robots can NOW do many physical tasks, and they will do them quicker, better, cheaper than humans quite soon
Then there's self driving autos - as @MaxPB notes. This alone will revolutionise our lives and reorder our cities, but also put swathes of people out of work...
BRACE
I saw that one of the robot dog. Useless. All that running around and it never even found the ball, let alone brought it back.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and 5th
This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient
Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years
Perhaps.
I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.
I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.
That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly
Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left
It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI
We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s
Taxi driving is about to go the way of the dodo. Waymo has proved it works and Tesla are about to revolutionise building of autonomous vehicles with their new process. I don't know how many people work in car transportation but we should expect it to drop by over 90% in the next decade and for delivery driver pay to crash due to oversupply of qualified drivers.
Maybe but much of Britain is not like the wide, open highways of China and the United States where these self-driving cars are developed. Our roads are narrow, congested and often have cyclists and pedestrians complicating matters. (Come to think of it, was it @Gallowgate who recently posted about how busy the M25 is even at 4am? One of pb's northerners anyway.)
One of the challenges must surely be managing country lane etiquette. You come round the corner and there’s a vehicle driving in your direction. It’s a single track road. One of you must decide to reverse a few metres up into the brambly hedge to allow the other to pass. The parking sensors are beeping continuously. What does a Waymo do in that situation?
The car doesn’t mind reversing, remember. Unlike humans.
When all cars are driverless, they will be able to coordinate to avoid such situations.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
And people don't like to be seen backing a loser.
Yup, we'll end up with a donors' strike, that'll end Kemi's leadership.
I am almost regretting vote for her.
A fie on the parliamentary Tory Party for giving me a choice between Badenoch and Jenrick.
Just disband the party. It’s over. Nothing is forever. Soft dads like you can join the LDs - and improve their offering - and harder types can join Reform, giving them gravitas
Win win
The next election should ideally be LDs versus Reform. That would be a good clear choice for the people. The two big parties need to go extinct now
I could never join a party that supports the WASPI women.
The fact that Wera Hobhouse hasn't been expelled for pushing 5G conspiracy theories is another black mark.
Only she wasn't pushing 5g conspiracy theories at all. She supported the local party and people in their opposition to the mast due to it being in an AONB. You are just parroting a distorted view of the council meeting from a local newspaper reporter.
In a submission to the council about the planned mast, Bath's MP said she was concerned about "the threat to human health, to tree health and to wildlife and biodiversity". Asked by the BBC to detail her concerns about health, Ms Hobhouse said she had spent time weighing up the available evidence and conceded that all the official guidance was that it was safe. But she said that "given the widespread concern and conversations I have had with Bath residents who claim to be extra vulnerable, I believe it may be worth applying a precautionary principle on where masts are located whilst further studies are being undertaken".
More like echoing her constituents' concerns without judging whether they were 5G nutters.
if you have ever been in a mass market consumer facing business, you'll meet a significant number of those you'll judge to be nutters, perverts, liars and cheats. Some you may have even voted for.
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
Where is there any evidence that Starmer believes he can't do the job and will admit to it?
With current PMs it is in the nature of the job that there isn't direct evidence until there is, at which point he is no longer PM.
Sunak I think packed it in without admitting that really the job wasn't for him but I think he realised it wasn't. But the rest weren't going anywhere without being shoved and even to this day are arguing I was well go at the job or the deep state stopped me being well good.
He did the most cowardly thing of all - he plunged the Tory Party into an unnecessary General Election and the country into the disaster of the Starmer Government, precisely because he couldn't admit it wasn't for him.
Let’s be clear - the independent pay boards had recommended pay rises that the NI cuts meant couldn’t be afforded.
So Rishi ran to avoid an election where the public secto were on strike and where tax rises would have been justifiable to Labour voters.
Rishi’s running is why the Tories have 90 seats rather than 40 and why Reeves is in the mess she is in due to SKS’s election promises
I don't particularly think it's correct, but the argument as an argument is logical enough. We know already that the human brain is able to cope with the complexities of British road conditions, and since American human brains are the same system as British human brains, all that is required is for the American to get some local experience. But we *don't* know in advance that the self driving car AI can cope with a more complex environment until somebody tries it, so it's possible that in fact the systems have a ceiling of complexity below which they're fine and above which they fail, such that they are OK on wide dry US highways and can't handle snowy one lane Scottish mountain roads.
In practice I think this argument has become steadily less justifiable over the years as the technology has advanced.
The thing your argument is missing is that the bulk of self-driving car training doesn't occur in the real world, there is only a finite amount of road and rare events remain rate, so instead much of it takes place in simulation. In simulation they rack up hundreds, or thousands of times more miles, they can be tested against the rarest events repeatedly, and they almost certainly would train for driving in extreme conditions that might not be replicated in markets they currently operate in. There is very little public information about what simulated training has occurred, it is a trade secret, but it's probably now the most important aspect of improving model performance.
Always been puzzled by this argument. If an American can learn to drive on British roads, then so can an AI that is able to drive on US roads.
People seem to think an AI is just a blank void that gets filled up with training, but that's not true. A lot of the behaviour is hard-coded in to the model when it is created. Most of that would need to be manually recreated to suit British roads, and the training data itself would also be mostly worthless given the obvious differences between US and UK roads.
Can US style full self-driving be replicated in the UK? Yes, but it's almost a case of starting from scratch. The main thing that would transfer over is institutional memory among the developers of difficult corner cases they had to deal with in the US, some of which would apply on this side of the Atlantic.
The UK and Ireland is not a big enough market to warrant this level of investment right away, so we're likely to get self-driving a fair bit later than the US, China and mainland Europe. I do not expect to be walking out of my home in rural Scotland and getting into a fully self-driving car any time before about 2040.
And, of course, most people don't live in rural Scotland.
You can't train self-drivng AI on Street View any more than you could do it on paper maps. Just showing it a road layout (and in the case of Street View an often inaccurate one) is little use. It's much like training a human driver, you can't do it to any degree with maps, we get them out on the road to experience real situations.
It needs human monitored cars to be sent out to find where and when the AI can't deal with situations and teach the model to account for that. It needs data from humans driving normal cars (Tesla thought that would be enough on its own - it isn't).
It's a colossal amount of work, much of which gets thrown away when you transplant the AI to a new market. The main way companies in this space minimise the work is to restrict their cars to a small geographical area, which is why we get endless 'trials' of self-driving cars in small areas of cities where training the AI on all the quirks of the road layout is easier.
I mentioned my rural location because it highlights one of the issues facing self-driving - in terms of road layouts and traffic rural areas are much easier for an AI. If I want to go to the train station I use it's a 20 minute journey with two left turns and one right turn, on roads that are mostly empty. But an AI will get little or no training benefit from a journey that simple, so for that reason these areas will be ignored until the AIs are completely trained and the self-drive car network is big enough for rural journeys to at least not lose too much money.
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
And people don't like to be seen backing a loser.
Yup, we'll end up with a donors' strike, that'll end Kemi's leadership.
I am almost regretting vote for her.
A fie on the parliamentary Tory Party for giving me a choice between Badenoch and Jenrick.
Just disband the party. It’s over. Nothing is forever. Soft dads like you can join the LDs - and improve their offering - and harder types can join Reform, giving them gravitas
Win win
The next election should ideally be LDs versus Reform. That would be a good clear choice for the people. The two big parties need to go extinct now
The Ultras said the same. And kept the Tories from power for a generation. But ultimately society moved on and the voters realised that tariffs on corn were not a good thing and the Ultras disappeared.
A moderate right of centre party is a good thing. The Tories are not delivering at the moment and seem irrelevant in the face of the howling bot-amplified screams from Reform. But ultimately they will be back.
These are not moderate times. I’m not sure moderate times will ever return
And now I must drink coffee and do some work on this grey cool Sunday. Later
You may be right. Moderation requires a population who believe that happiness consists in right expectations + the belief that a moral political order can protect, defend and sustain them. This also requires a political order that can produce reasonably honest manifestos at elections. This is a little way off, though we may get there once all else has been tried.
IMHO the largest problem in the way of this is not the future but the past. Older voters (I am 70) have two perceptions about the past. Firstly that it was, on the whole, a happier place for young people, and secondly that the accumulated baggage of the world on the 21st century (Twin Towers, Iraq, GFC, NHS, migration, Brexit etc) mean that any government starts off needing 500 to win with three wickets left because of how the earlier batsmen failed.
The last analogy is spot on I think. The world - specifically the developed world - has suffered a series of economic and political calamities that any country would struggle to shake off. Those you list, but in particular also the vastly expensive Covid pandemic and the upheaval of the global energy market triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Alongside the insidious bad news of ageing populations and a changing climate that is itself triggering wars, unrest and migration. And the self-fulfilling prophesy of this all bringing a populist to power in the US who is now upending global trade with his tariff policy.
So there’s been a middle order batting collapse. It’s one of the reasons I feel the world really needs a few years of calm more than anything else. Each crisis eats away at GDP, productivity and the assets of governments, and in so doing further erodes the foundations of liberal democracy.
There is not going to be any calm, it is all going to get even more hyped. Without being too specific - there are several technologies heading our way that are going to transform society in ways we cannot even conceive. This is already happening but most people don't realise
Check the robot videos coming out of China, NOW. Robots can NOW do many physical tasks, and they will do them quicker, better, cheaper than humans quite soon
Then there's self driving autos - as @MaxPB notes. This alone will revolutionise our lives and reorder our cities, but also put swathes of people out of work...
BRACE
When the only people earning any money are those "I wouldn't get up for less than a squillion pounds an hour" PBers, what happens to the general population when all the jobs except those exclusively done by PBers have gone forever?
How many novelists and travel hacks will we need when no one can afford books and holidays?
Lawyers will be OK as the need to defend peasants stealing from the super wealthy to barter for books and holidays will burgeon. But who pays the Lawyers?
Straw in the wind: The Economist rather has it in for Starmer at the moment and suggest this week he might do a Keegan and decide he just isn't quite good enough and go.
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
Where is there any evidence that Starmer believes he can't do the job and will admit to it?
With current PMs it is in the nature of the job that there isn't direct evidence until there is, at which point he is no longer PM.
Sunak I think packed it in without admitting that really the job wasn't for him but I think he realised it wasn't. But the rest weren't going anywhere without being shoved and even to this day are arguing I was well go at the job or the deep state stopped me being well good.
He did the most cowardly thing of all - he plunged the Tory Party into an unnecessary General Election and the country into the disaster of the Starmer Government, precisely because he couldn't admit it wasn't for him.
Let’s be clear - the independent pay boards had recommended pay rises that the NI cuts meant couldn’t be afforded.
So Rishi ran to avoid an election where the public secto were on strike and where tax rises would have been justifiable to Labour voters.
Rishi’s running is why the Tories have 90 seats rather than 40 and why Reeves is in the mess she is in due to SKS’s election promises
Well that, and the running out of prison places, and the Afghan fiasco bubbling up, and the realisation that Rwanda flights couldn't be put off much longer revealing their absurdity...
The Uber drivers in LA bully the Waymo cars mercilessly. They know they will always brake / reverse / etc.
The Waymo software needs a BMW driver upgrade.
That reminds me of a story I read recently.
A Day in the Diary of a BMW Driver
"The other day I was cruising along as usual coming out of Inverness onto my A9 , which was very busy with inferior cars. First off, I couldn't believe that the volume of traffic DIDN'T slow down for me AT ALL as I came off the slip road! I had to squeeze into a barely big enough gap between two cars in order to get onto my Dual carriageway! The driver of the car behind me did realise his mistake though and honked an apology to me with a long blast of his horn. Unbelievably, I had to do the same again before I could get to the BMW lane. Anyway, once I was in the BMW lane and posing along at 110 mph enjoying the adulation that the inferior car drivers were giving me, I noticed an inferior car ahead of me which was not only in the BMW lane of my A9, but was driving at a ridiculous 70 mph! Naturally, I got within a foot or so of his rear bumper and flashed my headlights to remind him he shouldn't be in the BMW lane of my A9 and to get out of my way. Of course, once he realised it was a BMW behind him, he did just that, but I could hardly believe it when he pulled straight back in behind me! He also tried to keep up with me and when he realised I would out-run him, he put on some blue lights in his front grill and urged me to get onto the hard shoulder so that he could congratulate me on my excellent car. Needless to say, I was eager to oblige and when we had stopped, the man gave me a piece of paper confirming what I already knew - that my car goes fast! Apparently he wants everyone to know what a superior car I have, so I had to take my driver’s licence to a police station to be sent away to have some points put on! (They're not free points either - they're £20 each and I was only allowed 3.) But the man at the Police station said that because I drive a BMW, it won't be much longer before I earn the full 12 points, and then I won't even NEED a driving licence, so they will take it off me! See... now THAT'S the sort of respect you get when you own and drive a BMW! "
Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough
Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses
Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.
And people don't like to be seen backing a loser.
Yup, we'll end up with a donors' strike, that'll end Kemi's leadership.
I am almost regretting vote for her.
A fie on the parliamentary Tory Party for giving me a choice between Badenoch and Jenrick.
Comments
The old biddy with the phone is sharing her call with us all. What a twit
I am not a Starmer fan, but nothing to see.
He looks like a backstabbing Judas who is destabilising the party when there’s no practical way he could be leader for the foreseeable future .
Asked by the BBC to detail her concerns about health, Ms Hobhouse said she had spent time weighing up the available evidence and conceded that all the official guidance was that it was safe.
But she said that "given the widespread concern and conversations I have had with Bath residents who claim to be extra vulnerable, I believe it may be worth applying a precautionary principle on where masts are located whilst further studies are being undertaken".
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55399513.amp
Sounds like a 5G nutter to me.
I think it is higher unlikely Labour raise VAT as the "regressive" nature of it will be a non-starter for most Labour MPs. And as Osborne found trying to tinker around the edges, the inconsistencies in VAT is a minefield.
Here it is
Check the robot videos coming out of China, NOW. Robots can NOW do many physical tasks, and they will do them quicker, better, cheaper than humans quite soon
Then there's self driving autos - as @MaxPB notes. This alone will revolutionise our lives and reorder our cities, but also put swathes of people out of work...
BRACE
Speaking of which, a hideous ad banner has appeared which they graciously take off when you log in. It's very tacky.
I like the way you caught @Roger in the image, with the stripy tee shirt and his bra-strap showing
Apparently Denver and Seattle are next - and their climates are closer to us than LA.
Expect automated tuk-tuks soon, as I once predicted on here
Their home grown self driving are known for mimicking the local driving style as it was felt the much more cautious driving style of Waymo just wouldn't work in China.
Because, as Blair told us, the Labour Party is "nothing less than the political wing of the British people".
The only question I would have - and may. E someone who uses X can ask Dan Neidle - is what would the capital gains impact have been?
If he bought it for £20k and sold it for £295k he’d have a capital gains liability. However on a typical inheritance the probate value becomes the new base cost for the inheritor. How does it work in this case? Did Starmer have a step up in his cost base to the probate value or did his cost base stay at £20k?
Micropayments and the like.
There are many ways that the Old Ways were better. There is something wonderful and inspiring about requiring would-be taxi drivers to memorise a map of inner London.
But putting that memory in a satnav is undoubtedly cheaper, and probably better at doing the necessary job. (And that's a good case- usually tech wins by behind worse but cheaper.)
"Migrants will have to prove their social worth before settling in Britain, says Mahmood" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/09/28/migrants-provesocial-before-settling-britain-mahmood/
And meet people in real-life. And listen to them - and ask curious questions about them - rather than bore their socks off by just talking about yourself. I've never done the dating app/tinder thing, and never needed to do so.
But the endless list of characteristics of the "perfect man" (GSOH etc) goes back decades to the lonely hearts section of newspapers and magazines in the 80s and 90s.
They were only limited then by a printed word limit, so I'm not convinced that's anything new.
I would far rather see Reform move to being official Opposition than government, next time.
Gove had his chance. The things that annoyed Conservatives about new Labour (woke, defence, justice, immigration), got worse on Gove's watch.
You need to think for yourself, and have a reasonably good idea what the final result ought to be, even if you let the technology work out the details.
It's possible that if he can polarise Reform he can lift his vote back up to c.30% or so in GE conditions.
I've been reading a little further about the minor party - National Distributionist Party, which I mentioned last night. Can anyone interpret their symbol? The Hound with a Flaming Torch is St Dominic / the Dominican Order, who are known as the "Dogs of the Lord." .
They draw their inspiration explicitly from Belloc and Chesterton (ie Edwardian and afterwards Roman Catholic men of letters, formed by RC social teaching), who coined "Distributionism". They say they are socially conservative.
Their manifesto is here, and is an interesting mix. https://www.nationaldistributistparty.com/uploads/1/3/2/5/132597826/national_distributist_manifesto__1_.pdf
In modern terms, it is reactionary and looking to the past, decisively rejecting neoliberalism and internationalism (incl. cut off both NATO and the UN, but wanting 0.7% international aid). And a Tolkien-like romantic attachment to 'Merrie England' and 'Christian England'), and a 'peaceful nationalism'. Slightly Farage style they want lots of support for everyone, but are not sure where the money will come from. They are also keen on "Trade Guilds" being recreated, sustainable food production, rewilding 30% of the country, and a focus of needs of veterans. And a Right-ish obsession with personal morality.
They also have one town councillor, who got a vacant spot by being the one candidate. They emphasize "being useful locally", so things like community litter picks. That's a 'non-political' promotional technique used by minor parties across the spectrum. The social media activity is more Charlie Kirk / NatCon like.
Website: https://www.nationaldistributistparty.com/
I don't really see the issue or wrongdoing here. But technically his answer to Laura K is not accurate.
https://x.com/DanNeidle/status/1972227359211434021?s=19
And if it wasn't a trust, why did he use this form of words in a letter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards?
https://x.com/DanNeidle/status/1972227361988018444?s=19
Hope Starmer hasn't done his classic lawyer stuff of well it wasn't called a trust, but it acts like one. Dan Neidle does have a bit of a reputation for not missing. The story is nonsense in terms of tax planning angle, but Starmer has got himself in trouble before by giving his lawyerly answers which opens more questions and makes himself look worse than it should.
That explains 90% of their problems.
BTW, if it's a life interest, it's a trust, but I wouldn't expect a DPP to know or care. He probably thinks its impartible gavelkind or an instance of frankalmoign.
In practice I think this argument has become steadily less justifiable over the years as the technology has advanced.
He said to the Parliamentary Commissioner "I immediately gifted the land to my parents for as long as they should live but I did not transfer the legal title - that remained with me."
That is a trust. The two statements above are directly contradictory. Either he misstated things to the Parliamentary Commissioner (which seems unlikely) or he just misled LK. I have no idea why he would do that."
https://x.com/StuartMaggs/status/1972217207003263032
Stuart Maggs is Head of Tax and is a Partner in the Estates team at Howes Percival
To go soon would have a double effect; he would be free at one bound of a job he isn't great at and (if it is true he can't stand Burnham) he would dish Burnham's chances almost absolutely until after 2028/9.
This is not a prediction.
Last the week there was a discernible backlash to Farsge's attacks on migrants settlec here, which also seemed to have been reflected in the polls.
There was a sense of Farage being on uncertain ground.
But then this week, the tmuch bigger backlash to the I..D. card project seems to have locked back in the social acceptability of Farage's moving the Overton window ever further to the right, on the grounds of "freedom", and I can see the results of this all over social media. An oppor6nity lost, and pure foolishness.
Can US style full self-driving be replicated in the UK? Yes, but it's almost a case of starting from scratch. The main thing that would transfer over is institutional memory among the developers of difficult corner cases they had to deal with in the US, some of which would apply on this side of the Atlantic.
The UK and Ireland is not a big enough market to warrant this level of investment right away, so we're likely to get self-driving a fair bit later than the US, China and mainland Europe. I do not expect to be walking out of my home in rural Scotland and getting into a fully self-driving car any time before about 2040.
And, of course, most people don't live in rural Scotland.
"Reform might be leading the polls but they still have to go out there and get something in a general election. They're going to fail and I will luv it - luv it - when they do."
I also appreciate Reform is hoovering up the anger and frustration of a lot of people across a range of issues and that works as long as the tent is big enough to contain the anger. You can’t in Government be all things to all people and I’ve seen little articulation of what a Reform run Britain would look like. There are many dependent on key public services who rightly fear the Thatcherites at the top of the party will take an axe to those services and give tax cutting largesse only to the very wealthy. That policy, if it is Reform policy, would be unwise.
I think there’s a paradox at work - many people would argue we have too much Government or State interference in our lives but the corollary of that is many also seem to see the Government and its money as the baseline solution to many of the country’s problems. Too much Government or not enough?
(At that time, it was not an unusual thing for a woman from a wealthy family to say -- but not to a single man she had just met.)
The way to get around if you're paying yourself is on two wheels.
He seems to carry on regardless.
It's political, not personal, obviously.
"Keir Starmet condemned Reform's 'racist' plans for cracking down on immigration today as he squirmed over how his digital ID plan will curb illegal arrivals.".
The many dissenting voices about Farage"s plan on their comments last week are much quieter. Most of the anger is directed at Starmer, and the idea of him as an overbearing leader.
I swear very rarely, but utterly fucking idiotic.
But don't forget, it's only available in a small part of a small number of places in the US. And often it won't go on the freeway, or won't go to places which are more ... tricky. Like the airport.
Bear in mind, too, that I first used Waymo in Phoenix back on 2021.
So, yes, it will come to the UK. But these things always take longer than you think (but then have more impact when they do eventually launch).
Voters on the other hand are interested in posho Starmer corruption and this is about the 45th major corruption charge against the Labour Party since Thursday. It chips away at Starmer's already negligible credibility.
if you have ever been in a mass market consumer facing business, you'll meet a significant number of those you'll judge to be nutters, perverts, liars and cheats. Some you may have even voted for.
So Rishi ran to avoid an election where the public secto were on strike and where tax rises would have been justifiable to Labour voters.
Rishi’s running is why the Tories have 90 seats rather than 40 and why Reeves is in the mess she is in due to SKS’s election promises
It needs human monitored cars to be sent out to find where and when the AI can't deal with situations and teach the model to account for that. It needs data from humans driving normal cars (Tesla thought that would be enough on its own - it isn't).
It's a colossal amount of work, much of which gets thrown away when you transplant the AI to a new market. The main way companies in this space minimise the work is to restrict their cars to a small geographical area, which is why we get endless 'trials' of self-driving cars in small areas of cities where training the AI on all the quirks of the road layout is easier.
I mentioned my rural location because it highlights one of the issues facing self-driving - in terms of road layouts and traffic rural areas are much easier for an AI. If I want to go to the train station I use it's a 20 minute journey with two left turns and one right turn, on roads that are mostly empty. But an AI will get little or no training benefit from a journey that simple, so for that reason these areas will be ignored until the AIs are completely trained and the self-drive car network is big enough for rural journeys to at least not lose too much money.
How many novelists and travel hacks will we need when no one can afford books and holidays?
Lawyers will be OK as the need to defend peasants stealing from the super wealthy to barter for books and holidays will burgeon. But who pays the Lawyers?
A Day in the Diary of a BMW Driver
"The other day I was cruising along as usual coming out of Inverness onto my A9 , which was very busy with inferior cars. First off, I couldn't believe that the volume of traffic DIDN'T slow down for me AT ALL as I came off the slip road! I had to squeeze into a barely big enough gap between two cars in order to get onto my Dual carriageway!
The driver of the car behind me did realise his mistake though and honked an apology to me with a long blast of his horn. Unbelievably, I had to do the same again before I could get to the BMW lane. Anyway, once I was in the BMW lane and posing along at 110 mph enjoying the adulation that the inferior car drivers were giving me, I noticed an inferior car ahead of me which was not only in the BMW lane of my A9, but was driving at a ridiculous 70 mph! Naturally, I got within a foot or so of his rear bumper and flashed my headlights to remind him he shouldn't be in the BMW lane of my A9 and to get out of my way.
Of course, once he realised it was a BMW behind him, he did just that, but I could hardly believe it when he pulled straight back in behind me! He also tried to keep up with me and when he realised I would out-run him, he put on some blue lights in his front grill and urged me to get onto the hard shoulder so that he could congratulate me on my excellent car.
Needless to say, I was eager to oblige and when we had stopped, the man gave me a piece of paper confirming what I already knew - that my car goes fast! Apparently he wants everyone to know what a superior car I have, so I had to take my driver’s licence to a police station to be sent away to have some points put on! (They're not free points either - they're £20 each and I was only allowed 3.) But the man at the Police station said that because I drive a BMW, it won't be much longer before I earn the full 12 points, and then I won't even NEED a driving licence, so they will take it off me! See... now THAT'S the sort of respect you get when you own and drive a BMW! "