Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
What rot. Music to Putin's ears would be to not stand up for international norms regardless of who breaks them.
This is almost a spiritual approach to global political, but as Stalin is reported to have said: "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?"
Stalin was wrong though. The papacy commands the allegiance of around a billion people. How many still base their conduct on the pronouncements of the Russian Communist Party? If you want a cynical answer then Trump's actions gain very little and risk much, namely encouraging China to go for Taiwan and giving Russia an excuse to walk away from any negotiations over Ukraine.
"...One of the problems we're facing at the moment is the resurrection of arguments which nobody has had to defend in living memory. "Might Makes Right"
The pervert Stephen Miller has been let off his leash to make this argument all over the news post-Maduro. And nobody remembers what the counter-argument is, because it's an argument only a pervert would make
One answer of course is that Might Makes Right leads to perverts like Miller being in government instead of being locked in a basement in a gimp suit where they belong. Sadly, it seems science fiction, or a sh*tty French r*c*st abusing our art, must take some responsibility for the pervert Stephen Miller..."
That is quite parochial. “Might makes right” is how Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia operates, and how the two Cold War principals operated, throughout much of the world.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
T is for Tories, T is for Trump
(OK that's not very good I know)
I missed that this morning. I'm glad I did, I would have choked on my muesli. What is the point of a Conservative party that doesn't stand up for a rules-based international order, and supports the right of a country to depose the ruler of another on a whim?
This might be nothing, or it might be tomorrow’s headline.
There’s definitely a fair amount of surveillance underway on the vessel, from documented aircraft movements. Could set up a diplomatic row between the US and Russia. 🍿
There is speculation that US special forces flying from the UK will try to capture tanker MV Bella 1, now in the Western Atlantic.
The vessel was sanctioned by the US and has carried Venezuelan crude oil. On 30th Dec, the ship was renamed MV Marinera and re-flagged as a Russian vessel.
10 C17s have frown to the UK in the past 24hrs. They are big 4-engined jet cargo planes that can carry helicopters and small tanks. Is that compatible with a special forces mission?
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Do you not see such a statement on so many levels is unwise?
Yesterday we were beating up on Starmer for his fence sitting and comparing him to Chamberlain. Isn't this worse?
Stephen Miller's unhinged interview with Jake Tapper suggests to me she has made far more of an error that any current Conservatives on here would admit.
If people haven't seen that, go find ot. Off his fucking tits. And he is the National Security Advisor.
Anyone downplaying the threat to NATO needs to watch that interview. The mad king is being advised by a madman.
Essentially Miller has declared war on NATO (minus the USA) by explaining Greenland WILL be annexed and no one will stop him. The only thing Miller has missed out is a time and a date.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
I think the EU and UK need to make clear, privately, the consequences of annexing Greenland, for example:
- Closing all US bases on European soil. This would lose the US more in terms of military projection than it would gain from getting Greenland where they have large bases.
- The end of NATO and it's replacement with a ETO. Turkey is welcome to remain a part of the new organisation.
- Nuclear umbrella covers all of ETO. Or at least the UK and EU.
As the US has says, it's obvious the defending Greenland militarily is likely a non starter. So focus on other consequences that are in our control.
Do you really think Poland would send the Americans home over Greenland?
Do you really think the US would help to defend Poland?
At a certain point you need to recognise that having US troops in Europe is a bigger threat than it is a benefit. The point at which the US takes European territory by force is a good time to enforce that.
In any case, we don't need to close every base to hurt the US.
As I keep repeating. Cut off US access to the data from Fylingdales. It is still a key part of their ballistic missile early warning system along with Thule and Clear, but is an RAF station. It would seem particularly apt given Thule is in Greenland.
Don't be silly. They'd build another and lock us out of all their systems.
Where? It is about geography. Go look at a map of the interlinked BMEWS stations. They need the UK to plug a gap.
Plus, in case you missed it, Fylingdales is the bit of the system that protects the UK. Cutting us out of the rest of it would make bugger all difference.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Off her tits:
The Chavez regime is bad, lets remove it US abducts Maduro US declares it has freed Venezuela from the regime The regime installs the deputy as acting leader and continues to oppress people
Its an oil heist.
Without, it seems, much oil to heist.
And keeping a now compliant regime in power isn't tenable beyond the short term as the fundamental economic and political problems are still there.
What happens if there are protests demanding elections and they're suppressed ?
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
If this is the new world order, can we reclaim “our” bits of France? If so, I am all in.
Sure, and let's grab Ireland back again. We have nukes. What they going to do about it?
And all those treaties we signed....surely we can just forget about the ones we don't like any more?
Anyone who cannot imagine what international relations might look like without a rule-based system needs only to brush up on The Thirty Years War. Putin's Russia provides a kind of modern illustration, but for the real deal you have to go back to the late middle-ages.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
Starmer (and Meloni!!!!!) have countersigned Macron's verbal defence of Greenland. Badenoch's analysis of Trump's annexation of Venezuela runs contrary to that defence of Greenland.
This might be nothing, or it might be tomorrow’s headline.
There’s definitely a fair amount of surveillance underway on the vessel, from documented aircraft movements. Could set up a diplomatic row between the US and Russia. 🍿
There is speculation that US special forces flying from the UK will try to capture tanker MV Bella 1, now in the Western Atlantic.
The vessel was sanctioned by the US and has carried Venezuelan crude oil. On 30th Dec, the ship was renamed MV Marinera and re-flagged as a Russian vessel.
10 C17s have frown to the UK in the past 24hrs. They are big 4-engined jet cargo planes that can carry helicopters and small tanks. Is that compatible with a special forces mission?
It appears there’s three things going on at the same time. A planned NATO exercise, a deployment towards Iran, and this ship crossing the Atlantic.
Yes the C17s have dropped off helicopters in the UK, at least five, which would be compatible with a boarding party for the ship in question.
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
I think the EU and UK need to make clear, privately, the consequences of annexing Greenland, for example:
- Closing all US bases on European soil. This would lose the US more in terms of military projection than it would gain from getting Greenland where they have large bases.
- The end of NATO and it's replacement with a ETO. Turkey is welcome to remain a part of the new organisation.
- Nuclear umbrella covers all of ETO. Or at least the UK and EU.
As the US has says, it's obvious the defending Greenland militarily is likely a non starter. So focus on other consequences that are in our control.
Do you really think Poland would send the Americans home over Greenland?
Tell me you don’t know any Poles without telling me you don’t know any Poles.
The Poles know all about the consequences of appeasement and a foreign power occupying countries.
William has is the space oc a few weeks gone from telling us how good Trump was for NATO and European security to cheerleading NATO's destruction.
It is at least an object lesson in how MAGA thought operates, from someone who isn't just a drooling idiot.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
The “special relationship” is dead and our future is with Europe. That is very clear.
Our future is no more with Europe than it was a year ago or 5 years ago. We have always worked closely with Europe on security matters and that will continue as before.
The main change I would suggest is cutting the US out of 5-Eyes and replacing them with one of the European nations or a combination of them. France is the obvious choice.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Off her tits:
The Chavez regime is bad, lets remove it US abducts Maduro US declares it has freed Venezuela from the regime The regime installs the deputy as acting leader and continues to oppress people
Its an oil heist.
It might be an "oil heist" if anybody in the White House had got investment commitments from Big Oil first. At best they have said "We'll get back to you..."
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
2 or 3 times a week? Blimey! Even now when I have the most positive cash flow of my life, being single and with grown up children, I probably eat out once a month typically, perhaps twice if there is a special event. When the children were younger we ate out hardly at all, as a family for birthdays and maybe once or twice on days out as a treat, and I went out with just my wife for our anniversary and maybe randomly once or twice. And at this time I was probably around the top 10% mark in terms of earnings. - I expect we ate out more than most (and I expect I do now too).
Am I alone in noting the inconsistency between calling for lower low-wage immigration at the same time as complaints about its impact? I wonder what it'll be like when the social care sector has to start paying a decent wage to its staff.
75%+ of staff in the social care sector are from the U.K.
The no-holds-bared thing of letting the care homes recruit directly abroad changed this very little. It did create a huge amount of fraud - charging the recruited foreigners huge fees for the visa, then having no job for them.
This got to the point that the Indian government asked the UK government to crack down on the defrauding of Indian citizens.
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
I think the EU and UK need to make clear, privately, the consequences of annexing Greenland, for example:
- Closing all US bases on European soil. This would lose the US more in terms of military projection than it would gain from getting Greenland where they have large bases.
- The end of NATO and it's replacement with a ETO. Turkey is welcome to remain a part of the new organisation.
- Nuclear umbrella covers all of ETO. Or at least the UK and EU.
As the US has says, it's obvious the defending Greenland militarily is likely a non starter. So focus on other consequences that are in our control.
Do you really think Poland would send the Americans home over Greenland?
Do you really think the US would help to defend Poland?
At a certain point you need to recognise that having US troops in Europe is a bigger threat than it is a benefit. The point at which the US takes European territory by force is a good time to enforce that.
In any case, we don't need to close every base to hurt the US.
As I keep repeating. Cut off US access to the data from Fylingdales. It is still a key part of their ballistic missile early warning system along with Thule and Clear, but is an RAF station. It would seem particularly apt given Thule is in Greenland.
Don't be silly. They'd build another and lock us out of all their systems.
Where? It is about geography. Go look at a map of the interlinked BMEWS stations. They need the UK to plug a gap.
Plus, in case you missed it, Fylingdales is the bit of the system that protects the UK. Cutting us out of the rest of it would make bugger all difference.
It would be a massive escalation. There are also 4 USAF bases here, so plenty of UK cards.
The trouble is the US has lots of cards too - rumour is their subs are providing escort to V-class at the moment because our A-class are often out of service. That's absolutely critical to UK defence and no way a PM could risk it.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
This might be nothing, or it might be tomorrow’s headline.
There’s definitely a fair amount of surveillance underway on the vessel, from documented aircraft movements. Could set up a diplomatic row between the US and Russia. 🍿
There is speculation that US special forces flying from the UK will try to capture tanker MV Bella 1, now in the Western Atlantic.
The vessel was sanctioned by the US and has carried Venezuelan crude oil. On 30th Dec, the ship was renamed MV Marinera and re-flagged as a Russian vessel.
10 C17s have frown to the UK in the past 24hrs. They are big 4-engined jet cargo planes that can carry helicopters and small tanks. Is that compatible with a special forces mission?
It appears there’s three things going on at the same time. A planned NATO exercise, a deployment towards Iran, and this ship crossing the Atlantic.
Yes the C17s have dropped off helicopters in the UK, at least five, which would be compatible with a boarding party for the ship in question.
It’s not snowing in Dubai. Except at that famous indoor ski slope!
My parents, who have been here for the last three weeks enjoying the warmth, are not looking forward to their return to what looks like a proper British winter this weekend!
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
2 or 3 times a week? Blimey! Even now when I have the most positive cash flow of my life, being single and with grown up children, I probably eat out once a month typically, perhaps twice if there is a special event. When the children were younger we ate out hardly at all, as a family for birthdays and maybe once or twice on days out as a treat, and I went out with just my wife for our anniversary and maybe randomly once or twice. And at this time I was probably around the top 10% mark in terms of earnings. - I expect we ate out more than most (and I expect I do now too).
Am I alone in noting the inconsistency between calling for lower low-wage immigration at the same time as complaints about its impact? I wonder what it'll be like when the social care sector has to start paying a decent wage to its staff.
75%+ of staff in the social care sector are from the U.K.
The no-holds-bared thing of letting the care homes recruit directly abroad changed this very little. It did create a huge amount of fraud - charging the recruited foreigners huge fees for the visa, then having no job for them.
This got to the point that the Indian government asked the UK government to crack down on the defrauding of Indian citizens.
Sadly, I need carers. Only an hour a day or so but.
At the moment ..... hasn't always been like this ..... they're all British.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
The “special relationship” is dead and our future is with Europe. That is very clear.
Our future is no more with Europe than it was a year ago or 5 years ago. We have always worked closely with Europe on security matters and that will continue as before.
The main change I would suggest is cutting the US out of 5-Eyes and replacing them with one of the European nations or a combination of them. France is the obvious choice.
Stephen Miller has been in office as surrogate President for a year. European leaders have ignored him for that year. European countries have had a year to deal with funding and managing a USA free NATO, and they have singularly failed to act.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
I agree and it is also not really on for office workers to simply say they are not facing challenging times because they don’t like the industry. Hospitality is not just pubs and restaurants. Which I get the impression some would be happy to see go. But also theatre, hotels, cafes, street food vendors and many more.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
'Clear' would be about the last word to use about international law. As the mighty David Allen Green points out:
Some even doubt international law exists.
(BTW he refers here to international public law, not international private law, which exists and functions quite well)
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
2 or 3 times a week? Blimey! Even now when I have the most positive cash flow of my life, being single and with grown up children, I probably eat out once a month typically, perhaps twice if there is a special event. When the children were younger we ate out hardly at all, as a family for birthdays and maybe once or twice on days out as a treat, and I went out with just my wife for our anniversary and maybe randomly once or twice. And at this time I was probably around the top 10% mark in terms of earnings. - I expect we ate out more than most (and I expect I do now too).
Am I alone in noting the inconsistency between calling for lower low-wage immigration at the same time as complaints about its impact? I wonder what it'll be like when the social care sector has to start paying a decent wage to its staff.
75%+ of staff in the social care sector are from the U.K.
The no-holds-bared thing of letting the care homes recruit directly abroad changed this very little. It did create a huge amount of fraud - charging the recruited foreigners huge fees for the visa, then having no job for them.
This got to the point that the Indian government asked the UK government to crack down on the defrauding of Indian citizens.
Thanks for adding this point - I was aware most staff are British but it's worth mentioning. I was thinking of the effects of an overall tightening of the labour market at the lower end of the wage scale in general. It wouldn't take much of the 25% immigrant social care labour force disappearing to have an impact on wages (across the board, not just in social care).
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
2 or 3 times a week? Blimey! Even now when I have the most positive cash flow of my life, being single and with grown up children, I probably eat out once a month typically, perhaps twice if there is a special event. When the children were younger we ate out hardly at all, as a family for birthdays and maybe once or twice on days out as a treat, and I went out with just my wife for our anniversary and maybe randomly once or twice. And at this time I was probably around the top 10% mark in terms of earnings. - I expect we ate out more than most (and I expect I do now too).
Am I alone in noting the inconsistency between calling for lower low-wage immigration at the same time as complaints about its impact? I wonder what it'll be like when the social care sector has to start paying a decent wage to its staff.
75%+ of staff in the social care sector are from the U.K.
The no-holds-bared thing of letting the care homes recruit directly abroad changed this very little. It did create a huge amount of fraud - charging the recruited foreigners huge fees for the visa, then having no job for them.
This got to the point that the Indian government asked the UK government to crack down on the defrauding of Indian citizens.
Sadly, I need carers. Only an hour a day or so but.
At the moment ..... hasn't always been like this ..... they're all British.
The very high turnover of foreign born staff was related to the visa scam.
Charging 5 figures for a visa to work in a care home meant that the staff recruited were desperate for a higher paid job. If the job they were recruited for existed, that is.
When some of the care home companies protested about the ending of the scheme, they were told to hire among the many thousands they had issued visas to. Nearly no one granted such visas was working in care homes…
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
2 or 3 times a week? Blimey! Even now when I have the most positive cash flow of my life, being single and with grown up children, I probably eat out once a month typically, perhaps twice if there is a special event. When the children were younger we ate out hardly at all, as a family for birthdays and maybe once or twice on days out as a treat, and I went out with just my wife for our anniversary and maybe randomly once or twice. And at this time I was probably around the top 10% mark in terms of earnings. - I expect we ate out more than most (and I expect I do now too).
Am I alone in noting the inconsistency between calling for lower low-wage immigration at the same time as complaints about its impact? I wonder what it'll be like when the social care sector has to start paying a decent wage to its staff.
75%+ of staff in the social care sector are from the U.K.
The no-holds-bared thing of letting the care homes recruit directly abroad changed this very little. It did create a huge amount of fraud - charging the recruited foreigners huge fees for the visa, then having no job for them.
This got to the point that the Indian government asked the UK government to crack down on the defrauding of Indian citizens.
We had the same employment issues in the sandpit a few years ago. The problem is almost all in India.
There’s a law here now that full salaries must be paid directly into to the employee’s bank account. No agents. Also campaign ads in India warning of agents offering sandpit jobs.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
2 or 3 times a week? Blimey! Even now when I have the most positive cash flow of my life, being single and with grown up children, I probably eat out once a month typically, perhaps twice if there is a special event. When the children were younger we ate out hardly at all, as a family for birthdays and maybe once or twice on days out as a treat, and I went out with just my wife for our anniversary and maybe randomly once or twice. And at this time I was probably around the top 10% mark in terms of earnings. - I expect we ate out more than most (and I expect I do now too).
Am I alone in noting the inconsistency between calling for lower low-wage immigration at the same time as complaints about its impact? I wonder what it'll be like when the social care sector has to start paying a decent wage to its staff.
75%+ of staff in the social care sector are from the U.K.
The no-holds-bared thing of letting the care homes recruit directly abroad changed this very little. It did create a huge amount of fraud - charging the recruited foreigners huge fees for the visa, then having no job for them.
This got to the point that the Indian government asked the UK government to crack down on the defrauding of Indian citizens.
Thanks for adding this point - I was aware most staff are British but it's worth mentioning. I was thinking of the effects of an overall tightening of the labour market at the lower end of the wage scale in general. It wouldn't take much of the 25% immigrant social care labour force disappearing to have an impact on wages (across the board, not just in social care).
Currently we have quite a few young people unemployed. They find getting even minimum wage jobs extremely difficult.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
The “special relationship” is dead and our future is with Europe. That is very clear.
Our future is no more with Europe than it was a year ago or 5 years ago. We have always worked closely with Europe on security matters and that will continue as before.
The main change I would suggest is cutting the US out of 5-Eyes and replacing them with one of the European nations or a combination of them. France is the obvious choice.
Stephen Miller has been in office as surrogate President for a year. European leaders have ignored him for that year. European countries have had a year to deal with funding and managing a USA free NATO, and they have singularly failed to act.
That's not entirely true. The Northern European countries have certainly done the funding bit (to the extent that we've gone from being NATO's 3rd highest spender to something like 12th); it's the agreeing and managing a new European framework that hasn't even started to happen.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
The “special relationship” is dead and our future is with Europe. That is very clear.
Our future is no more with Europe than it was a year ago or 5 years ago. We have always worked closely with Europe on security matters and that will continue as before.
The main change I would suggest is cutting the US out of 5-Eyes and replacing them with one of the European nations or a combination of them. France is the obvious choice.
Stephen Miller has been in office as surrogate President for a year. European leaders have ignored him for that year. European countries have had a year to deal with funding and managing a USA free NATO, and they have singularly failed to act.
I agree. But that is always the way. That doesn't mean we shouldn't act now even if it is late in the day.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
2 or 3 times a week? Blimey! Even now when I have the most positive cash flow of my life, being single and with grown up children, I probably eat out once a month typically, perhaps twice if there is a special event. When the children were younger we ate out hardly at all, as a family for birthdays and maybe once or twice on days out as a treat, and I went out with just my wife for our anniversary and maybe randomly once or twice. And at this time I was probably around the top 10% mark in terms of earnings. - I expect we ate out more than most (and I expect I do now too).
Am I alone in noting the inconsistency between calling for lower low-wage immigration at the same time as complaints about its impact? I wonder what it'll be like when the social care sector has to start paying a decent wage to its staff.
75%+ of staff in the social care sector are from the U.K.
The no-holds-bared thing of letting the care homes recruit directly abroad changed this very little. It did create a huge amount of fraud - charging the recruited foreigners huge fees for the visa, then having no job for them.
This got to the point that the Indian government asked the UK government to crack down on the defrauding of Indian citizens.
Sadly, I need carers. Only an hour a day or so but.
At the moment ..... hasn't always been like this ..... they're all British.
The very high turnover of foreign born staff was related to the visa scam.
Charging 5 figures for a visa to work in a care home meant that the staff recruited were desperate for a higher paid job. If the job they were recruited for existed, that is.
When some of the care home companies protested about the ending of the scheme, they were told to hire among the many thousands they had issued visas to. Nearly no one granted such visas was working in care homes…
What on earth were the Tories thinking, it’s hard not to have a great deal of sympathy for those exploited.
‘ For some of the staff at Addison Court, the situation was made worse by the fact that they had also paid between £6,000 and £10,000 for their visas through a recruitment agency called BGM Consulting.
A three-year visa would only have cost £551 if they had applied directly through the UK government website.’
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
I think the EU and UK need to make clear, privately, the consequences of annexing Greenland, for example:
- Closing all US bases on European soil. This would lose the US more in terms of military projection than it would gain from getting Greenland where they have large bases.
- The end of NATO and it's replacement with a ETO. Turkey is welcome to remain a part of the new organisation.
- Nuclear umbrella covers all of ETO. Or at least the UK and EU.
As the US has says, it's obvious the defending Greenland militarily is likely a non starter. So focus on other consequences that are in our control.
Do you really think Poland would send the Americans home over Greenland?
Do you really think the US would help to defend Poland?
At a certain point you need to recognise that having US troops in Europe is a bigger threat than it is a benefit. The point at which the US takes European territory by force is a good time to enforce that.
In any case, we don't need to close every base to hurt the US.
As I keep repeating. Cut off US access to the data from Fylingdales. It is still a key part of their ballistic missile early warning system along with Thule and Clear, but is an RAF station. It would seem particularly apt given Thule is in Greenland.
Don't be silly. They'd build another and lock us out of all their systems.
Where? It is about geography. Go look at a map of the interlinked BMEWS stations. They need the UK to plug a gap.
Plus, in case you missed it, Fylingdales is the bit of the system that protects the UK. Cutting us out of the rest of it would make bugger all difference.
It would be a massive escalation. There are also 4 USAF bases here, so plenty of UK cards.
The trouble is the US has lots of cards too - rumour is their subs are providing escort to V-class at the moment because our A-class are often out of service. That's absolutely critical to UK defence and no way a PM could risk it.
It depends on whther you believe having your ships protected by a potential enemy makes them any safer?
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
I agree and it is also not really on for office workers to simply say they are not facing challenging times because they don’t like the industry. Hospitality is not just pubs and restaurants. Which I get the impression some would be happy to see go. But also theatre, hotels, cafes, street food vendors and many more.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
This is the trouble though - lots of people like the idea of a high productivity economy but that does mean that a sector like hospitality will naturally shrink as a proportion of the economy, and this is then considered a big problem.
I spend about 3/7 evenings in the pub and spend £1000s in the Highland economy each year #doingmybit. The biggest boost to you could give the sector is massively increasing taxes on flights abroad - good for the environment too.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
Is anyone arguing for a "complete rupture" (other than those in MAGA) ?
Standing up to him doesn't risk that anymore than crawling does. Indeed the latter is more likely to encourage mad adventures like annexing Greenland, which would necessarily lead to a complete rupture.
The arguments of those like "Daddy Trump" Rutte are completely exploded.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
2 or 3 times a week? Blimey! Even now when I have the most positive cash flow of my life, being single and with grown up children, I probably eat out once a month typically, perhaps twice if there is a special event. When the children were younger we ate out hardly at all, as a family for birthdays and maybe once or twice on days out as a treat, and I went out with just my wife for our anniversary and maybe randomly once or twice. And at this time I was probably around the top 10% mark in terms of earnings. - I expect we ate out more than most (and I expect I do now too).
Am I alone in noting the inconsistency between calling for lower low-wage immigration at the same time as complaints about its impact? I wonder what it'll be like when the social care sector has to start paying a decent wage to its staff.
75%+ of staff in the social care sector are from the U.K.
The no-holds-bared thing of letting the care homes recruit directly abroad changed this very little. It did create a huge amount of fraud - charging the recruited foreigners huge fees for the visa, then having no job for them.
This got to the point that the Indian government asked the UK government to crack down on the defrauding of Indian citizens.
Sadly, I need carers. Only an hour a day or so but.
At the moment ..... hasn't always been like this ..... they're all British.
The very high turnover of foreign born staff was related to the visa scam.
Charging 5 figures for a visa to work in a care home meant that the staff recruited were desperate for a higher paid job. If the job they were recruited for existed, that is.
When some of the care home companies protested about the ending of the scheme, they were told to hire among the many thousands they had issued visas to. Nearly no one granted such visas was working in care homes…
Long years ago I was part of a Care Home Inspection team. It was fairly true to say that the higher the proportion of overseas staff, the more likely there were to be management issues. That's not a criticism of the individual staff members; I've had no issues with those sent to look after me, either.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
I agree and it is also not really on for office workers to simply say they are not facing challenging times because they don’t like the industry. Hospitality is not just pubs and restaurants. Which I get the impression some would be happy to see go. But also theatre, hotels, cafes, street food vendors and many more.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
This is the trouble though - lots of people like the idea of a high productivity economy but that does mean that a sector like hospitality will naturally shrink as a proportion of the economy, and this is then considered a big problem.
I spend about 3/7 evenings in the pub and spend £1000s in the Highland economy each year #doingmybit. The biggest boost to you could give the sector is massively increasing taxes on flights abroad - good for the environment too.
A massive increase in taxes on flights abroad, means that your average man in the street would spend even less on UK hospitality in order to support their annual fortnight somewhere sunnier.
Also inbound tourism would suffer from the higher flight prices, not to mention the impact on business travel.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
Um. Who has Trump replaced this "bad person" by, supposedly in the American national interest? Now return to your points 1 and 2 and decide if they still apply, even if you are still disregarding the rule of law issue.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
Is anyone arguing for a "complete rupture" (other than those in MAGA) ?
Standing up to him doesn't risk that anymore than crawling does. Indeed the latter is more likely to encourage mad adventures like annexing Greenland, which would necessarily lead to a complete rupture.
I, as an example, am not arguing for a complete rupture. I am just saying that it is inevitable and we need to recognise it when it happens.
The US are no longer our ally. I wish it were otherwise but I firmly believe that is now the case. In an ideal world, if forced to choose between allying with the US or the EU (as an example) I would always have chosen the US. Now under Trump I no longer believe that. Not because I am any more favourable towards the EU but because the US is now acting as a potential enemy.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
I agree and it is also not really on for office workers to simply say they are not facing challenging times because they don’t like the industry. Hospitality is not just pubs and restaurants. Which I get the impression some would be happy to see go. But also theatre, hotels, cafes, street food vendors and many more.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
This is the trouble though - lots of people like the idea of a high productivity economy but that does mean that a sector like hospitality will naturally shrink as a proportion of the economy, and this is then considered a big problem.
I spend about 3/7 evenings in the pub and spend £1000s in the Highland economy each year #doingmybit. The biggest boost to you could give the sector is massively increasing taxes on flights abroad - good for the environment too.
A massive increase in taxes on flights abroad, means that your average man in the street would spend even less on UK hospitality in order to support their annual fortnight somewhere sunnier.
Also inbound tourism would suffer from the higher flight prices, not to mention the impact on business travel.
I think it's highly unlikely that the demand for foreign holidays is so inelastic. It would certainly alter where I spent my money.
It’s not snowing in Dubai. Except at that famous indoor ski slope!
My parents, who have been here for the last three weeks enjoying the warmth, are not looking forward to their return to what looks like a proper British winter this weekend!
Hmmm. Looking at the forecast, looks like the snow flurries will leave the London area by late afternoon. Heavy rain forecast for tonight, and positive overnight temperatures for the first time in nearly a week.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
The “special relationship” is dead and our future is with Europe. That is very clear.
Our future is no more with Europe than it was a year ago or 5 years ago. We have always worked closely with Europe on security matters and that will continue as before.
The main change I would suggest is cutting the US out of 5-Eyes and replacing them with one of the European nations or a combination of them. France is the obvious choice.
Stephen Miller has been in office as surrogate President for a year. European leaders have ignored him for that year. European countries have had a year to deal with funding and managing a USA free NATO, and they have singularly failed to act.
It is inconceivable that if they were in fact acting in concert to prepare for a USA free NATO they could do anything to communicate the fact to the public.
They have an appalling piece of variable geometry to negotiate: USA is indispensable for years to come; EU has run for decades on a false prospectus; we are broke; USA's next POTUS may be a proNATO Atlanticist; most European country's youth are non militaristic; there's a war on in Europe.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
Um. Who has Trump replaced this "bad person" by, supposedly in the American national interest? Now return to your points 1 and 2 and decide if they still apply, even if you are still disregarding the rule of law issue.
He's replaced the bad person by someone who can take over without the country descending into chaos and factional fighting. That's surely the most morally correct course of action.
How many deaths would be acceptable to install Machado instead?
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
Um. Who has Trump replaced this "bad person" by, supposedly in the American national interest? Now return to your points 1 and 2 and decide if they still apply, even if you are still disregarding the rule of law issue.
Those are details in the third paragraph.
Nobody has ever read the third paragraph of any report, ever. Most of us usually don't make it to the third sentence. The question is whether to lament that, or exploit it.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
Um. Who has Trump replaced this "bad person" by, supposedly in the American national interest? Now return to your points 1 and 2 and decide if they still apply, even if you are still disregarding the rule of law issue.
Address your question not to PBers but to Badenoch's audience who pay no attention. You are asking them to go beyond their attention span.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
Is anyone arguing for a "complete rupture" (other than those in MAGA) ?
Standing up to him doesn't risk that anymore than crawling does. Indeed the latter is more likely to encourage mad adventures like annexing Greenland, which would necessarily lead to a complete rupture.
I, as an example, am not arguing for a complete rupture. I am just saying that it is inevitable and we need to recognise it when it happens.
The US are no longer our ally. I wish it were otherwise but I firmly believe that is now the case. In an ideal world, if forced to choose between allying with the US or the EU (as an example) I would always have chosen the US. Now under Trump I no longer believe that. Not because I am any more favourable towards the EU but because the US is now acting as a potential enemy.
Oh, I don't disagree with that, as you know from my recent commentary. And our common interests are more with Europe than with the US, whatever our personal beliefs might be; that's simple geography.
But our commercial and defence ties with the US are profound. Continuing to deal with them is not incompatible with trying to help build a new European security structure, nor with showing a bit of spine in our dealings with them, until they actually make it so.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
I agree and it is also not really on for office workers to simply say they are not facing challenging times because they don’t like the industry. Hospitality is not just pubs and restaurants. Which I get the impression some would be happy to see go. But also theatre, hotels, cafes, street food vendors and many more.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
Hospitality is also key to keeping the high street going, which a lot of people are concerned above, at least most are legitimate businesses rather than the nail bars, barbers, and seemingly convenience stores which we now have 4 of in one one-mile section of high street. One is even opposite Sainsburys and not open appreciably longer hours, other than Sunday evening
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
I agree and it is also not really on for office workers to simply say they are not facing challenging times because they don’t like the industry. Hospitality is not just pubs and restaurants. Which I get the impression some would be happy to see go. But also theatre, hotels, cafes, street food vendors and many more.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
This is the trouble though - lots of people like the idea of a high productivity economy but that does mean that a sector like hospitality will naturally shrink as a proportion of the economy, and this is then considered a big problem.
I spend about 3/7 evenings in the pub and spend £1000s in the Highland economy each year #doingmybit. The biggest boost to you could give the sector is massively increasing taxes on flights abroad - good for the environment too.
A massive increase in taxes on flights abroad, means that your average man in the street would spend even less on UK hospitality in order to support their annual fortnight somewhere sunnier.
Also inbound tourism would suffer from the higher flight prices, not to mention the impact on business travel.
I think it's highly unlikely that the demand for foreign holidays is so inelastic. It would certainly alter where I spent my money.
I’d argue that, for the majority of the working classes, their taking of one foreign holiday per year is very inelastic.
They might take 10 days rather than 14 if prices rise, but their taking of the flight itself is about as price inelastic as cigarettes.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
Um. Who has Trump replaced this "bad person" by, supposedly in the American national interest? Now return to your points 1 and 2 and decide if they still apply, even if you are still disregarding the rule of law issue.
He's replaced the bad person by someone who can take over without the country descending into chaos and factional fighting. That's surely the most morally correct course of action.
How many deaths would be acceptable to install Machado instead?
Gonzalez won the last election and should be President.
Removing Maduro was the right thing to do, but insufficient, and done for the wrong reasons.
Trump had done a demonstration of power. He could and should have said something along the lines of "we don't want war but are prepared to fight, transfer power to the election winner Gonzalez peacefully or else".
Instead he said "we are prepared to fight, give us your oil, or else".
By doing the latter, he undid all the good toppling Maduro had done.
It was also f***ing stupid as a transfer of power is an achievable event, a transfer of oil is not.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
I agree and it is also not really on for office workers to simply say they are not facing challenging times because they don’t like the industry. Hospitality is not just pubs and restaurants. Which I get the impression some would be happy to see go. But also theatre, hotels, cafes, street food vendors and many more.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
This is the trouble though - lots of people like the idea of a high productivity economy but that does mean that a sector like hospitality will naturally shrink as a proportion of the economy, and this is then considered a big problem.
I spend about 3/7 evenings in the pub and spend £1000s in the Highland economy each year #doingmybit. The biggest boost to you could give the sector is massively increasing taxes on flights abroad - good for the environment too.
A massive increase in taxes on flights abroad, means that your average man in the street would spend even less on UK hospitality in order to support their annual fortnight somewhere sunnier.
Also inbound tourism would suffer from the higher flight prices, not to mention the impact on business travel.
I think it's highly unlikely that the demand for foreign holidays is so inelastic. It would certainly alter where I spent my money.
I’d argue that, for the majority of the working classes, their taking of one foreign holiday per year is very inelastic.
They might take 10 days rather than 14 if prices rise, but their taking of the flight itself is about as price inelastic as cigarettes.
If so it would be a highly effective revenue tax that we could use to cut business rates for pubs.
(Slightly baffled that you think this form of hospitality is so price insensitive while others are not...)
WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - One in three* Americans approve of the U.S. military strike on Venezuela that toppled the country's president and 72% worry the U.S. will become too involved in the South American country, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday. https://x.com/idreesali114/status/2008250454959063449
*Only one in three actively disapprove, and the remaining third are undecided.
Since the administration doesn't appear to have any clear idea of what they are going to do next - other than being "in control", and prepared to "take action" if resisted in whatever the hell it is they are going to do next - I can't see those approval figures improving much.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
I agree and it is also not really on for office workers to simply say they are not facing challenging times because they don’t like the industry. Hospitality is not just pubs and restaurants. Which I get the impression some would be happy to see go. But also theatre, hotels, cafes, street food vendors and many more.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
This is the trouble though - lots of people like the idea of a high productivity economy but that does mean that a sector like hospitality will naturally shrink as a proportion of the economy, and this is then considered a big problem.
I spend about 3/7 evenings in the pub and spend £1000s in the Highland economy each year #doingmybit. The biggest boost to you could give the sector is massively increasing taxes on flights abroad - good for the environment too.
A massive increase in taxes on flights abroad, means that your average man in the street would spend even less on UK hospitality in order to support their annual fortnight somewhere sunnier.
Also inbound tourism would suffer from the higher flight prices, not to mention the impact on business travel.
I think it's highly unlikely that the demand for foreign holidays is so inelastic. It would certainly alter where I spent my money.
I’d argue that, for the majority of the working classes, their taking of one foreign holiday per year is very inelastic.
They might take 10 days rather than 14 if prices rise, but their taking of the flight itself is about as price inelastic as cigarettes.
If so it would be a highly effective revenue tax that we could use to cut business rates for pubs.
(Slightly baffled that you think this form of hospitality is so price insensitive while others are not...)
The decision is to not go out for dinner every week, instead move it to once a fortnight or even once a month in order to be able to afford the annual holiday.
The fact of the annual holiday is non-negotiable for most families.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
Is anyone arguing for a "complete rupture" (other than those in MAGA) ?
Standing up to him doesn't risk that anymore than crawling does. Indeed the latter is more likely to encourage mad adventures like annexing Greenland, which would necessarily lead to a complete rupture.
I, as an example, am not arguing for a complete rupture. I am just saying that it is inevitable and we need to recognise it when it happens.
The US are no longer our ally. I wish it were otherwise but I firmly believe that is now the case. In an ideal world, if forced to choose between allying with the US or the EU (as an example) I would always have chosen the US. Now under Trump I no longer believe that. Not because I am any more favourable towards the EU but because the US is now acting as a potential enemy.
Countries have interests more than allies.
Alliances should last as long as the interests are aligned. For the past 80 years NATO has served us well, but if America is diverging we need to look after our own interests.
We don't need to bind ourselves to either the EU or America, we need to work together as allies where it suits our interests (and theirs), but maintain our operational independence.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
Is anyone arguing for a "complete rupture" (other than those in MAGA) ?
Standing up to him doesn't risk that anymore than crawling does. Indeed the latter is more likely to encourage mad adventures like annexing Greenland, which would necessarily lead to a complete rupture.
I, as an example, am not arguing for a complete rupture. I am just saying that it is inevitable and we need to recognise it when it happens.
The US are no longer our ally. I wish it were otherwise but I firmly believe that is now the case. In an ideal world, if forced to choose between allying with the US or the EU (as an example) I would always have chosen the US. Now under Trump I no longer believe that. Not because I am any more favourable towards the EU but because the US is now acting as a potential enemy.
Countries have interests more than allies.
Alliances should last as long as the interests are aligned. For the past 80 years NATO has served us well, but if America is diverging we need to look after our own interests.
We don't need to bind ourselves to either the EU or America, we need to work together as allies where it suits our interests (and theirs), but maintain our operational independence.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
Um. Who has Trump replaced this "bad person" by, supposedly in the American national interest? Now return to your points 1 and 2 and decide if they still apply, even if you are still disregarding the rule of law issue.
Address your question not to PBers but to Badenoch's audience who pay no attention. You are asking them to go beyond their attention span.
You said "in defence of Badenoch" so I thought you meant defence of the principle. But if it's just headline perceptions it's "mad dictator sending armies to foreign countries to change governments they don't like" versus "bad man arrested". The problem with the second one is that no-one has given a moment's thought to Maduro previously - they hadn't even heard of him - so they don't have a view on whether he's bad or not
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
I agree and it is also not really on for office workers to simply say they are not facing challenging times because they don’t like the industry. Hospitality is not just pubs and restaurants. Which I get the impression some would be happy to see go. But also theatre, hotels, cafes, street food vendors and many more.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
This is the trouble though - lots of people like the idea of a high productivity economy but that does mean that a sector like hospitality will naturally shrink as a proportion of the economy, and this is then considered a big problem.
I spend about 3/7 evenings in the pub and spend £1000s in the Highland economy each year #doingmybit. The biggest boost to you could give the sector is massively increasing taxes on flights abroad - good for the environment too.
A massive increase in taxes on flights abroad, means that your average man in the street would spend even less on UK hospitality in order to support their annual fortnight somewhere sunnier.
Also inbound tourism would suffer from the higher flight prices, not to mention the impact on business travel.
I think it's highly unlikely that the demand for foreign holidays is so inelastic. It would certainly alter where I spent my money.
I’d argue that, for the majority of the working classes, their taking of one foreign holiday per year is very inelastic.
They might take 10 days rather than 14 if prices rise, but their taking of the flight itself is about as price inelastic as cigarettes.
Or go somewhere less pricey like Egypt or Tunisia.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
"...Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable no respect to law and justice..."
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
I agree and it is also not really on for office workers to simply say they are not facing challenging times because they don’t like the industry. Hospitality is not just pubs and restaurants. Which I get the impression some would be happy to see go. But also theatre, hotels, cafes, street food vendors and many more.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
This is the trouble though - lots of people like the idea of a high productivity economy but that does mean that a sector like hospitality will naturally shrink as a proportion of the economy, and this is then considered a big problem.
I spend about 3/7 evenings in the pub and spend £1000s in the Highland economy each year #doingmybit. The biggest boost to you could give the sector is massively increasing taxes on flights abroad - good for the environment too.
A massive increase in taxes on flights abroad, means that your average man in the street would spend even less on UK hospitality in order to support their annual fortnight somewhere sunnier.
Also inbound tourism would suffer from the higher flight prices, not to mention the impact on business travel.
I think it's highly unlikely that the demand for foreign holidays is so inelastic. It would certainly alter where I spent my money.
I’d argue that, for the majority of the working classes, their taking of one foreign holiday per year is very inelastic.
They might take 10 days rather than 14 if prices rise, but their taking of the flight itself is about as price inelastic as cigarettes.
Or go somewhere less pricey like Egypt or Tunisia.
There’s always some crazy-looking offers out here in the summer, things like 5* beach resort hotel for 7 nights, 2A + 2C £3,000 inc flights.
But you really don’t want to be here in August, because it’s bloody hot & humid, and when you do get here you’re looking at £12 pints and £30 breakfasts.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
"...Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable no respect to law and justice..."
FTFY
Maduro ending up before a court is absolutely reasonable with respect to law and justice.
The idea that criminals should be left free to run wild is a perversion of law and justice.
Trump making it all about oil instead of the proper election winner getting power and deciding how to proceed, is also a perversion of law and justice and contemptible.
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
To be fair to the US, their purchased oil rights and significant investment in Venezuela were confiscated by Maduro.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
The number of vacancies is roughly the same as before COVID, and the number of people in employment in the sector is 3% higher.
It's not in crisis. Some firms are making a big fuss because the COVID discount on business rates is coming to a close, and they are having to pay a slightly higher minimum-wage. That's their right, but MRD applies.
They're taking bollocks. Employment is down 24,000 since then - 0.9%.
100,000 hospitality job loses since 2024 reported by the industry
I will take the industry and the fact labour mps have been banned from pubs as evidence of the crisis you seem to be in denial off
My stats are ONS. I'm not in denial that putting up the minimum wage and reverting the discount on business rates don't cost hospitality businesses money - I'm just pointing out the danger of taking industry lobbying at face value. Its certainly not in crisis at the moment, as you claimed. They want cheap labour to exploit so they maximise profits - that's their purpose after all.
My guess is the hospitality lobby group is quoting staff let go in an industry where there is a lot of temporary hiring and firing, rather than net employment. This is at best misleading and you're right to call it out. Hospitality is facing challenging times nevertheless and it doesn't do their case any good to invent numbers.
I agree and it is also not really on for office workers to simply say they are not facing challenging times because they don’t like the industry. Hospitality is not just pubs and restaurants. Which I get the impression some would be happy to see go. But also theatre, hotels, cafes, street food vendors and many more.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
This is the trouble though - lots of people like the idea of a high productivity economy but that does mean that a sector like hospitality will naturally shrink as a proportion of the economy, and this is then considered a big problem.
I spend about 3/7 evenings in the pub and spend £1000s in the Highland economy each year #doingmybit. The biggest boost to you could give the sector is massively increasing taxes on flights abroad - good for the environment too.
A massive increase in taxes on flights abroad, means that your average man in the street would spend even less on UK hospitality in order to support their annual fortnight somewhere sunnier.
Also inbound tourism would suffer from the higher flight prices, not to mention the impact on business travel.
I think it's highly unlikely that the demand for foreign holidays is so inelastic. It would certainly alter where I spent my money.
I’d argue that, for the majority of the working classes, their taking of one foreign holiday per year is very inelastic.
They might take 10 days rather than 14 if prices rise, but their taking of the flight itself is about as price inelastic as cigarettes.
Or go somewhere less pricey like Egypt or Tunisia.
Mentioning Egypt and Tunisia highlights the problem.
Countries with big hospitality industries tend to be poor countries, because you need a lot of workers willing to do long, inconvenient hours for not much pay. See 1960s/70s Spain.
Nice as a consumer, but not brilliant for the country.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
"...Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable no respect to law and justice..."
FTFY
Maduro ending up before a court is absolutely reasonable with respect to law and justice.
The idea that criminals should be left free to run wild is a perversion of law and justice.
Trump making it all about oil instead of the proper election winner getting power and deciding how to proceed, is also a perversion of law and justice and contemptible.
Do you think it would be ok for a country like Saudi Arabia to abduct, put on trial and execute a UK citizen who had gay sex in the UK?
Just admit that you adhere to the "might is right" principle. It would explain almost all your posts and positions on PB.
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
To be fair to the US, their purchased oil rights and significant investment in Venezuela were confiscated by Maduro.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
People often misunderstand "might makes right" to be an endorsement of aggression, but Putin's actions are wrong in part precisely because he doesn't have might on his side.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
The luxury of opposition allowed her to sit on the fence without the accusation of indecision.
She certainly didn't need to fall behind Trump. Even Farage managed to remain ambiguous.
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
To be fair to the US, their purchased oil rights and significant investment in Venezuela were confiscated by Maduro.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
People often misunderstand "might makes right" to be an endorsement of aggression, but Putin's actions are wrong in part precisely because he doesn't have might on his side.
He has neither might nor right on his side, and has in the last few days lost quite a bit of territory in Ukraine.
➖Destroy NATO ➖Create a EU-US trade war ➖Compel the US to militarily rule a reluctant Greenlandic population ➖Encourage a Russian attack on the Baltics ➖Destroy a range of US commercial interests: from the lock-out of (all/some) US defence, energy and tech companies as well as investors from EU markets ➖Create a political backlash in the US probably affecting the midterms
Fees like a long list of bad things. Are the supposed benefits really so great that they outweigh all those downsides?
But, they’d get to call Greenland, Red White and Blue Land (that is an actual proposal).
Need to give them representation then. Roll on another Democrat senator and rep.
My understanding, when they were talking about annexing Canada, is that post annexation, Canadians would not get the vote. I imagine the same would apply to Greenland.
Any additional territory the US is able to get for the remainder of the Trump term, especially if taken by force, will abolutely NOT be allowed the vote.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
"...Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable no respect to law and justice..."
FTFY
Maduro ending up before a court is absolutely reasonable with respect to law and justice.
The idea that criminals should be left free to run wild is a perversion of law and justice.
Trump making it all about oil instead of the proper election winner getting power and deciding how to proceed, is also a perversion of law and justice and contemptible.
Do you think it would be ok for a country like Saudi Arabia to abduct, put on trial and execute a UK citizen who had gay sex in the UK?
Just admit that you adhere to the "might is right" principle. It would explain almost all your posts and positions on PB.
No, I would not, as I do not think it is reasonable to put people on trial for gay sex.
I do think it is reasonable to put people on trial for stealing elections and the plethora of other crimes Maduro has committed.
The difference is the crimes, not the involvement of third parties.
Might is not right, law is not right either. Right is right, wrong is wrong.
If might is abused, then that is bad. If law is abused, then that is bad too.
I adhere to the principle that might is real - and the way to prevent other people abusing their might is by investing in Defence, not a comfort blanket of 'law' that is a utopian fantasy.
I don't think Reform are polling well enough or broadly enough across a wide enough range of issues, or that Nigel Farage is favourable enough, for them to win.
They are in the high 20s mid-term (which would undoubtedly be less following a GE campaign) and their support is strong on immigration/cultural issues, but they still haven't convinced on the economy. On top, Farage is better than he was but still very much marmite.
It sings to me of them getting c.150 seats, but not winning.
The YouGov vote shares are a nightmare for bettors, because hundreds of seats are going to be won on very low vote shares, and by very small margins.
About the only thing you can say with certainty is that - if they hold out- then the SNP will get 40-odd seats, and the LibDems will get around 100, given both those parties highly geographically concentrated vote share.
For Reform and the Conservatives, a lot depends on how efficient their vote is. If it is moderate efficient, they'll clean up. If it isn't, then I think 150-200 for Reform is probably about right.
Yes, I think so - but I'm not quite as bullish on the LDs as you are.
I'm just playing with the YouGov numbers: if they get 16%, then given they get close to zero in half the country, they'll be getting a decent number of seats mathematically.
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
To be fair to the US, their purchased oil rights and significant investment in Venezuela were confiscated by Maduro.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
Isn't that just a difference of competence of planning and execution? Putin didn't imagine he was getting into a four year war, he thought he was going to do a quick military op, topple the existing government and install a suitably compliant puppet regime. Also, we haven't yet had time to see the consequences unfold in Venezuela: if taking out Maduro upsets a power balance and results in civil war, for example, I think we should hold that on the negative side of the ledger when evaluating the costs of Trump's actions here.
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
To be fair to the US, their purchased oil rights and significant investment in Venezuela were confiscated by Maduro.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
People often misunderstand "might makes right" to be an endorsement of aggression, but Putin's actions are wrong in part precisely because he doesn't have might on his side.
I am intrigued to see how well this defence works in court.
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
To be fair to the US, their purchased oil rights and significant investment in Venezuela were confiscated by Maduro.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
While not disagreeing with your basic point, weren't the investments "nationalized" by Chavez rather than Maduro?
I don't think Reform are polling well enough or broadly enough across a wide enough range of issues, or that Nigel Farage is favourable enough, for them to win.
They are in the high 20s mid-term (which would undoubtedly be less following a GE campaign) and their support is strong on immigration/cultural issues, but they still haven't convinced on the economy. On top, Farage is better than he was but still very much marmite.
It sings to me of them getting c.150 seats, but not winning.
The YouGov vote shares are a nightmare for bettors, because hundreds of seats are going to be won on very low vote shares, and by very small margins.
About the only thing you can say with certainty is that - if they hold out- then the SNP will get 40-odd seats, and the LibDems will get around 100, given both those parties highly geographically concentrated vote share.
For Reform and the Conservatives, a lot depends on how efficient their vote is. If it is moderate efficient, they'll clean up. If it isn't, then I think 150-200 for Reform is probably about right.
Yes, I think so - but I'm not quite as bullish on the LDs as you are.
I'm just playing with the YouGov numbers: if they get 16%, then given they get close to zero in half the country, they'll be getting a decent number of seats mathematically.
Can you assume that the Lib Dem vote will always be efficient? In 2010 they got 23% for fewer seats than they have now.
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
To be fair to the US, their purchased oil rights and significant investment in Venezuela were confiscated by Maduro.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
People often misunderstand "might makes right" to be an endorsement of aggression, but Putin's actions are wrong in part precisely because he doesn't have might on his side.
I am intrigued to see how well this defence works in court.
By definition, if you find yourself being put on trial, then you are lacking in the power department.
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
To be fair to the US, their purchased oil rights and significant investment in Venezuela were confiscated by Maduro.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
Isn't that just a difference of competence of planning and execution? Putin didn't imagine he was getting into a four year war, he thought he was going to do a quick military op, topple the existing government and install a suitably compliant puppet regime. Also, we haven't yet had time to see the consequences unfold in Venezuela: if taking out Maduro upsets a power balance and results in civil war, for example, I think we should hold that on the negative side of the ledger when evaluating the costs of Trump's actions here.
Previous US overseas adventures have fallen into that trap, but it does appear that this particular mission was very limited and executed brilliantly.
A small number of special forces put themselves in danger, but did what they were very well trained to do and the mission came off.
WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - One in three* Americans approve of the U.S. military strike on Venezuela that toppled the country's president and 72% worry the U.S. will become too involved in the South American country, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday. https://x.com/idreesali114/status/2008250454959063449
*Only one in three actively disapprove, and the remaining third are undecided.
Since the administration doesn't appear to have any clear idea of what they are going to do next - other than being "in control", and prepared to "take action" if resisted in whatever the hell it is they are going to do next - I can't see those approval figures improving much.
This is hilarious, and I am sure will be massively popular...
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
To be fair to the US, their purchased oil rights and significant investment in Venezuela were confiscated by Maduro.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
While not disagreeing with your basic point, weren't the investments "nationalized" by Chavez rather than Maduro?
I’ll defer to others on the exact timing, as to which scumbag as in charge at the point of each ‘nationalisation’.
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
To be fair to the US, their purchased oil rights and significant investment in Venezuela were confiscated by Maduro.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
People often misunderstand "might makes right" to be an endorsement of aggression, but Putin's actions are wrong in part precisely because he doesn't have might on his side.
I am intrigued to see how well this defence works in court.
By definition, if you find yourself being put on trial, then you are lacking in the power department.
If Putin’s lacking in the might department, why’s your boy Trump so consistently terrified of him?
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
"...Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable no respect to law and justice..."
FTFY
Maduro ending up before a court is absolutely reasonable with respect to law and justice.
The idea that criminals should be left free to run wild is a perversion of law and justice.
Trump making it all about oil instead of the proper election winner getting power and deciding how to proceed, is also a perversion of law and justice and contemptible.
Do you think it would be ok for a country like Saudi Arabia to abduct, put on trial and execute a UK citizen who had gay sex in the UK?
Just admit that you adhere to the "might is right" principle. It would explain almost all your posts and positions on PB.
No, I would not, as I do not think it is reasonable to put people on trial for gay sex.
I do think it is reasonable to put people on trial for stealing elections and the plethora of other crimes Maduro has committed.
The difference is the crimes, not the involvement of third parties.
Might is not right, law is not right either. Right is right, wrong is wrong.
If might is abused, then that is bad. If law is abused, then that is bad too.
I adhere to the principle that might is real - and the way to prevent other people abusing their might is by investing in Defence, not a comfort blanket of 'law' that is a utopian fantasy.
What strikes me is that Reform are not running away with it and relatively modest swings could make things look quite different. Guardian is leading on Tories overtaking Labour but, really, seems just a bit of churn. The election (due 2029) seems far more open than the commentary seems to suggest. A lot could, and undoubtedly will, happen between now and then.
Tom Kerridge. Michelin starred chef. Also a TV and radio personality.
Very pro labour in the run up to the 24 election.
He’s at the FO stage of FAFO.
That’s a Rishi time bomb that everyone forgot to defuse and given how Reeves seems to be looking at individual pots of tax, one that wasn’t an easy fix.
I will go back to my recurring statement 3p should have been put on income tax back in November 2024.
A more gradual rise might be easier to stomach, but I dont see why we should continue to have low rates for hospitality.
£50k extra tax bill could be an extra £2/main meal if you are open 250 days a year and have 100 meals served each day. Maybe my assumptions are way off but doesn't seem impossible to swallow...
Because price electricity of demand is really high for restaurants and pubs, putting £2 on each main course and you only sell perhaps 70 instead of 100 per day.
I could believe that about if a single restaurant did it but this affects the whole sector no?
If all restaurants increase prices by £2/meal (probably less than 5% of total cost), I can't see how it would have such a big change.
Because the primary decision people are making isn’t between different pubs/restaurants, it’s whether to eat out or stay in and cook.
Hospitality and retail are dying on their arse, and business rates is a large part of the reason why.
He charges £35 for fish and chips, you think his sales will go down by 30% if he makes it £37 and the rest of the industry also raises their prices? Implausible.
If people have a fixed budget for eating out, then a small increase in costs should correspond to a small decrease in eating out.
Perhaps not such a big effect at the £35 main course level, but at the £15-20 level absolutely.
The named chefs with ‘destination’ restaurants will most likely survive, in the same way as Jeremy Clarkson’s farm and pub will likely survive. That doesn’t mean that thousands of others are not in serious trouble though, and they welcome the more famous among themselves highlighting the issues.
I guess it will all be very clear come April. If we see swathes of restaurants closing by the Summer I will accept I was wrong.
But I think far more likely is prices go up a bit, a small number close and life goes on.
There is only so much the public will and can pay for eating out and it is astonishing that even a meal for 2 adults and 3 children easily exceeds £100
Talking to our family they and their friends have dramatically cut back eating out
Hospitality is in crisis
We’re the same. We used to go out 2 or 3 times a week for a meal, sometimes including a concert or the theatre. Now it’s once at most.
Hospitality is in crisis. Lots of additional costs it cannot easily pass on.
Do we really want a hospitality industry ? I get the impression quite a few don’t really.
2 or 3 times a week? Blimey! Even now when I have the most positive cash flow of my life, being single and with grown up children, I probably eat out once a month typically, perhaps twice if there is a special event. When the children were younger we ate out hardly at all, as a family for birthdays and maybe once or twice on days out as a treat, and I went out with just my wife for our anniversary and maybe randomly once or twice. And at this time I was probably around the top 10% mark in terms of earnings. - I expect we ate out more than most (and I expect I do now too).
Am I alone in noting the inconsistency between calling for lower low-wage immigration at the same time as complaints about its impact? I wonder what it'll be like when the social care sector has to start paying a decent wage to its staff.
75%+ of staff in the social care sector are from the U.K.
The no-holds-bared thing of letting the care homes recruit directly abroad changed this very little. It did create a huge amount of fraud - charging the recruited foreigners huge fees for the visa, then having no job for them.
This got to the point that the Indian government asked the UK government to crack down on the defrauding of Indian citizens.
Sadly, I need carers. Only an hour a day or so but.
At the moment ..... hasn't always been like this ..... they're all British.
The very high turnover of foreign born staff was related to the visa scam.
Charging 5 figures for a visa to work in a care home meant that the staff recruited were desperate for a higher paid job. If the job they were recruited for existed, that is.
When some of the care home companies protested about the ending of the scheme, they were told to hire among the many thousands they had issued visas to. Nearly no one granted such visas was working in care homes…
What on earth were the Tories thinking, it’s hard not to have a great deal of sympathy for those exploited.
‘ For some of the staff at Addison Court, the situation was made worse by the fact that they had also paid between £6,000 and £10,000 for their visas through a recruitment agency called BGM Consulting.
A three-year visa would only have cost £551 if they had applied directly through the UK government website.’
I don't think Reform are polling well enough or broadly enough across a wide enough range of issues, or that Nigel Farage is favourable enough, for them to win.
They are in the high 20s mid-term (which would undoubtedly be less following a GE campaign) and their support is strong on immigration/cultural issues, but they still haven't convinced on the economy. On top, Farage is better than he was but still very much marmite.
It sings to me of them getting c.150 seats, but not winning.
The YouGov vote shares are a nightmare for bettors, because hundreds of seats are going to be won on very low vote shares, and by very small margins.
About the only thing you can say with certainty is that - if they hold out- then the SNP will get 40-odd seats, and the LibDems will get around 100, given both those parties highly geographically concentrated vote share.
For Reform and the Conservatives, a lot depends on how efficient their vote is. If it is moderate efficient, they'll clean up. If it isn't, then I think 150-200 for Reform is probably about right.
Yes, I think so - but I'm not quite as bullish on the LDs as you are.
I'm just playing with the YouGov numbers: if they get 16%, then given they get close to zero in half the country, they'll be getting a decent number of seats mathematically.
Can you assume that the Lib Dem vote will always be efficient? In 2010 they got 23% for fewer seats than they have now.
For a reasonable time, yes.
Their 2010 map was extensive, but a bit of a mess. Celtic seats going back to Jo Grimond and before, some university towns and lots of random places that happened to have had a by-election.
Their current map, Nice England with a cathedral, a Gail's or a Waitrose (ideally all three) is much more coherent and stable. Nobody else is really going for those voters, either.
It's hard for the Lib Dems to extend beyond 100 seats or so, but they will be blooming hard to shift from those.
You'd like to think (although I can easily see me being disappointed on the downside) that the US has a mass of evidence it can produce in court to show that Maduro is an election-stealing piece of scum who is happy to skim a billion or two off drugs going into the US as he turns a blind eye. So far so good on the US seizing him to face justice.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
To be fair to the US, their purchased oil rights and significant investment in Venezuela were confiscated by Maduro.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
People often misunderstand "might makes right" to be an endorsement of aggression, but Putin's actions are wrong in part precisely because he doesn't have might on his side.
I am intrigued to see how well this defence works in court.
By definition, if you find yourself being put on trial, then you are lacking in the power department.
If Putin’s lacking in the might department, why’s your boy Trump so consistently terrified of him?
It's not a binary question. Putin does have some power but he's just not on the same level as the US President. Part of the problem is that Putin doesn't accept this.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Off her tits:
The Chavez regime is bad, lets remove it US abducts Maduro US declares it has freed Venezuela from the regime The regime installs the deputy as acting leader and continues to oppress people
Its an oil heist.
Yeah. So far, the US action has put two bad people in jail, killed 80 people who probably didn't deserve to die, and made no difference to the human rights situation in Venezuela. The ignore-international-law/"moral" argument falls down because it's not clear what the US has meaningfully achieved.
What strikes me is that Reform are not running away with it and relatively modest swings could make things look quite different. Guardian is leading on Tories overtaking Labour but, really, seems just a bit of churn. The election (due 2029) seems far more open than the commentary seems to suggest. A lot could, and undoubtedly will, happen between now and then.
YouGov had a telling graphic yesterday showing the 2025 news calendar with rising and falling coverage of different topics. Immigration has dropped off the agenda in recent months. Domestic politics and the economy has risen. That helps Conservatives and hinders Reform.
Trump and Gaza waxed and waned, but it being all Trump at the moment probably helps LD/Green and also hinders Reform a tad.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says US action in Venezuela was 'morally' the right thing to do.
She tells @bbcnickrobinson nations 'go through the motions' of rules-based order, but 'the world has changed'.
Dangerous and very cynical. Grovelling to Trump is bad politics and bad strategy.
Dangerous and cynical would be Ed Davey's approach of threatening the special relationship, which is music to Putin's ears.
International Law is very clear. Davey is not being cynical in defending it. The only special relationship Trump believes in is the degree of humiliation he intends to inflict on democratic governments. Putin's cuck - a treacherous friend- is far more dangerous than Putin himself.
There are three camps:
The Putin Trump Farage camp The spineless worms camp The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
In partial defence of Starmer and other European leaders their approach is motivated by keeping Trump doing at least some things that benefit Ukraine: intelligence sharing; allowing weapons to be transferred to Ukraine; sanctions on Russia. All of which are put at risk in a complete ruptured with Trump.
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
In defence of Badenoch, she has the luxury of opposition, and has to use it. Those who pay little attention - most people - will perhaps have noticed this:
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice 2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
Um. Who has Trump replaced this "bad person" by, supposedly in the American national interest? Now return to your points 1 and 2 and decide if they still apply, even if you are still disregarding the rule of law issue.
Address your question not to PBers but to Badenoch's audience who pay no attention. You are asking them to go beyond their attention span.
You said "in defence of Badenoch" so I thought you meant defence of the principle. But if it's just headline perceptions it's "mad dictator sending armies to foreign countries to change governments they don't like" versus "bad man arrested". The problem with the second one is that no-one has given a moment's thought to Maduro previously - they hadn't even heard of him - so they don't have a view on whether he's bad or not
I noticed that Kemi Badenoch, in her comments about Maduro etc., referenced her personal experience of living under a dictatorship in Nigeria. Through that lens, I guess, things look a little different. I wonder how important that personal background is in the formation of her politics.
Comments
Not that that makes. Miller any less dangerous.
The Putin Trump Farage camp
The spineless worms camp
The International Law camp
Starmer is a worm, but at leat he recognises that the axis is doing bad things. I remain baffled by the people who shill for the Putin Trump Farage axis.
Lets be very clear here. Venezuela is the Rhineland. Listen to Miller. "Our back yard". "Our interests". Hitler instructed his generals to withdraw if the French stood up to them. France did not, Hitler thought ok who is next. Trumpler is of the same mindset, a gambler. And the more he gambles and wins, the higher the stakes he will risk.
Banhammers like Miller think they are king shit, and can do over anyone they like and we will not only do nothing, we will literally grovel for scraps. We will let them seize Greenland and perhaps Canada and will reward them by buying military hardware from them.
Are we going to equip the Starmer worm with a spine or what? There is an awful lot we can do to resist Trumpler's next moves, but we have to declare our intentions to do so. The US regime declared us their enemy in their new defence posture, they moved. We either respond or join the axis as some people clearly want us to do...
Reform-led council under fire for plans to rip up Victorian lampposts
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/kent-county-council-reform-canterbury-victorian-lampposts-b2894645.html
Plus, in case you missed it, Fylingdales is the bit of the system that protects the UK. Cutting us out of the rest of it would make bugger all difference.
And keeping a now compliant regime in power isn't tenable beyond the short term as the fundamental economic and political problems are still there.
What happens if there are protests demanding elections and they're suppressed ?
And all those treaties we signed....surely we can just forget about the ones we don't like any more?
Anyone who cannot imagine what international relations might look like without a rule-based system needs only to brush up on The Thirty Years War. Putin's Russia provides a kind of modern illustration, but for the real deal you have to go back to the late middle-ages.
Yes the C17s have dropped off helicopters in the UK, at least five, which would be compatible with a boarding party for the ship in question.
It is at least an object lesson in how MAGA thought operates, from someone who isn't just a drooling idiot.
"It was right to rip up rulebook on Venezuela
The idea international law keeps the world safe is laughable: we're all better off without dictators"
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/right-to-rip-up-rulebook-venezuela-q5gzvk05g
The main change I would suggest is cutting the US out of 5-Eyes and replacing them with one of the European nations or a combination of them. France is the obvious choice.
The no-holds-bared thing of letting the care homes recruit directly abroad changed this very little. It did create a huge amount of fraud - charging the recruited foreigners huge fees for the visa, then having no job for them.
This got to the point that the Indian government asked the UK government to crack down on the defrauding of Indian citizens.
The trouble is the US has lots of cards too - rumour is their subs are providing escort to V-class at the moment because our A-class are often out of service. That's absolutely critical to UK defence and no way a PM could risk it.
https://x.com/maria_drutska/status/2008500180497174735
My parents, who have been here for the last three weeks enjoying the warmth, are not looking forward to their return to what looks like a proper British winter this weekend!
But you're right, there's no excuse for Badenoch actually supporting Trump on the principle.
At the moment ..... hasn't always been like this ..... they're all British.
It is the third biggest employer and will be a key part of the govt scheme to get young people into work.
What is more telling is the link I provided showing the fall in average hours worked, it’s fine just pointing to the numbers employed is fine but their working hours, overall, seems to be falling.
Some even doubt international law exists.
(BTW he refers here to international public law, not international private law, which exists and functions quite well)
https://davidallengreen.com/2026/01/but-what-about-international-law/
Charging 5 figures for a visa to work in a care home meant that the staff recruited were desperate for a higher paid job. If the job they were recruited for existed, that is.
When some of the care home companies protested about the ending of the scheme, they were told to hire among the many thousands they had issued visas to. Nearly no one granted such visas was working in care homes…
There’s a law here now that full salaries must be paid directly into to the employee’s bank account. No agents. Also campaign ads in India warning of agents offering sandpit jobs.
1) A very bad person they never heard of has been toppled and brought to justice
2) Every liberal and internationalist is queueing up to say "He is a very bad person and he should not have been toppled and should not have been brought to justice. It's an outrage."
And concluded this does not make sense as they think bad people should be brought to justice.
Badenoch is addressing those people, who are not entirely wrong, and doing so with reasonable respect to law and justice.
The Northern European countries have certainly done the funding bit (to the extent that we've gone from being NATO's 3rd highest spender to something like 12th); it's the agreeing and managing a new European framework that hasn't even started to happen.
‘ For some of the staff at Addison Court, the situation was made worse by the fact that they had also paid between £6,000 and £10,000 for their visas through a recruitment agency called BGM Consulting.
A three-year visa would only have cost £551 if they had applied directly through the UK government website.’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67684417
I spend about 3/7 evenings in the pub and spend £1000s in the Highland economy each year #doingmybit. The biggest boost to you could give the sector is massively increasing taxes on flights abroad - good for the environment too.
Standing up to him doesn't risk that anymore than crawling does. Indeed the latter is more likely to encourage mad adventures like annexing Greenland, which would necessarily lead to a complete rupture.
The arguments of those like "Daddy Trump" Rutte are completely exploded.
That's not a criticism of the individual staff members; I've had no issues with those sent to look after me, either.
Also inbound tourism would suffer from the higher flight prices, not to mention the impact on business travel.
The US are no longer our ally. I wish it were otherwise but I firmly believe that is now the case. In an ideal world, if forced to choose between allying with the US or the EU (as an example) I would always have chosen the US. Now under Trump I no longer believe that. Not because I am any more favourable towards the EU but because the US is now acting as a potential enemy.
They have an appalling piece of variable geometry to negotiate: USA is indispensable for years to come; EU has run for decades on a false prospectus; we are broke; USA's next POTUS may be a proNATO Atlanticist; most European country's youth are non militaristic; there's a war on in Europe.
How many deaths would be acceptable to install Machado instead?
Nobody has ever read the third paragraph of any report, ever. Most of us usually don't make it to the third sentence. The question is whether to lament that, or exploit it.
And our common interests are more with Europe than with the US, whatever our personal beliefs might be; that's simple geography.
But our commercial and defence ties with the US are profound. Continuing to deal with them is not incompatible with trying to help build a new European security structure, nor with showing a bit of spine in our dealings with them, until they actually make it so.
They might take 10 days rather than 14 if prices rise, but their taking of the flight itself is about as price inelastic as cigarettes.
Removing Maduro was the right thing to do, but insufficient, and done for the wrong reasons.
Trump had done a demonstration of power. He could and should have said something along the lines of "we don't want war but are prepared to fight, transfer power to the election winner Gonzalez peacefully or else".
Instead he said "we are prepared to fight, give us your oil, or else".
By doing the latter, he undid all the good toppling Maduro had done.
It was also f***ing stupid as a transfer of power is an achievable event, a transfer of oil is not.
(Slightly baffled that you think this form of hospitality is so price insensitive while others are not...)
WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - One in three* Americans approve of the U.S. military strike on Venezuela that toppled the country's president and 72% worry the U.S. will become too involved in the South American country, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday.
https://x.com/idreesali114/status/2008250454959063449
*Only one in three actively disapprove, and the remaining third are undecided.
Since the administration doesn't appear to have any clear idea of what they are going to do next - other than being "in control", and prepared to "take action" if resisted in whatever the hell it is they are going to do next - I can't see those approval figures improving much.
The fact of the annual holiday is non-negotiable for most families.
Alliances should last as long as the interests are aligned. For the past 80 years NATO has served us well, but if America is diverging we need to look after our own interests.
We don't need to bind ourselves to either the EU or America, we need to work together as allies where it suits our interests (and theirs), but maintain our operational independence.
The intelligence, planning and execution were flawless. Hats off to the CIA and the US military on that. It was everything that Putin's 3 day SMO was not.
Left at that, the world would largely have shrugged and suggest the guy had it coming (although not so sure the charges against his wife will stand up).
But then Trump has to say he's now in charge of Venezuela and it was all about grabbing their oil. Thereby playing himself offside with those having no respect for his "might is right" new world order. If I were advising Kemi, I'd have given him kudos for the first part - but called him out on the oil grab. It comes across as no better than Putin grabbing Ukraine - because he could.
(As an aside, the grounds for deposing Maduro are no better than those for toppling Lukashenko in Belarus. Another malignant sore on the face of democracy.)
reasonableno respect to law and justice..."FTFY
But you really don’t want to be here in August, because it’s bloody hot & humid, and when you do get here you’re looking at £12 pints and £30 breakfasts.
The idea that criminals should be left free to run wild is a perversion of law and justice.
Trump making it all about oil instead of the proper election winner getting power and deciding how to proceed, is also a perversion of law and justice and contemptible.
Comparisons between Trump in Venezuela and Putin in Ukraine are totally unfounded. One was a mission to get two people, over in hours, the other is a war of four years that’s cost a million lives.
Countries with big hospitality industries tend to be poor countries, because you need a lot of workers willing to do long, inconvenient hours for not much pay. See 1960s/70s Spain.
Nice as a consumer, but not brilliant for the country.
Just admit that you adhere to the "might is right" principle. It would explain almost all your posts and positions on PB.
https://x.com/tendar/status/2008508945271578781
She certainly didn't need to fall behind Trump. Even Farage managed to remain ambiguous.
Any additional territory the US is able to get for the remainder of the Trump term, especially if taken by force, will abolutely NOT be allowed the vote.
I do think it is reasonable to put people on trial for stealing elections and the plethora of other crimes Maduro has committed.
The difference is the crimes, not the involvement of third parties.
Might is not right, law is not right either. Right is right, wrong is wrong.
If might is abused, then that is bad. If law is abused, then that is bad too.
I adhere to the principle that might is real - and the way to prevent other people abusing their might is by investing in Defence, not a comfort blanket of 'law' that is a utopian fantasy.
A small number of special forces put themselves in danger, but did what they were very well trained to do and the mission came off.
TRUMP: U.S. MAY REIMBURSE OIL COMPANIES FOR REBUILDING VENEZUELA INFRASTRUCTURE – NBC
https://x.com/FirstSquawk/status/2008316404408143907
How long was it now, since they were going to make billions by appropriating Venezuelas oil assets ?
RFM 26% (+1)
CON 19% (=)
LAB 17% (-3)
LDEM 16% (+1)
GRN 15% (=)
What strikes me is that Reform are not running away with it and relatively modest swings could make things look quite different. Guardian is leading on Tories overtaking Labour but, really, seems just a bit of churn. The election (due 2029) seems far more open than the commentary seems to suggest. A lot could, and undoubtedly will, happen between now and then.
The beauty was that creating a fake job to get a visa created a “job vacancy” in the stats. That was never filled…
Their 2010 map was extensive, but a bit of a mess. Celtic seats going back to Jo Grimond and before, some university towns and lots of random places that happened to have had a by-election.
Their current map, Nice England with a cathedral, a Gail's or a Waitrose (ideally all three) is much more coherent and stable. Nobody else is really going for those voters, either.
It's hard for the Lib Dems to extend beyond 100 seats or so, but they will be blooming hard to shift from those.
Trump and Gaza waxed and waned, but it being all Trump at the moment probably helps LD/Green and also hinders Reform a tad.
None of the news topics have helped Labour.