The NDAA stipulates that any reduction of U.S. troops below 76,000 in Europe for more than 45 days requires congressional oversight. This reduction would still leave about 80,000 in theatre; however, the removal of any American hardware over $500,000 or any handover of facilities still triggers oversight. I’m sure Hegseth has thought this one through...
R4 had Kurt Volker on this morning asking "who is to say what the correct number should be ?" Ignoring the obvious answer that Congress does that.
Congress is AWOL though.
Sure, but the point is that old GOP establishment like Volker just seem now to have accepted that without demur.
His line was that 'Trump won't be around forever', so we should just grin and bear it. I don't think Americans quite realise to what extent the damage Trump has done is likely to continue once he has gone.
I've seen many here do the same. But when 40-55% would go for another Trump if they could, the fundamentals have shifted.
Wes Streeting's problem is not his small majority but that he is on the right of the party whereas most of the party (whose votes he will need) and his likely leadership rivals are from the soft left.
Think his only hope in a leadership contest is to go full rejoin early on and make the contest about that rather than left/right.
Wes Streeting's problem is not his small majority but that he is on the right of the party whereas most of the party (whose votes he will need) and his likely leadership rivals are from the soft left.
Hence why I think Miliband is value.
If you've got Wes doing a Hezza and trying to seize the crown I think there will be a reaction from the soft-left and those in the cabinet seeking "unity" to find another candidate. I don't think Rayner is that unity candidate, but someone like Miliband could be (and potentially bring Rayner into the tent and get Burnham back into the Commons and into a high profile job). He is popular with members and can be pitched as palatable to all wings of the party. He also has the profile in a way that someone like Healey doesn't. Cooper would be another possible unity candidate, but she has been noticeably poor in her roles in government (not that this has stopped others before).
Also, having tried to stem the loss of votes to Reform with right-leaning stances on immigration and various cultural issues, the greater threat now to Labour is from the left and the Greens in particular. Hence the consensus is that a more left leaning approach is needed to shore up the progressive vote. Streeting is the least equipped to be able to deliver that.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Just like our policy on Gaza, our housing policy, including how many should be planned for in each area, is decided by central government, not locally. Appeals are not decided by a local authority or an arm's length local agency but by central government.
if Gaza is irrelevant to these elections, so is house building.
And in a democracy voters and voters alone decide what the reasons are for their vote.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Starmer is not an irrelevance. National popularity has always had a big effect on local results - many a good councillor has lost and many a poor candidate has won because of the national situation.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Posters saying 'Support Reform; get Starmer Out' say nothing about local issues though.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Starmer is not an irrelevance. National popularity has always had a big effect on local results - many a good councillor has lost and many a poor candidate has won because of the national situation.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Posters saying 'Support Reform; get Starmer Out' say nothing about local issues though.
They don't, but that's not unusual. Many local leaflets are full of non-local matters - 'save the NHS' being a Labour favourite - and a sprinkling of local ones.
Sometimes the local ones are just generic 'will spend money wisely/housing in the right places' that say nothing meaningful about local issues.
Nor antisemitism, still, one more push by the right wing tabloids.
You don't get many on the BBC anymore. They've been told not to. The rest of the world though insists on telling it like it is and this sort of thing pisses people off.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
Isn’t it more fundamentally about that old phrase about being a moral crusade, and therefore compromising itself on questions of international injustice - which is how many see it - hits at the core of Labour self identity?
And, of course, Labour has been predominant among Muslim voters, who are particularly concerned about such matters. I remember when I had a Muslim libdem running mate, and he offered to draft a letter targeted at Muslim voters; in his first draft the whole thing was about the Middle East and it didn’t mention the ward ir anything local at all.
The NDAA stipulates that any reduction of U.S. troops below 76,000 in Europe for more than 45 days requires congressional oversight. This reduction would still leave about 80,000 in theatre; however, the removal of any American hardware over $500,000 or any handover of facilities still triggers oversight. I’m sure Hegseth has thought this one through...
R4 had Kurt Volker on this morning asking "who is to say what the correct number should be ?" Ignoring the obvious answer that Congress does that.
Congress is AWOL though.
Sure, but the point is that old GOP establishment like Volker just seem now to have accepted that without demur.
His line was that 'Trump won't be around forever', so we should just grin and bear it. I don't think Americans quite realise to what extent the damage Trump has done is likely to continue once he has gone.
I've seen many here do the same. But when 40-55% would go for another Trump if they could, the fundamentals have shifted.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Starmer is not an irrelevance. National popularity has always had a big effect on local results - many a good councillor has lost and many a poor candidate has won because of the national situation.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Posters saying 'Support Reform; get Starmer Out' say nothing about local issues though.
They don't, but that's not unusual. Many local leaflets are full of non-local matters - 'save the NHS' being a Labour favourite - and a sprinkling of local ones.
Sometimes the local ones are just generic 'will spend money wisely/housing in the right places' that say nothing meaningful about local issues.
It is what it is.
On the island pretty much every Reform candidate has ignored the local paper and media websites requests for photos and a hundred words, they’re not turning up to hustings, and the Reform leaflets are national mail shots from Farage that don’t mention the island let alone the local patch or who the candidate might be.
Yet they remain odds on to take control of our council, despite only having a couple of oddballs elected currently.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Starmer is not an irrelevance. National popularity has always had a big effect on local results - many a good councillor has lost and many a poor candidate has won because of the national situation.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Posters saying 'Support Reform; get Starmer Out' say nothing about local issues though.
They don't, but that's not unusual. Many local leaflets are full of non-local matters - 'save the NHS' being a Labour favourite - and a sprinkling of local ones.
Sometimes the local ones are just generic 'will spend money wisely/housing in the right places' that say nothing meaningful about local issues.
It is what it is.
On the island pretty much every Reform candidate has ignored the local paper and media websites requests for photos and a hundred words, they’re not turning up to hustings, and the Reform leaflets are national mail shots from Farage that don’t mention the island let alone the local patch or who the candidate might be.
Yet they remain odds on to take control of our council, despite only having a couple of oddballs elected currently.
Council s***show incoming….
The Greens worked more locally for years to build up strength to then target areas nationally. Reform and predecessors went for a tipping point strategy where with sufficient national support suddenly they break through in lots of places despite little local focus.
It's finally worked. And Greens are now able to follow suit thanks to Zack.
Absolute beast of a thunder storm here. Can’t think when I last had one directly overhead, the noise is magnificent.
There's been a slow-moving wall of water coming up NNE from France all morning. Hoping the worst of it will miss south Devon.
Super warm and sunny here this morning, so far, with barely a cloud in the sky, the wind and waves of the last few days have dropped away, and aside from the plane practicing aerobatics above the park, all is quiet and calm
Absolute beast of a thunder storm here. Can’t think when I last had one directly overhead, the noise is magnificent.
There's been a slow-moving wall of water coming up NNE from France all morning. Hoping the worst of it will miss south Devon.
Super warm and sunny here this morning, so far, with barely a cloud in the sky, the wind and waves of the last few days have dropped away, and aside from the plane practicing aerobatics above the park, all is quiet and calm
Glad to say the East wind has dropped a bit this morning. It's been clear blue sky and bright sun of late, but the wind has been quite strong and chilly.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Starmer is not an irrelevance. National popularity has always had a big effect on local results - many a good councillor has lost and many a poor candidate has won because of the national situation.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Posters saying 'Support Reform; get Starmer Out' say nothing about local issues though.
They don't, but that's not unusual. Many local leaflets are full of non-local matters - 'save the NHS' being a Labour favourite - and a sprinkling of local ones.
Sometimes the local ones are just generic 'will spend money wisely/housing in the right places' that say nothing meaningful about local issues.
It is what it is.
On the island pretty much every Reform candidate has ignored the local paper and media websites requests for photos and a hundred words, they’re not turning up to hustings, and the Reform leaflets are national mail shots from Farage that don’t mention the island let alone the local patch or who the candidate might be.
Yet they remain odds on to take control of our council, despite only having a couple of oddballs elected currently.
Council s***show incoming….
In the short-medium term, it will be fine, because the officers will end up running the show. Damn those unelected bureacrats.
Three things to watch for: 1 When it turns out that some of the elected councillors are too fruity, even for Reform. 2 When councillors turn to personal ego battles for want of anything else to do. 3 When officers tell the councillors that they have to do something that they don't want to do.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour are at least partly with Councils, too.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
The NDAA stipulates that any reduction of U.S. troops below 76,000 in Europe for more than 45 days requires congressional oversight. This reduction would still leave about 80,000 in theatre; however, the removal of any American hardware over $500,000 or any handover of facilities still triggers oversight. I’m sure Hegseth has thought this one through...
Suspect the point about Gaza is not that it's a widely-shared voter concern, but that for a smallish but geographically-concentrated slice of the electorate, it's the issue.
The bigger question is this. How do politicians do anything about the first three issues without upsetting people for who the fourth one is key?
The political triumph of Reform is to convince a winning coalition of voters that there is so much waste and woke that it's possible to cut taxes and make people's surroundings better at the same time.
The political failure of Reform is that... there isn't really.
Whilst some of that isn't going to be easy, I'm not sure I'd be so pessimistic about Reform's opportunities to improve things. There is actually a reasonable amount of low hanging fruit which for various reasons government's of various colours have refused to fix.
At one extreme, the tax system and the £100k tax trap. It's really not going to be difficult to come up with a better system than the complete mess which we have at present.
At a different level, we're moving house at the moment. Why have I and my wife had to do (and pay for) three different ID checks (both Estate agents and my solicitors) at about £15 a pop? Fair enough to make the solicitors do it, but that should be sufficient. OK, it's only cost us £90, but multiply that up by the number of houses sold a year, and it's £50-£100mil a year wasted from the population's pockets every year. Trivial on one level, but also trivial to fix.
Take crime. 75% of the noticeable crime (burglaries, shop lifting, that sort of thing) in my small town is the product of half a dozen people. They should be locked up and the key thrown away, rather than doing odd bouts of six weeks inside here and there, plus the odd bit of community service. Three strikes and it's ten years inside would virtually solve low level crime. It would probably pay for itself quite quickly in reduced policing costs too.
£3mil got spent on the A road I use to get to work recently, because about 15 years ago there was a spate of motorcycle accidents (all of them idiots on motorbikes being idiots), and it briefly became categorised as dangerous, and that's how long it takes the bureaucracy to respond. It's currently categorised as so dangerous that it doesn't even qualify for yellow backs on the speed limit signs, however they've (completely unnecessarily) reduced the speed limit, covered everything in white paint and rumble strips and stuff up average speed cameras anyway. There should be a complete moratorium on these sorts of projects followed by a rigorous VFM evaluation before they are allowed to proceed - I can guarantee 95% of them will fail.
Don't even get me started on my local NHS trust, who (for instance) haven't yet discovered email, but insist on posting appointment notifications, even when there is no possibility of the notification arriving prior to the appointment. Also the complete wasted MRI slot I had where I informed them (as per their procedure) there was a risk I had metal splinters in my eyes prior to the day, and they somehow failed to have Xray provision available to check my eyes and my MRI had to be cancelled and the slot go unused.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Everywhere one looks, there are loads of easy wins. If Reform manage do 10% of them, they should make the UK a much better place.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Starmer is not an irrelevance. National popularity has always had a big effect on local results - many a good councillor has lost and many a poor candidate has won because of the national situation.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Posters saying 'Support Reform; get Starmer Out' say nothing about local issues though.
They don't, but that's not unusual. Many local leaflets are full of non-local matters - 'save the NHS' being a Labour favourite - and a sprinkling of local ones.
Sometimes the local ones are just generic 'will spend money wisely/housing in the right places' that say nothing meaningful about local issues.
It is what it is.
On the island pretty much every Reform candidate has ignored the local paper and media websites requests for photos and a hundred words, they’re not turning up to hustings, and the Reform leaflets are national mail shots from Farage that don’t mention the island let alone the local patch or who the candidate might be.
Yet they remain odds on to take control of our council, despite only having a couple of oddballs elected currently.
Council s***show incoming….
The Greens worked more locally for years to build up strength to then target areas nationally. Reform and predecessors went for a tipping point strategy where with sufficient national support suddenly they break through in lots of places despite little local focus.
It's finally worked. And Greens are now able to follow suit thanks to Zack.
I imagine that many of the old-school Greens who worked their patch, campaigning on environmental issues, are in despair.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Starmer is not an irrelevance. National popularity has always had a big effect on local results - many a good councillor has lost and many a poor candidate has won because of the national situation.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Posters saying 'Support Reform; get Starmer Out' say nothing about local issues though.
They don't, but that's not unusual. Many local leaflets are full of non-local matters - 'save the NHS' being a Labour favourite - and a sprinkling of local ones.
Sometimes the local ones are just generic 'will spend money wisely/housing in the right places' that say nothing meaningful about local issues.
It is what it is.
On the island pretty much every Reform candidate has ignored the local paper and media websites requests for photos and a hundred words, they’re not turning up to hustings, and the Reform leaflets are national mail shots from Farage that don’t mention the island let alone the local patch or who the candidate might be.
Yet they remain odds on to take control of our council, despite only having a couple of oddballs elected currently.
Council s***show incoming….
In the short-medium term, it will be fine, because the officers will end up running the show. Damn those unelected bureacrats.
Three things to watch for: 1 When it turns out that some of the elected councillors are too fruity, even for Reform. 2 When councillors turn to personal ego battles for want of anything else to do. 3 When officers tell the councillors that they have to do something that they don't want to do.
Shitshow? Probably, but a slow-burn shitshow.
Tom Harwood, who i think sometimes has interesting opinions, has this weird complaint about local government being 'potemkin' because senior officers make more than even the leader of a council.
He seems to therefore believe the councillors should be directly managing operations, and doesn't serm to understand that whilst there are options to choose from in local government they are highly constrained by central government, who often take away choice entirely.
I've seen Tories and LDs be surprised by that, and many Reform certainly will.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour are at least partly with Councils, too.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
Pavement parking is a complete non-issue. It's necessary in may of our streets, blanket banning it would be beyond stupid. (I'm typing this litterally whilst pushing a double buggy with two sleeping children across our housing estate past reams of pavement parked cars - not one has caused me the slightest problem).
Suspect the point about Gaza is not that it's a widely-shared voter concern, but that for a smallish but geographically-concentrated slice of the electorate, it's the issue.
The bigger question is this. How do politicians do anything about the first three issues without upsetting people for who the fourth one is key?
The political triumph of Reform is to convince a winning coalition of voters that there is so much waste and woke that it's possible to cut taxes and make people's surroundings better at the same time.
The political failure of Reform is that... there isn't really.
Whilst some of that isn't going to be easy, I'm not sure I'd be so pessimistic about Reform's opportunities to improve things. There is actually a reasonable amount of low hanging fruit which for various reasons government's of various colours have refused to fix.
At one extreme, the tax system and the £100k tax trap. It's really not going to be difficult to come up with a better system than the complete mess which we have at present.
At a different level, we're moving house at the moment. Why have I and my wife had to do (and pay for) three different ID checks (both Estate agents and my solicitors) at about £15 a pop? Fair enough to make the solicitors do it, but that should be sufficient. OK, it's only cost us £90, but multiply that up by the number of houses sold a year, and it's £50-£100mil a year wasted from the population's pockets every year. Trivial on one level, but also trivial to fix.
Take crime. 75% of the noticeable crime (burglaries, shop lifting, that sort of thing) in my small town is the product of half a dozen people. They should be locked up and the key thrown away, rather than doing odd bouts of six weeks inside here and there, plus the odd bit of community service. Three strikes and it's ten years inside would virtually solve low level crime. It would probably pay for itself quite quickly in reduced policing costs too.
£3mil got spent on the A road I use to get to work recently, because about 15 years ago there was a spate of motorcycle accidents (all of them idiots on motorbikes being idiots), and it briefly became categorised as dangerous, and that's how long it takes the bureaucracy to respond. It's currently categorised as so dangerous that it doesn't even qualify for yellow backs on the speed limit signs, however they've (completely unnecessarily) reduced the speed limit, covered everything in white paint and rumble strips and stuff up average speed cameras anyway. There should be a complete moratorium on these sorts of projects followed by a rigorous VFM evaluation before they are allowed to proceed - I can guarantee 95% of them will fail.
Don't even get me started on my local NHS trust, who (for instance) haven't yet discovered email, but insist on posting appointment notifications, even when there is no possibility of the notification arriving prior to the appointment. Also the complete wasted MRI slot I had where I informed them (as per their procedure) there was a risk I had metal splinters in my eyes prior to the day, and they somehow failed to have Xray provision available to check my eyes and my MRI had to be cancelled and the slot go unused.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Everywhere one looks, there are loads of easy wins. If Reform manage do 10% of them, they should make the UK a much better place.
That there are inefficiencies in a goverment sector in a country the size of the UK? Of course. That a government can significantly and consistently reduce those inefficiencies? Perhaps but not much evidence. That the chaps in Reform are actually capable of this? Dream on That the chaps in Reform are actually interested in this beyond soundbites? Dream on
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour are at least partly with Councils, too.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
Councils also control their own competence.
One I ran into a couple of weeks ago which I am not sure mentioned here (it's Reform in Northants, but most do similar) is the Council decided that Blue Badge spaces in their car parks would now be chargeable.
But the idiots left the ticket machine where they are supposed to pay on a kerbed podium that is unreachable using a mobility aid.
I've been prodding a local newspaper in the North-West to cover a somewhat similar story this week - to do with a "cycling" (and cycling only) ban on several miles of local roadworks for months in Northwich, including residential roads, without Scottish Power or Cheshire East apparently being aware that "cycling" on adapted cycles is the only form of local transport (say 0-6 miles journeys) for lots of disabled people without shelling out enormously for taxis etc. 40% do not have driving licences.
The NDAA stipulates that any reduction of U.S. troops below 76,000 in Europe for more than 45 days requires congressional oversight. This reduction would still leave about 80,000 in theatre; however, the removal of any American hardware over $500,000 or any handover of facilities still triggers oversight. I’m sure Hegseth has thought this one through...
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Housing strategy is a national, not a local policy.
The NDAA stipulates that any reduction of U.S. troops below 76,000 in Europe for more than 45 days requires congressional oversight. This reduction would still leave about 80,000 in theatre; however, the removal of any American hardware over $500,000 or any handover of facilities still triggers oversight. I’m sure Hegseth has thought this one through...
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Housing strategy is a national, not a local policy.
I'm as sure as I can be that this is a local response though.
The NDAA stipulates that any reduction of U.S. troops below 76,000 in Europe for more than 45 days requires congressional oversight. This reduction would still leave about 80,000 in theatre; however, the removal of any American hardware over $500,000 or any handover of facilities still triggers oversight. I’m sure Hegseth has thought this one through...
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Housing strategy is a national, not a local policy.
Is it not still Local Plans, nationally set housing quotas, and the developer gets what they want if the approved plan does not meet the quota?
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Housing strategy is a national, not a local policy.
Housing strategy over the last decade has been to rotate minister every year so that no-one becomes accountable for the complete and persistent failure to reach any of their targets.
The NDAA stipulates that any reduction of U.S. troops below 76,000 in Europe for more than 45 days requires congressional oversight. This reduction would still leave about 80,000 in theatre; however, the removal of any American hardware over $500,000 or any handover of facilities still triggers oversight. I’m sure Hegseth has thought this one through...
I'm not sure that the stuff about the seceding of the 5000 is not just the latest posturing rhetoric. We'll see.
It's supposedly over the next 6-12 months, so plenty of time for several changes of mind (or what's left of it).
European governments will be publicly regretting but privately welcoming US troop withdrawals, because by this point they're more likely to be used against European interests than in Europe's defense.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour are at least partly with Councils, too.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
Councils also control their own competence.
One I ran into a couple of weeks ago which I am not sure mentioned here (it's Reform in Northants, but most do similar) is the Council decided that Blue Badge spaces in their car parks would now be chargeable.
But the idiots left the ticket machine where they are supposed to pay on a kerbed podium that is unreachable using a mobility aid.
I've been prodding a local newspaper in the North-West to cover a somewhat similar story this week - to do with a "cycling" (and cycling only) ban on several miles of local roadworks for months in Northwich, including residential roads, without Scottish Power or Cheshire East apparently being aware that "cycling" on adapted cycles is the only form of local transport (say 0-6 miles journeys) for lots of disabled people without shelling out enormously for taxis etc. 40% do not have driving licences.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Starmer is not an irrelevance. National popularity has always had a big effect on local results - many a good councillor has lost and many a poor candidate has won because of the national situation.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Posters saying 'Support Reform; get Starmer Out' say nothing about local issues though.
They don't, but that's not unusual. Many local leaflets are full of non-local matters - 'save the NHS' being a Labour favourite - and a sprinkling of local ones.
Sometimes the local ones are just generic 'will spend money wisely/housing in the right places' that say nothing meaningful about local issues.
It is what it is.
On the island pretty much every Reform candidate has ignored the local paper and media websites requests for photos and a hundred words, they’re not turning up to hustings, and the Reform leaflets are national mail shots from Farage that don’t mention the island let alone the local patch or who the candidate might be.
Yet they remain odds on to take control of our council, despite only having a couple of oddballs elected currently.
Council s***show incoming….
The Greens worked more locally for years to build up strength to then target areas nationally. Reform and predecessors went for a tipping point strategy where with sufficient national support suddenly they break through in lots of places despite little local focus.
It's finally worked. And Greens are now able to follow suit thanks to Zack.
I imagine that many of the old-school Greens who worked their patch, campaigning on environmental issues, are in despair.
They are not, they are mostly elated and excited in my experience.
I left the party because ZP is obviously going to adopt some centrist policies (kowtowing to the crowned thieves, participating in the imperialist NATO project) now that he's within range of an electoral breakthrough. The hardcore eco-warriors are along for the ride for now.
We're at the end of what can be achieved by voting on ecological matters. As noted Russian futurist V. V. Mayakovsky observed, Теперь ваша очередь говорить, товарищ Мозер. It's your turn to speak, Comrade Mauser.
Five unexpected but excellent things are beginning to happen
1. London is beginning to bounce back 2. Brexit is beginning to show benefits (belatedly) 3. Iran is beginning to lose the war 4. Russia is beginning to lose the war 5. Reform are beginning to look like actual election winners
Five unexpected but excellent things are beginning to happen
1. London is beginning to bounce back 2. Brexit is beginning to show benefits (belatedly) 3. Iran is beginning to lose the war 4. Russia is beginning to lose the war 5. Reform are beginning to look like actual election winners
All these bounces and benefits - sounds like your vote for Starmer may be a late winner!
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Starmer is not an irrelevance. National popularity has always had a big effect on local results - many a good councillor has lost and many a poor candidate has won because of the national situation.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Posters saying 'Support Reform; get Starmer Out' say nothing about local issues though.
They don't, but that's not unusual. Many local leaflets are full of non-local matters - 'save the NHS' being a Labour favourite - and a sprinkling of local ones.
Sometimes the local ones are just generic 'will spend money wisely/housing in the right places' that say nothing meaningful about local issues.
It is what it is.
On the island pretty much every Reform candidate has ignored the local paper and media websites requests for photos and a hundred words, they’re not turning up to hustings, and the Reform leaflets are national mail shots from Farage that don’t mention the island let alone the local patch or who the candidate might be.
Yet they remain odds on to take control of our council, despite only having a couple of oddballs elected currently.
Council s***show incoming….
The Greens worked more locally for years to build up strength to then target areas nationally. Reform and predecessors went for a tipping point strategy where with sufficient national support suddenly they break through in lots of places despite little local focus.
It's finally worked. And Greens are now able to follow suit thanks to Zack.
I imagine that many of the old-school Greens who worked their patch, campaigning on environmental issues, are in despair.
They are not, they are mostly elated and excited in my experience.
I left the party because ZP is obviously going to adopt some centrist policies (kowtowing to the crowned thieves, participating in the imperialist NATO project) now that he's within range of an electoral breakthrough. The hardcore eco-warriors are along for the ride for now.
We're at the end of what can be achieved by voting on ecological matters. As noted Russian futurist V. V. Mayakovsky observed, Теперь ваша очередь говорить, товарищ Мозер. It's your turn to speak, Comrade Mauser.
Wouldn't surprise me at all. I doubt most of the nutters are bothered how we all get back to living in caves as long as it happens.
Is it fair to say that with recent events the MSM is getting to where it should have been two years ago on the antisemitism issue? I see uniondivvie keenly pointing out that the tabloid attention to the issue has failed to make antisemitism one of the public's top concerns.
So is that bravo to the tabloids for trying to raise the salience of the issue? Or maybe we'd be better off if they hadn't? I'm not sure the obvious conclusions to draw are the ones he intended.
Suspect the point about Gaza is not that it's a widely-shared voter concern, but that for a smallish but geographically-concentrated slice of the electorate, it's the issue.
The bigger question is this. How do politicians do anything about the first three issues without upsetting people for who the fourth one is key?
The political triumph of Reform is to convince a winning coalition of voters that there is so much waste and woke that it's possible to cut taxes and make people's surroundings better at the same time.
The political failure of Reform is that... there isn't really.
Whilst some of that isn't going to be easy, I'm not sure I'd be so pessimistic about Reform's opportunities to improve things. There is actually a reasonable amount of low hanging fruit which for various reasons government's of various colours have refused to fix.
At one extreme, the tax system and the £100k tax trap. It's really not going to be difficult to come up with a better system than the complete mess which we have at present.
At a different level, we're moving house at the moment. Why have I and my wife had to do (and pay for) three different ID checks (both Estate agents and my solicitors) at about £15 a pop? Fair enough to make the solicitors do it, but that should be sufficient. OK, it's only cost us £90, but multiply that up by the number of houses sold a year, and it's £50-£100mil a year wasted from the population's pockets every year. Trivial on one level, but also trivial to fix.
Take crime. 75% of the noticeable crime (burglaries, shop lifting, that sort of thing) in my small town is the product of half a dozen people. They should be locked up and the key thrown away, rather than doing odd bouts of six weeks inside here and there, plus the odd bit of community service. Three strikes and it's ten years inside would virtually solve low level crime. It would probably pay for itself quite quickly in reduced policing costs too.
£3mil got spent on the A road I use to get to work recently, because about 15 years ago there was a spate of motorcycle accidents (all of them idiots on motorbikes being idiots), and it briefly became categorised as dangerous, and that's how long it takes the bureaucracy to respond. It's currently categorised as so dangerous that it doesn't even qualify for yellow backs on the speed limit signs, however they've (completely unnecessarily) reduced the speed limit, covered everything in white paint and rumble strips and stuff up average speed cameras anyway. There should be a complete moratorium on these sorts of projects followed by a rigorous VFM evaluation before they are allowed to proceed - I can guarantee 95% of them will fail.
Don't even get me started on my local NHS trust, who (for instance) haven't yet discovered email, but insist on posting appointment notifications, even when there is no possibility of the notification arriving prior to the appointment. Also the complete wasted MRI slot I had where I informed them (as per their procedure) there was a risk I had metal splinters in my eyes prior to the day, and they somehow failed to have Xray provision available to check my eyes and my MRI had to be cancelled and the slot go unused.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Everywhere one looks, there are loads of easy wins. If Reform manage do 10% of them, they should make the UK a much better place.
Three strikes and 10 years imprisonment sounds good but you'd soon have a backlash and juries refusing to convict a shoplifter facing 10 years for pinching a bottle of water.
Five unexpected but excellent things are beginning to happen
1. London is beginning to bounce back 2. Brexit is beginning to show benefits (belatedly) 3. Iran is beginning to lose the war 4. Russia is beginning to lose the war 5. Reform are beginning to look like actual election winners
#2 is impressive. I would like to borrow your telescope.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Starmer is not an irrelevance. National popularity has always had a big effect on local results - many a good councillor has lost and many a poor candidate has won because of the national situation.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Posters saying 'Support Reform; get Starmer Out' say nothing about local issues though.
They don't, but that's not unusual. Many local leaflets are full of non-local matters - 'save the NHS' being a Labour favourite - and a sprinkling of local ones.
Sometimes the local ones are just generic 'will spend money wisely/housing in the right places' that say nothing meaningful about local issues.
It is what it is.
On the island pretty much every Reform candidate has ignored the local paper and media websites requests for photos and a hundred words, they’re not turning up to hustings, and the Reform leaflets are national mail shots from Farage that don’t mention the island let alone the local patch or who the candidate might be.
Yet they remain odds on to take control of our council, despite only having a couple of oddballs elected currently.
Council s***show incoming….
The Greens worked more locally for years to build up strength to then target areas nationally. Reform and predecessors went for a tipping point strategy where with sufficient national support suddenly they break through in lots of places despite little local focus.
It's finally worked. And Greens are now able to follow suit thanks to Zack.
I imagine that many of the old-school Greens who worked their patch, campaigning on environmental issues, are in despair.
They are not, they are mostly elated and excited in my experience.
I left the party because ZP is obviously going to adopt some centrist policies (kowtowing to the crowned thieves, participating in the imperialist NATO project) now that he's within range of an electoral breakthrough. The hardcore eco-warriors are along for the ride for now.
We're at the end of what can be achieved by voting on ecological matters. As noted Russian futurist V. V. Mayakovsky observed, Теперь ваша очередь говорить, товарищ Мозер. It's your turn to speak, Comrade Mauser.
I don't regard NATO as an imperialist project but if one does, it must surely be acknowledged that Russia is also an imperialist project. And I would add, a much worse one.
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
If Labour do come second to Reform on Thursday and beat the Conservatives and Greens and LDs and BMG are correct Starmer is secure. Kemi might face some questions though, Reform beating the Conservatives is understandable, this deeply unpopular Labour party in government beating the Conservative opposition too is not
Five unexpected but excellent things are beginning to happen
1. London is beginning to bounce back 2. Brexit is beginning to show benefits (belatedly) 3. Iran is beginning to lose the war 4. Russia is beginning to lose the war 5. Reform are beginning to look like actual election winners
If anti Reform tactical voting 28% is nowhere near what Farage needs for a majority
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
I agree. But it will be turnout. The Labour turnout is poor at the best of times. And this isn't one of those. What is the good reason to get out and vote Labour? What reason not to go Green?
Five unexpected but excellent things are beginning to happen
1. London is beginning to bounce back 2. Brexit is beginning to show benefits (belatedly) 3. Iran is beginning to lose the war 4. Russia is beginning to lose the war 5. Reform are beginning to look like actual election winners
There's nothing like staring at hippos and crocodiles to give one a new perspective.
1) I'm intriuged and bow to your greater knowledge. 2) Needs some specifics 3) Not clear at all 4) Some positive signs but no reasons to be popping the champagne corks 5) Let's see next week. But even then the whole crypto business is murky as hell
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
If Labour do come second to Reform on Thursday and beat the Conservatives and Greens and LDs and BMG are correct Starmer is secure. Kemi might face some questions though, Reform beating the Conservatives is understandable, this deeply unpopular Labour party in government beating the Conservative opposition too is not
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour are at least partly with Councils, too.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
Councils also control their own competence.
One I ran into a couple of weeks ago which I am not sure mentioned here (it's Reform in Northants, but most do similar) is the Council decided that Blue Badge spaces in their car parks would now be chargeable.
But the idiots left the ticket machine where they are supposed to pay on a kerbed podium that is unreachable using a mobility aid.
I've been prodding a local newspaper in the North-West to cover a somewhat similar story this week - to do with a "cycling" (and cycling only) ban on several miles of local roadworks for months in Northwich, including residential roads, without Scottish Power or Cheshire East apparently being aware that "cycling" on adapted cycles is the only form of local transport (say 0-6 miles journeys) for lots of disabled people without shelling out enormously for taxis etc. 40% do not have driving licences.
For all the fulminating about DEI, we've a long way to go before the issue is even considered in many areas of life.
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
I agree. But it will be turnout. The Labour turnout is poor at the best of times. And this isn't one of those. What is the good reason to get out and vote Labour? What reason not to go Green?
Just speaking for myself it's the rise of Green that will send me out to vote Labour in a contest (Greenwich) where the winner will be between them. I'm not sure I'd have bothered to vote otherwise.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Starmer is not an irrelevance. National popularity has always had a big effect on local results - many a good councillor has lost and many a poor candidate has won because of the national situation.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Posters saying 'Support Reform; get Starmer Out' say nothing about local issues though.
They don't, but that's not unusual. Many local leaflets are full of non-local matters - 'save the NHS' being a Labour favourite - and a sprinkling of local ones.
Sometimes the local ones are just generic 'will spend money wisely/housing in the right places' that say nothing meaningful about local issues.
It is what it is.
On the island pretty much every Reform candidate has ignored the local paper and media websites requests for photos and a hundred words, they’re not turning up to hustings, and the Reform leaflets are national mail shots from Farage that don’t mention the island let alone the local patch or who the candidate might be.
Yet they remain odds on to take control of our council, despite only having a couple of oddballs elected currently.
Council s***show incoming….
The Greens worked more locally for years to build up strength to then target areas nationally. Reform and predecessors went for a tipping point strategy where with sufficient national support suddenly they break through in lots of places despite little local focus.
It's finally worked. And Greens are now able to follow suit thanks to Zack.
I imagine that many of the old-school Greens who worked their patch, campaigning on environmental issues, are in despair.
The Greens campaigning in my ward, a Green target, are mostly middle aged to elderly, and they all seem pretty perky.
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
I agree. But it will be turnout. The Labour turnout is poor at the best of times. And this isn't one of those. What is the good reason to get out and vote Labour? What reason not to go Green?
In what, given the massive downer I have on the government, might come as a surprise, I think I actually will be voting for Labour on Thursday. Here it’s a battle between Labour and Green, I suspect, hence I’ll be voting to keep the Greens out. My vote is very unlikely to be replicated at a GE on those lines, but that’s how I see the lie of the land where I am at the moment.
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
I agree. But it will be turnout. The Labour turnout is poor at the best of times. And this isn't one of those. What is the good reason to get out and vote Labour? What reason not to go Green?
Just speaking for myself it's the rise of Green that will send me out to vote Labour in a contest (Greenwich) where the winner will be between them. I'm not sure I'd have bothered to vote otherwise.
Fair enough. But I'm the opposite. I can't risk chucking my vote away on Labour with Reform as a prospective winner. In appreciate London is different.
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
If Labour do come second to Reform on Thursday and beat the Conservatives and Greens and LDs and BMG are correct Starmer is secure. Kemi might face some questions though, Reform beating the Conservatives is understandable, this deeply unpopular Labour party in government beating the Conservative opposition too is not
What's the main metric iyo? Seat swings or NEV?
NEV, it is mostly urban seats up on Thursday including all London council seats so that will naturally favour Labour over the Conservatives
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
If Labour do come second to Reform on Thursday and beat the Conservatives and Greens and LDs and BMG are correct Starmer is secure. Kemi might face some questions though, Reform beating the Conservatives is understandable, this deeply unpopular Labour party in government beating the Conservative opposition too is not
What's the main metric iyo? Seat swings or NEV?
NEV, it is mostly urban seats up on Thursday including all London council seats so that will naturally favour Labour over the Conservatives
NEV is adjusted to take into account which areas voted, isn't it?
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour are at least partly with Councils, too.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
Councils also control their own competence.
One I ran into a couple of weeks ago which I am not sure mentioned here (it's Reform in Northants, but most do similar) is the Council decided that Blue Badge spaces in their car parks would now be chargeable.
But the idiots left the ticket machine where they are supposed to pay on a kerbed podium that is unreachable using a mobility aid.
I've been prodding a local newspaper in the North-West to cover a somewhat similar story this week - to do with a "cycling" (and cycling only) ban on several miles of local roadworks for months in Northwich, including residential roads, without Scottish Power or Cheshire East apparently being aware that "cycling" on adapted cycles is the only form of local transport (say 0-6 miles journeys) for lots of disabled people without shelling out enormously for taxis etc. 40% do not have driving licences.
For all the fulminating about DEI, we've a long way to go before the issue is even considered in many areas of life.
In the UK, imo one of the most pernicious aspects is institutionalised ignorance, and that is very difficult to address.
There are some interesting category challenges that surprise, like the charging points one I raised earlier this week.
Another one: we happily spend about £10k of NHS money on a hip replacement for a 73 year old, which is a mobility aid. Should we also spend the same (or say half - £5k) on a suitable electric wheelchair or adapted cycle for a 27 year old, so they can go where they need to go?
If not, why not? I'm raising a question rather than trying to provide my answer.
Is it fair to say that with recent events the MSM is getting to where it should have been two years ago on the antisemitism issue? I see uniondivvie keenly pointing out that the tabloid attention to the issue has failed to make antisemitism one of the public's top concerns.
So is that bravo to the tabloids for trying to raise the salience of the issue? Or maybe we'd be better off if they hadn't? I'm not sure the obvious conclusions to draw are the ones he intended.
Great that you know what conclusions I was intending to draw, very generous of you to share, though a bit chicken-hearted not to address me directly.
I was replying to a post saying Gaza was not high on voters concerns, so the conclusion I was drawing is that much as partisans on both sides, tabloid editors, politicians, randoms on the internet and Simon Scharma want the populace to join in their rending of garments, it’s not really happening. It’s just on balance there are more people disturbed by thousands of disembowelled, decapitated and disassembled kids than they are by a schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and a Muslim.
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
If Labour do come second to Reform on Thursday and beat the Conservatives and Greens and LDs and BMG are correct Starmer is secure. Kemi might face some questions though, Reform beating the Conservatives is understandable, this deeply unpopular Labour party in government beating the Conservative opposition too is not
What's the main metric iyo? Seat swings or NEV?
NEV, it is mostly urban seats up on Thursday including all London council seats so that will naturally favour Labour over the Conservatives
NEV is adjusted to take into account which areas voted, isn't it?
Yes, so as I said NEV is how Kemi should be measured not seats won
As I said, if that is the NEV on Thursday the champagne corks will be popping in the Starmer’s Downing Street flat on Friday. Even if Reform win Team Starmer can spin beating the Tories, Greens and LDs as a relative victory
As mentioned before, Starmer's main issue was having a large majority in the commons and then not using it. As well as those unelectable wannabe PM's sitting behind him on the benches. If 'use it or lose it' is the mantra, a unity candidate is necessary or they will just lapse into the infighting that has bedevilled previous governments.
So who is the unity candidate? Can't be those intending to knife Starmer.
Miliband is the unity candidate. Cooper the backup if it turns out Miliband genuinely doesn't want the job.
Miliband is covered in the comment above - unelectable wannabe PM
He's still the unity candidate, because the Labour Party doesn't conform to the paradigm you've created.
Perhaps that would lead you to conclude that this Labour government is doomed, and it's not an unreasonable assessment.
Miliband is the unity candidate only in the sense he unites everybody who Labour might want to vote for them in saying "Fuck off, Ed".
Well, whatever. The question isn't whether Miliband would win a general election with an electorate of tens of millions. It's whether he'd win a leadership election with a nominating pool of 400-odd Labour MPs and an electorate of a couple of hundred thousand party members and however many trade union members.
"Well, whatever" pretty much sums up Labour's options.
Pick Miliband and the polls won't improve from Starmer. What then?
Replacing Truss with Sunak didn't ultimately do much to improve the Tories fortunes. They were polling in the low-20s when she was forced out and received 24% at the 2024GE. Should the Tories have left Truss in office as PM?
Since none of the alternatives for PM seem to have a scooby about what to do differently (with the possible exception of Burnham) then the result would likely be the same as under Sunak. Labour MPs minds will quickly turn to how they are going to earn a living after the inevitable election defeat.
I feel like very often on PB.com there are two different discussions going on. There's a discussion about what the optimal course of action might be. And then there's a discussion about what the most likely course of action is thought to be.
These are very different things.
I'd suggest that the optimal course of action for Labour would be to come up with a plan for fixing the country's ills, and then choose the person best able to implement that plan.
My expectation is that they will end up choosing a new PM on the basis of that person not being various other people - not a friend of Mandelson, not being investigated by HMRC, not being ineligible for the contest, etc - and on providing gentle reassurance that everything is going to be okay. Miliband is the likely comfort blanket.
Leaving Truss in place would have wrecked the economy through the bond market. She had to go, regardless of the options to succeed her.
There's no evidence for that.
However, she did have to go, because effectively she was told by the Cabinet Secretary to reverse the Corporation Tax freeze or the business of Government would stop. It was effectively a threat to strike.
Once she'd been forced to reverse such a key step so publicly, she couldn't carry on long term. She was a prisoner in the castle not the ruler of the castle.
It's a very peculiar thing to demand - cancelling the CT raise was not a massively costly part of the overall budget and clearly would have had beneficial dynamic impacts later on (though we can argue about their level). I think it was pretty much an outright order from the USA, who had been campaigning for years to get other countries to increase their corporate tax levels so it could repatriate companies. Biden himself publicly attacked the budget.
It's no surprise under the circumstances that Truss has a lifelong antipathy toward the blob.
The fact Truss cut tax not spending after Kwarteng’s budget crashed the markets and sent interest rates surging and meant she could not carry on
If Labour do perform poorly next week ie third or worse then Starmer will likely face a leadership challenge. On the latest news it seems Streeting aims to be a decisive Sunak in removing a PM hit by scandals and fading in popularity rather than a dithering Portillo or David Miliband
Could well be 'or worse' in Scotland.
Andrew Learmonth @andrewlearmonth EXC: New mega-poll predicts SNP majority as Labour falls to fourth behind Reform and Greens. Tories to come sixth.
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
With a very small number of exceptions polls have always overestimated Labour's share of the vote, so I think it would be sensible to assume that it's still the case.
However, given how far Labour's opinion poll score has fallen, it's worth considering if it might not be the case, and why. For example, you could argue that Labour have lost young voters to the Greens, and poorer voters to Reform - both demographics with lower turnout - and so their residual vote share might be more reliable, and more likely to turnout, with the Greens and Reform falling short of their polling.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour are at least partly with Councils, too.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
Councils also control their own competence.
One I ran into a couple of weeks ago which I am not sure mentioned here (it's Reform in Northants, but most do similar) is the Council decided that Blue Badge spaces in their car parks would now be chargeable.
But the idiots left the ticket machine where they are supposed to pay on a kerbed podium that is unreachable using a mobility aid.
I've been prodding a local newspaper in the North-West to cover a somewhat similar story this week - to do with a "cycling" (and cycling only) ban on several miles of local roadworks for months in Northwich, including residential roads, without Scottish Power or Cheshire East apparently being aware that "cycling" on adapted cycles is the only form of local transport (say 0-6 miles journeys) for lots of disabled people without shelling out enormously for taxis etc. 40% do not have driving licences.
For all the fulminating about DEI, we've a long way to go before the issue is even considered in many areas of life.
Perhaps. But at the same time, we have some insane DEI policies, even if we don't call them that. As Birmingham Council found out. And now Tesco:
Suspect the point about Gaza is not that it's a widely-shared voter concern, but that for a smallish but geographically-concentrated slice of the electorate, it's the issue.
The bigger question is this. How do politicians do anything about the first three issues without upsetting people for who the fourth one is key?
The political triumph of Reform is to convince a winning coalition of voters that there is so much waste and woke that it's possible to cut taxes and make people's surroundings better at the same time.
The political failure of Reform is that... there isn't really.
Whilst some of that isn't going to be easy, I'm not sure I'd be so pessimistic about Reform's opportunities to improve things. There is actually a reasonable amount of low hanging fruit which for various reasons government's of various colours have refused to fix.
At one extreme, the tax system and the £100k tax trap. It's really not going to be difficult to come up with a better system than the complete mess which we have at present.
At a different level, we're moving house at the moment. Why have I and my wife had to do (and pay for) three different ID checks (both Estate agents and my solicitors) at about £15 a pop? Fair enough to make the solicitors do it, but that should be sufficient. OK, it's only cost us £90, but multiply that up by the number of houses sold a year, and it's £50-£100mil a year wasted from the population's pockets every year. Trivial on one level, but also trivial to fix.
Take crime. 75% of the noticeable crime (burglaries, shop lifting, that sort of thing) in my small town is the product of half a dozen people. They should be locked up and the key thrown away, rather than doing odd bouts of six weeks inside here and there, plus the odd bit of community service. Three strikes and it's ten years inside would virtually solve low level crime. It would probably pay for itself quite quickly in reduced policing costs too.
£3mil got spent on the A road I use to get to work recently, because about 15 years ago there was a spate of motorcycle accidents (all of them idiots on motorbikes being idiots), and it briefly became categorised as dangerous, and that's how long it takes the bureaucracy to respond. It's currently categorised as so dangerous that it doesn't even qualify for yellow backs on the speed limit signs, however they've (completely unnecessarily) reduced the speed limit, covered everything in white paint and rumble strips and stuff up average speed cameras anyway. There should be a complete moratorium on these sorts of projects followed by a rigorous VFM evaluation before they are allowed to proceed - I can guarantee 95% of them will fail.
Don't even get me started on my local NHS trust, who (for instance) haven't yet discovered email, but insist on posting appointment notifications, even when there is no possibility of the notification arriving prior to the appointment. Also the complete wasted MRI slot I had where I informed them (as per their procedure) there was a risk I had metal splinters in my eyes prior to the day, and they somehow failed to have Xray provision available to check my eyes and my MRI had to be cancelled and the slot go unused.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Everywhere one looks, there are loads of easy wins. If Reform manage do 10% of them, they should make the UK a much better place.
Three strikes and 10 years imprisonment sounds good but you'd soon have a backlash and juries refusing to convict a shoplifter facing 10 years for pinching a bottle of water.
Why? By offence number 3, you should be aware that 1) stealing is bad, and 2) next time it's ten years. If you steal again, then either you are a hardened crim and should be doing time, or you need sectioning under the mental health act.
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
If Labour do come second to Reform on Thursday and beat the Conservatives and Greens and LDs and BMG are correct Starmer is secure. Kemi might face some questions though, Reform beating the Conservatives is understandable, this deeply unpopular Labour party in government beating the Conservative opposition too is not
What's the main metric iyo? Seat swings or NEV?
NEV, it is mostly urban seats up on Thursday including all London council seats so that will naturally favour Labour over the Conservatives
NEV is adjusted to take into account which areas voted, isn't it?
Yes, so as I said NEV is how Kemi should be measured not seats won
FIVE DAYS TO SAVE THE LABOUR CONSERVATIVE PARTY!!!
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour are at least partly with Councils, too.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
Councils also control their own competence.
One I ran into a couple of weeks ago which I am not sure mentioned here (it's Reform in Northants, but most do similar) is the Council decided that Blue Badge spaces in their car parks would now be chargeable.
But the idiots left the ticket machine where they are supposed to pay on a kerbed podium that is unreachable using a mobility aid.
I've been prodding a local newspaper in the North-West to cover a somewhat similar story this week - to do with a "cycling" (and cycling only) ban on several miles of local roadworks for months in Northwich, including residential roads, without Scottish Power or Cheshire East apparently being aware that "cycling" on adapted cycles is the only form of local transport (say 0-6 miles journeys) for lots of disabled people without shelling out enormously for taxis etc. 40% do not have driving licences.
For all the fulminating about DEI, we've a long way to go before the issue is even considered in many areas of life.
Perhaps. But at the same time, we have some insane DEI policies, even if we don't call them that. As Birmingham Council found out. And now Tesco:
I don't understand this equal pay for 'equivalent' jobs trend as the jobs appear to be quite different but are by arcane reasoning not permitted to be treated differently.
From private eye a few months ago on Zack Polanski's time with the Lib Dems.
"At the time, the party was split between lefties and coalition-defending Cleggmaniacs, and Polanski gave the impression of sympathy to both groups. He praised "Nick" (Clegg) repeatedly in his conference speech, but was also a regular attendee of council meetings of the Social Liberal Forum (SLF), the party's leading left-wing pressure group.
"I found it hard to square the stuff he was telling us, about how he was against privatisation, with the pro-market views I'd heard from him at other party events," one SLF colleague told the Eye. "Then I realised he'd twigged that most rank-and-file members were SLF supporters; what he really wanted was the SLF's endorsement in selection contests."
This surprises a colleague from the rival right-wing Liberal Reform pressure group: "We thought he was one of us. He told us so when he came up to our stand at conference.""
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour are at least partly with Councils, too.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
Councils also control their own competence.
One I ran into a couple of weeks ago which I am not sure mentioned here (it's Reform in Northants, but most do similar) is the Council decided that Blue Badge spaces in their car parks would now be chargeable.
But the idiots left the ticket machine where they are supposed to pay on a kerbed podium that is unreachable using a mobility aid.
I've been prodding a local newspaper in the North-West to cover a somewhat similar story this week - to do with a "cycling" (and cycling only) ban on several miles of local roadworks for months in Northwich, including residential roads, without Scottish Power or Cheshire East apparently being aware that "cycling" on adapted cycles is the only form of local transport (say 0-6 miles journeys) for lots of disabled people without shelling out enormously for taxis etc. 40% do not have driving licences.
For all the fulminating about DEI, we've a long way to go before the issue is even considered in many areas of life.
Perhaps. But at the same time, we have some insane DEI policies, even if we don't call them that. As Birmingham Council found out. And now Tesco:
I don't understand this equal pay for 'equivalent' jobs trend as the jobs appear to be quite different but are by arcane reasoning not permitted to be treated differently.
It is utter bollox to compare working in awarehouse driving forklifts and lugging heavy loads to checkout/help desk / shelf stacker jobs. PC gone crazy.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour are at least partly with Councils, too.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
Councils also control their own competence.
One I ran into a couple of weeks ago which I am not sure mentioned here (it's Reform in Northants, but most do similar) is the Council decided that Blue Badge spaces in their car parks would now be chargeable.
But the idiots left the ticket machine where they are supposed to pay on a kerbed podium that is unreachable using a mobility aid.
I've been prodding a local newspaper in the North-West to cover a somewhat similar story this week - to do with a "cycling" (and cycling only) ban on several miles of local roadworks for months in Northwich, including residential roads, without Scottish Power or Cheshire East apparently being aware that "cycling" on adapted cycles is the only form of local transport (say 0-6 miles journeys) for lots of disabled people without shelling out enormously for taxis etc. 40% do not have driving licences.
For all the fulminating about DEI, we've a long way to go before the issue is even considered in many areas of life.
Perhaps. But at the same time, we have some insane DEI policies, even if we don't call them that. As Birmingham Council found out. And now Tesco:
I don't understand this equal pay for 'equivalent' jobs trend as the jobs appear to be quite different but are by arcane reasoning not permitted to be treated differently.
To this laymen it appears bad legislation is causing perverse rulings, but there's nothing that can be done save for re-legislation.
Is it fair to say that with recent events the MSM is getting to where it should have been two years ago on the antisemitism issue? I see uniondivvie keenly pointing out that the tabloid attention to the issue has failed to make antisemitism one of the public's top concerns.
So is that bravo to the tabloids for trying to raise the salience of the issue? Or maybe we'd be better off if they hadn't? I'm not sure the obvious conclusions to draw are the ones he intended.
Great that you know what conclusions I was intending to draw, very generous of you to share, though a bit chicken-hearted not to address me directly.
I was replying to a post saying Gaza was not high on voters concerns, so the conclusion I was drawing is that much as partisans on both sides, tabloid editors, politicians, randoms on the internet and Simon Scharma want the populace to join in their rending of garments, it’s not really happening. It’s just on balance there are more people disturbed by thousands of disembowelled, decapitated and disassembled kids than they are by a schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and a Muslim.
Sorry there, I find most of your comments on this site rather tiresome and assume you're just doing it for the bants. I failed to realise that although you generally offer little else but snide barbs at people on the right, you are in fact just acting out of the height of intellectual considerations and not offering any real personal view of your own.
But you see you can't help but give yourself away. 'Schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and Muslim.' Do you think that is why Jews are so concerned? Why we've had recent statements we've had from the head of the Greater Manchester Police and the Met about the safety of British Jews. Now perhaps you don't mean to make light of it, you just chose not to mention it in its full context. But at some point people are entitled to wonder.
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
With a very small number of exceptions polls have always overestimated Labour's share of the vote, so I think it would be sensible to assume that it's still the case.
However, given how far Labour's opinion poll score has fallen, it's worth considering if it might not be the case, and why. For example, you could argue that Labour have lost young voters to the Greens, and poorer voters to Reform - both demographics with lower turnout - and so their residual vote share might be more reliable, and more likely to turnout, with the Greens and Reform falling short of their polling.
Something to consider.
The other point is that poll responders tend to overestimate their likelihood to vote, particularly in local elections if their party is unpopular. There are likely to be a fair few Labour-leaning voters who when Thursday comes around get tied up with RL matters and conclude that they can’t be arsed to turn out.
Suspect the point about Gaza is not that it's a widely-shared voter concern, but that for a smallish but geographically-concentrated slice of the electorate, it's the issue.
The bigger question is this. How do politicians do anything about the first three issues without upsetting people for who the fourth one is key?
The political triumph of Reform is to convince a winning coalition of voters that there is so much waste and woke that it's possible to cut taxes and make people's surroundings better at the same time.
The political failure of Reform is that... there isn't really.
Whilst some of that isn't going to be easy, I'm not sure I'd be so pessimistic about Reform's opportunities to improve things. There is actually a reasonable amount of low hanging fruit which for various reasons government's of various colours have refused to fix.
At one extreme, the tax system and the £100k tax trap. It's really not going to be difficult to come up with a better system than the complete mess which we have at present.
At a different level, we're moving house at the moment. Why have I and my wife had to do (and pay for) three different ID checks (both Estate agents and my solicitors) at about £15 a pop? Fair enough to make the solicitors do it, but that should be sufficient. OK, it's only cost us £90, but multiply that up by the number of houses sold a year, and it's £50-£100mil a year wasted from the population's pockets every year. Trivial on one level, but also trivial to fix.
Take crime. 75% of the noticeable crime (burglaries, shop lifting, that sort of thing) in my small town is the product of half a dozen people. They should be locked up and the key thrown away, rather than doing odd bouts of six weeks inside here and there, plus the odd bit of community service. Three strikes and it's ten years inside would virtually solve low level crime. It would probably pay for itself quite quickly in reduced policing costs too.
£3mil got spent on the A road I use to get to work recently, because about 15 years ago there was a spate of motorcycle accidents (all of them idiots on motorbikes being idiots), and it briefly became categorised as dangerous, and that's how long it takes the bureaucracy to respond. It's currently categorised as so dangerous that it doesn't even qualify for yellow backs on the speed limit signs, however they've (completely unnecessarily) reduced the speed limit, covered everything in white paint and rumble strips and stuff up average speed cameras anyway. There should be a complete moratorium on these sorts of projects followed by a rigorous VFM evaluation before they are allowed to proceed - I can guarantee 95% of them will fail.
Don't even get me started on my local NHS trust, who (for instance) haven't yet discovered email, but insist on posting appointment notifications, even when there is no possibility of the notification arriving prior to the appointment. Also the complete wasted MRI slot I had where I informed them (as per their procedure) there was a risk I had metal splinters in my eyes prior to the day, and they somehow failed to have Xray provision available to check my eyes and my MRI had to be cancelled and the slot go unused.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Everywhere one looks, there are loads of easy wins. If Reform manage do 10% of them, they should make the UK a much better place.
Three strikes and 10 years imprisonment sounds good but you'd soon have a backlash and juries refusing to convict a shoplifter facing 10 years for pinching a bottle of water.
Why? By offence number 3, you should be aware that 1) stealing is bad, and 2) next time it's ten years. If you steal again, then either you are a hardened crim and should be doing time, or you need sectioning under the mental health act.
The sticking point is getting such people in front of the beak once, let alone three times.
It's a win, and it's a win worth paying for. But it's not that easy and will cost upfront.
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Housing strategy is a national, not a local policy.
So is where asylum seekers will live. Think of the sorts of games you can play. 'Let us build homes ... or else.'
As I said, if that is the NEV on Thursday the champagne corks will be popping in the Starmer’s Downing Street flat on Friday. Even if Reform win Team Starmer can spin beating the Tories, Greens and LDs as a relative victory
Five unexpected but excellent things are beginning to happen
1. London is beginning to bounce back 2. Brexit is beginning to show benefits (belatedly) 3. Iran is beginning to lose the war 4. Russia is beginning to lose the war 5. Reform are beginning to look like actual election winners
1. London property prices continue to tank - down 25% in real terms over recent years - compared to both inflation and the rest of UK (https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-house-prices-property-ons-b1279581.html). Your views on London are essentially worthless since if you see a few dodgy looking immigrants down Parkway you tell us it’s a cesspit and you’re moving abroad, yet it only takes a small crowd outside a pub on Friday afternoon and suddenly you say it’s booming again. Truth is, the City has taken a bit of a hit since Brexit but is actually rebounding pretty well, whereas the rest of the capital is becoming a less attractive place to live due principally to its dysfunctional housing market.
2. Just no
3. The US has won the battle but it’s still quite possible that Iran’s resilience might win the war
4. Hopefully, yes
5. They look like the same bunch of incompetent, corrupt and unpatriotic chancers that they always did. They might be about to do well in local elections in many areas - although their polling is subsiding from its peak - but I’d wager that the experiences to come of those councils, like mine, that look likely to fall to Reform won’t do them any favours when voters come to think about who should be running our country going forward. Betting advice: once Thursday’s results are in, over the weekend after, laying Reform majority and Reform most seats in next GE will probably be the smart bet.
Is it fair to say that with recent events the MSM is getting to where it should have been two years ago on the antisemitism issue? I see uniondivvie keenly pointing out that the tabloid attention to the issue has failed to make antisemitism one of the public's top concerns.
So is that bravo to the tabloids for trying to raise the salience of the issue? Or maybe we'd be better off if they hadn't? I'm not sure the obvious conclusions to draw are the ones he intended.
Great that you know what conclusions I was intending to draw, very generous of you to share, though a bit chicken-hearted not to address me directly.
I was replying to a post saying Gaza was not high on voters concerns, so the conclusion I was drawing is that much as partisans on both sides, tabloid editors, politicians, randoms on the internet and Simon Scharma want the populace to join in their rending of garments, it’s not really happening. It’s just on balance there are more people disturbed by thousands of disembowelled, decapitated and disassembled kids than they are by a schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and a Muslim.
Sorry there, I find most of your comments on this site rather tiresome and assume you're just doing it for the bants. I failed to realise that although you generally offer little else but snide barbs at people on the right, you are in fact just acting out of the height of intellectual considerations and not offering any real personal view of your own.
But you see you can't help but give yourself away. 'Schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and Muslim.' Do you think that is why Jews are so concerned? Why we've had recent statements we've had from the head of the Greater Manchester Police and the Met about the safety of British Jews. Now perhaps you don't mean to make light of it, you just chose not to mention it in its full context. But at some point people are entitled to wonder.
Ooh, get Mr Snide! Have you got to know any Jewish people yet? If not I can only applaud your selfless efforts on behalf of British Jews.
Polanski now retweeting one of the most virulently antisemitic accounts in Ireland, a man who was literally invited to Tehran by the Iranian regime to join a propaganda junket.
Is it fair to say that with recent events the MSM is getting to where it should have been two years ago on the antisemitism issue? I see uniondivvie keenly pointing out that the tabloid attention to the issue has failed to make antisemitism one of the public's top concerns.
So is that bravo to the tabloids for trying to raise the salience of the issue? Or maybe we'd be better off if they hadn't? I'm not sure the obvious conclusions to draw are the ones he intended.
Great that you know what conclusions I was intending to draw, very generous of you to share, though a bit chicken-hearted not to address me directly.
I was replying to a post saying Gaza was not high on voters concerns, so the conclusion I was drawing is that much as partisans on both sides, tabloid editors, politicians, randoms on the internet and Simon Scharma want the populace to join in their rending of garments, it’s not really happening. It’s just on balance there are more people disturbed by thousands of disembowelled, decapitated and disassembled kids than they are by a schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and a Muslim.
Sorry there, I find most of your comments on this site rather tiresome and assume you're just doing it for the bants. I failed to realise that although you generally offer little else but snide barbs at people on the right, you are in fact just acting out of the height of intellectual considerations and not offering any real personal view of your own.
But you see you can't help but give yourself away. 'Schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and Muslim.' Do you think that is why Jews are so concerned? Why we've had recent statements we've had from the head of the Greater Manchester Police and the Met about the safety of British Jews. Now perhaps you don't mean to make light of it, you just chose not to mention it in its full context. But at some point people are entitled to wonder.
Is there any data on where Jewish concerns rank within the general public's concerns? It seems to rate higher (than similar abuse) within the media. Shoplifting, youths carrying knives, drug dealing are far more rife than actual violence but why the level of interest?
The same goes for Gaza. It's almost like some sort of fetish where people can show 'concern' for one group or another in the knowledge they can change neither but fail to take call for action on issues that should be dealt with.
Is it fair to say that with recent events the MSM is getting to where it should have been two years ago on the antisemitism issue? I see uniondivvie keenly pointing out that the tabloid attention to the issue has failed to make antisemitism one of the public's top concerns.
So is that bravo to the tabloids for trying to raise the salience of the issue? Or maybe we'd be better off if they hadn't? I'm not sure the obvious conclusions to draw are the ones he intended.
Great that you know what conclusions I was intending to draw, very generous of you to share, though a bit chicken-hearted not to address me directly.
I was replying to a post saying Gaza was not high on voters concerns, so the conclusion I was drawing is that much as partisans on both sides, tabloid editors, politicians, randoms on the internet and Simon Scharma want the populace to join in their rending of garments, it’s not really happening. It’s just on balance there are more people disturbed by thousands of disembowelled, decapitated and disassembled kids than they are by a schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and a Muslim.
Sorry there, I find most of your comments on this site rather tiresome and assume you're just doing it for the bants. I failed to realise that although you generally offer little else but snide barbs at people on the right, you are in fact just acting out of the height of intellectual considerations and not offering any real personal view of your own.
But you see you can't help but give yourself away. 'Schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and Muslim.' Do you think that is why Jews are so concerned? Why we've had recent statements we've had from the head of the Greater Manchester Police and the Met about the safety of British Jews. Now perhaps you don't mean to make light of it, you just chose not to mention it in its full context. But at some point people are entitled to wonder.
Is there any data on where Jewish concerns rank within the general public's concerns? It seems to rate higher (than similar abuse) within the media. Shoplifting, youths carrying knives, drug dealing are far more rife than actual violence but why the level of interest?
The same goes for Gaza. It's almost like some sort of fetish where people can show 'concern' for one group or another in the knowledge they can change neither but fail to take call for action on issues that should be dealt with.
The NDAA stipulates that any reduction of U.S. troops below 76,000 in Europe for more than 45 days requires congressional oversight. This reduction would still leave about 80,000 in theatre; however, the removal of any American hardware over $500,000 or any handover of facilities still triggers oversight. I’m sure Hegseth has thought this one through...
I'm not sure what the GOP congress think their job even is, since they also pass very little legislation and definitely don't believe in checks and balances.
What do they do with their time?
They quietly overturn or ignore quite a bit.
For example Trump has put in a budget request with a big cut for NASA.
This will come out as a slight increase, probably, after the budget goes through The Hill
Is it fair to say that with recent events the MSM is getting to where it should have been two years ago on the antisemitism issue? I see uniondivvie keenly pointing out that the tabloid attention to the issue has failed to make antisemitism one of the public's top concerns.
So is that bravo to the tabloids for trying to raise the salience of the issue? Or maybe we'd be better off if they hadn't? I'm not sure the obvious conclusions to draw are the ones he intended.
Great that you know what conclusions I was intending to draw, very generous of you to share, though a bit chicken-hearted not to address me directly.
I was replying to a post saying Gaza was not high on voters concerns, so the conclusion I was drawing is that much as partisans on both sides, tabloid editors, politicians, randoms on the internet and Simon Scharma want the populace to join in their rending of garments, it’s not really happening. It’s just on balance there are more people disturbed by thousands of disembowelled, decapitated and disassembled kids than they are by a schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and a Muslim.
Sorry there, I find most of your comments on this site rather tiresome and assume you're just doing it for the bants. I failed to realise that although you generally offer little else but snide barbs at people on the right, you are in fact just acting out of the height of intellectual considerations and not offering any real personal view of your own.
But you see you can't help but give yourself away. 'Schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and Muslim.' Do you think that is why Jews are so concerned? Why we've had recent statements we've had from the head of the Greater Manchester Police and the Met about the safety of British Jews. Now perhaps you don't mean to make light of it, you just chose not to mention it in its full context. But at some point people are entitled to wonder.
Ooh, get Mr Snide! Have you got to know any Jewish people yet? If not I can only applaud your selfless efforts on behalf of British Jews.
If your defence is “I wasn’t minimising antisemitism, I was merely describing it in the most minimising terms available,” then, splendid, carry on.
From private eye a few months ago on Zack Polanski's time with the Lib Dems.
"At the time, the party was split between lefties and coalition-defending Cleggmaniacs, and Polanski gave the impression of sympathy to both groups. He praised "Nick" (Clegg) repeatedly in his conference speech, but was also a regular attendee of council meetings of the Social Liberal Forum (SLF), the party's leading left-wing pressure group.
"I found it hard to square the stuff he was telling us, about how he was against privatisation, with the pro-market views I'd heard from him at other party events," one SLF colleague told the Eye. "Then I realised he'd twigged that most rank-and-file members were SLF supporters; what he really wanted was the SLF's endorsement in selection contests."
This surprises a colleague from the rival right-wing Liberal Reform pressure group: "We thought he was one of us. He told us so when he came up to our stand at conference.""
"Look into my eyes. Looook intooo my eyes. I am a member of the Liberal Reform pressure group. I have always beeeeen a member. Yooo are feeling sleeeepy...."
I know I am talking from my own biases, but I don't think the Labour vote will actually hold up this well. Certainly I could be wrong, it doesn't happen infrequently. But if I'm right, some pollsters are going to need to rethink their methodologies very seriously.
If Labour do come second to Reform on Thursday and beat the Conservatives and Greens and LDs and BMG are correct Starmer is secure. Kemi might face some questions though, Reform beating the Conservatives is understandable, this deeply unpopular Labour party in government beating the Conservative opposition too is not
Are you managing expectations for Skyr?
I have just Baxtered that poll (adding a recent Scots poll). Here is what it produces in a General Election:
So, a massive Reform majority, and Labour in FIFTH
I am really not sure Starmer is safe if he gets a local + London + Wales + Scotland vote (as close as you can get to an actual GE), which suggests he is on course to come fifth in a General Election, essentially destroying Labour forever
Suspect the point about Gaza is not that it's a widely-shared voter concern, but that for a smallish but geographically-concentrated slice of the electorate, it's the issue.
The bigger question is this. How do politicians do anything about the first three issues without upsetting people for who the fourth one is key?
The political triumph of Reform is to convince a winning coalition of voters that there is so much waste and woke that it's possible to cut taxes and make people's surroundings better at the same time.
The political failure of Reform is that... there isn't really.
Whilst some of that isn't going to be easy, I'm not sure I'd be so pessimistic about Reform's opportunities to improve things. There is actually a reasonable amount of low hanging fruit which for various reasons government's of various colours have refused to fix.
At one extreme, the tax system and the £100k tax trap. It's really not going to be difficult to come up with a better system than the complete mess which we have at present.
At a different level, we're moving house at the moment. Why have I and my wife had to do (and pay for) three different ID checks (both Estate agents and my solicitors) at about £15 a pop? Fair enough to make the solicitors do it, but that should be sufficient. OK, it's only cost us £90, but multiply that up by the number of houses sold a year, and it's £50-£100mil a year wasted from the population's pockets every year. Trivial on one level, but also trivial to fix.
Take crime. 75% of the noticeable crime (burglaries, shop lifting, that sort of thing) in my small town is the product of half a dozen people. They should be locked up and the key thrown away, rather than doing odd bouts of six weeks inside here and there, plus the odd bit of community service. Three strikes and it's ten years inside would virtually solve low level crime. It would probably pay for itself quite quickly in reduced policing costs too.
£3mil got spent on the A road I use to get to work recently, because about 15 years ago there was a spate of motorcycle accidents (all of them idiots on motorbikes being idiots), and it briefly became categorised as dangerous, and that's how long it takes the bureaucracy to respond. It's currently categorised as so dangerous that it doesn't even qualify for yellow backs on the speed limit signs, however they've (completely unnecessarily) reduced the speed limit, covered everything in white paint and rumble strips and stuff up average speed cameras anyway. There should be a complete moratorium on these sorts of projects followed by a rigorous VFM evaluation before they are allowed to proceed - I can guarantee 95% of them will fail.
Don't even get me started on my local NHS trust, who (for instance) haven't yet discovered email, but insist on posting appointment notifications, even when there is no possibility of the notification arriving prior to the appointment. Also the complete wasted MRI slot I had where I informed them (as per their procedure) there was a risk I had metal splinters in my eyes prior to the day, and they somehow failed to have Xray provision available to check my eyes and my MRI had to be cancelled and the slot go unused.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Everywhere one looks, there are loads of easy wins. If Reform manage do 10% of them, they should make the UK a much better place.
Three strikes and 10 years imprisonment sounds good but you'd soon have a backlash and juries refusing to convict a shoplifter facing 10 years for pinching a bottle of water.
I have a trial in Aberdeen next week. Absolutely routine concerned in the supply of drugs. Lots of evidence. Not much value. But its in the High Court because s205B of the Criminal Procedure (S) Act said that a 3rd conviction for being concerned in the supply at indictment level has a minimum sentence of 5 years. So, we end up with a trial when we should have a plea. There is absolutely no incentive to plead because the Court cannot give a discount. And they won't give him any more given the value.
Minimum sentences have consequences. All too often in my experience not good ones.
Polanski now retweeting one of the most virulently antisemitic accounts in Ireland, a man who was literally invited to Tehran by the Iranian regime to join a propaganda junket.
lol
Three observations:
1. Polanski is seriously seriously stupid. Just a dumb fucker. This is his education, from Wiki:
"Polanski studied drama at Aberystwyth University from 2003 to 2006 and attended a drama school in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States."
DRAMA AT ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY
Intellectually, he makes Jeremy Corbyn look like Carl Jung. He will make many more of these errors due to his idiocy, and he will self destruct
Meaning:
2. The Green implosion will come much sooner than expected as Polanski falls apart; then the Islamists might try to take over earlier than they anticipated
Meaning:
3. This could be a shred of hope for Starmer as the Greens sink back
Is it fair to say that with recent events the MSM is getting to where it should have been two years ago on the antisemitism issue? I see uniondivvie keenly pointing out that the tabloid attention to the issue has failed to make antisemitism one of the public's top concerns.
So is that bravo to the tabloids for trying to raise the salience of the issue? Or maybe we'd be better off if they hadn't? I'm not sure the obvious conclusions to draw are the ones he intended.
Great that you know what conclusions I was intending to draw, very generous of you to share, though a bit chicken-hearted not to address me directly.
I was replying to a post saying Gaza was not high on voters concerns, so the conclusion I was drawing is that much as partisans on both sides, tabloid editors, politicians, randoms on the internet and Simon Scharma want the populace to join in their rending of garments, it’s not really happening. It’s just on balance there are more people disturbed by thousands of disembowelled, decapitated and disassembled kids than they are by a schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and a Muslim.
Sorry there, I find most of your comments on this site rather tiresome and assume you're just doing it for the bants. I failed to realise that although you generally offer little else but snide barbs at people on the right, you are in fact just acting out of the height of intellectual considerations and not offering any real personal view of your own.
But you see you can't help but give yourself away. 'Schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and Muslim.' Do you think that is why Jews are so concerned? Why we've had recent statements we've had from the head of the Greater Manchester Police and the Met about the safety of British Jews. Now perhaps you don't mean to make light of it, you just chose not to mention it in its full context. But at some point people are entitled to wonder.
Ooh, get Mr Snide! Have you got to know any Jewish people yet? If not I can only applaud your selfless efforts on behalf of British Jews.
If your defence is “I wasn’t minimising antisemitism, I was merely describing it in the most minimising terms available,” then, splendid, carry on.
I fear I must break it to you that making a defence is pretty low down my priorities, least of all to some random popping up on my replies.
Polanski now retweeting one of the most virulently antisemitic accounts in Ireland, a man who was literally invited to Tehran by the Iranian regime to join a propaganda junket.
lol
Three observations:
1. Polanski is seriously seriously stupid. Just a dumb fucker. This is his education, from Wiki:
"Polanski studied drama at Aberystwyth University from 2003 to 2006 and attended a drama school in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States."
DRAMA AT ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY
Intellectually, he makes Jeremy Corbyn look like Carl Jung. He will make many more of these errors due to his idiocy, and he will self destruct
Meaning:
2. The Green implosion will come much sooner than expected as Polanski falls apart; then the Islamists might try to take over earlier than they anticipated
Meaning:
3. This could be a shred of hope for Starmer as the Greens sink back
Amid your usual stream of consciousness drivel, there might actually be some genuine insight buried there. The next GE might very well turn out to be - contrary to all current expectations - a mostly familiar Labour versus Tory contest (with the LDs holding their 75-odd seats on the side), with the question being which of Reform or the Greens has imploded first and the more dramatically. Bet accordingly, DYOR.
Anyhow, after a warm sunny morning, it’s now pissing with rain here. And by good fortune I’ve received a nice delivery from my online spirits supplier. I have a quality 18-y-o Deanston highland single malt, and an Ardnamurchan 10-y-o which despite being only 60% as expensive offers some of that coastal peatyness that the more sophisticated Deanston wouldn’t stoop to, plus a freebie sample of an apparently award-winning US single malt Blue Ridge Toasted Oak, from the mountains of Virginia that me and the dog have enjoyed visiting in times past. What does our resident scotch expert Malc make of this range of tastes on offer?
Is it fair to say that with recent events the MSM is getting to where it should have been two years ago on the antisemitism issue? I see uniondivvie keenly pointing out that the tabloid attention to the issue has failed to make antisemitism one of the public's top concerns.
So is that bravo to the tabloids for trying to raise the salience of the issue? Or maybe we'd be better off if they hadn't? I'm not sure the obvious conclusions to draw are the ones he intended.
Great that you know what conclusions I was intending to draw, very generous of you to share, though a bit chicken-hearted not to address me directly.
I was replying to a post saying Gaza was not high on voters concerns, so the conclusion I was drawing is that much as partisans on both sides, tabloid editors, politicians, randoms on the internet and Simon Scharma want the populace to join in their rending of garments, it’s not really happening. It’s just on balance there are more people disturbed by thousands of disembowelled, decapitated and disassembled kids than they are by a schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and a Muslim.
Sorry there, I find most of your comments on this site rather tiresome and assume you're just doing it for the bants. I failed to realise that although you generally offer little else but snide barbs at people on the right, you are in fact just acting out of the height of intellectual considerations and not offering any real personal view of your own.
But you see you can't help but give yourself away. 'Schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and Muslim.' Do you think that is why Jews are so concerned? Why we've had recent statements we've had from the head of the Greater Manchester Police and the Met about the safety of British Jews. Now perhaps you don't mean to make light of it, you just chose not to mention it in its full context. But at some point people are entitled to wonder.
Is there any data on where Jewish concerns rank within the general public's concerns? It seems to rate higher (than similar abuse) within the media. Shoplifting, youths carrying knives, drug dealing are far more rife than actual violence but why the level of interest?
The same goes for Gaza. It's almost like some sort of fetish where people can show 'concern' for one group or another in the knowledge they can change neither but fail to take call for action on issues that should be dealt with.
it a london thing
Gaza is a thing in plenty of northern towns.
Just watch those "Independent" gains come rolling in.
From private eye a few months ago on Zack Polanski's time with the Lib Dems.
"At the time, the party was split between lefties and coalition-defending Cleggmaniacs, and Polanski gave the impression of sympathy to both groups. He praised "Nick" (Clegg) repeatedly in his conference speech, but was also a regular attendee of council meetings of the Social Liberal Forum (SLF), the party's leading left-wing pressure group.
"I found it hard to square the stuff he was telling us, about how he was against privatisation, with the pro-market views I'd heard from him at other party events," one SLF colleague told the Eye. "Then I realised he'd twigged that most rank-and-file members were SLF supporters; what he really wanted was the SLF's endorsement in selection contests."
This surprises a colleague from the rival right-wing Liberal Reform pressure group: "We thought he was one of us. He told us so when he came up to our stand at conference.""
If I see SLF I can only think Stiff Little Fingers....
Of which only council tax (within tight bounds) and road maintenance are actually within the local authority ambit.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
Exactly. Gaza's irrelevant IN THESE ELECTIONS! (Sorry about shouting!) Locally the big issue's housing as there's a proposal on the table for 6000 houses in a village nearby. Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
Given that voting probably won't change the result even in one's ward, the purpose is to indicate a preference, and I don't see any harm in indicating a national preference, as that's so much more important than, say, the precise form of bin collection.
6000 houses will, if all occupied mean about 20,000 people, increasing the size of the community five-fold.
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour are at least partly with Councils, too.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
Councils also control their own competence.
One I ran into a couple of weeks ago which I am not sure mentioned here (it's Reform in Northants, but most do similar) is the Council decided that Blue Badge spaces in their car parks would now be chargeable.
But the idiots left the ticket machine where they are supposed to pay on a kerbed podium that is unreachable using a mobility aid.
I've been prodding a local newspaper in the North-West to cover a somewhat similar story this week - to do with a "cycling" (and cycling only) ban on several miles of local roadworks for months in Northwich, including residential roads, without Scottish Power or Cheshire East apparently being aware that "cycling" on adapted cycles is the only form of local transport (say 0-6 miles journeys) for lots of disabled people without shelling out enormously for taxis etc. 40% do not have driving licences.
For all the fulminating about DEI, we've a long way to go before the issue is even considered in many areas of life.
Perhaps. But at the same time, we have some insane DEI policies, even if we don't call them that. As Birmingham Council found out. And now Tesco:
I don't understand this equal pay for 'equivalent' jobs trend as the jobs appear to be quite different but are by arcane reasoning not permitted to be treated differently.
When I worked at British Gas, they used the Hay job evaluation methodology to figure out which grade individual roles should be set at. I assume that this is still a thing.
One chap's job was evaluated two grades lower than he was being paid.
Comments
if Gaza is irrelevant to these elections, so is house building.
And in a democracy voters and voters alone decide what the reasons are for their vote.
Sometimes the local ones are just generic 'will spend money wisely/housing in the right places' that say nothing meaningful about local issues.
It is what it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CJmusA69ME
And, of course, Labour has been predominant among Muslim voters, who are particularly concerned about such matters. I remember when I had a Muslim libdem running mate, and he offered to draft a letter targeted at Muslim voters; in his first draft the whole thing was about the Middle East and it didn’t mention the ward ir anything local at all.
Yet they remain odds on to take control of our council, despite only having a couple of oddballs elected currently.
Council s***show incoming….
https://www.netweather.tv/live-weather/radar
It's finally worked. And Greens are now able to follow suit thanks to Zack.
Three things to watch for:
1 When it turns out that some of the elected councillors are too fruity, even for Reform.
2 When councillors turn to personal ego battles for want of anything else to do.
3 When officers tell the councillors that they have to do something that they don't want to do.
Shitshow? Probably, but a slow-burn shitshow.
Coucnils do have input into police priorities.
Also, so is pavement parking which is very prominent ASB.
At one extreme, the tax system and the £100k tax trap. It's really not going to be difficult to come up with a better system than the complete mess which we have at present.
At a different level, we're moving house at the moment. Why have I and my wife had to do (and pay for) three different ID checks (both Estate agents and my solicitors) at about £15 a pop? Fair enough to make the solicitors do it, but that should be sufficient. OK, it's only cost us £90, but multiply that up by the number of houses sold a year, and it's £50-£100mil a year wasted from the population's pockets every year. Trivial on one level, but also trivial to fix.
Take crime. 75% of the noticeable crime (burglaries, shop lifting, that sort of thing) in my small town is the product of half a dozen people. They should be locked up and the key thrown away, rather than doing odd bouts of six weeks inside here and there, plus the odd bit of community service. Three strikes and it's ten years inside would virtually solve low level crime. It would probably pay for itself quite quickly in reduced policing costs too.
£3mil got spent on the A road I use to get to work recently, because about 15 years ago there was a spate of motorcycle accidents (all of them idiots on motorbikes being idiots), and it briefly became categorised as dangerous, and that's how long it takes the bureaucracy to respond. It's currently categorised as so dangerous that it doesn't even qualify for yellow backs on the speed limit signs, however they've (completely unnecessarily) reduced the speed limit, covered everything in white paint and rumble strips and stuff up average speed cameras anyway. There should be a complete moratorium on these sorts of projects followed by a rigorous VFM evaluation before they are allowed to proceed - I can guarantee 95% of them will fail.
Don't even get me started on my local NHS trust, who (for instance) haven't yet discovered email, but insist on posting appointment notifications, even when there is no possibility of the notification arriving prior to the appointment. Also the complete wasted MRI slot I had where I informed them (as per their procedure) there was a risk I had metal splinters in my eyes prior to the day, and they somehow failed to have Xray provision available to check my eyes and my MRI had to be cancelled and the slot go unused.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Everywhere one looks, there are loads of easy wins. If Reform manage do 10% of them, they should make the UK a much better place.
He seems to therefore believe the councillors should be directly managing operations, and doesn't serm to understand that whilst there are options to choose from in local government they are highly constrained by central government, who often take away choice entirely.
I've seen Tories and LDs be surprised by that, and many Reform certainly will.
Yeah, I know it’s a poor fake but the numb nuts in the replies demonstrate why these people do it.
https://x.com/chriswrightson6/status/2050463641997119682?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
That a government can significantly and consistently reduce those inefficiencies? Perhaps but not much evidence.
That the chaps in Reform are actually capable of this? Dream on
That the chaps in Reform are actually interested in this beyond soundbites? Dream on
One I ran into a couple of weeks ago which I am not sure mentioned here (it's Reform in Northants, but most do similar) is the Council decided that Blue Badge spaces in their car parks would now be chargeable.
But the idiots left the ticket machine where they are supposed to pay on a kerbed podium that is unreachable using a mobility aid.
I've been prodding a local newspaper in the North-West to cover a somewhat similar story this week - to do with a "cycling" (and cycling only) ban on several miles of local roadworks for months in Northwich, including residential roads, without Scottish Power or Cheshire East apparently being aware that "cycling" on adapted cycles is the only form of local transport (say 0-6 miles journeys) for lots of disabled people without shelling out enormously for taxis etc. 40% do not have driving licences.
Downing Street has much more cut through.
https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/13539114/alex-zanardi-former-formula-1-driver-and-paralympic-gold-medallist-dies-aged-59
https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/26029023.three-month-ban-cycling-affects-four-roads-middlewich/
I left the party because ZP is obviously going to adopt some centrist policies (kowtowing to the crowned thieves, participating in the imperialist NATO project) now that he's within range of an electoral breakthrough. The hardcore eco-warriors are along for the ride for now.
We're at the end of what can be achieved by voting on ecological matters. As noted Russian futurist V. V. Mayakovsky observed, Теперь ваша очередь говорить, товарищ Мозер. It's your turn to speak, Comrade Mauser.
1. London is beginning to bounce back
2. Brexit is beginning to show benefits (belatedly)
3. Iran is beginning to lose the war
4. Russia is beginning to lose the war
5. Reform are beginning to look like actual election winners
So is that bravo to the tabloids for trying to raise the salience of the issue? Or maybe we'd be better off if they hadn't? I'm not sure the obvious conclusions to draw are the ones he intended.
Coronation Streeting?
But it will be turnout. The Labour turnout is poor at the best of times. And this isn't one of those.
What is the good reason to get out and vote Labour?
What reason not to go Green?
1) I'm intriuged and bow to your greater knowledge.
2) Needs some specifics
3) Not clear at all
4) Some positive signs but no reasons to be popping the champagne corks
5) Let's see next week. But even then the whole crypto business is murky as hell
In what, given the massive downer I have on the government, might come as a surprise, I think I actually will be voting for Labour on Thursday. Here it’s a battle between Labour and Green, I suspect, hence I’ll be voting to keep the Greens out. My vote is very unlikely to be replicated at a GE on those lines, but that’s how I see the lie of the land where I am at the moment.
In appreciate London is different.
There are some interesting category challenges that surprise, like the charging points one I raised earlier this week.
Another one: we happily spend about £10k of NHS money on a hip replacement for a 73 year old, which is a mobility aid. Should we also spend the same (or say half - £5k) on a suitable electric wheelchair or adapted cycle for a 27 year old, so they can go where they need to go?
If not, why not? I'm raising a question rather than trying to provide my answer.
I was replying to a post saying Gaza was not high on voters concerns, so the conclusion I was drawing is that much as partisans on both sides, tabloid editors, politicians, randoms on the internet and Simon Scharma want the populace to join in their rending of garments, it’s not really happening. It’s just on balance there are more people disturbed by thousands of disembowelled, decapitated and disassembled kids than they are by a schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and a Muslim.
https://www.newsweek.com/germany-overtakes-us-in-ammunition-production-capacity-11886409
However, given how far Labour's opinion poll score has fallen, it's worth considering if it might not be the case, and why. For example, you could argue that Labour have lost young voters to the Greens, and poorer voters to Reform - both demographics with lower turnout - and so their residual vote share might be more reliable, and more likely to turnout, with the Greens and Reform falling short of their polling.
Something to consider.
https://www.ft.com/content/9fd5fca7-05ee-4823-bc37-b807479a648e
"Tesco argues equal pay claim disregards ‘economic reality'"
From private eye a few months ago on Zack Polanski's time with the Lib Dems.
"At the time, the party was split between lefties and coalition-defending Cleggmaniacs, and Polanski gave the impression of sympathy to both groups. He praised "Nick" (Clegg) repeatedly in his conference speech, but was also a regular attendee of council meetings of the Social Liberal Forum (SLF), the party's leading left-wing pressure group.
"I found it hard to square the stuff he was telling us, about how he was against privatisation, with the pro-market views I'd heard from him at other party events," one SLF colleague told the Eye. "Then I realised he'd twigged that most rank-and-file members were SLF supporters; what he really wanted was the SLF's endorsement in selection contests."
This surprises a colleague from the rival right-wing Liberal Reform pressure group: "We thought he was one of us. He told us so when he came up to our stand at conference.""
But you see you can't help but give yourself away. 'Schizophrenic bloke stabbing two Jews and Muslim.' Do you think that is why Jews are so concerned? Why we've had recent statements we've had from the head of the Greater Manchester Police and the Met about the safety of British Jews. Now perhaps you don't mean to make light of it, you just chose not to mention it in its full context. But at some point people are entitled to wonder.
It's a win, and it's a win worth paying for. But it's not that easy and will cost upfront.
2. Just no
3. The US has won the battle but it’s still quite possible that Iran’s resilience might win the war
4. Hopefully, yes
5. They look like the same bunch of incompetent, corrupt and unpatriotic chancers that they always did. They might be about to do well in local elections in many areas - although their polling is subsiding from its peak - but I’d wager that the experiences to come of those councils, like mine, that look likely to fall to Reform won’t do them any favours when voters come to think about who should be running our country going forward. Betting advice: once Thursday’s results are in, over the weekend after, laying Reform majority and Reform most seats in next GE will probably be the smart bet.
Have you got to know any Jewish people yet? If not I can only applaud your selfless efforts on behalf of British Jews.
https://x.com/OzKaterji/status/2050553612187619447
Polanski now retweeting one of the most virulently antisemitic accounts in Ireland, a man who was literally invited to Tehran by the Iranian regime to join a propaganda junket.
The same goes for Gaza. It's almost like some sort of fetish where people can show 'concern' for one group or another in the knowledge they can change neither but fail to take call for action on issues that should be dealt with.
For example Trump has put in a budget request with a big cut for NASA.
This will come out as a slight increase, probably, after the budget goes through The Hill
https://x.com/flying_rodent/status/2050510644324057453?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
I have just Baxtered that poll (adding a recent Scots poll). Here is what it produces in a General Election:
Reform: 354
Green: 69
LDs: 54
SNP: 48
Lab: 46
Con: 42
So, a massive Reform majority, and Labour in FIFTH
I am really not sure Starmer is safe if he gets a local + London + Wales + Scotland vote (as close as you can get to an actual GE), which suggests he is on course to come fifth in a General Election, essentially destroying Labour forever
Minimum sentences have consequences. All too often in my experience not good ones.
Three observations:
1. Polanski is seriously seriously stupid. Just a dumb fucker. This is his education, from Wiki:
"Polanski studied drama at Aberystwyth University from 2003 to 2006 and attended a drama school in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States."
DRAMA AT ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY
Intellectually, he makes Jeremy Corbyn look like Carl Jung. He will make many more of these errors due to his idiocy, and he will self destruct
Meaning:
2. The Green implosion will come much sooner than expected as Polanski falls apart; then the Islamists might try to take over earlier than they anticipated
Meaning:
3. This could be a shred of hope for Starmer as the Greens sink back
Anyhow, after a warm sunny morning, it’s now pissing with rain here. And by good fortune I’ve received a nice delivery from my online spirits supplier. I have a quality 18-y-o Deanston highland single malt, and an Ardnamurchan 10-y-o which despite being only 60% as expensive offers some of that coastal peatyness that the more sophisticated Deanston wouldn’t stoop to, plus a freebie sample of an apparently award-winning US single malt Blue Ridge Toasted Oak, from the mountains of Virginia that me and the dog have enjoyed visiting in times past. What does our resident scotch expert Malc make of this range of tastes on offer?
Just watch those "Independent" gains come rolling in.
A different Wasted Life maybe.
One chap's job was evaluated two grades lower than he was being paid.