Though afflicted by the sentimentalism that Hastings can be prone to, some telling points. Perhaps the most meaningful is this exchange with Amos Oz.
'Seven years later, I was having lunch in Jerusalem with the great Israeli novelist Amos Oz, and fulminating against prime minister Menachem Begin’s treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Amos, a liberal peacenik, responded: “People like you, who have loved Israel as a European country, are doomed to disappointment. Israel is becoming a Middle Eastern country. I hope that it will never behave worse than other Middle Eastern countries. But do not expect it to behave better.”'
The comment from Amos on Israel being a European or Middle Eastern country is on the money.
As Israel’s behaviour has got worse, its relationship with many of its neighbours has got better. Could easily see MBS and Netanyahu being besties.
I'd say the more accurate comparison is to an 18th/19th century colonising European power, settlers expanding their territory and driving out/killing the existing inhabitants. see Australia, North and South America.
This "single" punch must have been a heck of a one. Not only did it kill one person it put another in hospital. That's some Bruce Lee. Or maybe it was many and only two connected?
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
Except Virgin, I think, who acquired the old cable TV infrastructure. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Much the same with shared phone masts aiui.
But is this a good idea? Shared infrastructure is more efficient but denies the role of free market competition in driving innovation. That was what the boss of America's Verizon, then rolling out 5g while we had 4g as cutting edge, said to the EU some years back. What is the incentive for, say, EE to research and develop better technology if they will then be forced to share it with Vodafone?
Is our half-and-half position with competitors sharing infrastructure better or worse than publicly-owned national champions on the one hand, or unbridled free market competition on the other?
That's not really how it works. They share the physical mast but not the infrastructure on the mast itself, which is owned or leased.
There are only a few companies left doing that, which are Cellnex (who bought most of Arquiva's stuff) and I forget the other one.
If what you mean is the SRN, that's on the basis that there are no operators operating in a particular area at all, so it's an absence of competition. The SRN would introduce competition and a level playing field.
There is plenty of innovation when it comes to telecoms.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
It really isn't. Broadband is perhaps analogous to electricity, but there is no comparison at all with water.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
It really isn't. Broadband is perhaps analogous to electricity, but there is no comparison at all with water.
It is totally analogous to water. The pipes coming into your home are identical with whatever provider you choose to use. We could have one broadband provider; it would make virtually no difference to the "service" you or I receive.
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
An uncharacteristically nonsense post. "In different circumstances Kemi would be heading for victory" What does that even mean? Her personal polling roughly matches that of Ed Davey. To most non members Kemi- as leader- IS the Tory Party. What do you think of Kemi? 'She's OK'. Same as most inoffensive Party leaders you're not going to vote for.
Trying not to be too blunt she's on a one way ticket to Palookaville. No one is giving her or her Party a second look because she/they aren't offering anything NEW or DiFFERENT or INTERESTING. It's only one time members like yourself who are even looking for the silver lining let alone believing you might have found it!
He identifies himself at the end as Frank Right. I'd say articulate and speaks in full sentences almost in the manner of Enoch Powell, but most of it is articulating fairly standard positions that I am familiar with.
I'm not going to try and do a full thumbnail, but I note a link to "Catholic Social Teaching" on his web page, and a series of articles about the 13 Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. Leo XIII was Pope from 1878 to 1903. His most significant Encyclical was perhaps Rerum Novarum, which was a consideration of private and public morality, and consider capitalism, socialism, and rights of workers. I'd consider that in some ways a parallel to the work done on the evangelical side by the likes of social reformer Lord Shaftesbury.
That is interesting.
On that basis I would speculate (and it would be largely speculation) that he aligns with right wing social conservatism / more left wing on the economics. So I'd suggest that could be with the Distributionism of Hilaire Belloc / GK Chesterton.
I can't point to better known figures who would be thinking from a similar basis, unless perhaps someone like Iain Duncan Smith to an extent, who I think is dyed-in-the-wool RC since childhood to have imbibed the social teaching from that time - and has specifically engaged in religion-inspired politics at the Centre for Social Justice alongside Tim Montgomery.
More recent adult converts would have to have dug quite deep to be reading Leo XIII encyclicals without a specific reason - maybe Tony Blair would have gone down that route at some time, or Jacob Rees-Mogg as a lifetime Roman Catholic.
Does anyone know any Conservatives or other politicians who consciously follow modern - probably meaning post First Council of Trent (1563 !) - Roman Catholic Social Teaching?
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
Except Virgin, I think, who acquired the old cable TV infrastructure. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Much the same with shared phone masts aiui.
But is this a good idea? Shared infrastructure is more efficient but denies the role of free market competition in driving innovation. That was what the boss of America's Verizon, then rolling out 5g while we had 4g as cutting edge, said to the EU some years back. What is the incentive for, say, EE to research and develop better technology if they will then be forced to share it with Vodafone?
Is our half-and-half position with competitors sharing infrastructure better or worse than publicly-owned national champions on the one hand, or unbridled free market competition on the other?
If competitors do NOT share infrastructure, are there not (even) more holes in the road? Or lines among the trees?
There is also MBNL (Three and EE) which was a genuinely shared site back in the 3G days but both operators now don't do that on the majority of sites.
Vodafone and O2 have Cornerstone which is shared in non-unwound areas (London and large cities mostly) which is a shared site and shared antennas although still independent networks. They do this for efficiencies, where it makes no sense to host identical infrastructure.
He identifies himself at the end as Frank Right. I'd say articulate and speaks in full sentences almost in the manner of Enoch Powell, but most of it is articulating fairly standard positions that I am familiar with.
I'm not going to try and do a full thumbnail, but I note a link to "Catholic Social Teaching" on his web page, and a series of articles about the 13 Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. Leo XIII was Pope from 1878 to 1903. His most significant Encyclical was perhaps Rerum Novarum, which was a consideration of private and public morality, and consider capitalism, socialism, and rights of workers. I'd consider that in some ways a parallel to the work done on the evangelical side by the likes of social reformer Lord Shaftesbury.
That is interesting.
On that basis I would speculate (and it would be largely speculation) that he aligns with right wing social conservatism / more left wing on the economics. So I'd suggest that could be with the Distributionism of Hilaire Belloc / GK Chesterton.
I can't point to better known figures who would be thinking from a similar basis, unless perhaps someone like Iain Duncan Smith to an extent, who is dyed-in-the-wool RC since childhood to have imbibed the social teaching from that time. More recent adult converts would have to have dug quite deep to be reading Leo XIII encyclicals without a specific reason - maybe Tony Blair would have gone down that route at some time, or Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Does anyone know any Conservatives or other politicians who consciously follow modern - probably meaning post First Council of Trent (1563 !) - Roman Catholic Social Teaching?
Andy Burnham? I'm not suggesting he does, but it's an underappreciated influence on him.
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
An uncharacteristically nonsense post. "In different circumstances Kemi would be heading for victory" What does that even mean? Her personal polling roughly matches that of Ed Davey. To most non members Kemi- as leader- IS the Tory Party. What do you think of Kemi? 'She's OK'. Same as most inoffensive Party leaders you're not going to vote for.
Trying not to be too blunt she's on a one way ticket to Palookaville. No one is giving her or her Party a second look because she/they aren't offering anything NEW or DiFFERENT or INTERESTING. It's only one time members like yourself who are even looking for the silver lining let alone believing you might have found it!
Now Roger has opined, I best stick £1000 on Kemi most seats
He identifies himself at the end as Frank Right. I'd say articulate and speaks in full sentences almost in the manner of Enoch Powell, but most of it is articulating fairly standard positions that I am familiar with.
I'm not going to try and do a full thumbnail, but I note a link to "Catholic Social Teaching" on his web page, and a series of articles about the 13 Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. Leo XIII was Pope from 1878 to 1903. His most significant Encyclical was perhaps Rerum Novarum, which was a consideration of private and public morality, and consider capitalism, socialism, and rights of workers. I'd consider that in some ways a parallel to the work done on the evangelical side by the likes of social reformer Lord Shaftesbury.
That is interesting.
On that basis I would speculate (and it would be largely speculation) that he aligns with right wing social conservatism / more left wing on the economics. So I'd suggest that could be with the Distributionism of Hilaire Belloc / GK Chesterton.
Less impressed, despite being a fan of catholic social teaching. Setting up the concept 'liberal' as a straw man, undefined, on which you place the blame for everything you don't like is a conservative religious trope and no use at all. Suggesting that a huge pool of talent is ousted by a huge pool of the conspiratorial and talentless powerful is always attractive but needs evidence.
The jump from a well founded objection to the worship of money to the answer to our problems being Rupert Lowe (!!!) doesn't really sound like the best of the Thomistic tradition to me.
I'm struggling with the header. Is TSE suggesting Farage is planning Kemicide?
And what part do Bushy, Bagot, and the Greens play ?
I just think if Reform do usurp the Tories at the next election and that would be this country's greatest usurpation since Bolingbroke and Dicky II.
What about Richard of Gloucester and 'Eleven Week' Eddy?
Or Henry Tudor and Good King Richard?
The problem with Henry, or William III, is that they were demonstrable improvements on their predecessors which is why they took the throne in the first place. Richard III was a child-killing thieving niece-lusting corrupt maniac whose own army hated his guts, and James VII and II went off his head.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
This argument requires us to separate Kemi Badenoch from the party she leads. She could take the party to a different place from where it is but she's not doing that.
I do think there's a large addressable market for people who don't want social democracy but also despise hard right nihilism. An Osborne party in a new form. But that's not Badenoch.
From what I can tell of the polling, a fairly large proportion of people who currently intend to vote Tory still wish that the Tories were more like Reform, or that Farage would lead the Tories. So I think the market for a party of the centre-right is quite small.
A talented leader, acting boldly, with conviction and clarity, could expand that market, and bring in support from people who weren't entirely ideologically aligned. But on ideology alone I think the market for the hard right is larger than for the centre right.
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
Wholeheartedly agree.
I have no strong views on Badenoch either way (but then I think I'm unusual in having no strong views on Starmer, Farage or Polanski either, though if forced I'd probably choose Badenoch followed by Farage to have a pint with).
The Tories simply need to wait out the voters' memories. Badenoch is as good as anyone to do this.
I think Badenoch is doing a good job.
I used to think KB was doomed because by any reality based measure, polling and actual election results, she's doing a fucking awful job.
However, there is a significant fanbase who think she's doing great based on the vibe. So maybe she will make it to the GE to be slaughtered by the Burnhamator.
The backlash against the tech bros is growing stronger. Although they consider themselves the modern day analogues of the plutocrats of the gilded age, there is certainly no analogue to Andrew Carnegie's view that "a man who dies rich dies disgraced". Their greed and narcissism often makes me think that the revolution should not be long delayed, and I am as far from a Communist as you can get.
In the end, I suspect that when the Augean stables of the Trump White House finally get cleaned, there will be some kind of reckoning, so maybe Argentina, or even Mars might be the perfect place for the bastards.
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
I'd love to know what these "different circumstances" are or would have been. Had there been no Farage intervention or Reform rise before the election, yes, it's likely Starmer would have won but with a smaller majority.
Of course, if there were no Reform or Restore, Badenoch's Conservatives would be ahead but we're in the real world here and whether you like it or not, Reform has emerged as an existential challenge to the Conservatives to which, frankly, Badenoch is struggling to respond.
From being a national party and the main alternative to those not willing to vote Labour, the Conservatives now have to compete with Reform, Greens and perhaps even Restore. They are driven back to their heartlands and are becoming uncompetititive elsewhere.
The London results, good as they were in parts of the north, the west and south east, include being virtually wiped out in the south west and Havering and no longer being represented on ten of the thirty two Boroughs (not as bad as the LDs true but hardly the sign of a main opposition party in full vim and vigour).
Voters stuck with Blair despite the Iraq war (insofar as ‘stuck with’ can describe a majority won on a minority vote) and with Thatcher and Major despite the poll tax and the rest, in both cases because the opposition choice on offer wasn’t seen as up to scratch. To get elected, at least in the past, the government has to be unpopular AND the opposition has to be seen as a competent and credible replacement, and the truth for the Tories is that they haven’t yet got back to a point where the latter is true.
Kinnock Labour led Thatcher's Tories in 1990 polls which is why they switched to Major.
Cameron may well have beaten Blair for most seats in 2010
The backlash against the tech bros is growing stronger. Although they consider themselves the modern day analogues of the plutocrats of the gilded age, there is certainly no analogue to Andrew Carnegie's view that "a man who dies rich dies disgraced". Their greed and narcissism often makes me think that the revolution should not be long delayed, and I am as far from a Communist as you can get.
In the end, I suspect that when the Augean stables of the Trump White House finally get cleaned, there will be some kind of reckoning, so maybe Argentina, or even Mars might be the perfect place for the bastards.
That's brilliant. Please tell me it was deliberate!
Question about the legions of NEETS and the Milburn report. None of the coverage I have listened to, including a fair bit of R4 Today, about the problems of 16-24 (and older) making 400 applications and not getting a reply etc etc covered an important issue:
To what extent are the long term NEETS veering away from or towards the occupations with specific shortages both WRT applications and further education and training? And why, with this vast pool of unused talent, are there so many shortage occupations?
He identifies himself at the end as Frank Right. I'd say articulate and speaks in full sentences almost in the manner of Enoch Powell, but most of it is articulating fairly standard positions that I am familiar with.
I'm not going to try and do a full thumbnail, but I note a link to "Catholic Social Teaching" on his web page, and a series of articles about the 13 Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. Leo XIII was Pope from 1878 to 1903. His most significant Encyclical was perhaps Rerum Novarum, which was a consideration of private and public morality, and consider capitalism, socialism, and rights of workers. I'd consider that in some ways a parallel to the work done on the evangelical side by the likes of social reformer Lord Shaftesbury.
That is interesting.
On that basis I would speculate (and it would be largely speculation) that he aligns with right wing social conservatism / more left wing on the economics. So I'd suggest that could be with the Distributionism of Hilaire Belloc / GK Chesterton.
I can't point to better known figures who would be thinking from a similar basis, unless perhaps someone like Iain Duncan Smith to an extent, who is dyed-in-the-wool RC since childhood to have imbibed the social teaching from that time. More recent adult converts would have to have dug quite deep to be reading Leo XIII encyclicals without a specific reason - maybe Tony Blair would have gone down that route at some time, or Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Does anyone know any Conservatives or other politicians who consciously follow modern - probably meaning post First Council of Trent (1563 !) - Roman Catholic Social Teaching?
Andy Burnham? I'm not suggesting he does, but it's an underappreciated influence on him.
Burnham is Roman Catholic, though not as fervent a practitioner of it as say Rees Mogg or even the Blairs.
He would certainly follow Papal teachings on inequality and economics though, even if socially being more liberal
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
Wholeheartedly agree.
I have no strong views on Badenoch either way (but then I think I'm unusual in having no strong views on Starmer, Farage or Polanski either, though if forced I'd probably choose Badenoch followed by Farage to have a pint with).
The Tories simply need to wait out the voters' memories. Badenoch is as good as anyone to do this.
I think Badenoch is doing a good job.
I used to think KB was doomed because by any reality based measure, polling and actual election results, she's doing a fucking awful job.
However, there is a significant fanbase who think she's doing great based on the vibe. So maybe she will make it to the GE to be slaughtered by the Burnhamator.
I think it's possible the Tories will make a handful of gains from Labour at the next election, while losing dozens to Reform.
I saw it (I'm visiting relatives). The AI Churchill, Gandhi, Kahlo and Pankhurst were a 30-second teaser at the beginning of the program just after the titles, not part of it. The program had a round table of five(?) people as normal.
It wasn't bad: in fact considerably better than a normal episode.
I saw some of it. I liked it when a member of the audience made sure to clarify that while she had a "relationship" with an AI chatbot, it wasn't sexual.
I'm struggling with the header. Is TSE suggesting Farage is planning Kemicide?
And what part do Bushy, Bagot, and the Greens play ?
I just think if Reform do usurp the Tories at the next election and that would be this country's greatest usurpation since Bolingbroke and Dicky II.
What about Richard of Gloucester and 'Eleven Week' Eddy?
Or Henry Tudor and Good King Richard?
The problem with Henry, or William III, is that they were demonstrable improvements on their predecessors which is why they took the throne in the first place. Richard III was a child-killing thieving niece-lusting corrupt maniac whose own army hated his guts, and James VII and II went off his head.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
There is also a case that many of the crimes allegedly committed by Richard III were in fact committed by Henry VII. Shakespeare was a genius as a Tudor propagandist, and history is written by the victors. "Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold".
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
Except Virgin, I think, who acquired the old cable TV infrastructure. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Much the same with shared phone masts aiui.
But is this a good idea? Shared infrastructure is more efficient but denies the role of free market competition in driving innovation. That was what the boss of America's Verizon, then rolling out 5g while we had 4g as cutting edge, said to the EU some years back. What is the incentive for, say, EE to research and develop better technology if they will then be forced to share it with Vodafone?
Is our half-and-half position with competitors sharing infrastructure better or worse than publicly-owned national champions on the one hand, or unbridled free market competition on the other?
If competitors do NOT share infrastructure, are there not (even) more holes in the road? Or lines among the trees?
Yes. My fear is that our shared infrastructure model means that most of the competition our governments put so much faith in is confined to marketing and accountancy and not at the level of core services. We have neither the protection of proper regulation, nor the benefit of free market competition.
Question about the legions of NEETS and the Milburn report. None of the coverage I have listened to, including a fair bit of R4 Today, about the problems of 16-24 (and older) making 400 applications and not getting a reply etc etc covered an important issue:
To what extent are the long term NEETS veering away from or towards the occupations with specific shortages both WRT applications and further education and training? And why, with this vast pool of unused talent, are there so many shortage occupations?
The employers report that they get huge numbers of fake responses - with very few showing up for interview.
My experience (trying to hire) of the more skilled labour market is that it seems to have broken down in both directions. A sea of bullshit between applicants and potential employers.
I semi-jokingly suggested writing the job specs, long hand, on parchment and place them upon boards outside the Royal Exchange. Engage a town cryer to announce them to the populace, and have a table setup nearby to do screening interviews.
He identifies himself at the end as Frank Right. I'd say articulate and speaks in full sentences almost in the manner of Enoch Powell, but most of it is articulating fairly standard positions that I am familiar with.
I'm not going to try and do a full thumbnail, but I note a link to "Catholic Social Teaching" on his web page, and a series of articles about the 13 Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. Leo XIII was Pope from 1878 to 1903. His most significant Encyclical was perhaps Rerum Novarum, which was a consideration of private and public morality, and consider capitalism, socialism, and rights of workers. I'd consider that in some ways a parallel to the work done on the evangelical side by the likes of social reformer Lord Shaftesbury.
That is interesting.
On that basis I would speculate (and it would be largely speculation) that he aligns with right wing social conservatism / more left wing on the economics. So I'd suggest that could be with the Distributionism of Hilaire Belloc / GK Chesterton.
I can't point to better known figures who would be thinking from a similar basis, unless perhaps someone like Iain Duncan Smith to an extent, who is dyed-in-the-wool RC since childhood to have imbibed the social teaching from that time. More recent adult converts would have to have dug quite deep to be reading Leo XIII encyclicals without a specific reason - maybe Tony Blair would have gone down that route at some time, or Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Does anyone know any Conservatives or other politicians who consciously follow modern - probably meaning post First Council of Trent (1563 !) - Roman Catholic Social Teaching?
Andy Burnham? I'm not suggesting he does, but it's an underappreciated influence on him.
Burnham is Roman Catholic, though not as fervent a practitioner of it as say Rees Mogg or even the Blairs.
He would certainly follow Papal teachings on inequality and economics though, even if socially being more liberal
Would he be the first Roman Catholic to be elected to Downing Street, if he is?
Massive only converted while PM to marry his latest squeeze (and will abandon it when he divorces her) and Blair only officially converted after leaving office.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
Except Virgin, I think, who acquired the old cable TV infrastructure. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Much the same with shared phone masts aiui.
But is this a good idea? Shared infrastructure is more efficient but denies the role of free market competition in driving innovation. That was what the boss of America's Verizon, then rolling out 5g while we had 4g as cutting edge, said to the EU some years back. What is the incentive for, say, EE to research and develop better technology if they will then be forced to share it with Vodafone?
Is our half-and-half position with competitors sharing infrastructure better or worse than publicly-owned national champions on the one hand, or unbridled free market competition on the other?
If competitors do NOT share infrastructure, are there not (even) more holes in the road? Or lines among the trees?
At the moment, various outfits are laying fibre on my street. Due to vaguely intelligent work by previous people, this involves pulling cable through ducts from one manhole (in the pavement) to the next.
That highlights the issue around being a potentially regional party. Labour have a similar challenge.
The Tories were at 28% in the polls back in 2023, so the 2027 local elections offer the LibDems and Reform further opportunities to make inroads into Tory councillor numbers - although in England I think it’s mostly the authorities that have elections by thirds that will be up next year, plus all council seats in Scotland (using STV) and Wales. Does the Welsh assembly have devolved power to change the voting system for Welsh councils, I wonder?
I think I am right in saying that 2027 will also be the first round of local elections where Reform will have a significant number of seats to defend, which could be interesting.
Those mets that were all-out this year have the third place winners defending their seats next year. So, for example, plenty of newly elected Reform councillors in Bradford and elsewhere are at risk of losing their seats. We'e got one in our ward and I'm sure there will be a strong Labour campaign to get the bugger out.
So, Reform gains in seats that were last up in 2023 may be partly offset by losses of some of their 2026 gains.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
Except Virgin, I think, who acquired the old cable TV infrastructure. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Much the same with shared phone masts aiui.
But is this a good idea? Shared infrastructure is more efficient but denies the role of free market competition in driving innovation. That was what the boss of America's Verizon, then rolling out 5g while we had 4g as cutting edge, said to the EU some years back. What is the incentive for, say, EE to research and develop better technology if they will then be forced to share it with Vodafone?
Is our half-and-half position with competitors sharing infrastructure better or worse than publicly-owned national champions on the one hand, or unbridled free market competition on the other?
If competitors do NOT share infrastructure, are there not (even) more holes in the road? Or lines among the trees?
Yes. My fear is that our shared infrastructure model means that most of the competition our governments put so much faith in is confined to marketing and accountancy and not at the level of core services. We have neither the protection of proper regulation, nor the benefit of free market competition.
The US provides excellent examples of the end stage of this - state mandated monopoly companies that don't even do stuff when bribed with more government money.
I'm struggling with the header. Is TSE suggesting Farage is planning Kemicide?
And what part do Bushy, Bagot, and the Greens play ?
I just think if Reform do usurp the Tories at the next election and that would be this country's greatest usurpation since Bolingbroke and Dicky II.
What about Richard of Gloucester and 'Eleven Week' Eddy?
Or Henry Tudor and Good King Richard?
The problem with Henry, or William III, is that they were demonstrable improvements on their predecessors which is why they took the throne in the first place. Richard III was a child-killing thieving niece-lusting corrupt maniac whose own army hated his guts, and James VII and II went off his head.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
There is also a case that many of the crimes allegedly committed by Richard III were in fact committed by Henry VII. Shakespeare was a genius as a Tudor propagandist, and history is written by the victors. "Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold".
There really, really, is not. And most of the charges against Richard long pre-dated Shakespeare. In fact, the majority of them were laid out in the repeal of Titulus Regius and quite a number were put forward by his own supporters.
Edit - you would be on much firmer ground by saying some of the crimes attributed to Richard by Shakespeare actually were at the door of Edward IV (which they were, e.g. the murder of Henry VI, the death of Warwick and Edward Prince of Wales or the execution of the Duke of Clarence). But there were plenty of other crimes alleged against Richard that Shakespeare was oddly silent on, e.g. the kidnapping of the Countess of Oxford or the murder of St Leger and Colyngbourne.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
It really isn't. Broadband is perhaps analogous to electricity, but there is no comparison at all with water.
It is totally analogous to water. The pipes coming into your home are identical with whatever provider you choose to use. We could have one broadband provider; it would make virtually no difference to the "service" you or I receive.
Yes that's true, and indeed business customers can choose their water supplier, just as all customers can choose their electricity or broadband supplier.
It's only domestic water customers that can't choose their supplier, and that is a political fudge because the water companies lobbied successfully against it, arguing that it would unwind cross-subsidies, for example to the 8% or so of domestic customers who don't pay their bills.
Pretty much the same argument they used to frustrate upstream unbundling and competition for water resources too.
I happen to know from a couple of highly placed sources that, on a couple of occasions, Ofwat came quite close to referring the whole industry to the CMA, hoping that it would break it up and introduce far more competition, as it did with gas in the 1990s, but in the end Ofwat chickened out.
But if we're ever to have a more effective water industry in this country, more competition and deregulation where possible must play an important part.
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
An uncharacteristically nonsense post. "In different circumstances Kemi would be heading for victory" What does that even mean? Her personal polling roughly matches that of Ed Davey. To most non members Kemi- as leader- IS the Tory Party. What do you think of Kemi? 'She's OK'. Same as most inoffensive Party leaders you're not going to vote for.
Trying not to be too blunt she's on a one way ticket to Palookaville. No one is giving her or her Party a second look because she/they aren't offering anything NEW or DiFFERENT or INTERESTING. It's only one time members like yourself who are even looking for the silver lining let alone believing you might have found it!
Her big problem is that she is weighed down (in the eyes of right of centre right voters), with the last government's record of failure. That is why her own personal ratings, do not translate into support for the Conservative Party.
We used to joke that the only section of the electorate who would approve of the last government's record were well to do pensioners who welcomed mass migration.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
It really isn't. Broadband is perhaps analogous to electricity, but there is no comparison at all with water.
It is totally analogous to water. The pipes coming into your home are identical with whatever provider you choose to use. We could have one broadband provider; it would make virtually no difference to the "service" you or I receive.
Yes that's true, and indeed business customers can choose their water supplier, just as all customers can choose their electricity or broadband supplier.
It's only domestic water customers that can't choose their supplier, and that is a political fudge because the water companies lobbied successfully against it, arguing that it would unwind cross-subsidies, for example to the 8% or so of domestic customers who don't pay their bills.
Pretty much the same argument they used to frustrate upstream unbundling and competition for water resources too.
I happen to know from a couple of highly placed sources that, on a couple of occasions, Ofwat came quite close to referring the whole industry to the CMA, hoping that it would break it up and introduce far more competition, as it did with gas in the 1990s, but in the end Ofwat chickened out.
But if we're ever to have a more effective water industry in this country, more competition and deregulation where possible must play an important part.
I am not saying introducing more water "suppliers" (companies that you pay the bill to) would do much, personally I am in favour of one company running the pipes (as per Openreach) and whether it's nationalised or not probably would make little practical difference. I was just questioning the idea that you can't have competition in some aspects of water.
What we need is stronger regulation, as Openreach showed.
I'm struggling with the header. Is TSE suggesting Farage is planning Kemicide?
And what part do Bushy, Bagot, and the Greens play ?
I just think if Reform do usurp the Tories at the next election and that would be this country's greatest usurpation since Bolingbroke and Dicky II.
What about Richard of Gloucester and 'Eleven Week' Eddy?
Or Henry Tudor and Good King Richard?
The problem with Henry, or William III, is that they were demonstrable improvements on their predecessors which is why they took the throne in the first place. Richard III was a child-killing thieving niece-lusting corrupt maniac whose own army hated his guts, and James VII and II went off his head.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
There is also a case that many of the crimes allegedly committed by Richard III were in fact committed by Henry VII. Shakespeare was a genius as a Tudor propagandist, and history is written by the victors. "Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold".
There really, really, is not. And most of the charges against Richard long pre-dated Shakespeare. In fact, the majority of them were laid out in the repeal of Titulus Regius and quite a number were put forward by his own supporters.
Edit - you would be on much firmer ground by saying some of the crimes attributed to Richard by Shakespeare actually were at the door of Edward IV (which they were, e.g. the murder of Henry VI, the death of Warwick and Edward Prince of Wales or the execution of the Duke of Clarence). But there were plenty of other crimes alleged against Richard that Shakespeare was oddly silent on, e.g. the kidnapping of the Countess of Oxford or the murder of St Leger and Colyngbourne.
But it is still the case that Josephine Tey's novel about this, The Daughter of Time, is one of the greatest ever detective stories.
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
I'm struggling with the header. Is TSE suggesting Farage is planning Kemicide?
And what part do Bushy, Bagot, and the Greens play ?
I just think if Reform do usurp the Tories at the next election and that would be this country's greatest usurpation since Bolingbroke and Dicky II.
What about Richard of Gloucester and 'Eleven Week' Eddy?
Or Henry Tudor and Good King Richard?
The problem with Henry, or William III, is that they were demonstrable improvements on their predecessors which is why they took the throne in the first place. Richard III was a child-killing thieving niece-lusting corrupt maniac whose own army hated his guts, and James VII and II went off his head.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
There is also a case that many of the crimes allegedly committed by Richard III were in fact committed by Henry VII. Shakespeare was a genius as a Tudor propagandist, and history is written by the victors. "Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold".
There really, really, is not. And most of the charges against Richard long pre-dated Shakespeare. In fact, the majority of them were laid out in the repeal of Titulus Regius and quite a number were put forward by his own supporters.
Edit - you would be on much firmer ground by saying some of the crimes attributed to Richard by Shakespeare actually were at the door of Edward IV (which they were, e.g. the murder of Henry VI, the death of Warwick and Edward Prince of Wales or the execution of the Duke of Clarence). But there were plenty of other crimes alleged against Richard that Shakespeare was oddly silent on, e.g. the kidnapping of the Countess of Oxford or the murder of St Leger and Colyngbourne.
But it is still the case that Josephine Tey's novel about this, The Daughter of Time, is one of the greatest ever detective stories.
And along with the greatest of them all, Agatha Christie's Ten Little (redacted) more commonly called And Then There Were None, is totally implausible.
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
An uncharacteristically nonsense post. "In different circumstances Kemi would be heading for victory" What does that even mean? Her personal polling roughly matches that of Ed Davey. To most non members Kemi- as leader- IS the Tory Party. What do you think of Kemi? 'She's OK'. Same as most inoffensive Party leaders you're not going to vote for.
Trying not to be too blunt she's on a one way ticket to Palookaville. No one is giving her or her Party a second look because she/they aren't offering anything NEW or DiFFERENT or INTERESTING. It's only one time members like yourself who are even looking for the silver lining let alone believing you might have found it!
Her big problem is that she is weighed down (in the eyes of right of centre right voters), with the last government's record of failure. That is why her own personal ratings, do not translate into support for the Conservative Party.
We used to joke that the only section of the electorate who would approve of the last government's record were well to do pensioners who welcomed mass migration.
I thought you were going to say 'who were struggling to get cleaners'!
I'm struggling with the header. Is TSE suggesting Farage is planning Kemicide?
And what part do Bushy, Bagot, and the Greens play ?
I just think if Reform do usurp the Tories at the next election and that would be this country's greatest usurpation since Bolingbroke and Dicky II.
What about Richard of Gloucester and 'Eleven Week' Eddy?
Or Henry Tudor and Good King Richard?
The problem with Henry, or William III, is that they were demonstrable improvements on their predecessors which is why they took the throne in the first place. Richard III was a child-killing thieving niece-lusting corrupt maniac whose own army hated his guts, and James VII and II went off his head.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
There is also a case that many of the crimes allegedly committed by Richard III were in fact committed by Henry VII. Shakespeare was a genius as a Tudor propagandist, and history is written by the victors. "Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold".
There really, really, is not. And most of the charges against Richard long pre-dated Shakespeare. In fact, the majority of them were laid out in the repeal of Titulus Regius and quite a number were put forward by his own supporters.
Edit - you would be on much firmer ground by saying some of the crimes attributed to Richard by Shakespeare actually were at the door of Edward IV (which they were, e.g. the murder of Henry VI, the death of Warwick and Edward Prince of Wales or the execution of the Duke of Clarence). But there were plenty of other crimes alleged against Richard that Shakespeare was oddly silent on, e.g. the kidnapping of the Countess of Oxford or the murder of St Leger and Colyngbourne.
But it is still the case that Josephine Tey's novel about this, The Daughter of Time, is one of the greatest ever detective stories.
And along with the greatest of them all, Agatha Christie's Ten Little (redacted) more commonly called And Then There Were None, is totally implausible.
I remember many many years ago seeing the film with Ray Milland in on the Beeb.
He identifies himself at the end as Frank Right. I'd say articulate and speaks in full sentences almost in the manner of Enoch Powell, but most of it is articulating fairly standard positions that I am familiar with.
I'm not going to try and do a full thumbnail, but I note a link to "Catholic Social Teaching" on his web page, and a series of articles about the 13 Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. Leo XIII was Pope from 1878 to 1903. His most significant Encyclical was perhaps Rerum Novarum, which was a consideration of private and public morality, and consider capitalism, socialism, and rights of workers. I'd consider that in some ways a parallel to the work done on the evangelical side by the likes of social reformer Lord Shaftesbury.
That is interesting.
On that basis I would speculate (and it would be largely speculation) that he aligns with right wing social conservatism / more left wing on the economics. So I'd suggest that could be with the Distributionism of Hilaire Belloc / GK Chesterton.
I can't point to better known figures who would be thinking from a similar basis, unless perhaps someone like Iain Duncan Smith to an extent, who is dyed-in-the-wool RC since childhood to have imbibed the social teaching from that time. More recent adult converts would have to have dug quite deep to be reading Leo XIII encyclicals without a specific reason - maybe Tony Blair would have gone down that route at some time, or Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Does anyone know any Conservatives or other politicians who consciously follow modern - probably meaning post First Council of Trent (1563 !) - Roman Catholic Social Teaching?
Andy Burnham? I'm not suggesting he does, but it's an underappreciated influence on him.
Burnham is Roman Catholic, though not as fervent a practitioner of it as say Rees Mogg or even the Blairs.
He would certainly follow Papal teachings on inequality and economics though, even if socially being more liberal
In practice in my view it's perhaps not quite so much around "following Papal teachings", but around taking what the Pope said and using it as grist for your own mill. With the key point being that reflection and thought happens as part of the process, rather than there being a focus on pre-boiled assumptions and dogmas.
In my experience evangelicals can often be mainly about logical propositional arguments, with a process reminiscent of New Atheism or Islam, and for Roman Catholics and non-evangelical types of Anglicans it is more about osmosis - values learnt from the performance of the gospel in the liturgy, and the practice of kindness in the worshipping community.
(Obviously we can point out where this does not work, but the same is true of any human community or organisation.)
I've not read many Papal Encyclicals or similar, except perhaps Vatican II related materials, and on particular questions as I find necessary. But many RC commentators imo have a scope and a distance that Protestants can lack.
I've generally picked up RC social type teaching from people implementing it, whether Trade Union Reps, hospital or industrial chaplains, people in intentional communities, or accounts from people who have been on various edges of the RC Church.
I'm struggling with the header. Is TSE suggesting Farage is planning Kemicide?
And what part do Bushy, Bagot, and the Greens play ?
I just think if Reform do usurp the Tories at the next election and that would be this country's greatest usurpation since Bolingbroke and Dicky II.
What about Richard of Gloucester and 'Eleven Week' Eddy?
Or Henry Tudor and Good King Richard?
The problem with Henry, or William III, is that they were demonstrable improvements on their predecessors which is why they took the throne in the first place. Richard III was a child-killing thieving niece-lusting corrupt maniac whose own army hated his guts, and James VII and II went off his head.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
There is also a case that many of the crimes allegedly committed by Richard III were in fact committed by Henry VII. Shakespeare was a genius as a Tudor propagandist, and history is written by the victors. "Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold".
There really, really, is not. And most of the charges against Richard long pre-dated Shakespeare. In fact, the majority of them were laid out in the repeal of Titulus Regius and quite a number were put forward by his own supporters.
Edit - you would be on much firmer ground by saying some of the crimes attributed to Richard by Shakespeare actually were at the door of Edward IV (which they were, e.g. the murder of Henry VI, the death of Warwick and Edward Prince of Wales or the execution of the Duke of Clarence). But there were plenty of other crimes alleged against Richard that Shakespeare was oddly silent on, e.g. the kidnapping of the Countess of Oxford or the murder of St Leger and Colyngbourne.
I tend to agree about Richard. It's worth noting that Henry Tudor only won, because many of Richard's own faction turned against him. Richard rapidly staged a coup, and the obvious inference is that either he had the princes murdered, or else, supporters of his did the deed, without him even giving the order, and he found himself stuck with the situation. Elizabeth Woodville took sanctuary with her daughter, she was so afraid of him. The Lord Chancellor of France was openly speculating that the princes had been murdered, by Christmas 1483.
Murder of royalty had become quite common, at this point in English history.
I'm struggling with the header. Is TSE suggesting Farage is planning Kemicide?
And what part do Bushy, Bagot, and the Greens play ?
I just think if Reform do usurp the Tories at the next election and that would be this country's greatest usurpation since Bolingbroke and Dicky II.
What about Richard of Gloucester and 'Eleven Week' Eddy?
Or Henry Tudor and Good King Richard?
The problem with Henry, or William III, is that they were demonstrable improvements on their predecessors which is why they took the throne in the first place. Richard III was a child-killing thieving niece-lusting corrupt maniac whose own army hated his guts, and James VII and II went off his head.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
There is also a case that many of the crimes allegedly committed by Richard III were in fact committed by Henry VII. Shakespeare was a genius as a Tudor propagandist, and history is written by the victors. "Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold".
There really, really, is not. And most of the charges against Richard long pre-dated Shakespeare. In fact, the majority of them were laid out in the repeal of Titulus Regius and quite a number were put forward by his own supporters.
Edit - you would be on much firmer ground by saying some of the crimes attributed to Richard by Shakespeare actually were at the door of Edward IV (which they were, e.g. the murder of Henry VI, the death of Warwick and Edward Prince of Wales or the execution of the Duke of Clarence). But there were plenty of other crimes alleged against Richard that Shakespeare was oddly silent on, e.g. the kidnapping of the Countess of Oxford or the murder of St Leger and Colyngbourne.
But it is still the case that Josephine Tey's novel about this, The Daughter of Time, is one of the greatest ever detective stories.
And along with the greatest of them all, Agatha Christie's Ten Little (redacted) more commonly called And Then There Were None, is totally implausible.
I think the greatest Christie mystery is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd with its WTF ending. It caused great controversy at the time. Some members of the Detection Club (a group of British mystery writers) were so upset they reportedly considered expelling Christie from the group.
Question about the legions of NEETS and the Milburn report. None of the coverage I have listened to, including a fair bit of R4 Today, about the problems of 16-24 (and older) making 400 applications and not getting a reply etc etc covered an important issue:
To what extent are the long term NEETS veering away from or towards the occupations with specific shortages both WRT applications and further education and training? And why, with this vast pool of unused talent, are there so many shortage occupations?
The employers report that they get huge numbers of fake responses - with very few showing up for interview.
My experience (trying to hire) of the more skilled labour market is that it seems to have broken down in both directions. A sea of bullshit between applicants and potential employers.
I semi-jokingly suggested writing the job specs, long hand, on parchment and place them upon boards outside the Royal Exchange. Engage a town cryer to announce them to the populace, and have a table setup nearby to do screening interviews.
My 22-year-old lad, despite already having a good job, is on the lookout for his next position. He completely eschews job ads and recruiters due to the aforementioned sea of AI bullshit associated with them. Instead, he simply contacts companies that he likes the look of and tries to blag a chat with a human.
Excl: More "embarrassing" communications between Wes Streeting and Peter Mandelson are set to be made public next week.
While the former Health Secretary voluntarily published his direct WhatsApp messages with Mandelson in February, group chats were not included in the disclosure.
Government sources claim some of those unseen exchanges are "embarrassing" and expected to feature in the next tranche of Mandelson files when Parliament returns.
A spokesperson for Mr Streeting said: "Wes has handed everything over to the Cabinet Office and has nothing to hide."
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
An uncharacteristically nonsense post. "In different circumstances Kemi would be heading for victory" What does that even mean? Her personal polling roughly matches that of Ed Davey. To most non members Kemi- as leader- IS the Tory Party. What do you think of Kemi? 'She's OK'. Same as most inoffensive Party leaders you're not going to vote for.
Trying not to be too blunt she's on a one way ticket to Palookaville. No one is giving her or her Party a second look because she/they aren't offering anything NEW or DiFFERENT or INTERESTING. It's only one time members like yourself who are even looking for the silver lining let alone believing you might have found it!
Her big problem is that she is weighed down (in the eyes of right of centre right voters), with the last government's record of failure. That is why her own personal ratings, do not translate into support for the Conservative Party.
We used to joke that the only section of the electorate who would approve of the last government's record were well to do pensioners who welcomed mass migration.
Inflation was lower in 2024 when Rishi left office, growth was higher, taxes were lower and net migration is only falling now due to measures from the Sunak government
Question about the legions of NEETS and the Milburn report. None of the coverage I have listened to, including a fair bit of R4 Today, about the problems of 16-24 (and older) making 400 applications and not getting a reply etc etc covered an important issue:
To what extent are the long term NEETS veering away from or towards the occupations with specific shortages both WRT applications and further education and training? And why, with this vast pool of unused talent, are there so many shortage occupations?
The employers report that they get huge numbers of fake responses - with very few showing up for interview.
My experience (trying to hire) of the more skilled labour market is that it seems to have broken down in both directions. A sea of bullshit between applicants and potential employers.
I semi-jokingly suggested writing the job specs, long hand, on parchment and place them upon boards outside the Royal Exchange. Engage a town cryer to announce them to the populace, and have a table setup nearby to do screening interviews.
My 22-year-old lad, despite already having a good job, is on the lookout for his next position. He completely eschews job ads and recruiters due to the aforementioned sea of AI bullshit associated with them. Instead, he simply contacts companies that he likes the look of and tries to blag a chat with a human.
Having done contract work for many years I’ve grown to despise recruitment consultants, or the industry. We’ve a great job. Just need two references. Calls, putting you forward for a job. Never hear from them again.
On LinkedIn from time to time a recruiter complains about being ghosted by a company or a candidate not taking a job and they get it back in spades from people.
I'm struggling with the header. Is TSE suggesting Farage is planning Kemicide?
And what part do Bushy, Bagot, and the Greens play ?
I just think if Reform do usurp the Tories at the next election and that would be this country's greatest usurpation since Bolingbroke and Dicky II.
What about Richard of Gloucester and 'Eleven Week' Eddy?
Or Henry Tudor and Good King Richard?
The problem with Henry, or William III, is that they were demonstrable improvements on their predecessors which is why they took the throne in the first place. Richard III was a child-killing thieving niece-lusting corrupt maniac whose own army hated his guts, and James VII and II went off his head.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
There is also a case that many of the crimes allegedly committed by Richard III were in fact committed by Henry VII. Shakespeare was a genius as a Tudor propagandist, and history is written by the victors. "Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold".
There really, really, is not. And most of the charges against Richard long pre-dated Shakespeare. In fact, the majority of them were laid out in the repeal of Titulus Regius and quite a number were put forward by his own supporters.
Edit - you would be on much firmer ground by saying some of the crimes attributed to Richard by Shakespeare actually were at the door of Edward IV (which they were, e.g. the murder of Henry VI, the death of Warwick and Edward Prince of Wales or the execution of the Duke of Clarence). But there were plenty of other crimes alleged against Richard that Shakespeare was oddly silent on, e.g. the kidnapping of the Countess of Oxford or the murder of St Leger and Colyngbourne.
I tend to agree about Richard. It's worth noting that Henry Tudor only won, because many of Richard's own faction turned against him. Richard rapidly staged a coup, and the obvious inference is that either he had the princes murdered, or else, supporters of his did the deed, without him even giving the order, and he found himself stuck with the situation. Elizabeth Woodville took sanctuary with her daughter, she was so afraid of him. The Lord Chancellor of France was openly speculating that the princes had been murdered, by Christmas 1483.
Murder of royalty had become quite common, at this point in English history.
With the bit in the bold, I would note that Ricardians state - quite rightly - that there is no way Richard would have murdered Henry VI without a direct order from Edward IV. Killing a deposed king in the Middle Ages was a big, big deal. Even though Henry had failed dramatically and often as king, and Edward had a very good case to be next in line, his murder still led to a great deal of comment.
It is somewhat puzzling that they do not apply the same logic to Richard and Edward V, despite the fact that the murder of Edward V would not even make Richard next in line for the throne, as he himself knew very well judging by the increasingly sophistic arguments he came up with to justify his holding it.
On the subject of the death of the princes, not just the Lord Chancellor of France. The people of London, and also the duke of Buckingham, clearly knew they were dead by the autumn of 1483. Michael Bennett makes the astute point that many people worked at the Tower of London and would therefore know whether the princes were still there, and would also have known if they had been moved. If they suddenly disappeared - and they clearly did - it could only be because they were murdered, and that would rapidly have been no secret. 'Medieval England was not a police state, where people could disappear for years and then turn up alive again.'
And, again, because killing an ex-king is a big deal, they could only have been murdered on Richard's orders. Indeed, the only other candidate named by contemporaries as being involved - Buckingham - seems, judging by his subsequent behaviour, to have opposed their murder.
He identifies himself at the end as Frank Right. I'd say articulate and speaks in full sentences almost in the manner of Enoch Powell, but most of it is articulating fairly standard positions that I am familiar with.
I'm not going to try and do a full thumbnail, but I note a link to "Catholic Social Teaching" on his web page, and a series of articles about the 13 Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. Leo XIII was Pope from 1878 to 1903. His most significant Encyclical was perhaps Rerum Novarum, which was a consideration of private and public morality, and consider capitalism, socialism, and rights of workers. I'd consider that in some ways a parallel to the work done on the evangelical side by the likes of social reformer Lord Shaftesbury.
That is interesting.
On that basis I would speculate (and it would be largely speculation) that he aligns with right wing social conservatism / more left wing on the economics. So I'd suggest that could be with the Distributionism of Hilaire Belloc / GK Chesterton.
I can't point to better known figures who would be thinking from a similar basis, unless perhaps someone like Iain Duncan Smith to an extent, who is dyed-in-the-wool RC since childhood to have imbibed the social teaching from that time. More recent adult converts would have to have dug quite deep to be reading Leo XIII encyclicals without a specific reason - maybe Tony Blair would have gone down that route at some time, or Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Does anyone know any Conservatives or other politicians who consciously follow modern - probably meaning post First Council of Trent (1563 !) - Roman Catholic Social Teaching?
Andy Burnham? I'm not suggesting he does, but it's an underappreciated influence on him.
Burnham is Roman Catholic, though not as fervent a practitioner of it as say Rees Mogg or even the Blairs.
He would certainly follow Papal teachings on inequality and economics though, even if socially being more liberal
Would he be the first Roman Catholic to be elected to Downing Street, if he is?
Massive only converted while PM to marry his latest squeeze (and will abandon it when he divorces her) and Blair only officially converted after leaving office.
Boris was baptised Roman Catholic only becoming confirmed in the C of E at Eton. Cherie was always RC and converted her husband over
That rocket explosion was pretty spectacular. Once again it really shows how far ahead SpaceX are compared to the competition. I wonder whether Amazon will now have to beg Elon Musk for launch slots for their LEO constellation or face losing the spectrum rights they've accumulated.
I'm struggling with the header. Is TSE suggesting Farage is planning Kemicide?
And what part do Bushy, Bagot, and the Greens play ?
I just think if Reform do usurp the Tories at the next election and that would be this country's greatest usurpation since Bolingbroke and Dicky II.
What about Richard of Gloucester and 'Eleven Week' Eddy?
Or Henry Tudor and Good King Richard?
The problem with Henry, or William III, is that they were demonstrable improvements on their predecessors which is why they took the throne in the first place. Richard III was a child-killing thieving niece-lusting corrupt maniac whose own army hated his guts, and James VII and II went off his head.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
There is also a case that many of the crimes allegedly committed by Richard III were in fact committed by Henry VII. Shakespeare was a genius as a Tudor propagandist, and history is written by the victors. "Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold".
There really, really, is not. And most of the charges against Richard long pre-dated Shakespeare. In fact, the majority of them were laid out in the repeal of Titulus Regius and quite a number were put forward by his own supporters.
Edit - you would be on much firmer ground by saying some of the crimes attributed to Richard by Shakespeare actually were at the door of Edward IV (which they were, e.g. the murder of Henry VI, the death of Warwick and Edward Prince of Wales or the execution of the Duke of Clarence). But there were plenty of other crimes alleged against Richard that Shakespeare was oddly silent on, e.g. the kidnapping of the Countess of Oxford or the murder of St Leger and Colyngbourne.
But it is still the case that Josephine Tey's novel about this, The Daughter of Time, is one of the greatest ever detective stories.
And along with the greatest of them all, Agatha Christie's Ten Little (redacted) more commonly called And Then There Were None, is totally implausible.
I think the greatest Christie mystery is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd with its WTF ending. It caused great controversy at the time. Some members of the Detection Club (a group of British mystery writers) were so upset they reportedly considered expelling Christie from the group.
They're both remarkably clever if you're willing to suspend your disbelief to a great extent. As is Murder on the Orient Express.
In some ways though the more humdrum problems of the early Miss Marples are better detective fiction as a puzzle.
He identifies himself at the end as Frank Right. I'd say articulate and speaks in full sentences almost in the manner of Enoch Powell, but most of it is articulating fairly standard positions that I am familiar with.
I'm not going to try and do a full thumbnail, but I note a link to "Catholic Social Teaching" on his web page, and a series of articles about the 13 Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. Leo XIII was Pope from 1878 to 1903. His most significant Encyclical was perhaps Rerum Novarum, which was a consideration of private and public morality, and consider capitalism, socialism, and rights of workers. I'd consider that in some ways a parallel to the work done on the evangelical side by the likes of social reformer Lord Shaftesbury.
That is interesting.
On that basis I would speculate (and it would be largely speculation) that he aligns with right wing social conservatism / more left wing on the economics. So I'd suggest that could be with the Distributionism of Hilaire Belloc / GK Chesterton.
Less impressed, despite being a fan of catholic social teaching. Setting up the concept 'liberal' as a straw man, undefined, on which you place the blame for everything you don't like is a conservative religious trope and no use at all. Suggesting that a huge pool of talent is ousted by a huge pool of the conspiratorial and talentless powerful is always attractive but needs evidence.
The jump from a well founded objection to the worship of money to the answer to our problems being Rupert Lowe (!!!) doesn't really sound like the best of the Thomistic tradition to me.
I'll just quote one para: Wright's intellectual project is sweeping — a full alternative political economy grounded in Catholic theology. Restore Britain's platform, by contrast, is primarily focused on immigration control, benefit reform, and tax cuts — the kind of policy-level agenda Wright seems to view as symptoms rather than causes of Britain's problems.
Which is a bit pathetic, because Russia know they won't do anything about it other than complain.
Other than providing Ukraine with $223bn in combined financial, military, humanitarian and refugee assistance since the start of the war the EU has done absolutely nothing, you are right.
I'm struggling with the header. Is TSE suggesting Farage is planning Kemicide?
And what part do Bushy, Bagot, and the Greens play ?
I just think if Reform do usurp the Tories at the next election and that would be this country's greatest usurpation since Bolingbroke and Dicky II.
What about Richard of Gloucester and 'Eleven Week' Eddy?
Or Henry Tudor and Good King Richard?
The problem with Henry, or William III, is that they were demonstrable improvements on their predecessors which is why they took the throne in the first place. Richard III was a child-killing thieving niece-lusting corrupt maniac whose own army hated his guts, and James VII and II went off his head.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
There is also a case that many of the crimes allegedly committed by Richard III were in fact committed by Henry VII. Shakespeare was a genius as a Tudor propagandist, and history is written by the victors. "Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold".
There really, really, is not. And most of the charges against Richard long pre-dated Shakespeare. In fact, the majority of them were laid out in the repeal of Titulus Regius and quite a number were put forward by his own supporters.
Edit - you would be on much firmer ground by saying some of the crimes attributed to Richard by Shakespeare actually were at the door of Edward IV (which they were, e.g. the murder of Henry VI, the death of Warwick and Edward Prince of Wales or the execution of the Duke of Clarence). But there were plenty of other crimes alleged against Richard that Shakespeare was oddly silent on, e.g. the kidnapping of the Countess of Oxford or the murder of St Leger and Colyngbourne.
I tend to agree about Richard. It's worth noting that Henry Tudor only won, because many of Richard's own faction turned against him. Richard rapidly staged a coup, and the obvious inference is that either he had the princes murdered, or else, supporters of his did the deed, without him even giving the order, and he found himself stuck with the situation. Elizabeth Woodville took sanctuary with her daughter, she was so afraid of him. The Lord Chancellor of France was openly speculating that the princes had been murdered, by Christmas 1483.
Murder of royalty had become quite common, at this point in English history.
With the bit in the bold, I would note that Ricardians state - quite rightly - that there is no way Richard would have murdered Henry VI without a direct order from Edward IV. Killing a deposed king in the Middle Ages was a big, big deal. Even though Henry had failed dramatically and often as king, and Edward had a very good case to be next in line, his murder still led to a great deal of comment.
It is somewhat puzzling that they do not apply the same logic to Richard and Edward V, despite the fact that the murder of Edward V would not even make Richard next in line for the throne, as he himself knew very well judging by the increasingly sophistic arguments he came up with to justify his holding it.
On the subject of the death of the princes, not just the Lord Chancellor of France. The people of London, and also the duke of Buckingham, clearly knew they were dead by the autumn of 1483. Michael Bennett makes the astute point that many people worked at the Tower of London and would therefore know whether the princes were still there, and would also have known if they had been moved. If they suddenly disappeared - and they clearly did - it could only be because they were murdered, and that would rapidly have been no secret. 'Medieval England was not a police state, where people could disappear for years and then turn up alive again.'
And, again, because killing an ex-king is a big deal, they could only have been murdered on Richard's orders. Indeed, the only other candidate named by contemporaries as being involved - Buckingham - seems, judging by his subsequent behaviour, to have opposed their murder.
Using Occam's Razor, there has to be a very strong presumption that the princes were killed on Richard's orders.
Arguments that it was Buckingham, Henry Tudor, or Lady Margaret Beaufort, are very convoluted.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
Except Virgin, I think, who acquired the old cable TV infrastructure. Correct me if I'm wrong!
There were mainly two companies, NTL and Telewest, who "competed" but strangely decided to not rollout in the same areas.
They then magically announced a merger which worked perfectly as there was no overlap, brilliant! They become NTL Telewest. They then did a deal with Virgin Enterprises (?) to license the Virgin name and become "Virgin Media". I believe Virgin Enterprises purchased some of the shares.
Liberty Global then bought most of the company and kept the name.
Liberty Global then merged the company with Telefonica UK ("O2") in a 50/50 deal, becoming "Virgin Media O2". The new company is owned half by Liberty Global, half by Telefonica.
Telefonica are partially owned by the Spanish state, so you could make an argument we're subsidising their FTTP rollout.
Great, thanks. Not my area of expertise so thank you for explaining.
Question about the legions of NEETS and the Milburn report. None of the coverage I have listened to, including a fair bit of R4 Today, about the problems of 16-24 (and older) making 400 applications and not getting a reply etc etc covered an important issue:
To what extent are the long term NEETS veering away from or towards the occupations with specific shortages both WRT applications and further education and training? And why, with this vast pool of unused talent, are there so many shortage occupations?
The employers report that they get huge numbers of fake responses - with very few showing up for interview.
My experience (trying to hire) of the more skilled labour market is that it seems to have broken down in both directions. A sea of bullshit between applicants and potential employers.
I semi-jokingly suggested writing the job specs, long hand, on parchment and place them upon boards outside the Royal Exchange. Engage a town cryer to announce them to the populace, and have a table setup nearby to do screening interviews.
My 22-year-old lad, despite already having a good job, is on the lookout for his next position. He completely eschews job ads and recruiters due to the aforementioned sea of AI bullshit associated with them. Instead, he simply contacts companies that he likes the look of and tries to blag a chat with a human.
Having done contract work for many years I’ve grown to despise recruitment consultants, or the industry. We’ve a great job. Just need two references. Calls, putting you forward for a job. Never hear from them again.
On LinkedIn from time to time a recruiter complains about being ghosted by a company or a candidate not taking a job and they get it back in spades from people.
Recruitment companies are mostly trash.
"We've got vacancies doing xxx in xxx sector but nothing that fits your profile." That is what I do, you f**kwit!!! From a recruitment consultancy I'd worked through on and off for 20+years.
That rocket explosion was pretty spectacular. Once again it really shows how far ahead SpaceX are compared to the competition. I wonder whether Amazon will now have to beg Elon Musk for launch slots for their LEO constellation or face losing the spectrum rights they've accumulated.
Rockets in the first dozen of so launches are vulnerable to the bathtub curve.
As to Amazon LEO - they will get a waiver from the FCC. Because they aren't frequency squatting but spending billions on trying to get the system up and running.
The backlash against the tech bros is growing stronger. Although they consider themselves the modern day analogues of the plutocrats of the gilded age, there is certainly no analogue to Andrew Carnegie's view that "a man who dies rich dies disgraced". Their greed and narcissism often makes me think that the revolution should not be long delayed, and I am as far from a Communist as you can get.
In the end, I suspect that when the Augean stables of the Trump White House finally get cleaned, there will be some kind of reckoning, so maybe Argentina, or even Mars might be the perfect place for the bastards.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
It really isn't. Broadband is perhaps analogous to electricity, but there is no comparison at all with water.
It is totally analogous to water. The pipes coming into your home are identical with whatever provider you choose to use. We could have one broadband provider; it would make virtually no difference to the "service" you or I receive.
That's nonsense.
You can't set up reservoirs, sewer, treatment plants etc up from scratch; they're long term, capital intensive, low margin businesses. Your idea that alternate providers could crop up in the same manner as a broadband provider is absurd. No one would do it.
Question about the legions of NEETS and the Milburn report. None of the coverage I have listened to, including a fair bit of R4 Today, about the problems of 16-24 (and older) making 400 applications and not getting a reply etc etc covered an important issue:
To what extent are the long term NEETS veering away from or towards the occupations with specific shortages both WRT applications and further education and training? And why, with this vast pool of unused talent, are there so many shortage occupations?
The employers report that they get huge numbers of fake responses - with very few showing up for interview.
My experience (trying to hire) of the more skilled labour market is that it seems to have broken down in both directions. A sea of bullshit between applicants and potential employers.
I semi-jokingly suggested writing the job specs, long hand, on parchment and place them upon boards outside the Royal Exchange. Engage a town cryer to announce them to the populace, and have a table setup nearby to do screening interviews.
My 22-year-old lad, despite already having a good job, is on the lookout for his next position. He completely eschews job ads and recruiters due to the aforementioned sea of AI bullshit associated with them. Instead, he simply contacts companies that he likes the look of and tries to blag a chat with a human.
Having done contract work for many years I’ve grown to despise recruitment consultants, or the industry. We’ve a great job. Just need two references. Calls, putting you forward for a job. Never hear from them again.
On LinkedIn from time to time a recruiter complains about being ghosted by a company or a candidate not taking a job and they get it back in spades from people.
Recruitment companies are mostly trash.
A few years ago now, when my name meant something in pharmaceutical circles, I was 'phoned by a colleague. Had I given a reference to such and such a person. No, I knew him, and no way would I have given him a reference. Turned out the applicant had forged a reference from me. The applicant had come through a recruitment agency so I rang the agency and complained. Was told it wasn't their business to check references, that was the job of the employer.
Hard words were exchanged.
The 'applicant 'stopped' being a pharmacist quite soon afterwards!
"Catholic social teaching underpins my politics, we did have to read the catechism at school but it is powerful and strong and right".
He says it was the "obsession with sexuality" that did it.
I wouldn't actually call that "lost his faith"; I'd call that "lost his faith in the current emphasis of the church leadership." There have always been a large chunk of Roman Catholics who have a loyalty to the Church but not to the Holy See,
But then I have quite broad definitions of such things, and movements described as eg "the church outside the church", "secular faith", "church without walls", "church OUT THERE", "church without religion" and more, have been everywhere for at least a century.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
Except Virgin, I think, who acquired the old cable TV infrastructure. Correct me if I'm wrong!
There were mainly two companies, NTL and Telewest, who "competed" but strangely decided to not rollout in the same areas.
They then magically announced a merger which worked perfectly as there was no overlap, brilliant! They become NTL Telewest. They then did a deal with Virgin Enterprises (?) to license the Virgin name and become "Virgin Media". I believe Virgin Enterprises purchased some of the shares.
Liberty Global then bought most of the company and kept the name.
Liberty Global then merged the company with Telefonica UK ("O2") in a 50/50 deal, becoming "Virgin Media O2". The new company is owned half by Liberty Global, half by Telefonica.
Telefonica are partially owned by the Spanish state, so you could make an argument we're subsidising their FTTP rollout.
Great, thanks. Not my area of expertise so thank you for explaining.
There are also a few smaller companies with separate fibre networks in some locations and 4/5G mobile broadband (highly recommended if you have a solid 5G signal), though with the 3 merger with Vodafone this might degrade.
Question about the legions of NEETS and the Milburn report. None of the coverage I have listened to, including a fair bit of R4 Today, about the problems of 16-24 (and older) making 400 applications and not getting a reply etc etc covered an important issue:
To what extent are the long term NEETS veering away from or towards the occupations with specific shortages both WRT applications and further education and training? And why, with this vast pool of unused talent, are there so many shortage occupations?
The employers report that they get huge numbers of fake responses - with very few showing up for interview.
My experience (trying to hire) of the more skilled labour market is that it seems to have broken down in both directions. A sea of bullshit between applicants and potential employers.
I semi-jokingly suggested writing the job specs, long hand, on parchment and place them upon boards outside the Royal Exchange. Engage a town cryer to announce them to the populace, and have a table setup nearby to do screening interviews.
My 22-year-old lad, despite already having a good job, is on the lookout for his next position. He completely eschews job ads and recruiters due to the aforementioned sea of AI bullshit associated with them. Instead, he simply contacts companies that he likes the look of and tries to blag a chat with a human.
Having done contract work for many years I’ve grown to despise recruitment consultants, or the industry. We’ve a great job. Just need two references. Calls, putting you forward for a job. Never hear from them again.
On LinkedIn from time to time a recruiter complains about being ghosted by a company or a candidate not taking a job and they get it back in spades from people.
Recruitment companies are mostly trash.
"We've got vacancies doing xxx in xxx sector but nothing that fits your profile." That is what I do, you f**kwit!!! From a recruitment consultancy I'd worked through on and off for 20+years.
The peak moment, for me, was a recruiter from Aston Carter admitting to me that he was ex-Foxtons.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
It really isn't. Broadband is perhaps analogous to electricity, but there is no comparison at all with water.
It is totally analogous to water. The pipes coming into your home are identical with whatever provider you choose to use. We could have one broadband provider; it would make virtually no difference to the "service" you or I receive.
That's nonsense.
You can't set up reservoirs, sewer, treatment plants etc up from scratch; they're long term, capital intensive, low margin businesses. Your idea that alternate providers could crop up in the same manner as a broadband provider is absurd. No one would do it.
And with fibre, different companies can easily send their own, different signals over the same physical system. Which makes swapping providers rather easier.
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
Wholeheartedly agree.
I have no strong views on Badenoch either way (but then I think I'm unusual in having no strong views on Starmer, Farage or Polanski either, though if forced I'd probably choose Badenoch followed by Farage to have a pint with).
The Tories simply need to wait out the voters' memories. Badenoch is as good as anyone to do this.
I think Badenoch is doing a good job.
I used to think KB was doomed because by any reality based measure, polling and actual election results, she's doing a fucking awful job.
However, there is a significant fanbase who think she's doing great based on the vibe. So maybe she will make it to the GE to be slaughtered by the Burnhamator.
Burnham is a flash in the pan AND a weathervane. Suspect he'll lose Hermerite voters to the greens, and centrist/rightist support to Reform.
Labour at 17% in the next election, third behind the Tories, would be delicious.
So who has made more U turns - Burnham or Jenrick ?
Burnham's are swerves not U-turns. He's still going in the same direction.
Leftwards or rightwards?
I can't tell any more.
Not leftward or rightward but sensible: This is the clear direction.
* Introduce PR (majority of public in favour) * Remove red lines on EU single market and customs union (majority of public in favour) * Take water companies into public ownership (big majority of public in favour even if it might seem left wing) * Enable local authorities to build more social housing (majority of public in favour)
I’m pretty sure Burnham is not calling to take these companies into public ownership?
Are you? What makes you so sure? He took the buses in Manchester into public ownership and it has been a great success.
In this interview, Burnham says he thinks there is case for public ownership of Thames Water.
I thought he rowed back on this because of the costs involved.
iirc Burnham didn't take the buses back into public ownership. He put them under public control
Happy to be corrected if I have got this wrong.
I think you are right. It is a franchise model similar to Transport for London I think. TFL works well. If it were applied to Thames Water, the government would set the prices, determine investments etc but outsource the actual operations for a fixed fee to one or more suppliers. I can see that working. It works in the NHS where most GP practices are outsourced and many hospital services.
I think it's a good model.
Less obvious how that would work with water. BusCo A and Busco B can use different buses under the TfL banner. WaterCo A and WaterCo B cannot lay their own pipes to take water from their own reservoirs to every bathtub in the land.
And be careful about the NHS as doctors are making noises about wanting more private work in their private/NHS mix. Stealth privatisation is happening even beyond the government's control.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. TfL say what buses are allowed, they do designs etc and then the companies lease them.
They can’t just run whatever buses they want. It’s why the Boris buses have all disappeared at once.
The point is there are lots of buses owned and operated by different companies, famously including the Paris bus company which is owned by the French state (nationalisation, eh!) whereas water companies would not be competing in the same way. It is a natural monopoly: no-one advocates building multiple pipelines from different reservoirs to the same homes. All that can change is the logo on the water bill. And natural monopolies need careful regulation, as every economist barring the ones advising HMG always knew.
Following up on this, for over half of the country there is no alternative infrastructure to Openreach. But nobody is suggesting nationalising that.
Openreach was doing a very bad job until the threat of splitting them off appeared. Then magically they decided FTTP was doable and they started rolling it out at record breaking speed. The result is that there is still a virtual monopoly on infrastructure however the infrastructure is much better.
Perhaps there’s something to look at in this for water?
I’m not necessarily advocating this approach but why can broadband providers exist that use the same infrastructure owned by one company, but this can’t also happen for water?
Because if you have several water companies supplying treated water into the same system and one is shit they poison everybody and the whole system. Water pipes, water and sewage are not comparable to copper, fibre and electrical signals.
You obviously have very little understanding of how our FTTP infrastructure works then.
Every provider uses the same set of cables to supply your home, it is totally analogous to water.
It really isn't. Broadband is perhaps analogous to electricity, but there is no comparison at all with water.
It is totally analogous to water. The pipes coming into your home are identical with whatever provider you choose to use. We could have one broadband provider; it would make virtually no difference to the "service" you or I receive.
That's nonsense.
You can't set up reservoirs, sewer, treatment plants etc up from scratch; they're long term, capital intensive, low margin businesses. Your idea that alternate providers could crop up in the same manner as a broadband provider is absurd. No one would do it.
Highlights the problem, though.
Water should be a long term, capital intensive, low margin business. And that's an honourable thing to be, a useful part of the economy and a valid part of the investment ecosystem. That rather implies keeping it out of the hands of the kind of PE wizards who re-engineer the finances to extract massive mountains of money before the company falls over.
How you do that, remembering that PE wizards are clever and it's awfully hard to come up with rules that can't be circumvented, especially when money can leave the country in the blink of an eye... that's the tricky part.
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
Wholeheartedly agree.
I have no strong views on Badenoch either way (but then I think I'm unusual in having no strong views on Starmer, Farage or Polanski either, though if forced I'd probably choose Badenoch followed by Farage to have a pint with).
The Tories simply need to wait out the voters' memories. Badenoch is as good as anyone to do this.
I think Badenoch is doing a good job.
I used to think KB was doomed because by any reality based measure, polling and actual election results, she's doing a fucking awful job.
However, there is a significant fanbase who think she's doing great based on the vibe. So maybe she will make it to the GE to be slaughtered by the Burnhamator.
Burnham is a flash in the pan AND a weathervane. Suspect he'll lose Hermerite voters to the greens, and centrist/rightist support to Reform.
Labour at 17% in the next election, third behind the Tories, would be delicious.
The polling evidence we have is Burnham squeezes the Greens back nearly to 2024 levels.
He also takes a few voters from Reform and the LDs too but to a lesser extent
Are Reform the party of the aspiring working class?
Their hopes and dreams of a better life fanned by the Blair Years (Loadsamoney) were dashed after 2008. And a man made in the image of Loadsamoney is trashing the Tim (Nice But Dim) Tories.
They are the party of the thick morons who believe the shyster will give them free money
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
Wholeheartedly agree.
I have no strong views on Badenoch either way (but then I think I'm unusual in having no strong views on Starmer, Farage or Polanski either, though if forced I'd probably choose Badenoch followed by Farage to have a pint with).
The Tories simply need to wait out the voters' memories. Badenoch is as good as anyone to do this.
I think Badenoch is doing a good job.
I used to think KB was doomed because by any reality based measure, polling and actual election results, she's doing a fucking awful job.
However, there is a significant fanbase who think she's doing great based on the vibe. So maybe she will make it to the GE to be slaughtered by the Burnhamator.
Burnham is a flash in the pan AND a weathervane. Suspect he'll lose Hermerite voters to the greens, and centrist/rightist support to Reform.
Labour at 17% in the next election, third behind the Tories, would be delicious.
I think that in different circumstances, Kemi would be heading for victory. She is the highest-rated of the party leaders.
Her problem is the record of the last Conservative, and Conservative-dominated, government. And, not just the madness of Truss, and the corruption and incompetence of Boris, damaging though they were.
The longer-term, and malign, influence of George Osborne is a factor. Osborne was a brilliant tactician, but a dire strategist. Cuts to the policing, justice and defence budgets (issues that matter to right of centre voters), were bad in themselves, and destroyed the Conservatives' reputation, on issues that are supposed to be their strengths. Exempting pensioners from austerity meant that the brunt of the burden was borne by young people. In the short term, that worked to the Conservatives' advantage, by boosting pensioner support. In the long term, it turned new generations of voters against them.
And, over all, there was immigration, where the Conservatives talked tough, and were sometimes, performatively cruel, but actually allowed record numbers in.
Wholeheartedly agree.
I have no strong views on Badenoch either way (but then I think I'm unusual in having no strong views on Starmer, Farage or Polanski either, though if forced I'd probably choose Badenoch followed by Farage to have a pint with).
The Tories simply need to wait out the voters' memories. Badenoch is as good as anyone to do this.
I think Badenoch is doing a good job.
I used to think KB was doomed because by any reality based measure, polling and actual election results, she's doing a fucking awful job.
However, there is a significant fanbase who think she's doing great based on the vibe. So maybe she will make it to the GE to be slaughtered by the Burnhamator.
Burnham is a flash in the pan AND a weathervane. Suspect he'll lose Hermerite voters to the greens, and centrist/rightist support to Reform.
Labour at 17% in the next election, third behind the Tories, would be delicious.
Hermerite votes. Are there actually such?
The sorts of people who nod in agreement with paying to give up the Chagos islands
Two people have been injured in Romania after a Russian Shahed drone hit an apartment building.
What will be the NATO response?
I said before that NATO should have destroyed the factory in Russia that made these drones when they flew them into Poland. Now people have been injured because of NATO inaction.
The video/photo of the apartment building on fire at the link above is quite something.
You and I both know there won't be a "NATO" response because a direct provoked NATO attack on Russian territory crosses all sorts of lines and puts us in a very dangerous place.
It's probable (not certain) this was an accident and an off-course missile has strayed into Romanian territory and doubtless diplomatic channels are all over it so best to leave it to those channels.
I think that a NATO attack on the Russian factory that produces Shahed drones would be a proportionate response and would re-establish NATO deterrence against Russia.
Russia isn't worried about what NATO might do in response and so it acts with impunity. Failing to act is more dangerous in the present circumstances. It invites Russia to do more.
As ever they will wring their hands and do nothing
Two people have been injured in Romania after a Russian Shahed drone hit an apartment building.
What will be the NATO response?
I said before that NATO should have destroyed the factory in Russia that made these drones when they flew them into Poland. Now people have been injured because of NATO inaction.
The video/photo of the apartment building on fire at the link above is quite something.
You and I both know there won't be a "NATO" response because a direct provoked NATO attack on Russian territory crosses all sorts of lines and puts us in a very dangerous place.
It's probable (not certain) this was an accident and an off-course missile has strayed into Romanian territory and doubtless diplomatic channels are all over it so best to leave it to those channels.
I think that a NATO attack on the Russian factory that produces Shahed drones would be a proportionate response and would re-establish NATO deterrence against Russia.
Russia isn't worried about what NATO might do in response and so it acts with impunity. Failing to act is more dangerous in the present circumstances. It invites Russia to do more.
As ever they will wring their hands and do nothing
After a 32-word burst, Shrey Parikh wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee The eighth-grader from California was crowned the winner after correctly spelling a record 32 words with a rapper’s speed during a spell-off.
Two people have been injured in Romania after a Russian Shahed drone hit an apartment building.
What will be the NATO response?
I said before that NATO should have destroyed the factory in Russia that made these drones when they flew them into Poland. Now people have been injured because of NATO inaction.
NATO will do nothing because to do anything, they'd need Trump's permission and they wouldn't even dare ask.
The lesson that Labour ought to take from the Tories is that changing leader is unlikely to save the brand when it has been so tarnished.
The question is whether it's a Thatcher-to-Major scenario (not that much changed, but the rogue flagship was sunk and the face was more human; that did work) or Truss-to-Sunak one (where changing the leader stopped any more damage, but didn't really improve things for the party).
In terms of governance, I suspect that Starmer to Burnham will be a bit of a downgrade, but in political terms a significant upgrade. But I'm not particularly the target audience.
Which is a bit pathetic, because Russia know they won't do anything about it other than complain.
Other than providing Ukraine with $223bn in combined financial, military, humanitarian and refugee assistance since the start of the war the EU has done absolutely nothing, you are right.
The EU should be tweeting daily about smoking accidents in Russian refineries, that would show the damn Russkies!
If you wonder why I am such a fan of Margaret Thatcher here's one of the many reasons.
🗣️ ‘But it’s in northern France.’
🚨 Margaret Thatcher being entirely herself in November 1996 in this brilliant anecdote from Chris Patten's diaries, serialised in the Daily Telegraph on this day, 29 May, in 2022.
If you wonder why I am such a fan of Margaret Thatcher here's one of the many reasons.
🗣️ ‘But it’s in northern France.’
🚨 Margaret Thatcher being entirely herself in November 1996 in this brilliant anecdote from Chris Patten's diaries, serialised in the Daily Telegraph on this day, 29 May, in 2022.
"He [Lilley] has been a long-term critic of the European Union and backed Brexit in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. He was supportive of the Eurosceptic pressure group Leave Means Leave."
The lesson that Labour ought to take from the Tories is that changing leader is unlikely to save the brand when it has been so tarnished.
The question is whether it's a Thatcher-to-Major scenario (not that much changed, but the rogue flagship was sunk and the face was more human; that did work) or Truss-to-Sunak one (where changing the leader stopped any more damage, but didn't really improve things for the party).
In terms of governance, I suspect that Starmer to Burnham will be a bit of a downgrade, but in political terms a significant upgrade. But I'm not particularly the target audience.
I cant help but think that Thatcher would have also beaten Kinnock. Her unpopularity was electorally baked in; those millions who came out for the grey man would also have come out for her, when 'werreeeeeeee allllllrrriiiiiiiight' wanged on as he did.
If you wonder why I am such a fan of Margaret Thatcher here's one of the many reasons.
🗣️ ‘But it’s in northern France.’
🚨 Margaret Thatcher being entirely herself in November 1996 in this brilliant anecdote from Chris Patten's diaries, serialised in the Daily Telegraph on this day, 29 May, in 2022.
That highlights the issue around being a potentially regional party. Labour have a similar challenge.
The Tories were at 28% in the polls back in 2023, so the 2027 local elections offer the LibDems and Reform further opportunities to make inroads into Tory councillor numbers - although in England I think it’s mostly the authorities that have elections by thirds that will be up next year, plus all council seats in Scotland (using STV) and Wales. Does the Welsh assembly have devolved power to change the voting system for Welsh councils, I wonder?
I think I am right in saying that 2027 will also be the first round of local elections where Reform will have a significant number of seats to defend, which could be interesting.
I believe the Senedd does have the power to change the voting system for Welsh local elections and that there has even been some discussion of doing so… IIRC!
Comments
Not only did it kill one person it put another in hospital.
That's some Bruce Lee.
Or maybe it was many and only two connected?
There are only a few companies left doing that, which are Cellnex (who bought most of Arquiva's stuff) and I forget the other one.
If what you mean is the SRN, that's on the basis that there are no operators operating in a particular area at all, so it's an absence of competition. The SRN would introduce competition and a level playing field.
There is plenty of innovation when it comes to telecoms.
Broadband is perhaps analogous to electricity, but there is no comparison at all with water.
Trying not to be too blunt she's on a one way ticket to Palookaville. No one is giving her or her Party a second look because she/they aren't offering anything NEW or DiFFERENT or INTERESTING. It's only one time members like yourself who are even looking for the silver lining let alone believing you might have found it!
More recent adult converts would have to have dug quite deep to be reading Leo XIII encyclicals without a specific reason - maybe Tony Blair would have gone down that route at some time, or Jacob Rees-Mogg as a lifetime Roman Catholic.
Does anyone know any Conservatives or other politicians who consciously follow modern - probably meaning post First Council of Trent (1563 !) - Roman Catholic Social Teaching?
Vodafone and O2 have Cornerstone which is shared in non-unwound areas (London and large cities mostly) which is a shared site and shared antennas although still independent networks. They do this for efficiencies, where it makes no sense to host identical infrastructure.
I'm not suggesting he does, but it's an underappreciated influence on him.
The jump from a well founded objection to the worship of money to the answer to our problems being Rupert Lowe (!!!) doesn't really sound like the best of the Thomistic tradition to me.
With all her faults, I don't think anyone could suggest with a straight face that Farage would be an improvement on Badenoch.
Edit - although a case could be made on those lines for Henry IV as well I suppose. Likewise Edward III and Edward IV.
A talented leader, acting boldly, with conviction and clarity, could expand that market, and bring in support from people who weren't entirely ideologically aligned. But on ideology alone I think the market for the hard right is larger than for the centre right.
However, there is a significant fanbase who think she's doing great based on the vibe. So maybe she will make it to the GE to be slaughtered by the Burnhamator.
In the end, I suspect that when the Augean stables of the Trump White House finally get cleaned, there will be some kind of reckoning, so maybe Argentina, or even Mars might be the perfect place for the bastards.
Cameron may well have beaten Blair for most seats in 2010
To what extent are the long term NEETS veering away from or towards the occupations with specific shortages both WRT applications and further education and training? And why, with this vast pool of unused talent, are there so many shortage occupations?
He would certainly follow Papal teachings on inequality and economics though, even if socially being more liberal
My experience (trying to hire) of the more skilled labour market is that it seems to have broken down in both directions. A sea of bullshit between applicants and potential employers.
I semi-jokingly suggested writing the job specs, long hand, on parchment and place them upon boards outside the Royal Exchange. Engage a town cryer to announce them to the populace, and have a table setup nearby to do screening interviews.
Massive only converted while PM to marry his latest squeeze (and will abandon it when he divorces her) and Blair only officially converted after leaving office.
So, Reform gains in seats that were last up in 2023 may be partly offset by losses of some of their 2026 gains.
Another eleven crackers to go?
Edit - you would be on much firmer ground by saying some of the crimes attributed to Richard by Shakespeare actually were at the door of Edward IV (which they were, e.g. the murder of Henry VI, the death of Warwick and Edward Prince of Wales or the execution of the Duke of Clarence). But there were plenty of other crimes alleged against Richard that Shakespeare was oddly silent on, e.g. the kidnapping of the Countess of Oxford or the murder of St Leger and Colyngbourne.
Fairwood, Swansea
Lib Dem 29.3% (+19.9)
Labour 22.6% (-9.3)
Reform 17.0% (NEW)
Ind Dennis 11.5% (NEW)
Con 10.3% (-30.3)
Ind Ward 9.4% (NEW)
No PC (18.1) this time. Changes from 2022.
Lib Dem GAIN from Conservative
It's only domestic water customers that can't choose their supplier, and that is a political fudge because the water companies lobbied successfully against it, arguing that it would unwind cross-subsidies, for example to the 8% or so of domestic customers who don't pay their bills.
Pretty much the same argument they used to frustrate upstream unbundling and competition for water resources too.
I happen to know from a couple of highly placed sources that, on a couple of occasions, Ofwat came quite close to referring the whole industry to the CMA, hoping that it would break it up and introduce far more competition, as it did with gas in the 1990s, but in the end Ofwat chickened out.
But if we're ever to have a more effective water industry in this country, more competition and deregulation where possible must play an important part.
We used to joke that the only section of the electorate who would approve of the last government's record were well to do pensioners who welcomed mass migration.
What we need is stronger regulation, as Openreach showed.
From 2015. So who knows now.
https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/andy-burnham-i-lost-my-faith-because-of-church-s-obsession-with-sexuality
"Catholic social teaching underpins my politics, we did have to read the catechism at school but it is powerful and strong and right".
It was not bad.
In my experience evangelicals can often be mainly about logical propositional arguments, with a process reminiscent of New Atheism or Islam, and for Roman Catholics and non-evangelical types of Anglicans it is more about osmosis - values learnt from the performance of the gospel in the liturgy, and the practice of kindness in the worshipping community.
(Obviously we can point out where this does not work, but the same is true of any human community or organisation.)
I've not read many Papal Encyclicals or similar, except perhaps Vatican II related materials, and on particular questions as I find necessary. But many RC commentators imo have a scope and a distance that Protestants can lack.
I've generally picked up RC social type teaching from people implementing it, whether Trade Union Reps, hospital or industrial chaplains, people in intentional communities, or accounts from people who have been on various edges of the RC Church.
Murder of royalty had become quite common, at this point in English history.
It caused great controversy at the time.
Some members of the Detection Club (a group of British mystery writers) were so upset they reportedly considered expelling Christie from the group.
https://x.com/martinabettt/status/2060278296588243210
Excl: More "embarrassing" communications between Wes Streeting and Peter Mandelson are set to be made public next week.
While the former Health Secretary voluntarily published his direct WhatsApp messages with Mandelson in February, group chats were not included in the disclosure.
Government sources claim some of those unseen exchanges are "embarrassing" and expected to feature in the next tranche of Mandelson files when Parliament returns.
A spokesperson for Mr Streeting said: "Wes has handed everything over to the Cabinet Office and has nothing to hide."
On LinkedIn from time to time a recruiter complains about being ghosted by a company or a candidate not taking a job and they get it back in spades from people.
Recruitment companies are mostly trash.
It is somewhat puzzling that they do not apply the same logic to Richard and Edward V, despite the fact that the murder of Edward V would not even make Richard next in line for the throne, as he himself knew very well judging by the increasingly sophistic arguments he came up with to justify his holding it.
On the subject of the death of the princes, not just the Lord Chancellor of France. The people of London, and also the duke of Buckingham, clearly knew they were dead by the autumn of 1483. Michael Bennett makes the astute point that many people worked at the Tower of London and would therefore know whether the princes were still there, and would also have known if they had been moved. If they suddenly disappeared - and they clearly did - it could only be because they were murdered, and that would rapidly have been no secret. 'Medieval England was not a police state, where people could disappear for years and then turn up alive again.'
And, again, because killing an ex-king is a big deal, they could only have been murdered on Richard's orders. Indeed, the only other candidate named by contemporaries as being involved - Buckingham - seems, judging by his subsequent behaviour, to have opposed their murder.
In some ways though the more humdrum problems of the early Miss Marples are better detective fiction as a puzzle.
https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/2058542696046739460
IMO he has a conspiracy edge, and is quite Victorian.
And here's an AI summary of his thought, based on his substack:
https://claude.ai/share/0252b245-a54e-4f7e-bea4-3deffd323d88
I'll just quote one para:
Wright's intellectual project is sweeping — a full alternative political economy grounded in Catholic theology. Restore Britain's platform, by contrast, is primarily focused on immigration control, benefit reform, and tax cuts — the kind of policy-level agenda Wright seems to view as symptoms rather than causes of Britain's problems.
Arguments that it was Buckingham, Henry Tudor, or Lady Margaret Beaufort, are very convoluted.
That is what I do, you f**kwit!!! From a recruitment consultancy I'd worked through on and off for 20+years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/us/politics/criminal-inquiry-e-jean-carroll-trump-accusations.html
As to Amazon LEO - they will get a waiver from the FCC. Because they aren't frequency squatting but spending billions on trying to get the system up and running.
https://x.com/patrickkmaguire/status/2060299991311176118
You can't set up reservoirs, sewer, treatment plants etc up from scratch; they're long term, capital intensive, low margin businesses.
Your idea that alternate providers could crop up in the same manner as a broadband provider is absurd. No one would do it.
https://x.com/patrickkmaguire/status/2060299991311176118?s=20
Turned out the applicant had forged a reference from me.
The applicant had come through a recruitment agency so I rang the agency and complained. Was told it wasn't their business to check references, that was the job of the employer.
Hard words were exchanged.
The 'applicant 'stopped' being a pharmacist quite soon afterwards!
Very un Lib Demmy.
I wouldn't actually call that "lost his faith"; I'd call that "lost his faith in the current emphasis of the church leadership." There have always been a large chunk of Roman Catholics who have a loyalty to the Church but not to the Holy See,
But then I have quite broad definitions of such things, and movements described as eg "the church outside the church", "secular faith", "church without walls", "church OUT THERE", "church without religion" and more, have been everywhere for at least a century.
Labour at 17% in the next election, third behind the Tories, would be delicious.
Water should be a long term, capital intensive, low margin business. And that's an honourable thing to be, a useful part of the economy and a valid part of the investment ecosystem. That rather implies keeping it out of the hands of the kind of PE wizards who re-engineer the finances to extract massive mountains of money before the company falls over.
How you do that, remembering that PE wizards are clever and it's awfully hard to come up with rules that can't be circumvented, especially when money can leave the country in the blink of an eye... that's the tricky part.
He also takes a few voters from Reform and the LDs too but to a lesser extent
(For the record: I didn't recognize any of the seven toughest words in the contest.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/05/28/scripps-national-spelling-bee-2026-live-updates-words-definitions-finals/ )
In terms of governance, I suspect that Starmer to Burnham will be a bit of a downgrade, but in political terms a significant upgrade. But I'm not particularly the target audience.
Interesting the arrow points to the Lib Dems rather than Restore...
Good to hear.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0px74kznxo
"No second retrial for men accused of airport brawl"
One of them has been convicted on another count; the other gets off.
🗣️ ‘But it’s in northern France.’
🚨 Margaret Thatcher being entirely herself in November 1996 in this brilliant anecdote from Chris Patten's diaries, serialised in the Daily Telegraph on this day, 29 May, in 2022.
https://x.com/exPremiers/status/2060247265436934638
"He [Lilley] has been a long-term critic of the European Union and backed Brexit in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. He was supportive of the Eurosceptic pressure group Leave Means Leave."
American Dictator !
https://e-upgames.com/products/american-dictator-board-game