A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.
Council rejects 100 homes.
Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.
Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.
End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.
we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..
We've arrived at this point almost entirely by virtually unrestricted immigration and given the birth rate we could very easily shrink our population back again by making further immigration almost impossible.
That is a much better deal for almost everyone than continually concreting over the country to build horrible Barratt new builds without any accompanying infrastructure.
No more immigration, almost no more new housing, and in 15 years time housing will be affordable again. As a bonus, we can fill in the various holes in our labour force by redeployment of the people who are building houses to cope with immigration.
No one is building homes to cope with immigration, we aren’t building enough homes because not enough people can afford new ones. Largely flatlining wages after inflation , higher prices and supply and demand mean there are too few buyers who can afford them.
If we stop immigration the average age will be 45 in 2040 with far too few young people and a rapidly ageing population. Are the pensioners going to build their own houses.
In this scenario under sixteens would drop from 18% to 14%, the working population from 62% to 55% and the over 67’s would grow from about 19% to 29%…
So dependency would go from roughly 2:1 to close to 1:1.
Hey Presto not only no need for new houses with a collapsed economy no money to build them either!
Peter.
We've spent 25 years trying the approach of allowing mass immigration to increase the working age population in the face of what would otherwise be a natural decline and it has led to poor productivity growth, stagnant wages, inflated asset values and political instability. It's about time the people who advocated it learned to have some humility.
We have had 25 years of large scale immigration. We have increased the working age population. We have so far managed to avoid the economic cliff edge of a naturally declining population. We have had low productivity and low wage growth.
And you have abjectly failed to establish a causal link between them.
Other Countries with high immigration have had productivity growth; the US for one.
Developed Countries like Japan have had slow wage growth and little immigration.
Peter.
The onus isn't on me to prove a causal link. I have democracy on my side.
No you have Populism and what’s popular isn’t always right and what’s right isn’t always popular.
Essential you are adopting the Trumpian logic, that for something to be true the majority just has to believe it.
Much like his Meet the Press walk out. His evidence consisted of only what he believed, nothing more.
I am old fashioned, I like evidence based argument and still believe in objective truth.
Peter.
That’s not Trumpoan logic. It’s politics.
We’ve had governance by opinion poll for many years.
It hasn't worked very well.
So, you don't like democracy then?
The problem is people having factually wrong opinions. On immigration for example you can legitimately want less of it, or be comfortable with a high level. But it's a problem if people think that immigration is currently very high when it isn't, or that most new housing goes to immigrants when it doesn't, and politicians devise policies based on those demonstrably wrong perceptions.
I think your biggest problem (and that of your liberal ilk) is that you think you're always right - and any contrary opinion is therefore "wrong" - and are totally blind to the fact you have an ideology of your own; you genuinely think the facts support it.
I'd anchor that ideology around the complete fungibility of all individuals, and championing things like choosing your own identity and free movement regardless of any evidence of the social problems this causes.
We all suffer from cognitive bias, whether we are liberal or illiberal. We get comfort from people who think like us and get frustrated by people who don't. We all look for evidence that supports our views and ignore evidence that doesn't. We all do.
The remedy is to be aware of that behaviour and actively manage it when it comes to evidence.
But our opinions also depend on our values and these are not evidence based but deeply and emotionally ingrained. It takes a lot to shift them.
So we can amicably disagree when it comes to values, but we shouldn't accept "alternative facts" when the evidence contradicts them.
My wife likes to say that I always think I am right, which she appears to find irritating. My response is always, of course I think I am right. Everybody thinks they are right. If I thought I was wrong I would have changed my mind. This is a criticism I really can't understand.
Being right, so that others are wrong, only applies when its objective. If its subjective, which is more common, whilst you may still be right, others with different views, tastes and values that create different answers can also be equally right, even more right if assessing something for a group. At a complete outside guess she may be moaning about the latter and wording it with insufficient clarity.
A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.
Council rejects 100 homes.
Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.
Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.
End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.
we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..
We've arrived at this point almost entirely by virtually unrestricted immigration and given the birth rate we could very easily shrink our population back again by making further immigration almost impossible.
That is a much better deal for almost everyone than continually concreting over the country to build horrible Barratt new builds without any accompanying infrastructure.
No more immigration, almost no more new housing, and in 15 years time housing will be affordable again. As a bonus, we can fill in the various holes in our labour force by redeployment of the people who are building houses to cope with immigration.
No one is building homes to cope with immigration, we aren’t building enough homes because not enough people can afford new ones. Largely flatlining wages after inflation , higher prices and supply and demand mean there are too few buyers who can afford them.
If we stop immigration the average age will be 45 in 2040 with far too few young people and a rapidly ageing population. Are the pensioners going to build their own houses.
In this scenario under sixteens would drop from 18% to 14%, the working population from 62% to 55% and the over 67’s would grow from about 19% to 29%…
So dependency would go from roughly 2:1 to close to 1:1.
Hey Presto not only no need for new houses with a collapsed economy no money to build them either!
Peter.
We've spent 25 years trying the approach of allowing mass immigration to increase the working age population in the face of what would otherwise be a natural decline and it has led to poor productivity growth, stagnant wages, inflated asset values and political instability. It's about time the people who advocated it learned to have some humility.
We have had 25 years of large scale immigration. We have increased the working age population. We have so far managed to avoid the economic cliff edge of a naturally declining population. We have had low productivity and low wage growth.
And you have abjectly failed to establish a causal link between them.
Other Countries with high immigration have had productivity growth; the US for one.
Developed Countries like Japan have had slow wage growth and little immigration.
Peter.
The onus isn't on me to prove a causal link. I have democracy on my side.
No you have Populism and what’s popular isn’t always right and what’s right isn’t always popular.
Essential you are adopting the Trumpian logic, that for something to be true the majority just has to believe it.
Much like his Meet the Press walk out. His evidence consisted of only what he believed, nothing more.
I am old fashioned, I like evidence based argument and still believe in objective truth.
Peter.
That’s not Trumpoan logic. It’s politics.
We’ve had governance by opinion poll for many years.
It hasn't worked very well.
So, you don't like democracy then?
The problem is people having factually wrong opinions. On immigration for example you can legitimately want less of it, or be comfortable with a high level. But it's a problem if people think that immigration is currently very high when it isn't, or that most new housing goes to immigrants when it doesn't, and politicians devise policies based on those demonstrably wrong perceptions.
I think your biggest problem (and that of your liberal ilk) is that you think you're always right - and any contrary opinion is therefore "wrong" - and are totally blind to the fact you have an ideology of your own; you genuinely think the facts support it.
I'd anchor that ideology around the complete fungibility of all individuals, and championing things like choosing your own identity and free movement regardless of any evidence of the social problems this causes.
We all suffer from cognitive bias, whether we are liberal or illiberal. We get comfort from people who think like us and get frustrated by people who don't. We all look for evidence that supports our views and ignore evidence that doesn't. We all do.
The remedy is to be aware of that behaviour and actively manage it when it comes to evidence.
But our opinions also depend on our values and these are not evidence based but deeply and emotionally ingrained. It takes a lot to shift them.
So we can amicably disagree when it comes to values, but we shouldn't accept "alternative facts" when the evidence contradicts them.
My wife likes to say that I always think I am right, which she appears to find irritating. My response is always, of course I think I am right. Everybody thinks they are right. If I thought I was wrong I would have changed my mind. This is a criticism I really can't understand.
Being right, so that others are wrong, only applies when its objective. If its subjective, which is more common, whilst you may still be right, others with different views, tastes and values that create different answers can also be equally right, even more right if assessing something for a group. At a complete outside guess she may be moaning about the latter and wording it with insufficient clarity.
Interesting stuff in the FT about the gender divide in Makerfield polling. Notably that Survation have Burnham +3 with men and +17 with women. Which demonstrates the reason why this contest long ago stopped being competitive is because Reform picked a knobber and then tried to style it out.
Yes, but given that Farage created the Reform party and still largely owns it, they're kind of stuck with Nigel.
Oh, you meant their candidate in Makerfield?
(But seriously, folks... the question of why Reform keep picking terrible people as candidates isn't just down to bad luck or poor vetting. Something about the party systematically attracts a certain sort of worst person.
No, not every Reformer is awful, and other parties have awful people as well. But there's a definite pattern in the data.)
Not every Reformer is awful, true, but the last time I saw Kruger he was explaining Kenyon's interesting public stance towards Vorderman and looked like a hostage uncertain as to how exactly this mess had occurred to him and how on earth an upstanding Etonian evangelical finds himself temporising with a foot soldier of Geiseric.
Lots of decent people support Reform. Most of them have the limited sense required to do so at a substantial distance with a wary eye on the the exit. Potential candidates they are not.
Can you be a decent person and support Reform? Similar question to can you be a decent person and support MAGA
Yes, WRT Reform. Political imagination and scope varies. Many decent people find it hard to look at a big picture and are attracted to something which claims to be able to resolve immediate and local difficulties and appeal to a degree of legitimate self interest.
So, for example, a decent person might hear what Farage has said about ILR and be able to apply it to some notional group of benefits junkies and crooks, but not apply it to surgeons and engineers.
Politics is not most people's career or hobby. It is the job of those who seek power to communicate brilliantly to the non-political so as to keep the fanatics and extremes at bay. Which is why those in Labour who prefer power to opposition are clutching at the straw which is Burnham.
As to MAGA. No idea. Words fail me.
MAGA and Reform are the same thing. MAGA looks worse to our eyes here because its American context is alien to us. Both movements attract some people who are perfectly decent in their day to day behaviour and attitudes, just as other parties or movements that we might regard with horror now attracted support from decent enough people in the past.
I don't think they're quite the same thing. Clearly there's a large overlap, but Farage is but a pale shadow of Trump, and Reform lack the irrational and absolute dedication of a substantial core of voters towards their charismatic leader.
A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.
Council rejects 100 homes.
Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.
Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.
End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.
we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..
We've arrived at this point almost entirely by virtually unrestricted immigration and given the birth rate we could very easily shrink our population back again by making further immigration almost impossible.
That is a much better deal for almost everyone than continually concreting over the country to build horrible Barratt new builds without any accompanying infrastructure.
No more immigration, almost no more new housing, and in 15 years time housing will be affordable again. As a bonus, we can fill in the various holes in our labour force by redeployment of the people who are building houses to cope with immigration.
No one is building homes to cope with immigration, we aren’t building enough homes because not enough people can afford new ones. Largely flatlining wages after inflation , higher prices and supply and demand mean there are too few buyers who can afford them.
If we stop immigration the average age will be 45 in 2040 with far too few young people and a rapidly ageing population. Are the pensioners going to build their own houses.
In this scenario under sixteens would drop from 18% to 14%, the working population from 62% to 55% and the over 67’s would grow from about 19% to 29%…
So dependency would go from roughly 2:1 to close to 1:1.
Hey Presto not only no need for new houses with a collapsed economy no money to build them either!
Peter.
We've spent 25 years trying the approach of allowing mass immigration to increase the working age population in the face of what would otherwise be a natural decline and it has led to poor productivity growth, stagnant wages, inflated asset values and political instability. It's about time the people who advocated it learned to have some humility.
We have had 25 years of large scale immigration. We have increased the working age population. We have so far managed to avoid the economic cliff edge of a naturally declining population. We have had low productivity and low wage growth.
And you have abjectly failed to establish a causal link between them.
Other Countries with high immigration have had productivity growth; the US for one.
Developed Countries like Japan have had slow wage growth and little immigration.
Peter.
The onus isn't on me to prove a causal link. I have democracy on my side.
No you have Populism and what’s popular isn’t always right and what’s right isn’t always popular.
Essential you are adopting the Trumpian logic, that for something to be true the majority just has to believe it.
Much like his Meet the Press walk out. His evidence consisted of only what he believed, nothing more.
I am old fashioned, I like evidence based argument and still believe in objective truth.
Peter.
That’s not Trumpoan logic. It’s politics.
We’ve had governance by opinion poll for many years.
It hasn't worked very well.
So, you don't like democracy then?
The problem is people having factually wrong opinions. On immigration for example you can legitimately want less of it, or be comfortable with a high level. But it's a problem if people think that immigration is currently very high when it isn't, or that most new housing goes to immigrants when it doesn't, and politicians devise policies based on those demonstrably wrong perceptions.
I think your biggest problem (and that of your liberal ilk) is that you think you're always right - and any contrary opinion is therefore "wrong" - and are totally blind to the fact you have an ideology of your own; you genuinely think the facts support it.
I'd anchor that ideology around the complete fungibility of all individuals, and championing things like choosing your own identity and free movement regardless of any evidence of the social problems this causes.
We all suffer from cognitive bias, whether we are liberal or illiberal. We get comfort from people who think like us and get frustrated by people who don't. We all look for evidence that supports our views and ignore evidence that doesn't. We all do.
The remedy is to be aware of that behaviour and actively manage it when it comes to evidence.
But our opinions also depend on our values and these are not evidence based but deeply and emotionally ingrained. It takes a lot to shift them.
So we can amicably disagree when it comes to values, but we shouldn't accept "alternative facts" when the evidence contradicts them.
My wife likes to say that I always think I am right, which she appears to find irritating. My response is always, of course I think I am right. Everybody thinks they are right. If I thought I was wrong I would have changed my mind. This is a criticism I really can't understand.
I completely agree with you in your criticism of that particular criticism, for the reasons you give. What I think people who say that mean is that 'you won't entertain the possibility that you might be wrong' - this is a perfectly reasonable criticism, because we should always be prepared to consider that the world might be other than we think it is. And we can all think of people who stick dogmatically to a position long after it has been demonstrated that the foundations for that view are erroneous. But next time she tells you that you always think you're right, I wouldn't necessarily advocate explaining why she is wrong and what she should be saying.
That murdering people in the street has been privatised. It’s typical of this government that they refuse to protect a core industry - in this case local, tradition terroristic violence.
A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.
Council rejects 100 homes.
Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.
Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.
End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.
we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..
We've arrived at this point almost entirely by virtually unrestricted immigration and given the birth rate we could very easily shrink our population back again by making further immigration almost impossible.
That is a much better deal for almost everyone than continually concreting over the country to build horrible Barratt new builds without any accompanying infrastructure.
No more immigration, almost no more new housing, and in 15 years time housing will be affordable again. As a bonus, we can fill in the various holes in our labour force by redeployment of the people who are building houses to cope with immigration.
No one is building homes to cope with immigration, we aren’t building enough homes because not enough people can afford new ones. Largely flatlining wages after inflation , higher prices and supply and demand mean there are too few buyers who can afford them.
If we stop immigration the average age will be 45 in 2040 with far too few young people and a rapidly ageing population. Are the pensioners going to build their own houses.
In this scenario under sixteens would drop from 18% to 14%, the working population from 62% to 55% and the over 67’s would grow from about 19% to 29%…
So dependency would go from roughly 2:1 to close to 1:1.
Hey Presto not only no need for new houses with a collapsed economy no money to build them either!
Peter.
We've spent 25 years trying the approach of allowing mass immigration to increase the working age population in the face of what would otherwise be a natural decline and it has led to poor productivity growth, stagnant wages, inflated asset values and political instability. It's about time the people who advocated it learned to have some humility.
We have had 25 years of large scale immigration. We have increased the working age population. We have so far managed to avoid the economic cliff edge of a naturally declining population. We have had low productivity and low wage growth.
And you have abjectly failed to establish a causal link between them.
Other Countries with high immigration have had productivity growth; the US for one.
Developed Countries like Japan have had slow wage growth and little immigration.
Peter.
The onus isn't on me to prove a causal link. I have democracy on my side.
No you have Populism and what’s popular isn’t always right and what’s right isn’t always popular.
Essential you are adopting the Trumpian logic, that for something to be true the majority just has to believe it.
Much like his Meet the Press walk out. His evidence consisted of only what he believed, nothing more.
I am old fashioned, I like evidence based argument and still believe in objective truth.
Peter.
That’s not Trumpoan logic. It’s politics.
We’ve had governance by opinion poll for many years.
It hasn't worked very well.
So, you don't like democracy then?
The problem is people having factually wrong opinions. On immigration for example you can legitimately want less of it, or be comfortable with a high level. But it's a problem if people think that immigration is currently very high when it isn't, or that most new housing goes to immigrants when it doesn't, and politicians devise policies based on those demonstrably wrong perceptions.
I think your biggest problem (and that of your liberal ilk) is that you think you're always right - and any contrary opinion is therefore "wrong" - and are totally blind to the fact you have an ideology of your own; you genuinely think the facts support it.
I'd anchor that ideology around the complete fungibility of all individuals, and championing things like choosing your own identity and free movement regardless of any evidence of the social problems this causes.
We all suffer from cognitive bias, whether we are liberal or illiberal. We get comfort from people who think like us and get frustrated by people who don't. We all look for evidence that supports our views and ignore evidence that doesn't. We all do.
The remedy is to be aware of that behaviour and actively manage it when it comes to evidence.
But our opinions also depend on our values and these are not evidence based but deeply and emotionally ingrained. It takes a lot to shift them.
So we can amicably disagree when it comes to values, but we shouldn't accept "alternative facts" when the evidence contradicts them.
Totally, my contention is that category of people think they're someone immune from it.
A bit more humility wouldn't go amiss.
My contention is that there should be a greater respect for demonstrable measurable facts. "Humility" in accepting incorrect facts because people believing them are somehow deemed more sincere than I am is not something I subscribe to. Guilty as charged I suppose.
You are one of the ones who need it most. You confuse opinion with facts, and select the ones that confirm your opinions. It's extremely arrogant.
The people this relates to are very quickly self-identifying themselves on this thread.
Don't we all do that? Even honest yeoman Conservatives.*
* @williamglenn confirmed earlier he does not need to provide references to confirm his narrative. I am assuming the word of Trump or Farage is citation enough.
I got a troll flag last night for genuinely defending Badenoch.
I won't be doing that again.
Totally deserved.
Pete is one of the finest posters on this board. Giving him a troll flag is pathetic.
I understand @Dura_Ace and his concern. An even half hearted attempt at backing up Badenoch's oddly constructed CV deserves a flag from any non-Conservative. Oddly, I suspect I got one from a Kemi fanboi.
I got a troll flag last night for genuinely defending Badenoch.
I won't be doing that again.
Totally deserved.
Pete is one of the finest posters on this board. Giving him a troll flag is pathetic.
I understand @Dura_Ace and his concern. An even half hearted attempt at backing up Badenoch's oddly constructed CV deserves a flag from any non-Conservative. Oddly, I suspect I got one from a Kemi fanboi.
I'm afraid we are at the point where even the slightest and mildest criticism of Badenoch is jumped on by her "fanbois" as you call them.
The desperate desire of the Conservatives to become relevant again is such any kind of objective assessment of their performance (of which there was plenty in the 2019-24 period) is no longer allowed especially by their own side.
Whether they see Badenoch as the 21st century incarnation of the Blessed Margaret or hope she will be may be part of it, I don't know, but at 17-19% of the poll, the Conservatives clearly have a long road in front of them.
Shocking story. The new proposed law against drug gang cuckooing has a maximum sentence of 5 years - that is way too low, should be more, at least 20, if not life. I don't see a substantial difference to kidnapping which comes with maximum life sentencing.
I'm not sure the sentence matters a great deal compared with the ability (and willingness) of victim and police to act swiftly to end cuckooing rather than let it continue for years in fear of reprisals and while the police gather evidence against the gangs. We need the police to act now and forget about the bigger picture.
The problem for the victim is first the threat of physical reprisals but more importantly, since they are often addicted, risk of cutting off their own drugs supply. To that end, it is not wholly distinct from the crime which we cannot discuss in that the victims are often, at least at first, partly complicit.
But from the viewpoint of the gangs, the value of cuckooing is in providing a distribution or retail centre for their wares so any sentence at all is enough. To be cynical, keep sentences low enough to be rushed through magistrates courts.
I'm just putting in an objection to a planning proposal. Along the way I have discovered that Erewash Borough Council do not publish objections they receive on their website; to see them you have to make a trip during opening hours to the Council Office, or perhaps put in an FOI - which I think would not deliver a response within the consultation period.
My own Council in Ashfield have published them with names and addresses redacted for about 20 years.
What do other places do?
(My interest is piqued because this makes it more difficult for disabled people to engage, as they are lumped with driving to the Council office - but 40% of disabled adults do not have a driving license, or taking a taxi / Uber trip each way, which costs up to £20, and disabled people are more often in poverty. Or they can find another method, such as a long mobility aid trip, which up here is dodgy because of road conditions).
I'm just putting in an objection to a planning proposal. Along the way I have discovered that Erewash Borough Council do not publish objections they receive on their website; to see them you have to make a trip during opening hours to the Council Office, or perhaps put in an FOI - which I think would not deliver a response within the consultation period.
My own Council in Ashfield have published them with names and addresses redacted for about 20 years.
What do other places do?
(My interest is piqued because this makes it more difficult for disabled people to engage, as they are lumped with driving to the Council office - but 40% of disabled adults do not have a driving license, or taking a taxi / Uber trip each way, whcih costs up to £20. Or finding another method, such as a long mobiity aid trip, whcih up here is dodgy because of road conditions).
I got a troll flag last night for genuinely defending Badenoch.
I won't be doing that again.
Totally deserved.
Pete is one of the finest posters on this board. Giving him a troll flag is pathetic.
I understand Dura_Ace and his concern. An even half hearted attempt at backing up Badenoch's oddly constructed CV deserves a flag from any non-Conservative. Oddly, I suspect I got one from a Kemi fanboi.
Doing a terrible job of defending someone has long been part of the political dark arts. Perhaps that’s the reason for the flag.
Interesting stuff in the FT about the gender divide in Makerfield polling. Notably that Survation have Burnham +3 with men and +17 with women. Which demonstrates the reason why this contest long ago stopped being competitive is because Reform picked a knobber and then tried to style it out.
Yes, but given that Farage created the Reform party and still largely owns it, they're kind of stuck with Nigel.
Oh, you meant their candidate in Makerfield?
(But seriously, folks... the question of why Reform keep picking terrible people as candidates isn't just down to bad luck or poor vetting. Something about the party systematically attracts a certain sort of worst person.
No, not every Reformer is awful, and other parties have awful people as well. But there's a definite pattern in the data.)
Not every Reformer is awful, true, but the last time I saw Kruger he was explaining Kenyon's interesting public stance towards Vorderman and looked like a hostage uncertain as to how exactly this mess had occurred to him and how on earth an upstanding Etonian evangelical finds himself temporising with a foot soldier of Geiseric.
Lots of decent people support Reform. Most of them have the limited sense required to do so at a substantial distance with a wary eye on the the exit. Potential candidates they are not.
Can you be a decent person and support Reform? Similar question to can you be a decent person and support MAGA
Yes, WRT Reform. Political imagination and scope varies. Many decent people find it hard to look at a big picture and are attracted to something which claims to be able to resolve immediate and local difficulties and appeal to a degree of legitimate self interest.
So, for example, a decent person might hear what Farage has said about ILR and be able to apply it to some notional group of benefits junkies and crooks, but not apply it to surgeons and engineers.
Politics is not most people's career or hobby. It is the job of those who seek power to communicate brilliantly to the non-political so as to keep the fanatics and extremes at bay. Which is why those in Labour who prefer power to opposition are clutching at the straw which is Burnham.
As to MAGA. No idea. Words fail me.
MAGA and Reform are the same thing. MAGA looks worse to our eyes here because its American context is alien to us. Both movements attract some people who are perfectly decent in their day to day behaviour and attitudes, just as other parties or movements that we might regard with horror now attracted support from decent enough people in the past.
Also... Reform is still mostly words and plans, some of them confusing and contradictory. I don't think I would enjoy having a Reform government, but there aren't many actions to judge them by yet.
With MAGA, we all saw how they behaved 2016-20, and how they are behaving now. There really is no excuse for giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Interesting stuff in the FT about the gender divide in Makerfield polling. Notably that Survation have Burnham +3 with men and +17 with women. Which demonstrates the reason why this contest long ago stopped being competitive is because Reform picked a knobber and then tried to style it out.
Yes, but given that Farage created the Reform party and still largely owns it, they're kind of stuck with Nigel.
Oh, you meant their candidate in Makerfield?
(But seriously, folks... the question of why Reform keep picking terrible people as candidates isn't just down to bad luck or poor vetting. Something about the party systematically attracts a certain sort of worst person.
No, not every Reformer is awful, and other parties have awful people as well. But there's a definite pattern in the data.)
Not every Reformer is awful, true, but the last time I saw Kruger he was explaining Kenyon's interesting public stance towards Vorderman and looked like a hostage uncertain as to how exactly this mess had occurred to him and how on earth an upstanding Etonian evangelical finds himself temporising with a foot soldier of Geiseric.
Lots of decent people support Reform. Most of them have the limited sense required to do so at a substantial distance with a wary eye on the the exit. Potential candidates they are not.
Can you be a decent person and support Reform? Similar question to can you be a decent person and support MAGA
Yes, WRT Reform. Political imagination and scope varies. Many decent people find it hard to look at a big picture and are attracted to something which claims to be able to resolve immediate and local difficulties and appeal to a degree of legitimate self interest.
So, for example, a decent person might hear what Farage has said about ILR and be able to apply it to some notional group of benefits junkies and crooks, but not apply it to surgeons and engineers.
Politics is not most people's career or hobby. It is the job of those who seek power to communicate brilliantly to the non-political so as to keep the fanatics and extremes at bay. Which is why those in Labour who prefer power to opposition are clutching at the straw which is Burnham.
As to MAGA. No idea. Words fail me.
MAGA and Reform are the same thing. MAGA looks worse to our eyes here because its American context is alien to us. Both movements attract some people who are perfectly decent in their day to day behaviour and attitudes, just as other parties or movements that we might regard with horror now attracted support from decent enough people in the past.
I don't think they're quite the same thing. Clearly there's a large overlap, but Farage is but a pale shadow of Trump, and Reform lack the irrational and absolute dedication of a substantial core of voters towards their charismatic leader.
I think they are absolutely the same thing. Both are built on social media. Both are populist movements attacking the liberal elite. Both major on immigration. Both are supportive of Putin's Russia. Both are hostile to the EU. Both are based on a nostalgic idea of their country's previous greatness that has been destroyed by immigration and the liberal elite. Both are hostile to trans rights and BLM. Both talk about cutting the size of the state while not touching entitlement programmes relied on by their supporters. Both are backed by serious money (often in fact the same money). Both are big on explicitly "Christian" messaging (while not being especially close to Christ's actual teachings). Of course they present differently because the US and UK are different countries with different cultures. But once you strip out the superficial differences their substantially shared DNA is obvious.
A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.
Council rejects 100 homes.
Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.
Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.
End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.
we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..
We've arrived at this point almost entirely by virtually unrestricted immigration and given the birth rate we could very easily shrink our population back again by making further immigration almost impossible.
That is a much better deal for almost everyone than continually concreting over the country to build horrible Barratt new builds without any accompanying infrastructure.
No more immigration, almost no more new housing, and in 15 years time housing will be affordable again. As a bonus, we can fill in the various holes in our labour force by redeployment of the people who are building houses to cope with immigration.
No one is building homes to cope with immigration, we aren’t building enough homes because not enough people can afford new ones. Largely flatlining wages after inflation , higher prices and supply and demand mean there are too few buyers who can afford them.
If we stop immigration the average age will be 45 in 2040 with far too few young people and a rapidly ageing population. Are the pensioners going to build their own houses.
In this scenario under sixteens would drop from 18% to 14%, the working population from 62% to 55% and the over 67’s would grow from about 19% to 29%…
So dependency would go from roughly 2:1 to close to 1:1.
Hey Presto not only no need for new houses with a collapsed economy no money to build them either!
Peter.
We've spent 25 years trying the approach of allowing mass immigration to increase the working age population in the face of what would otherwise be a natural decline and it has led to poor productivity growth, stagnant wages, inflated asset values and political instability. It's about time the people who advocated it learned to have some humility.
We have had 25 years of large scale immigration. We have increased the working age population. We have so far managed to avoid the economic cliff edge of a naturally declining population. We have had low productivity and low wage growth.
And you have abjectly failed to establish a causal link between them.
Other Countries with high immigration have had productivity growth; the US for one.
Developed Countries like Japan have had slow wage growth and little immigration.
Peter.
The onus isn't on me to prove a causal link. I have democracy on my side.
No you have Populism and what’s popular isn’t always right and what’s right isn’t always popular.
Essential you are adopting the Trumpian logic, that for something to be true the majority just has to believe it.
Much like his Meet the Press walk out. His evidence consisted of only what he believed, nothing more.
I am old fashioned, I like evidence based argument and still believe in objective truth.
Peter.
That’s not Trumpoan logic. It’s politics.
We’ve had governance by opinion poll for many years.
It hasn't worked very well.
So, you don't like democracy then?
The problem is people having factually wrong opinions. On immigration for example you can legitimately want less of it, or be comfortable with a high level. But it's a problem if people think that immigration is currently very high when it isn't, or that most new housing goes to immigrants when it doesn't, and politicians devise policies based on those demonstrably wrong perceptions.
I think your biggest problem (and that of your liberal ilk) is that you think you're always right - and any contrary opinion is therefore "wrong" - and are totally blind to the fact you have an ideology of your own; you genuinely think the facts support it.
I'd anchor that ideology around the complete fungibility of all individuals, and championing things like choosing your own identity and free movement regardless of any evidence of the social problems this causes.
We all suffer from cognitive bias, whether we are liberal or illiberal. We get comfort from people who think like us and get frustrated by people who don't. We all look for evidence that supports our views and ignore evidence that doesn't. We all do.
The remedy is to be aware of that behaviour and actively manage it when it comes to evidence.
But our opinions also depend on our values and these are not evidence based but deeply and emotionally ingrained. It takes a lot to shift them.
So we can amicably disagree when it comes to values, but we shouldn't accept "alternative facts" when the evidence contradicts them.
Totally, my contention is that category of people think they're someone immune from it.
A bit more humility wouldn't go amiss.
My contention is that there should be a greater respect for demonstrable measurable facts. "Humility" in accepting incorrect facts because people believing them are somehow deemed more sincere than I am is not something I subscribe to. Guilty as charged I suppose.
You are one of the ones who need it most. You confuse opinion with facts, and select the ones that confirm your opinions. It's extremely arrogant.
The people this relates to are very quickly self-identifying themselves on this thread.
Obviously I think this accusation is a nonsense. But it's genuinely tricky to engage with misinformation sensitively and effectively, and I'm not particularly good at it
I'm not diving in, but is this not in essence how we all develop our opinions, and how opinions turn into 'facts' over time. In some sense a fact is a widely accepted opinion, backed with widely accepted evidence.
I'm just putting in an objection to a planning proposal. Along the way I have discovered that Erewash Borough Council do not publish objections they receive on their website; to see them you have to make a trip during opening hours to the Council Office, or perhaps put in an FOI - which I think would not deliver a response within the consultation period.
My own Council in Ashfield have published them with names and addresses redacted for about 20 years.
What do other places do?
(My interest is piqued because this makes it more difficult for disabled people to engage, as they are lumped with driving to the Council office - but 40% of disabled adults do not have a driving license, or taking a taxi / Uber trip each way, whcih costs up to £20. Or finding another method, such as a long mobiity aid trip, whcih up here is dodgy because of road conditions).
Why are you opposing development?
Why does it matter why he is objecting? He may have valid reasons, he may not, but it is his right to do so and he makes a very valid point regarding access. I find it astounding they do not publish them on their web site. I have no memory of local councils not doing so it has been so common for so long.
And if memory serves me correctly Matt has long been an advocate and campaigner for mobility access so I can see how this would really annoy him.
A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.
Council rejects 100 homes.
Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.
Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.
End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.
we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..
We've arrived at this point almost entirely by virtually unrestricted immigration and given the birth rate we could very easily shrink our population back again by making further immigration almost impossible.
That is a much better deal for almost everyone than continually concreting over the country to build horrible Barratt new builds without any accompanying infrastructure.
No more immigration, almost no more new housing, and in 15 years time housing will be affordable again. As a bonus, we can fill in the various holes in our labour force by redeployment of the people who are building houses to cope with immigration.
No one is building homes to cope with immigration, we aren’t building enough homes because not enough people can afford new ones. Largely flatlining wages after inflation , higher prices and supply and demand mean there are too few buyers who can afford them.
If we stop immigration the average age will be 45 in 2040 with far too few young people and a rapidly ageing population. Are the pensioners going to build their own houses.
In this scenario under sixteens would drop from 18% to 14%, the working population from 62% to 55% and the over 67’s would grow from about 19% to 29%…
So dependency would go from roughly 2:1 to close to 1:1.
Hey Presto not only no need for new houses with a collapsed economy no money to build them either!
Peter.
We've spent 25 years trying the approach of allowing mass immigration to increase the working age population in the face of what would otherwise be a natural decline and it has led to poor productivity growth, stagnant wages, inflated asset values and political instability. It's about time the people who advocated it learned to have some humility.
We have had 25 years of large scale immigration. We have increased the working age population. We have so far managed to avoid the economic cliff edge of a naturally declining population. We have had low productivity and low wage growth.
And you have abjectly failed to establish a causal link between them.
Other Countries with high immigration have had productivity growth; the US for one.
Developed Countries like Japan have had slow wage growth and little immigration.
Peter.
The onus isn't on me to prove a causal link. I have democracy on my side.
No you have Populism and what’s popular isn’t always right and what’s right isn’t always popular.
Essential you are adopting the Trumpian logic, that for something to be true the majority just has to believe it.
Much like his Meet the Press walk out. His evidence consisted of only what he believed, nothing more.
I am old fashioned, I like evidence based argument and still believe in objective truth.
Peter.
That’s not Trumpoan logic. It’s politics.
We’ve had governance by opinion poll for many years.
It hasn't worked very well.
So, you don't like democracy then?
The problem is people having factually wrong opinions. On immigration for example you can legitimately want less of it, or be comfortable with a high level. But it's a problem if people think that immigration is currently very high when it isn't, or that most new housing goes to immigrants when it doesn't, and politicians devise policies based on those demonstrably wrong perceptions.
I think your biggest problem (and that of your liberal ilk) is that you think you're always right - and any contrary opinion is therefore "wrong" - and are totally blind to the fact you have an ideology of your own; you genuinely think the facts support it.
I'd anchor that ideology around the complete fungibility of all individuals, and championing things like choosing your own identity and free movement regardless of any evidence of the social problems this causes.
We all suffer from cognitive bias, whether we are liberal or illiberal. We get comfort from people who think like us and get frustrated by people who don't. We all look for evidence that supports our views and ignore evidence that doesn't. We all do.
The remedy is to be aware of that behaviour and actively manage it when it comes to evidence.
But our opinions also depend on our values and these are not evidence based but deeply and emotionally ingrained. It takes a lot to shift them.
So we can amicably disagree when it comes to values, but we shouldn't accept "alternative facts" when the evidence contradicts them.
My wife likes to say that I always think I am right, which she appears to find irritating. My response is always, of course I think I am right. Everybody thinks they are right. If I thought I was wrong I would have changed my mind. This is a criticism I really can't understand.
Yes. But still. Try disagreeing with my Dad about anything.
There's a difference between thinking you are right, and dismissing any contradiction a priori.
The second thing, is to be clear about what it is you are disagreeing about. One of the reasons people are often so aggressive in response to a correction of the facts is that they perceive it to be an attack on their beliefs. And that's because political debate is often structured as, "you are wrong about this fact, therefore you must change your opinion and agree with me."
MAGA and Reform are the same thing. MAGA looks worse to our eyes here because its American context is alien to us. Both movements attract some people who are perfectly decent in their day to day behaviour and attitudes, just as other parties or movements that we might regard with horror now attracted support from decent enough people in the past.
Sure. I met a group of Reform canvassers in Makerfield, who were perfectly amiable types - one said nervously that he hoped the best person would win, and if that was Andy, fine.
It's particularly a problem for newish parties. Do they appeal to existing mainstream supporters? Then they're seen as retreads (Reform has this problem with ex-Tories). Or do they go for disillusioned types? In which case they'll find themselves with a bunch of people, some of whom have decidedly odd, even repulsive, opinions, which may not be immediately obvious. When you have to select candidates in a hurry, some of the latter will slip through.
I'm inclined to cut new parties some slack, if they take action when they've got it wrong. Not easy in a by-election though!
Your final comment: yes, that’s what I was thinking when I read those Labour MPs’ claims.
Much easier to blame a football match than admit the reality - they were not popular enough to win because they had overseen a total mess up of the economy. (Which was, in fairness, not entirely their fault.)
Just as the Labour left constantly blame the Falklands War for 1983, when actually it was mostly due to their own terrible mistakes.
The Longest Suicide Note In History was what created 1983.
I remember, as a child, a trade union activist on stage at the (televised) Labour conference arguing that the U.K. should leave NATO and the EEC and join COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.
The Falklands War made the Conservative majority a bit bigger.
Nato is not defensive. It is responsible for the destruction of Afghanistan and Libya and a key tool of US imperialism, the greatest threat to peace in the world.
As Afghanistan and Libya were such beautiful paradises of human rights under the Taliban and Bin Laden and Gaddafi of course
You missed the comment on Polanski. He's certainly tacking leftwards at a rate of knots.
The Labour Party is outraged that newly-elected Green leader Zack Polanski “seeks to undermine our membership of Nato”. Here’s hoping he does.
Polanski argues that the UK shouldn't leave NATO overnight. Instead, he wants the UK to first build an alternative security framework with European neighbours and Global South countries. Once that security is established, the UK would transition out of NATO. That sounds to me to be a defendable policy...
What common defence interest do we have with "the Global South" ? Not a few countries which fall into that category backed Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
There's a case for a European defence strategy, but his ideas sound like nebulous nonsense to me.
Interesting stuff in the FT about the gender divide in Makerfield polling. Notably that Survation have Burnham +3 with men and +17 with women. Which demonstrates the reason why this contest long ago stopped being competitive is because Reform picked a knobber and then tried to style it out.
Yes, but given that Farage created the Reform party and still largely owns it, they're kind of stuck with Nigel.
Oh, you meant their candidate in Makerfield?
(But seriously, folks... the question of why Reform keep picking terrible people as candidates isn't just down to bad luck or poor vetting. Something about the party systematically attracts a certain sort of worst person.
No, not every Reformer is awful, and other parties have awful people as well. But there's a definite pattern in the data.)
Not every Reformer is awful, true, but the last time I saw Kruger he was explaining Kenyon's interesting public stance towards Vorderman and looked like a hostage uncertain as to how exactly this mess had occurred to him and how on earth an upstanding Etonian evangelical finds himself temporising with a foot soldier of Geiseric.
Lots of decent people support Reform. Most of them have the limited sense required to do so at a substantial distance with a wary eye on the the exit. Potential candidates they are not.
Can you be a decent person and support Reform? Similar question to can you be a decent person and support MAGA
Yes, WRT Reform. Political imagination and scope varies. Many decent people find it hard to look at a big picture and are attracted to something which claims to be able to resolve immediate and local difficulties and appeal to a degree of legitimate self interest.
So, for example, a decent person might hear what Farage has said about ILR and be able to apply it to some notional group of benefits junkies and crooks, but not apply it to surgeons and engineers.
Politics is not most people's career or hobby. It is the job of those who seek power to communicate brilliantly to the non-political so as to keep the fanatics and extremes at bay. Which is why those in Labour who prefer power to opposition are clutching at the straw which is Burnham.
As to MAGA. No idea. Words fail me.
MAGA and Reform are the same thing. MAGA looks worse to our eyes here because its American context is alien to us. Both movements attract some people who are perfectly decent in their day to day behaviour and attitudes, just as other parties or movements that we might regard with horror now attracted support from decent enough people in the past.
I don't think they're quite the same thing. Clearly there's a large overlap, but Farage is but a pale shadow of Trump, and Reform lack the irrational and absolute dedication of a substantial core of voters towards their charismatic leader.
A key difference between Trump and Farage is that the first has been the actual administration twice and is visibly a disaster, while the second almost certainly will be a disaster but it hasn't happened yet and so it's deniable.
The baffling thing about MAGA is how they don't see what Trump is so clearly doing. They originally voted for him on a "drain the swamp" message.
Your final comment: yes, that’s what I was thinking when I read those Labour MPs’ claims.
Much easier to blame a football match than admit the reality - they were not popular enough to win because they had overseen a total mess up of the economy. (Which was, in fairness, not entirely their fault.)
Just as the Labour left constantly blame the Falklands War for 1983, when actually it was mostly due to their own terrible mistakes.
The Longest Suicide Note In History was what created 1983.
I remember, as a child, a trade union activist on stage at the (televised) Labour conference arguing that the U.K. should leave NATO and the EEC and join COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.
The Falklands War made the Conservative majority a bit bigger.
Classic correlation not causation.
Or post hoc ergo propter hoc as we say around here.
Interesting stuff in the FT about the gender divide in Makerfield polling. Notably that Survation have Burnham +3 with men and +17 with women. Which demonstrates the reason why this contest long ago stopped being competitive is because Reform picked a knobber and then tried to style it out.
So no different to the last by election.
Will they ever learn
At least the Greens recognised they picked a useless dickhead, but replaced him with another useless dickhead.
Interesting stuff in the FT about the gender divide in Makerfield polling. Notably that Survation have Burnham +3 with men and +17 with women. Which demonstrates the reason why this contest long ago stopped being competitive is because Reform picked a knobber and then tried to style it out.
Yes, but given that Farage created the Reform party and still largely owns it, they're kind of stuck with Nigel.
Oh, you meant their candidate in Makerfield?
(But seriously, folks... the question of why Reform keep picking terrible people as candidates isn't just down to bad luck or poor vetting. Something about the party systematically attracts a certain sort of worst person.
No, not every Reformer is awful, and other parties have awful people as well. But there's a definite pattern in the data.)
Not every Reformer is awful, true, but the last time I saw Kruger he was explaining Kenyon's interesting public stance towards Vorderman and looked like a hostage uncertain as to how exactly this mess had occurred to him and how on earth an upstanding Etonian evangelical finds himself temporising with a foot soldier of Geiseric.
Lots of decent people support Reform. Most of them have the limited sense required to do so at a substantial distance with a wary eye on the the exit. Potential candidates they are not.
Kruger is quite interesting, and I like to watch where he draws his lines as he tries to synthesise the various influences around him.
To put it in stark terms, the ideological divide between USA white evangelicals, and UK white evangelicals, is historical and still in place in attitudes to social action. That is a tension for him in a party where the leadership look to Trump, and have a similar "centre dominated by rich businessmen, with various other pieces attached" polity.
In the USA they founded their largest protestant denomination - Southern Baptists - to protect the institution of slavery, in 1845.
In the UK it was a group of campaigning evangelicals around Wilberforce and many others, many of whom lived around Clapham Common ("The Clapham Sect") who spent 50 years campaigning against slavery, and the church of Holy Trinity, Clapham.
That is a basic tension - UK evangelicalism around the Evangelical Alliance has social action as a core feature. In the US it is less so. We saw it in equally stark terms when Hegseth was speaking at D-Day - in my view he was trying to shoehorn his essentially Axis position into an Allied memorial event.
These days, Holy Trinity Clapham is known as HTC. It is a typical Georgian, relatively small for London, preaching box, currently gearing up for renovation.
The recent Origin Story podcast on evangelicalism made a good point on that difference.
The English church is established and endowed, so it didn't have to worry too much about where the money was coming from. To an extent, that was even true of things like Methodism. So it could push radical social reform.
The American church has always been more entrepreneurial, "pastor eats what they catch". Which made it much harder for the church to afflict the comfortable; for example for Southern Baptists to oppose slavery.
It's another version of the populist problem; if the electorate really really want something that's likely to be really harmful for them or their successors, what should a politician do? What should a statesman do?
I got a troll flag last night for genuinely defending Badenoch.
I won't be doing that again.
Totally deserved.
Pete is one of the finest posters on this board. Giving him a troll flag is pathetic.
Should have been a permanent ban.
I notice you’re not being shouted down by the moderation squad like others have been.
Good Morning everyone.
Almost no-one deserves a permanent ban. I realise that defending Badenoch is almost criminal in some posters minds but it's by no means as bad as, for example defending Farage.Which I think has been done on occasion.
Shocking story. The new proposed law against drug gang cuckooing has a maximum sentence of 5 years - that is way too low, should be more, at least 20, if not life. I don't see a substantial difference to kidnapping which comes with maximum life sentencing.
1. England will draw the opening match. Both sides being careful and canny. 2. So many votes these days are postal so they are in the bag 3. Have said before used to reside in Ashton, stood for the Council there, still have local contacts who consistently say Burnham by, in the region of 5000!
I'm just putting in an objection to a planning proposal. Along the way I have discovered that Erewash Borough Council do not publish objections they receive on their website; to see them you have to make a trip during opening hours to the Council Office, or perhaps put in an FOI - which I think would not deliver a response within the consultation period.
My own Council in Ashfield have published them with names and addresses redacted for about 20 years.
What do other places do?
(My interest is piqued because this makes it more difficult for disabled people to engage, as they are lumped with driving to the Council office - but 40% of disabled adults do not have a driving license, or taking a taxi / Uber trip each way, which costs up to £20, and disabled people are more often in poverty. Or they can find another method, such as a long mobility aid trip, which up here is dodgy because of road conditions).
Wouldn't there be a "reasonable adjustment" requirement on the council? Maybe write them a polite letter setting out your need for the information to be provided another way?
A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.
Council rejects 100 homes.
Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.
Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.
End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.
we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..
We've arrived at this point almost entirely by virtually unrestricted immigration and given the birth rate we could very easily shrink our population back again by making further immigration almost impossible.
That is a much better deal for almost everyone than continually concreting over the country to build horrible Barratt new builds without any accompanying infrastructure.
No more immigration, almost no more new housing, and in 15 years time housing will be affordable again. As a bonus, we can fill in the various holes in our labour force by redeployment of the people who are building houses to cope with immigration.
No one is building homes to cope with immigration, we aren’t building enough homes because not enough people can afford new ones. Largely flatlining wages after inflation , higher prices and supply and demand mean there are too few buyers who can afford them.
If we stop immigration the average age will be 45 in 2040 with far too few young people and a rapidly ageing population. Are the pensioners going to build their own houses.
In this scenario under sixteens would drop from 18% to 14%, the working population from 62% to 55% and the over 67’s would grow from about 19% to 29%…
So dependency would go from roughly 2:1 to close to 1:1.
Hey Presto not only no need for new houses with a collapsed economy no money to build them either!
Peter.
We've spent 25 years trying the approach of allowing mass immigration to increase the working age population in the face of what would otherwise be a natural decline and it has led to poor productivity growth, stagnant wages, inflated asset values and political instability. It's about time the people who advocated it learned to have some humility.
We have had 25 years of large scale immigration. We have increased the working age population. We have so far managed to avoid the economic cliff edge of a naturally declining population. We have had low productivity and low wage growth.
And you have abjectly failed to establish a causal link between them.
Other Countries with high immigration have had productivity growth; the US for one.
Developed Countries like Japan have had slow wage growth and little immigration.
Peter.
The onus isn't on me to prove a causal link. I have democracy on my side.
No you have Populism and what’s popular isn’t always right and what’s right isn’t always popular.
Essential you are adopting the Trumpian logic, that for something to be true the majority just has to believe it.
Much like his Meet the Press walk out. His evidence consisted of only what he believed, nothing more.
I am old fashioned, I like evidence based argument and still believe in objective truth.
Peter.
That’s not Trumpoan logic. It’s politics.
We’ve had governance by opinion poll for many years.
It hasn't worked very well.
So, you don't like democracy then?
The problem is people having factually wrong opinions. On immigration for example you can legitimately want less of it, or be comfortable with a high level. But it's a problem if people think that immigration is currently very high when it isn't, or that most new housing goes to immigrants when it doesn't, and politicians devise policies based on those demonstrably wrong perceptions.
I think your biggest problem (and that of your liberal ilk) is that you think you're always right - and any contrary opinion is therefore "wrong" - and are totally blind to the fact you have an ideology of your own; you genuinely think the facts support it.
I'd anchor that ideology around the complete fungibility of all individuals, and championing things like choosing your own identity and free movement regardless of any evidence of the social problems this causes.
We all suffer from cognitive bias, whether we are liberal or illiberal. We get comfort from people who think like us and get frustrated by people who don't. We all look for evidence that supports our views and ignore evidence that doesn't. We all do.
The remedy is to be aware of that behaviour and actively manage it when it comes to evidence.
But our opinions also depend on our values and these are not evidence based but deeply and emotionally ingrained. It takes a lot to shift them.
So we can amicably disagree when it comes to values, but we shouldn't accept "alternative facts" when the evidence contradicts them.
My wife likes to say that I always think I am right, which she appears to find irritating. My response is always, of course I think I am right. Everybody thinks they are right. If I thought I was wrong I would have changed my mind. This is a criticism I really can't understand.
There is more than one way of thinking you are right, to do with both personality and underlying philosophy. Some people think they are right in ways which appear as if they are unchallengeable because of their personality. Others think they are right because they don't believe that the truths they have decided on are falsifiable in principle so not open to discussion.
Wives are probably the best judges of which faults we are most guilty of.
MAGA and Reform are the same thing. MAGA looks worse to our eyes here because its American context is alien to us. Both movements attract some people who are perfectly decent in their day to day behaviour and attitudes, just as other parties or movements that we might regard with horror now attracted support from decent enough people in the past.
Sure. I met a group of Reform canvassers in Makerfield, who were perfectly amiable types - one said nervously that he hoped the best person would win, and if that was Andy, fine.
It's particularly a problem for newish parties. Do they appeal to existing mainstream supporters? Then they're seen as retreads (Reform has this problem with ex-Tories). Or do they go for disillusioned types? In which case they'll find themselves with a bunch of people, some of whom have decidedly odd, even repulsive, opinions, which may not be immediately obvious. When you have to select candidates in a hurry, some of the latter will slip through.
I'm inclined to cut new parties some slack, if they take action when they've got it wrong. Not easy in a by-election though!
Although my views could not be any further from Reform's, we shouldn't tar all Reform supporters with the same brush and Farage is not Trump by a long shot. He is considerably more intelligent and eloquent for starters (although that is not a high bar).
In terms of your experience with Reform canvassers in Makerfied we had a similar experience here. Sadly some of our tellers got abused at the polling stations during the locals. One teller was quite young and she was abused very badly. The Reform teller (who I have been told is their chair) stepped in to protect her from the abuse. Similarly during the GE I had quite a laugh with a Reform deliverer. I was at my front door taking delivery of about 5000 LD leaflets as he delivered his single Reform leaflet.
I'm just putting in an objection to a planning proposal. Along the way I have discovered that Erewash Borough Council do not publish objections they receive on their website; to see them you have to make a trip during opening hours to the Council Office, or perhaps put in an FOI - which I think would not deliver a response within the consultation period.
My own Council in Ashfield have published them with names and addresses redacted for about 20 years.
What do other places do?
(My interest is piqued because this makes it more difficult for disabled people to engage, as they are lumped with driving to the Council office - but 40% of disabled adults do not have a driving license, or taking a taxi / Uber trip each way, which costs up to £20, and disabled people are more often in poverty. Or they can find another method, such as a long mobility aid trip, which up here is dodgy because of road conditions).
All documents relevent to a planning application should be made available for public inspection during said process. I don't believe there is a legal requirement to put them on a website.
If someone writes a letter, for example, a copy of the letter with personal details redacted, should be available for anyone to look at during the consultation.
There are lots of documents (reports, surveys and the like) which are an integral part of the process and these are nowadays routinely digital but there's no assumption everyone has digital access so they need to be available in alternative formats.
Shocking story. The new proposed law against drug gang cuckooing has a maximum sentence of 5 years - that is way too low, should be more, at least 20, if not life. I don't see a substantial difference to kidnapping which comes with maximum life sentencing.
I agree but the cuckooing is likely to be combined with other charges such as being concerned in the supply. What is concerning is how many of the victims of this crime are extremely vulnerable. It is, in my experience, a consequence of the care in the community policy largely affecting people who would once have been in sheltered accommodation.
Shocking story. The new proposed law against drug gang cuckooing has a maximum sentence of 5 years - that is way too low, should be more, at least 20, if not life. I don't see a substantial difference to kidnapping which comes with maximum life sentencing.
Interesting stuff in the FT about the gender divide in Makerfield polling. Notably that Survation have Burnham +3 with men and +17 with women. Which demonstrates the reason why this contest long ago stopped being competitive is because Reform picked a knobber and then tried to style it out.
Yes, but given that Farage created the Reform party and still largely owns it, they're kind of stuck with Nigel.
Oh, you meant their candidate in Makerfield?
(But seriously, folks... the question of why Reform keep picking terrible people as candidates isn't just down to bad luck or poor vetting. Something about the party systematically attracts a certain sort of worst person.
No, not every Reformer is awful, and other parties have awful people as well. But there's a definite pattern in the data.)
Not every Reformer is awful, true, but the last time I saw Kruger he was explaining Kenyon's interesting public stance towards Vorderman and looked like a hostage uncertain as to how exactly this mess had occurred to him and how on earth an upstanding Etonian evangelical finds himself temporising with a foot soldier of Geiseric.
Lots of decent people support Reform. Most of them have the limited sense required to do so at a substantial distance with a wary eye on the the exit. Potential candidates they are not.
Kruger is quite interesting, and I like to watch where he draws his lines as he tries to synthesise the various influences around him.
To put it in stark terms, the ideological divide between USA white evangelicals, and UK white evangelicals, is historical and still in place in attitudes to social action. That is a tension for him in a party where the leadership look to Trump, and have a similar "centre dominated by rich businessmen, with various other pieces attached" polity.
In the USA they founded their largest protestant denomination - Southern Baptists - to protect the institution of slavery, in 1845.
In the UK it was a group of campaigning evangelicals around Wilberforce and many others, many of whom lived around Clapham Common ("The Clapham Sect") who spent 50 years campaigning against slavery, and the church of Holy Trinity, Clapham.
That is a basic tension - UK evangelicalism around the Evangelical Alliance has social action as a core feature. In the US it is less so. We saw it in equally stark terms when Hegseth was speaking at D-Day - in my view he was trying to shoehorn his essentially Axis position into an Allied memorial event.
These days, Holy Trinity Clapham is known as HTC. It is a typical Georgian, relatively small for London, preaching box, currently gearing up for renovation.
The recent Origin Story podcast on evangelicalism made a good point on that difference.
The English church is established and endowed, so it didn't have to worry too much about where the money was coming from. To an extent, that was even true of things like Methodism. So it could push radical social reform.
The American church has always been more entrepreneurial, "pastor eats what they catch". Which made it much harder for the church to afflict the comfortable; for example for Southern Baptists to oppose slavery.
It's another version of the populist problem; if the electorate really really want something that's likely to be really harmful for them or their successors, what should a politician do? What should a statesman do?
There is also the difference that Church of England vicaring is traditionally a graduate profession leading to a nuanced and reflective theology whereas in pioneer America, the church was led by self-taught preachers swapping bible quotes.
Interesting stuff in the FT about the gender divide in Makerfield polling. Notably that Survation have Burnham +3 with men and +17 with women. Which demonstrates the reason why this contest long ago stopped being competitive is because Reform picked a knobber and then tried to style it out.
Yes, but given that Farage created the Reform party and still largely owns it, they're kind of stuck with Nigel.
Oh, you meant their candidate in Makerfield?
(But seriously, folks... the question of why Reform keep picking terrible people as candidates isn't just down to bad luck or poor vetting. Something about the party systematically attracts a certain sort of worst person.
No, not every Reformer is awful, and other parties have awful people as well. But there's a definite pattern in the data.)
Not every Reformer is awful, true, but the last time I saw Kruger he was explaining Kenyon's interesting public stance towards Vorderman and looked like a hostage uncertain as to how exactly this mess had occurred to him and how on earth an upstanding Etonian evangelical finds himself temporising with a foot soldier of Geiseric.
Lots of decent people support Reform. Most of them have the limited sense required to do so at a substantial distance with a wary eye on the the exit. Potential candidates they are not.
Kruger is quite interesting, and I like to watch where he draws his lines as he tries to synthesise the various influences around him.
To put it in stark terms, the ideological divide between USA white evangelicals, and UK white evangelicals, is historical and still in place in attitudes to social action. That is a tension for him in a party where the leadership look to Trump, and have a similar "centre dominated by rich businessmen, with various other pieces attached" polity.
In the USA they founded their largest protestant denomination - Southern Baptists - to protect the institution of slavery, in 1845.
In the UK it was a group of campaigning evangelicals around Wilberforce and many others, many of whom lived around Clapham Common ("The Clapham Sect") who spent 50 years campaigning against slavery, and the church of Holy Trinity, Clapham.
That is a basic tension - UK evangelicalism around the Evangelical Alliance has social action as a core feature. In the US it is less so. We saw it in equally stark terms when Hegseth was speaking at D-Day - in my view he was trying to shoehorn his essentially Axis position into an Allied memorial event.
These days, Holy Trinity Clapham is known as HTC. It is a typical Georgian, relatively small for London, preaching box, currently gearing up for renovation.
One interesting note. When the "listed places of worship reduced VAT" scheme was poleaxed, their £6.2 million project suddenly became a £7.2 million project. It's expensive working with Grade 2* listed buildings !
We all suffer from cognitive bias, whether we are liberal or illiberal. We get comfort from people who think like us and get frustrated by people who don't. We all look for evidence that supports our views and ignore evidence that doesn't. We all do.
The remedy is to be aware of that behaviour and actively manage it when it comes to evidence.
But our opinions also depend on our values and these are not evidence based but deeply and emotionally ingrained. It takes a lot to shift them.
So we can amicably disagree when it comes to values, but we shouldn't accept "alternative facts" when the evidence contradicts them.
A difficulty is that one person's indisputable fact is someone else's disputable opinion. Has immigration fallen, to give your example? Almost certainly yes, according to official statistics, but someone who dislikes it will often say that the statistics are simply wrong, ignore the small boats and overstays and so on. Get into a detailed discussion and you often end up with mutual irritation rather than either conceding the point. I've been involved in politics all my adult life, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that anyone in personal discussion has said "Hmm, yes, you're right and I was wrong". Obviously that could be because I'm always wrong, but more plausibly people don't like changing positions. More common is shifting from "Hmm, I can see there are two sides to it", which may be genuine or just politeness.
What tends to work is hearing the same counter-arguments in different contexts over a long period. So one can contribute to the process, but shouldn't expect instant conversion (not least as one may be at least partly wrong oneself).
MAGA and Reform are the same thing. MAGA looks worse to our eyes here because its American context is alien to us. Both movements attract some people who are perfectly decent in their day to day behaviour and attitudes, just as other parties or movements that we might regard with horror now attracted support from decent enough people in the past.
Sure. I met a group of Reform canvassers in Makerfield, who were perfectly amiable types - one said nervously that he hoped the best person would win, and if that was Andy, fine.
It's particularly a problem for newish parties. Do they appeal to existing mainstream supporters? Then they're seen as retreads (Reform has this problem with ex-Tories). Or do they go for disillusioned types? In which case they'll find themselves with a bunch of people, some of whom have decidedly odd, even repulsive, opinions, which may not be immediately obvious. When you have to select candidates in a hurry, some of the latter will slip through.
I'm inclined to cut new parties some slack, if they take action when they've got it wrong. Not easy in a by-election though!
I can offer a little perspective on this from my experience with the Alliance.
I was the Agent in 1987 and at the count, while I was watching the Conservative vote being weighed, I was approached by a group of Labour people. They looked unhappy and immediately asked if I was SDP or Liberal - when I told them I was a Liberal, the mood changed immediately, they became friendly and cordial.
I don't know because it's not my world anymore but Reform is presumably made up of three groups - the ex-Conservatives, the ex-Labour and the completely new to politics. The SDP was about two thirds of the last category as I recall.
I don't know how Conservatives relate to ex-Conservatives now in Reform - it would presumably be different with ex-Labour people now in Reform or indeed completely new people.
In all the years I "did" politics, I had the occasional joust with the Conservatives - the MP called me at home once annoyed about a leaflet I had put out which in all honesty, with hindsight, probably sailed close to the line though I had had the leaflet checked over by a solicitor in our ranks and she had cleared it - but it was generally good natured and there was a mutual understanding when out canvassing or leafletting.
Indeed, when I worked in Cornwall, some of the best times I had doing politics was telling opposite the Conservatives - as long as you didn't talk politics, I found most Conservative and indeed Labour tellers erudite and interesting - one Tory was a local Hotelier and we would talk about tourism and the economics of running a Hotel.
Whatever your political perspective, there's always bonding to be had over the commonality of life experiences.
Shocking story. The new proposed law against drug gang cuckooing has a maximum sentence of 5 years - that is way too low, should be more, at least 20, if not life. I don't see a substantial difference to kidnapping which comes with maximum life sentencing.
That's a very strong point.
I'd say the maximum sentence could justifiably be life, depending on the intended charging practice.
One comparator is perhaps domestic abuse, which is not a single offence but is also an invasion and exploitation within a person's most private and personal space, with destruction exercised in that sphere.
And various charges could apply - kidnapping, as you say, but also many offences against the person, and around controlling and coercive behaviour. That latter also carries 5 years maximum, which may be a model.
By the way, the election is a week on Thursday, not Wednesday as the leader has it. I claim this is a verifiable fact and the leader-writer is WRONG.
Ahem
Yesterday I was scheduling my availability next week for work, editing PB, and watching the World Cup next week and I realised that England’s first match at the World Cup is against Croatia the night before the Makerfield by-election.
A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.
Council rejects 100 homes.
Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.
Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.
End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.
we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..
We've arrived at this point almost entirely by virtually unrestricted immigration and given the birth rate we could very easily shrink our population back again by making further immigration almost impossible.
That is a much better deal for almost everyone than continually concreting over the country to build horrible Barratt new builds without any accompanying infrastructure.
No more immigration, almost no more new housing, and in 15 years time housing will be affordable again. As a bonus, we can fill in the various holes in our labour force by redeployment of the people who are building houses to cope with immigration.
No one is building homes to cope with immigration, we aren’t building enough homes because not enough people can afford new ones. Largely flatlining wages after inflation , higher prices and supply and demand mean there are too few buyers who can afford them.
If we stop immigration the average age will be 45 in 2040 with far too few young people and a rapidly ageing population. Are the pensioners going to build their own houses.
In this scenario under sixteens would drop from 18% to 14%, the working population from 62% to 55% and the over 67’s would grow from about 19% to 29%…
So dependency would go from roughly 2:1 to close to 1:1.
Hey Presto not only no need for new houses with a collapsed economy no money to build them either!
Peter.
We've spent 25 years trying the approach of allowing mass immigration to increase the working age population in the face of what would otherwise be a natural decline and it has led to poor productivity growth, stagnant wages, inflated asset values and political instability. It's about time the people who advocated it learned to have some humility.
We have had 25 years of large scale immigration. We have increased the working age population. We have so far managed to avoid the economic cliff edge of a naturally declining population. We have had low productivity and low wage growth.
And you have abjectly failed to establish a causal link between them.
Other Countries with high immigration have had productivity growth; the US for one.
Developed Countries like Japan have had slow wage growth and little immigration.
Peter.
The onus isn't on me to prove a causal link. I have democracy on my side.
No you have Populism and what’s popular isn’t always right and what’s right isn’t always popular.
Essential you are adopting the Trumpian logic, that for something to be true the majority just has to believe it.
Much like his Meet the Press walk out. His evidence consisted of only what he believed, nothing more.
I am old fashioned, I like evidence based argument and still believe in objective truth.
Peter.
That’s not Trumpoan logic. It’s politics.
We’ve had governance by opinion poll for many years.
It hasn't worked very well.
So, you don't like democracy then?
The problem is people having factually wrong opinions. On immigration for example you can legitimately want less of it, or be comfortable with a high level. But it's a problem if people think that immigration is currently very high when it isn't, or that most new housing goes to immigrants when it doesn't, and politicians devise policies based on those demonstrably wrong perceptions.
I think your biggest problem (and that of your liberal ilk) is that you think you're always right - and any contrary opinion is therefore "wrong" - and are totally blind to the fact you have an ideology of your own; you genuinely think the facts support it.
I'd anchor that ideology around the complete fungibility of all individuals, and championing things like choosing your own identity and free movement regardless of any evidence of the social problems this causes.
We all suffer from cognitive bias, whether we are liberal or illiberal. We get comfort from people who think like us and get frustrated by people who don't. We all look for evidence that supports our views and ignore evidence that doesn't. We all do.
The remedy is to be aware of that behaviour and actively manage it when it comes to evidence.
But our opinions also depend on our values and these are not evidence based but deeply and emotionally ingrained. It takes a lot to shift them.
So we can amicably disagree when it comes to values, but we shouldn't accept "alternative facts" when the evidence contradicts them.
My wife likes to say that I always think I am right, which she appears to find irritating. My response is always, of course I think I am right. Everybody thinks they are right. If I thought I was wrong I would have changed my mind. This is a criticism I really can't understand.
There is more than one way of thinking you are right, to do with both personality and underlying philosophy. Some people think they are right in ways which appear as if they are unchallengeable because of their personality. Others think they are right because they don't believe that the truths they have decided on are falsifiable in principle so not open to discussion.
Wives are probably the best judges of which faults we are most guilty of.
Yes, I am indisputably a bit of a dick sometimes. On the other hand, I am much more open to criticism than my wife is! We've been together for 32 years anyway, so I guess I can't annoy her that much.
I'm just putting in an objection to a planning proposal. Along the way I have discovered that Erewash Borough Council do not publish objections they receive on their website; to see them you have to make a trip during opening hours to the Council Office, or perhaps put in an FOI - which I think would not deliver a response within the consultation period.
My own Council in Ashfield have published them with names and addresses redacted for about 20 years.
What do other places do?
(My interest is piqued because this makes it more difficult for disabled people to engage, as they are lumped with driving to the Council office - but 40% of disabled adults do not have a driving license, or taking a taxi / Uber trip each way, which costs up to £20, and disabled people are more often in poverty. Or they can find another method, such as a long mobility aid trip, which up here is dodgy because of road conditions).
All documents relevent to a planning application should be made available for public inspection during said process. I don't believe there is a legal requirement to put them on a website.
If someone writes a letter, for example, a copy of the letter with personal details redacted, should be available for anyone to look at during the consultation.
There are lots of documents (reports, surveys and the like) which are an integral part of the process and these are nowadays routinely digital but there's no assumption everyone has digital access so they need to be available in alternative formats.
The legal setup would (I think) be from the period when John Prescott was using his ODPM to drive everything online at local councils in a period that was impossibly short. I ran a couple of projects, having to account for a list of 800 or so "services" "going online" about a year.
I'd surmise that local authorities had the option - the Erewash Planning Officer said as much - so it is a postcode lottery.
I would question whether the "come and visit" model is sustainable under Equality Law, as it is imo a substantial disadvantage to some members of the community.
Your final comment: yes, that’s what I was thinking when I read those Labour MPs’ claims.
Much easier to blame a football match than admit the reality - they were not popular enough to win because they had overseen a total mess up of the economy. (Which was, in fairness, not entirely their fault.)
Just as the Labour left constantly blame the Falklands War for 1983, when actually it was mostly due to their own terrible mistakes.
The Longest Suicide Note In History was what created 1983.
I remember, as a child, a trade union activist on stage at the (televised) Labour conference arguing that the U.K. should leave NATO and the EEC and join COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.
The Falklands War made the Conservative majority a bit bigger.
Classic correlation not causation.
Or post hoc ergo propter hoc as we say around here.
Your final comment: yes, that’s what I was thinking when I read those Labour MPs’ claims.
Much easier to blame a football match than admit the reality - they were not popular enough to win because they had overseen a total mess up of the economy. (Which was, in fairness, not entirely their fault.)
Just as the Labour left constantly blame the Falklands War for 1983, when actually it was mostly due to their own terrible mistakes.
The Longest Suicide Note In History was what created 1983.
I remember, as a child, a trade union activist on stage at the (televised) Labour conference arguing that the U.K. should leave NATO and the EEC and join COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.
The Falklands War made the Conservative majority a bit bigger.
Classic correlation not causation.
Or post hoc ergo propter hoc as we say around here.
In Dundee?
In the hostelries around here they talk of little else but I meant on PB as we had a discussion about this yesterday or the day before.
Shocking story. The new proposed law against drug gang cuckooing has a maximum sentence of 5 years - that is way too low, should be more, at least 20, if not life. I don't see a substantial difference to kidnapping which comes with maximum life sentencing.
Shocking story. The new proposed law against drug gang cuckooing has a maximum sentence of 5 years - that is way too low, should be more, at least 20, if not life. I don't see a substantial difference to kidnapping which comes with maximum life sentencing.
Your final comment: yes, that’s what I was thinking when I read those Labour MPs’ claims.
Much easier to blame a football match than admit the reality - they were not popular enough to win because they had overseen a total mess up of the economy. (Which was, in fairness, not entirely their fault.)
Just as the Labour left constantly blame the Falklands War for 1983, when actually it was mostly due to their own terrible mistakes.
The Longest Suicide Note In History was what created 1983.
I remember, as a child, a trade union activist on stage at the (televised) Labour conference arguing that the U.K. should leave NATO and the EEC and join COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.
The Falklands War made the Conservative majority a bit bigger.
Classic correlation not causation.
Is that the Falklands, Labour’s manifesto, or the size of the bribe paid to the official in question by Moscow?
Thank goodness with Labour jettisoning socialism we no longer have any politicians left who would trouser dirty Russian money.
There's plenty of socialism that isn’t like the comic Suicide Note manifesto.
It’s not a choice between unfettered capitalism and East Germany. As large numbers of social democratic parties have proved, around the world.
If the Labour Party had been selling the politics of, say, the German SPD, in 1983, them there would have been no split. And they might well have won a majority at the election.
Instead they chose East Germany.
Thatcher clearly led best PM polls in 1983 so likely would have won anyway
Yes... but after, and as a result of, the Falklands
See if you can guess when the Falklands War took place on this timeline.
Shocking story. The new proposed law against drug gang cuckooing has a maximum sentence of 5 years - that is way too low, should be more, at least 20, if not life. I don't see a substantial difference to kidnapping which comes with maximum life sentencing.
I beg to differ - there is nothing duller than that attention-seeker blathering on and on imo.
Sober Leon was a fluent writer who could be an awful lot more informative and insightful than the sun is over the yardarm Leon set on hijacking threads and insulting other posters.
Shocking story. The new proposed law against drug gang cuckooing has a maximum sentence of 5 years - that is way too low, should be more, at least 20, if not life. I don't see a substantial difference to kidnapping which comes with maximum life sentencing.
I beg to differ - there is nothing duller than that attention-seeker blathering on and on imo.
Well, you are free to ignore him but I find many of his observations thought provoking and interesting.
I'd never ask for him to be banned (no need he self-destructs regularly enough) but he does remind me of a mini-Trump: offensive, self-obsessed, insensitive, and usually wrong.
PS Happy to acknowledge I may be in the minority on this.
Your final comment: yes, that’s what I was thinking when I read those Labour MPs’ claims.
Much easier to blame a football match than admit the reality - they were not popular enough to win because they had overseen a total mess up of the economy. (Which was, in fairness, not entirely their fault.)
Just as the Labour left constantly blame the Falklands War for 1983, when actually it was mostly due to their own terrible mistakes.
The Longest Suicide Note In History was what created 1983.
I remember, as a child, a trade union activist on stage at the (televised) Labour conference arguing that the U.K. should leave NATO and the EEC and join COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.
The Falklands War made the Conservative majority a bit bigger.
Classic correlation not causation.
Is that the Falklands, Labour’s manifesto, or the size of the bribe paid to the official in question by Moscow?
Thank goodness with Labour jettisoning socialism we no longer have any politicians left who would trouser dirty Russian money.
There's plenty of socialism that isn’t like the comic Suicide Note manifesto.
It’s not a choice between unfettered capitalism and East Germany. As large numbers of social democratic parties have proved, around the world.
If the Labour Party had been selling the politics of, say, the German SPD, in 1983, them there would have been no split. And they might well have won a majority at the election.
Instead they chose East Germany.
Thatcher clearly led best PM polls in 1983 so likely would have won anyway
Yes... but after, and as a result of, the Falklands
See if you can guess when the Falklands War took place on this timeline.
I did politics as part of my degree. One of the modules was taken by David Marquand, ex-SDP MP. He made the point - using the graph below - that the Conservatives by the 1983 election were at the point they would have been anyway with swingback (I don't think he called it that, but it's a term we all use). They had a spike with the Falklands War, but then started to fade back, before a final recovery in the way governing parties often do (and especially when the leader of the opposition is insanely left wing). His view was that had Argentina not invaded the Falklands the result in 1983 would have been pretty much exactly the same. It's worth noting that by the standards of GEs at the time, the Tories didn't do THAT well in terms of share of the popular vote - the landslide was delivered - as it always is - by how badly the party doing second had done.
Hearing there’s been multiple stabbings at a school in Blackley.
The sooner the govt bans pointed knives the sooner this stops.
Not enough.
All metal tools must be banned. Styrofoam cutlery only. All those who oppose this are clearly in favour of mountains of corpses. All hail our glorious socialist paradise!
A case study in why resisting reasonable development entirely can come back to bite you (if the developer ploy here works)? Work in the system to resist where you can, don't just pretend the system doesn't exist because you don't like it.
Council rejects 100 homes.
Developer wins appeal for 75 homes.
Developer then submits another 65 homes on the remaining land.
End result? Residents could get 140 homes instead of the original 100. Now they claim they’re being “picked on”.
we have the same population as France but 7 million fewer homes..
We've arrived at this point almost entirely by virtually unrestricted immigration and given the birth rate we could very easily shrink our population back again by making further immigration almost impossible.
That is a much better deal for almost everyone than continually concreting over the country to build horrible Barratt new builds without any accompanying infrastructure.
No more immigration, almost no more new housing, and in 15 years time housing will be affordable again. As a bonus, we can fill in the various holes in our labour force by redeployment of the people who are building houses to cope with immigration.
No one is building homes to cope with immigration, we aren’t building enough homes because not enough people can afford new ones. Largely flatlining wages after inflation , higher prices and supply and demand mean there are too few buyers who can afford them.
If we stop immigration the average age will be 45 in 2040 with far too few young people and a rapidly ageing population. Are the pensioners going to build their own houses.
In this scenario under sixteens would drop from 18% to 14%, the working population from 62% to 55% and the over 67’s would grow from about 19% to 29%…
So dependency would go from roughly 2:1 to close to 1:1.
Hey Presto not only no need for new houses with a collapsed economy no money to build them either!
Peter.
We've spent 25 years trying the approach of allowing mass immigration to increase the working age population in the face of what would otherwise be a natural decline and it has led to poor productivity growth, stagnant wages, inflated asset values and political instability. It's about time the people who advocated it learned to have some humility.
We have had 25 years of large scale immigration. We have increased the working age population. We have so far managed to avoid the economic cliff edge of a naturally declining population. We have had low productivity and low wage growth.
And you have abjectly failed to establish a causal link between them.
Other Countries with high immigration have had productivity growth; the US for one.
Developed Countries like Japan have had slow wage growth and little immigration.
Peter.
The onus isn't on me to prove a causal link. I have democracy on my side.
No you have Populism and what’s popular isn’t always right and what’s right isn’t always popular.
Essential you are adopting the Trumpian logic, that for something to be true the majority just has to believe it.
Much like his Meet the Press walk out. His evidence consisted of only what he believed, nothing more.
I am old fashioned, I like evidence based argument and still believe in objective truth.
Peter.
That’s not Trumpoan logic. It’s politics.
We’ve had governance by opinion poll for many years.
It hasn't worked very well.
So, you don't like democracy then?
The problem is people having factually wrong opinions. On immigration for example you can legitimately want less of it, or be comfortable with a high level. But it's a problem if people think that immigration is currently very high when it isn't, or that most new housing goes to immigrants when it doesn't, and politicians devise policies based on those demonstrably wrong perceptions.
I think your biggest problem (and that of your liberal ilk) is that you think you're always right - and any contrary opinion is therefore "wrong" - and are totally blind to the fact you have an ideology of your own; you genuinely think the facts support it.
I'd anchor that ideology around the complete fungibility of all individuals, and championing things like choosing your own identity and free movement regardless of any evidence of the social problems this causes.
We all suffer from cognitive bias, whether we are liberal or illiberal. We get comfort from people who think like us and get frustrated by people who don't. We all look for evidence that supports our views and ignore evidence that doesn't. We all do.
The remedy is to be aware of that behaviour and actively manage it when it comes to evidence.
But our opinions also depend on our values and these are not evidence based but deeply and emotionally ingrained. It takes a lot to shift them.
So we can amicably disagree when it comes to values, but we shouldn't accept "alternative facts" when the evidence contradicts them.
Totally, my contention is that category of people think they're someone immune from it.
A bit more humility wouldn't go amiss.
My contention is that there should be a greater respect for demonstrable measurable facts. "Humility" in accepting incorrect facts because people believing them are somehow deemed more sincere than I am is not something I subscribe to. Guilty as charged I suppose.
You are one of the ones who need it most. You confuse opinion with facts, and select the ones that confirm your opinions. It's extremely arrogant.
The people this relates to are very quickly self-identifying themselves on this thread.
Obviously I think this accusation is a nonsense. But it's genuinely tricky to engage with misinformation sensitively and effectively, and I'm not particularly good at it
Hearing there’s been multiple stabbings at a school in Blackley.
The sooner the govt bans pointed knives the sooner this stops.
Not enough.
All metal tools must be banned. Styrofoam cutlery only. All those who oppose this are clearly in favour of mountains of corpses. All hail our glorious socialist paradise!
Your prejudices are showing. It was the Thatcher government that banned carrying knives and other offensive weapons and May or Boris who restricted online sales.
Hearing there’s been multiple stabbings at a school in Blackley.
The sooner the govt bans pointed knives the sooner this stops.
Not enough.
All metal tools must be banned. Styrofoam cutlery only. All those who oppose this are clearly in favour of mountains of corpses. All hail our glorious socialist paradise!
Indeed. If you oppose this, or any measures they propose, you support the stabbing of young people and are worse than the people doing the stabbing.
Your final comment: yes, that’s what I was thinking when I read those Labour MPs’ claims.
Much easier to blame a football match than admit the reality - they were not popular enough to win because they had overseen a total mess up of the economy. (Which was, in fairness, not entirely their fault.)
Just as the Labour left constantly blame the Falklands War for 1983, when actually it was mostly due to their own terrible mistakes.
The Longest Suicide Note In History was what created 1983.
I remember, as a child, a trade union activist on stage at the (televised) Labour conference arguing that the U.K. should leave NATO and the EEC and join COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.
The Falklands War made the Conservative majority a bit bigger.
Classic correlation not causation.
Or post hoc ergo propter hoc as we say around here.
Same for @Mexicanpete, why are you allowed a private profile?
Everyone is allowed a private profile as far as I can tell, just go to edit profile and untick display my profile publicly?
@TheScreamingEagles I changed my profile to public from private as I thought you’d banned private profiles and it was courteous to respect the request. However it seems there are plenty of private profiles.
Hearing there’s been multiple stabbings at a school in Blackley.
The sooner the govt bans pointed knives the sooner this stops.
Not enough.
All metal tools must be banned. Styrofoam cutlery only. All those who oppose this are clearly in favour of mountains of corpses. All hail our glorious socialist paradise!
For fun - many kinds of plastic can be melted and fashioned into a shank.
Was a big problem in US prisons with plastic bags being made into weapons like that.
I'm just putting in an objection to a planning proposal. Along the way I have discovered that Erewash Borough Council do not publish objections they receive on their website; to see them you have to make a trip during opening hours to the Council Office, or perhaps put in an FOI - which I think would not deliver a response within the consultation period.
My own Council in Ashfield have published them with names and addresses redacted for about 20 years.
What do other places do?
(My interest is piqued because this makes it more difficult for disabled people to engage, as they are lumped with driving to the Council office - but 40% of disabled adults do not have a driving license, or taking a taxi / Uber trip each way, which costs up to £20, and disabled people are more often in poverty. Or they can find another method, such as a long mobility aid trip, which up here is dodgy because of road conditions).
All documents relevent to a planning application should be made available for public inspection during said process. I don't believe there is a legal requirement to put them on a website.
If someone writes a letter, for example, a copy of the letter with personal details redacted, should be available for anyone to look at during the consultation.
There are lots of documents (reports, surveys and the like) which are an integral part of the process and these are nowadays routinely digital but there's no assumption everyone has digital access so they need to be available in alternative formats.
The legal setup would (I think) be from the period when John Prescott was using his ODPM to drive everything online at local councils in a period that was impossibly short. I ran a couple of projects, having to account for a list of 800 or so "services" "going online" about a year.
I'd surmise that local authorities had the option - the Erewash Planning Officer said as much - so it is a postcode lottery.
I would question whether the "come and visit" model is sustainable under Equality Law, as it is imo a substantial disadvantage to some members of the community.
Forcing people to look at a plan on a computer screen is probably equally an issue under the Equality Act given how bad some scans I’ve seen are
Your final comment: yes, that’s what I was thinking when I read those Labour MPs’ claims.
Much easier to blame a football match than admit the reality - they were not popular enough to win because they had overseen a total mess up of the economy. (Which was, in fairness, not entirely their fault.)
Just as the Labour left constantly blame the Falklands War for 1983, when actually it was mostly due to their own terrible mistakes.
The Longest Suicide Note In History was what created 1983.
I remember, as a child, a trade union activist on stage at the (televised) Labour conference arguing that the U.K. should leave NATO and the EEC and join COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.
The Falklands War made the Conservative majority a bit bigger.
Classic correlation not causation.
Is that the Falklands, Labour’s manifesto, or the size of the bribe paid to the official in question by Moscow?
Thank goodness with Labour jettisoning socialism we no longer have any politicians left who would trouser dirty Russian money.
There's plenty of socialism that isn’t like the comic Suicide Note manifesto.
It’s not a choice between unfettered capitalism and East Germany. As large numbers of social democratic parties have proved, around the world.
If the Labour Party had been selling the politics of, say, the German SPD, in 1983, them there would have been no split. And they might well have won a majority at the election.
Instead they chose East Germany.
Thatcher clearly led best PM polls in 1983 so likely would have won anyway
Yes... but after, and as a result of, the Falklands
See if you can guess when the Falklands War took place on this timeline.
I did politics as part of my degree. One of the modules was taken by David Marquand, ex-SDP MP. He made the point - using the graph below - that the Conservatives by the 1983 election were at the point they would have been anyway with swingback (I don't think he called it that, but it's a term we all use). They had a spike with the Falklands War, but then started to fade back, before a final recovery in the way governing parties often do (and especially when the leader of the opposition is insanely left wing). His view was that had Argentina not invaded the Falklands the result in 1983 would have been pretty much exactly the same. It's worth noting that by the standards of GEs at the time, the Tories didn't do THAT well in terms of share of the popular vote - the landslide was delivered - as it always is - by how badly the party doing second had done.
I think the Falklands definitely helped because it underlined the results that could be achieved with MT's resolution and determination against the naysayers.
That played into what she was saying on economics as well.
MAGA and Reform are the same thing. MAGA looks worse to our eyes here because its American context is alien to us. Both movements attract some people who are perfectly decent in their day to day behaviour and attitudes, just as other parties or movements that we might regard with horror now attracted support from decent enough people in the past.
Sure. I met a group of Reform canvassers in Makerfield, who were perfectly amiable types - one said nervously that he hoped the best person would win, and if that was Andy, fine.
It's particularly a problem for newish parties. Do they appeal to existing mainstream supporters? Then they're seen as retreads (Reform has this problem with ex-Tories). Or do they go for disillusioned types? In which case they'll find themselves with a bunch of people, some of whom have decidedly odd, even repulsive, opinions, which may not be immediately obvious. When you have to select candidates in a hurry, some of the latter will slip through.
I'm inclined to cut new parties some slack, if they take action when they've got it wrong. Not easy in a by-election though!
I can offer a little perspective on this from my experience with the Alliance. ... I don't know because it's not my world anymore but Reform is presumably made up of three groups - the ex-Conservatives, the ex-Labour and the completely new to politics. The SDP was about two thirds of the last category as I recall.
I don't know how Conservatives relate to ex-Conservatives now in Reform - it would presumably be different with ex-Labour people now in Reform or indeed completely new people.
I think that is missing a couple of streams, but I would tend to think in more socio-political rather than party terms. Most polling analyses of Reform supporters come up with about 5 groups rather than 3, and they are all (naturally!) a little different. The largest polls tend to be Hope not Hate, where they would survey 10k or more and report in the document they call "State of Hate 2024 / 2025 / 2026", or a couple of the polling companies have done large polls.
One extra group is I suggest younger people (teens, twenties, maybe thirties) who are with the programme and trying to work out what their politics are. Farage has a number of people around him from this group, which HNH have termed iirc "Radical Young Men" in one analysis.
Another is the preserved far right, eg people who have previously in anything from the British Movement to the BNP to Britain First, some of whom are (or were, some have gone to Restore) following deliberate "infitrate and influence" strategies.
I'd also identify "former UKIP"-style (that is Farage UKIP, not the more recent Christian Nationalist UKIP) independents - eg the Mansfield Independent Forum people who have moved. The leader of Notts CC Mick Barton, was a MIF District Councillor from 2003.
HNH poll for responses to particular prominent individuals such as Tommy Robinson (to use his stage name) and the differences are quite stark.
Hearing there’s been multiple stabbings at a school in Blackley.
The sooner the govt bans pointed knives the sooner this stops.
Not enough.
All metal tools must be banned. Styrofoam cutlery only. All those who oppose this are clearly in favour of mountains of corpses. All hail our glorious socialist paradise!
For fun - many kinds of plastic can be melted and fashioned into a shank.
Was a big problem in US prisons with plastic bags being made into weapons like that.
I saw that on a US prison show. When I contracted and worked away from home I used to watch lots of YouTube and that included US prison shows. They made a shank from a plastic bag and also made hooch in a large plastic bag.
One crim even fertilised another by getting his nut butter to her via a vent. Never met, never will, but he fertilised her. Insane.
If only these crim twits turned their obvious innovation skills to the productive economy.
Same for @Mexicanpete, why are you allowed a private profile?
Everyone is allowed a private profile as far as I can tell, just go to edit profile and untick display my profile publicly?
At some point there was a pronouncement that everyone's profile should be public, so that people could more easily search their comment history, but I think this was only ever enforced on Leon, and if the mods wish to impose this rule that is up to them - I'm not sure that anyone should be appointing themselves as a site special constable and harassing other posters about it.
Same for @Mexicanpete, why are you allowed a private profile?
Everyone is allowed a private profile as far as I can tell, just go to edit profile and untick display my profile publicly?
I'm not really sure what is the point of private profiles. All they do, sfaict, is stop people easily getting a list of your recent previous posts without having to search. I suspect most people imagine private profiles somehow protect us from drone strikes or Big Brother.
By the way, the election is a week on Thursday, not Wednesday as the leader has it. I claim this is a verifiable fact and the leader-writer is WRONG.
Ahem
Yesterday I was scheduling my availability next week for work, editing PB, and watching the World Cup next week and I realised that England’s first match at the World Cup is against Croatia the night before the Makerfield by-election.
Hearing there’s been multiple stabbings at a school in Blackley.
The sooner the govt bans pointed knives the sooner this stops.
Not enough.
All metal tools must be banned. Styrofoam cutlery only. All those who oppose this are clearly in favour of mountains of corpses. All hail our glorious socialist paradise!
Your prejudices are showing. It was the Thatcher government that banned carrying knives and other offensive weapons and May or Boris who restricted online sales.
Perhaps. But Starmer and Labour are in power now, and have a tendency to make atrocious and far-reaching pronouncements. They seem to think that a magic button can be made to Make The Internet Safe.
Edited: ahem, forgot to draw the link: Labour's at risk of making it so everyone needs to upload a passport just to use the damned internet, which has obvious and appalling security and freedom risks. If they take the same approach with speeding, motorway speed limits would be cut to 5mph.
So as I understand it there is a 12pm curfew during matches. Or is it when on England duty? Point is the game was won and the next match not until a week wednesday, so I have no issue with them being out celebrating.
There is a different issue around Stokes. He has been magnificent as a player. I will never forget 2019, nor the double in SA. He is a superb leader of the team. He hasn't always got it right. We drew the home ashes last time but ought to have won 3-1 or 4-0 but he wanted to gamble on a declaration in the first test, and one or two Aussies had fallen that night he would have lauded.
But at 35 I think he is coming to the end. He is very fit, but his batting is struggling (all time average still 35 mind). He is the 4th bowler. Is he worth it in the team for his influence? Maybe. He will hate not scoring runs and contributing.
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdejnjdg08eo
Clearly there's a large overlap, but Farage is but a pale shadow of Trump, and Reform lack the irrational and absolute dedication of a substantial core of voters towards their charismatic leader.
What I think people who say that mean is that 'you won't entertain the possibility that you might be wrong' - this is a perfectly reasonable criticism, because we should always be prepared to consider that the world might be other than we think it is. And we can all think of people who stick dogmatically to a position long after it has been demonstrated that the foundations for that view are erroneous.
But next time she tells you that you always think you're right, I wouldn't necessarily advocate explaining why she is wrong and what she should be saying.
That murdering people in the street has been privatised. It’s typical of this government that they refuse to protect a core industry - in this case local, tradition terroristic violence.
* @williamglenn confirmed earlier he does not need to provide references to confirm his narrative. I am assuming the word of Trump or Farage is citation enough.
The desperate desire of the Conservatives to become relevant again is such any kind of objective assessment of their performance (of which there was plenty in the 2019-24 period) is no longer allowed especially by their own side.
Whether they see Badenoch as the 21st century incarnation of the Blessed Margaret or hope she will be may be part of it, I don't know, but at 17-19% of the poll, the Conservatives clearly have a long road in front of them.
The problem for the victim is first the threat of physical reprisals but more importantly, since they are often addicted, risk of cutting off their own drugs supply. To that end, it is not wholly distinct from the crime which we cannot discuss in that the victims are often, at least at first, partly complicit.
But from the viewpoint of the gangs, the value of cuckooing is in providing a distribution or retail centre for their wares so any sentence at all is enough. To be cynical, keep sentences low enough to be rushed through magistrates courts.
Keep trolling, Pete, and don't hold back.
Can I do a straw poll?
I'm just putting in an objection to a planning proposal. Along the way I have discovered that Erewash Borough Council do not publish objections they receive on their website; to see them you have to make a trip during opening hours to the Council Office, or perhaps put in an FOI - which I think would not deliver a response within the consultation period.
My own Council in Ashfield have published them with names and addresses redacted for about 20 years.
What do other places do?
(My interest is piqued because this makes it more difficult for disabled people to engage, as they are lumped with driving to the Council office - but 40% of disabled adults do not have a driving license, or taking a taxi / Uber trip each way, which costs up to £20, and disabled people are more often in poverty. Or they can find another method, such as a long mobility aid trip, which up here is dodgy because of road conditions).
“The Prime Minister is not hiding under a desk”.
With MAGA, we all saw how they behaved 2016-20, and how they are behaving now. There really is no excuse for giving them the benefit of the doubt.
And if memory serves me correctly Matt has long been an advocate and campaigner for mobility access so I can see how this would really annoy him.
He makes a very valid point.
There's a difference between thinking you are right, and dismissing any contradiction a priori.
The second thing, is to be clear about what it is you are disagreeing about. One of the reasons people are often so aggressive in response to a correction of the facts is that they perceive it to be an attack on their beliefs. And that's because political debate is often structured as, "you are wrong about this fact, therefore you must change your opinion and agree with me."
Revealed: Saracens player in Stokes nightclub clash was Totoa Auvaa
Exclusive: Samoan forward, 21, is believed to be rugby player at centre of late-night fracas with England captain and Gus Atkinson
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2026/06/09/totoa-auvaa-saracens-player-involved-ben-stokes-nightclub/
It's particularly a problem for newish parties. Do they appeal to existing mainstream supporters? Then they're seen as retreads (Reform has this problem with ex-Tories). Or do they go for disillusioned types? In which case they'll find themselves with a bunch of people, some of whom have decidedly odd, even repulsive, opinions, which may not be immediately obvious. When you have to select candidates in a hurry, some of the latter will slip through.
I'm inclined to cut new parties some slack, if they take action when they've got it wrong. Not easy in a by-election though!
The baffling thing about MAGA is how they don't see what Trump is so clearly doing. They originally voted for him on a "drain the swamp" message.
Will they ever learn
At least the Greens recognised they picked a useless dickhead, but replaced him with another useless dickhead.
The English church is established and endowed, so it didn't have to worry too much about where the money was coming from. To an extent, that was even true of things like Methodism. So it could push radical social reform.
The American church has always been more entrepreneurial, "pastor eats what they catch". Which made it much harder for the church to afflict the comfortable; for example for Southern Baptists to oppose slavery.
It's another version of the populist problem; if the electorate really really want something that's likely to be really harmful for them or their successors, what should a politician do? What should a statesman do?
Almost no-one deserves a permanent ban. I realise that defending Badenoch is almost criminal in some posters minds but it's by no means as bad as, for example defending Farage.Which I think has been done on occasion.
Where’s @Leon_VotedForStarmer when you need him !
2. So many votes these days are postal so they are in the bag
3. Have said before used to reside in Ashton, stood for the Council there, still have local contacts who consistently say Burnham by, in the region of 5000!
https://x.com/MENnewsdesk/status/2064267491627434414
Wives are probably the best judges of which faults we are most guilty of.
In terms of your experience with Reform canvassers in Makerfied we had a similar experience here. Sadly some of our tellers got abused at the polling stations during the locals. One teller was quite young and she was abused very badly. The Reform teller (who I have been told is their chair) stepped in to protect her from the abuse. Similarly during the GE I had quite a laugh with a Reform deliverer. I was at my front door taking delivery of about 5000 LD leaflets as he delivered his single Reform leaflet.
If someone writes a letter, for example, a copy of the letter with personal details redacted, should be available for anyone to look at during the consultation.
There are lots of documents (reports, surveys and the like) which are an integral part of the process and these are nowadays routinely digital but there's no assumption everyone has digital access so they need to be available in alternative formats.
What tends to work is hearing the same counter-arguments in different contexts over a long period. So one can contribute to the process, but shouldn't expect instant conversion (not least as one may be at least partly wrong oneself).
https://www.psni.police.uk/latest-news/man-arrested-suspicion-attempted-murder-following-serious-assault-north-belfast
I was the Agent in 1987 and at the count, while I was watching the Conservative vote being weighed, I was approached by a group of Labour people. They looked unhappy and immediately asked if I was SDP or Liberal - when I told them I was a Liberal, the mood changed immediately, they became friendly and cordial.
I don't know because it's not my world anymore but Reform is presumably made up of three groups - the ex-Conservatives, the ex-Labour and the completely new to politics. The SDP was about two thirds of the last category as I recall.
I don't know how Conservatives relate to ex-Conservatives now in Reform - it would presumably be different with ex-Labour people now in Reform or indeed completely new people.
In all the years I "did" politics, I had the occasional joust with the Conservatives - the MP called me at home once annoyed about a leaflet I had put out which in all honesty, with hindsight, probably sailed close to the line though I had had the leaflet checked over by a solicitor in our ranks and she had cleared it - but it was generally good natured and there was a mutual understanding when out canvassing or leafletting.
Indeed, when I worked in Cornwall, some of the best times I had doing politics was telling opposite the Conservatives - as long as you didn't talk politics, I found most Conservative and indeed Labour tellers erudite and interesting - one Tory was a local Hotelier and we would talk about tourism and the economics of running a Hotel.
Whatever your political perspective, there's always bonding to be had over the commonality of life experiences.
I'd say the maximum sentence could justifiably be life, depending on the intended charging practice.
One comparator is perhaps domestic abuse, which is not a single offence but is also an invasion and exploitation within a person's most private and personal space, with destruction exercised in that sphere.
And various charges could apply - kidnapping, as you say, but also many offences against the person, and around controlling and coercive behaviour. That latter also carries 5 years maximum, which may be a model.
Yesterday I was scheduling my availability next week for work, editing PB, and watching the World Cup next week and I realised that England’s first match at the World Cup is against Croatia the night before the Makerfield by-election.
I'd surmise that local authorities had the option - the Erewash Planning Officer said as much - so it is a postcode lottery.
I would question whether the "come and visit" model is sustainable under Equality Law, as it is imo a substantial disadvantage to some members of the community.
See if you can guess when the Falklands War took place on this timeline.
https://x.com/nhoultcricket/status/2064096366154924041?s=61
PS Happy to acknowledge I may be in the minority on this.
His view was that had Argentina not invaded the Falklands the result in 1983 would have been pretty much exactly the same. It's worth noting that by the standards of GEs at the time, the Tories didn't do THAT well in terms of share of the popular vote - the landslide was delivered - as it always is - by how badly the party doing second had done.
All metal tools must be banned. Styrofoam cutlery only. All those who oppose this are clearly in favour of mountains of corpses. All hail our glorious socialist paradise!
This is why I've never liked the like or flag buttons, they drive posting behaviour to the crowd.
So I presume I’m okay to change it back 👍
Was a big problem in US prisons with plastic bags being made into weapons like that.
That played into what she was saying on economics as well.
One extra group is I suggest younger people (teens, twenties, maybe thirties) who are with the programme and trying to work out what their politics are. Farage has a number of people around him from this group, which HNH have termed iirc "Radical Young Men" in one analysis.
Another is the preserved far right, eg people who have previously in anything from the British Movement to the BNP to Britain First, some of whom are (or were, some have gone to Restore) following deliberate "infitrate and influence" strategies.
I'd also identify "former UKIP"-style (that is Farage UKIP, not the more recent Christian Nationalist UKIP) independents - eg the Mansfield Independent Forum people who have moved. The leader of Notts CC Mick Barton, was a MIF District Councillor from 2003.
HNH poll for responses to particular prominent individuals such as Tommy Robinson (to use his stage name) and the differences are quite stark.
One crim even fertilised another by getting his nut butter to her via a vent. Never met, never will, but he fertilised her. Insane.
If only these crim twits turned their obvious innovation skills to the productive economy.
The Men Of Violence won’t like being outcompeted by cheap foreign labour.
Edited: ahem, forgot to draw the link: Labour's at risk of making it so everyone needs to upload a passport just to use the damned internet, which has obvious and appalling security and freedom risks. If they take the same approach with speeding, motorway speed limits would be cut to 5mph.
There is a different issue around Stokes. He has been magnificent as a player. I will never forget 2019, nor the double in SA. He is a superb leader of the team. He hasn't always got it right. We drew the home ashes last time but ought to have won 3-1 or 4-0 but he wanted to gamble on a declaration in the first test, and one or two Aussies had fallen that night he would have lauded.
But at 35 I think he is coming to the end. He is very fit, but his batting is struggling (all time average still 35 mind). He is the 4th bowler. Is he worth it in the team for his influence? Maybe. He will hate not scoring runs and contributing.
So I guess I own a marsh - or a field as they call it here in ireland.