While ostensibly about Ukrainian adaption to the war, he end up making points that we've rehearsed here many times. ..At the moment, I think we regulate ourselves into unaffordability, in a number of ways. And if you want to look at the difference, compare the number of civil servants working in defence procurements in the UK compared to Finland, and then compare the output of those two different workforces in terms of how much equipment they buy, at what price, and its functionality. And you will see that the Finns get far better value for money from a lot fewer people, because they have been better at defining sufficiency and accepting certain risk tolerance..
...you massively improve the quality of decision-making when you take decisions at an earlier stage. Our system has become chronic at making decisions as late as possible, and overlooking the fact that by delaying the decision, they have left themselves only with bad options. I will give you an example.
Two years ago [2024], the Labour government came in and committed to triple the size of our commitment to the NATO Alliance. It was a really significant increase/uplift in our commitment. Noting that the armed forces were functionally shrinking at that stage. One year ago, another pledge was made to our allies, which is that we would spend 3.5% of GDP on defence. And yet, just days before we were going to have to go back to NATO and explain the detail of when investments would be made into what, so that we could explain what we could offer, within what timeframe to enable the plans to inform their investments, the government was still debating a 50% variance in how much budget headroom it was going to make available for the department. That's a huge divergence in the trade-off decisions that the department has to make. And so by not having an argument about spending that you knew you were going to have, you guarantee the department having to make the most knee-jerk, reactive, and therefore resource inefficient decisions imaginable. And that is a recipe for having no option but to fail. Whereas if you make the decisions early, then you can engage in a much more deliberate process of planning, you can make sure that the profile of investment is such that it matches the capacity of the institution to absorb it and so on. So, I think the key thing we need to do is move our decision-making left.
Defining defence spending quality by the metric of equipping and training a military that can do the tasks assigned to it is wrong.
That leaves out vital requirements, such as supporting manufacturers. And making sure that project managers can announce success and leave before any problems.
He talks about that in the transcript, too. That was to some extent the old Soviet system, which persisted in Ukraine until the war forced innovation.
One thing he misses in terms of supply sovereignty is that a lot of the critical materials for defence, beyond the rare earths, are by products of large scale industrial mining of more basic commodities. Copper mining for tellurium; molybdenum; selenium; rhenium / zinc for gallium; germanium; indium; cadmium / nickel for platinum group metals / aluminium for scandium etc.
So you've got to return to that kind of mining before you can think of setting up the processing for those things. The capital involved is enormous.
Milliband is hugely in favour of massive devolution isn't he ?
Given the treasury are likely to be one of the blockers to Burnham's main strategic policy, putting someone into that role who will also be seeking to devolve powers from Whitehall would make sense through that lens.
Will he be on board with this
Cross Party group of MP’s tells Burnham to let councils raise tax by how much they want.
Hopefully, it's insane that someone in Whitehall determines what democratically elected councils can and cannot do.
Fiscal devolution, even without the ability to raise corporation and income tax will very greatly change how all this occurs.
Out of interest, can you think of any other democratic nation that has such a controlling centre that blocks the ability for regions to invest to grow their economies as like in this country ?
No, and I’m not against this change in principle. If it happens.
Local govt funding is broken in this country. We cannot stumble on as we are. Change from Labour to Reform to Lib Dem to Tory to Independents and little really changes
Local governments also need to obliged to do less. Allow the electorate to decide what (if any) value add they want on to of this lower starting point.
Out of interest what obligations on them would you reduce ?
SEND provision ?
Adult care ?
At some point they’ll both have to be capped under a similar regime to NICE.
IMHO, local government should be able to raise council tax by any amount they like, but only by referendum. If the voters aren't willing for councils to have more money, then they shouldn't have it.
The flip side of this is that local government should have complete freedom to decide what services they provide to their area. The whole debate is poisoned by the fact that local government effectively has its cost base fixed by central government, and large chunks of its funding is also ring fenced for things which might well not be the council's priorities.
If councils could provide budget offers with a choce between "council tax at level x, services y and z are cut back" or "council tax at x+10%, services y, and z fully funded" then people would have a real choice about what they pay and what they get.
They’ve tried that before and people generally don’t tend to vote as the polticians want them to.
Milliband is hugely in favour of massive devolution isn't he ?
Given the treasury are likely to be one of the blockers to Burnham's main strategic policy, putting someone into that role who will also be seeking to devolve powers from Whitehall would make sense through that lens.
Will he be on board with this
Cross Party group of MP’s tells Burnham to let councils raise tax by how much they want.
Hopefully, it's insane that someone in Whitehall determines what democratically elected councils can and cannot do.
Fiscal devolution, even without the ability to raise corporation and income tax will very greatly change how all this occurs.
Out of interest, can you think of any other democratic nation that has such a controlling centre that blocks the ability for regions to invest to grow their economies as like in this country ?
No, and I’m not against this change in principle. If it happens.
Local govt funding is broken in this country. We cannot stumble on as we are. Change from Labour to Reform to Lib Dem to Tory to Independents and little really changes
Local governments also need to obliged to do less. Allow the electorate to decide what (if any) value add they want on to of this lower starting point.
Out of interest what obligations on them would you reduce ?
SEND provision ?
Adult care ?
At some point they’ll both have to be capped under a similar regime to NICE.
IMHO, local government should be able to raise council tax by any amount they like, but only by referendum. If the voters aren't willing for councils to have more money, then they shouldn't have it.
The flip side of this is that local government should have complete freedom to decide what services they provide to their area. The whole debate is poisoned by the fact that local government effectively has its cost base fixed by central government, and large chunks of its funding is also ring fenced for things which might well not be the council's priorities.
If councils could provide budget offers with a choce between "council tax at level x, services y and z are cut back" or "council tax at x+10%, services y, and z fully funded" then people would have a real choice about what they pay and what they get.
They’ve tried that before and people generally don’t tend to vote as the polticians want them to.
Should there be a referendum when local councillors wish to cut services to ?
Or do we only put obstacles in the way of local democracy to support one group of society ?
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
Milliband is hugely in favour of massive devolution isn't he ?
Given the treasury are likely to be one of the blockers to Burnham's main strategic policy, putting someone into that role who will also be seeking to devolve powers from Whitehall would make sense through that lens.
Will he be on board with this
Cross Party group of MP’s tells Burnham to let councils raise tax by how much they want.
Hopefully, it's insane that someone in Whitehall determines what democratically elected councils can and cannot do.
Fiscal devolution, even without the ability to raise corporation and income tax will very greatly change how all this occurs.
Out of interest, can you think of any other democratic nation that has such a controlling centre that blocks the ability for regions to invest to grow their economies as like in this country ?
No, and I’m not against this change in principle. If it happens.
Local govt funding is broken in this country. We cannot stumble on as we are. Change from Labour to Reform to Lib Dem to Tory to Independents and little really changes
Local governments also need to obliged to do less. Allow the electorate to decide what (if any) value add they want on to of this lower starting point.
Out of interest what obligations on them would you reduce ?
SEND provision ?
Adult care ?
At some point they’ll both have to be capped under a similar regime to NICE.
IMHO, local government should be able to raise council tax by any amount they like, but only by referendum. If the voters aren't willing for councils to have more money, then they shouldn't have it.
The flip side of this is that local government should have complete freedom to decide what services they provide to their area. The whole debate is poisoned by the fact that local government effectively has its cost base fixed by central government, and large chunks of its funding is also ring fenced for things which might well not be the council's priorities.
If councils could provide budget offers with a choce between "council tax at level x, services y and z are cut back" or "council tax at x+10%, services y, and z fully funded" then people would have a real choice about what they pay and what they get.
They’ve tried that before and people generally don’t tend to vote as the polticians want them to.
Should there be a referendum when local councillors wish to cut services to ?
Or do we only put obstacles in the way of local democracy to support one group of society ?
If you also had referendums to forbid borrowing then you'd likely have the full set and trap the council in a logical impossibility.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
Just want to go back to something @Richard_Tyndall said on a previous thread:
3. There was no evidence that it was political and the victim was not a high profile serving politician so would not be considered an immediate target for such a political killing.
As such the police statements were neither couched nor pre-emptive. They were an accurate representation of the facts as understood at the time. When the facts changed so did the approach.
Not everything in this life has to be a conspiracy.
Anne Widdicombe might not have been an elected politician, but she was still very much in politics. The idea that not being elected meant she was any less likely to be a target is absurd.
The police have bungled badly. They have reinforced the view that they are there to manage the optics of a case like this which is not ideal for the Left.
It's not the job of the police to manage the paranoid fantasies of the extremely online.
No, it's their job to investigate without fear or favour. They have failed badly.
They haven't failed badly. They've arrested and charged someone. In a fast moving situation, it took them a couple of days to work out what had happened. That is not failing.
Don't think anyone has been charged. Just arrested in relation to two, possibly three, offences: murder, instigating terrorism, preparing acts of terrorism. AFAIK.
You're right. My apologies: arrested, not charged.
Milliband is hugely in favour of massive devolution isn't he ?
Given the treasury are likely to be one of the blockers to Burnham's main strategic policy, putting someone into that role who will also be seeking to devolve powers from Whitehall would make sense through that lens.
Will he be on board with this
Cross Party group of MP’s tells Burnham to let councils raise tax by how much they want.
Hopefully, it's insane that someone in Whitehall determines what democratically elected councils can and cannot do.
Fiscal devolution, even without the ability to raise corporation and income tax will very greatly change how all this occurs.
Out of interest, can you think of any other democratic nation that has such a controlling centre that blocks the ability for regions to invest to grow their economies as like in this country ?
No, and I’m not against this change in principle. If it happens.
Local govt funding is broken in this country. We cannot stumble on as we are. Change from Labour to Reform to Lib Dem to Tory to Independents and little really changes
Local governments also need to obliged to do less. Allow the electorate to decide what (if any) value add they want on to of this lower starting point.
Out of interest what obligations on them would you reduce ?
SEND provision ?
Adult care ?
At some point they’ll both have to be capped under a similar regime to NICE.
IMHO, local government should be able to raise council tax by any amount they like, but only by referendum. If the voters aren't willing for councils to have more money, then they shouldn't have it.
The flip side of this is that local government should have complete freedom to decide what services they provide to their area. The whole debate is poisoned by the fact that local government effectively has its cost base fixed by central government, and large chunks of its funding is also ring fenced for things which might well not be the council's priorities.
If councils could provide budget offers with a choce between "council tax at level x, services y and z are cut back" or "council tax at x+10%, services y, and z fully funded" then people would have a real choice about what they pay and what they get.
They’ve tried that before and people generally don’t tend to vote as the polticians want them to.
Should there be a referendum when local councillors wish to cut services to ?
Or do we only put obstacles in the way of local democracy to support one group of society ?
If you also had referendums to forbid borrowing then you'd likely have the full set and trap the council in a logical impossibility.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
Milliband is hugely in favour of massive devolution isn't he ?
Given the treasury are likely to be one of the blockers to Burnham's main strategic policy, putting someone into that role who will also be seeking to devolve powers from Whitehall would make sense through that lens.
Will he be on board with this
Cross Party group of MP’s tells Burnham to let councils raise tax by how much they want.
Hopefully, it's insane that someone in Whitehall determines what democratically elected councils can and cannot do.
Fiscal devolution, even without the ability to raise corporation and income tax will very greatly change how all this occurs.
Out of interest, can you think of any other democratic nation that has such a controlling centre that blocks the ability for regions to invest to grow their economies as like in this country ?
No, and I’m not against this change in principle. If it happens.
Local govt funding is broken in this country. We cannot stumble on as we are. Change from Labour to Reform to Lib Dem to Tory to Independents and little really changes
Local governments also need to obliged to do less. Allow the electorate to decide what (if any) value add they want on to of this lower starting point.
Out of interest what obligations on them would you reduce ?
SEND provision ?
Adult care ?
At some point they’ll both have to be capped under a similar regime to NICE.
IMHO, local government should be able to raise council tax by any amount they like, but only by referendum. If the voters aren't willing for councils to have more money, then they shouldn't have it.
The flip side of this is that local government should have complete freedom to decide what services they provide to their area. The whole debate is poisoned by the fact that local government effectively has its cost base fixed by central government, and large chunks of its funding is also ring fenced for things which might well not be the council's priorities.
If councils could provide budget offers with a choce between "council tax at level x, services y and z are cut back" or "council tax at x+10%, services y, and z fully funded" then people would have a real choice about what they pay and what they get.
They’ve tried that before and people generally don’t tend to vote as the polticians want them to.
Should there be a referendum when local councillors wish to cut services to ?
Or do we only put obstacles in the way of local democracy to support one group of society ?
How about parties say what they plan to do up front. What the cost will be for the voters and let the voters decide.
Just want to go back to something @Richard_Tyndall said on a previous thread:
3. There was no evidence that it was political and the victim was not a high profile serving politician so would not be considered an immediate target for such a political killing.
As such the police statements were neither couched nor pre-emptive. They were an accurate representation of the facts as understood at the time. When the facts changed so did the approach.
Not everything in this life has to be a conspiracy.
Anne Widdicombe might not have been an elected politician, but she was still very much in politics. The idea that not being elected meant she was any less likely to be a target is absurd.
The police have bungled badly. They have reinforced the view that they are there to manage the optics of a case like this which is not ideal for the Left.
It's not the job of the police to manage the paranoid fantasies of the extremely online.
No, it's their job to investigate without fear or favour. They have failed badly.
They haven't failed badly. They've arrested and charged someone. In a fast moving situation, it took them a couple of days to work out what had happened. That is not failing.
Don't think anyone has been charged. Just arrested in relation to two, possibly three, offences: murder, instigating terrorism, preparing acts of terrorism. AFAIK.
You're right. My apologies: arrested, not charged.
Problem - arrested is used now “to protect rights of the accused etc etc”
However being arrested goes on background checks and is taken by the general public to mean guilt.
What we need is the system in some other countries where there is a category before arrest, which is about the police bringing people in for formal interviews etc.
Another example of a court ruling leading to unintended consequences.
"Almost half of Coastguard workers could quit after the Government stops paying them, an MP has claimed.
Joe Robertson, the Conservative MP for Isle of Wight East, said as much as 44 per cent of the workforce was considering walking away from the life-saving service when HM Coastguard stops paying call-out fees in September.
The vast majority of the Coastguard is made up of about 3,500 volunteers who help those in distress along 11,000 miles of British coastline.
Until now, they have been able to claim just over £12 per hour for responding to emergency call-outs or undertaking rigorous training exercises.
However, Labour has decided to cut their pay after a court ruled that the volunteers counted as workers because of it, which means they are entitled to employment rights."
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
While ostensibly about Ukrainian adaption to the war, he end up making points that we've rehearsed here many times. ..At the moment, I think we regulate ourselves into unaffordability, in a number of ways. And if you want to look at the difference, compare the number of civil servants working in defence procurements in the UK compared to Finland, and then compare the output of those two different workforces in terms of how much equipment they buy, at what price, and its functionality. And you will see that the Finns get far better value for money from a lot fewer people, because they have been better at defining sufficiency and accepting certain risk tolerance..
...you massively improve the quality of decision-making when you take decisions at an earlier stage. Our system has become chronic at making decisions as late as possible, and overlooking the fact that by delaying the decision, they have left themselves only with bad options. I will give you an example.
Two years ago [2024], the Labour government came in and committed to triple the size of our commitment to the NATO Alliance. It was a really significant increase/uplift in our commitment. Noting that the armed forces were functionally shrinking at that stage. One year ago, another pledge was made to our allies, which is that we would spend 3.5% of GDP on defence. And yet, just days before we were going to have to go back to NATO and explain the detail of when investments would be made into what, so that we could explain what we could offer, within what timeframe to enable the plans to inform their investments, the government was still debating a 50% variance in how much budget headroom it was going to make available for the department. That's a huge divergence in the trade-off decisions that the department has to make. And so by not having an argument about spending that you knew you were going to have, you guarantee the department having to make the most knee-jerk, reactive, and therefore resource inefficient decisions imaginable. And that is a recipe for having no option but to fail. Whereas if you make the decisions early, then you can engage in a much more deliberate process of planning, you can make sure that the profile of investment is such that it matches the capacity of the institution to absorb it and so on. So, I think the key thing we need to do is move our decision-making left.
I'm not entirely convinced that Finland is the correct comparator for the UK.
And I think we need a good deal longer to determine how successful the extensive changes under healey in the procurement setup have been. It would be classic British short-termism * that it is all thrown up in the air and deranged, amid "total failure - we will fix it" declaration, before we even get a chance to recognise what has worked.
* The "not invented by me" syndrome by whoever is the new broom in 2-8 years.
Dickie DiDo isn't often right, but the Netanyahu regime of occupation needs sanctioning by the rest of the World. In Lebanon too.
Let's rally Israel round Bibi's flag just as he faces being voted out in October's general election. What could go wrong?
I suppose that is a double edged sword. It all depends on how the voter react to sanctions. Blaming Bibi or blaming the RotW for being nasty to Bibi.
Plus all the viable candidates will likely follow the current policies. Bibi is not a dictator he works within the political system and is constrained by it, IMO he follows the path of least political resistance and is acting in respect to the surrounding peoples as the average Jewish Israeli wants.
Dickie DiDo isn't often right, but the Netanyahu regime of occupation needs sanctioning by the rest of the World. In Lebanon too.
Let's rally Israel round Bibi's flag just as he faces being voted out in October's general election. What could go wrong?
I suppose that is a double edged sword. It all depends on how the voter react to sanctions. Blaming Bibi or blaming the RotW for being nasty to Bibi.
Plus all the viable candidates will likely follow the current policies. Bibi is not a dictator he works within the political system and is constrained by it, IMO he follows the path of least political resistance and is acting in respect to the surrounding peoples as the average Jewish Israeli wants.
Yes and no. Bibi (and others) has also shifted the Overton window in Israel to the right. He is a product of the system, but has in turn influenced the system. And as he's been PM for so long, he's done more than most to influence the system.
Milliband is hugely in favour of massive devolution isn't he ?
Given the treasury are likely to be one of the blockers to Burnham's main strategic policy, putting someone into that role who will also be seeking to devolve powers from Whitehall would make sense through that lens.
Will he be on board with this
Cross Party group of MP’s tells Burnham to let councils raise tax by how much they want.
Hopefully, it's insane that someone in Whitehall determines what democratically elected councils can and cannot do.
Fiscal devolution, even without the ability to raise corporation and income tax will very greatly change how all this occurs.
Out of interest, can you think of any other democratic nation that has such a controlling centre that blocks the ability for regions to invest to grow their economies as like in this country ?
No, and I’m not against this change in principle. If it happens.
Local govt funding is broken in this country. We cannot stumble on as we are. Change from Labour to Reform to Lib Dem to Tory to Independents and little really changes
Local governments also need to obliged to do less. Allow the electorate to decide what (if any) value add they want on to of this lower starting point.
Out of interest what obligations on them would you reduce ?
SEND provision ?
Adult care ?
At some point they’ll both have to be capped under a similar regime to NICE.
IMHO, local government should be able to raise council tax by any amount they like, but only by referendum. If the voters aren't willing for councils to have more money, then they shouldn't have it.
The flip side of this is that local government should have complete freedom to decide what services they provide to their area. The whole debate is poisoned by the fact that local government effectively has its cost base fixed by central government, and large chunks of its funding is also ring fenced for things which might well not be the council's priorities.
If councils could provide budget offers with a choce between "council tax at level x, services y and z are cut back" or "council tax at x+10%, services y, and z fully funded" then people would have a real choice about what they pay and what they get.
They’ve tried that before and people generally don’t tend to vote as the polticians want them to.
Should there be a referendum when local councillors wish to cut services to ?
Or do we only put obstacles in the way of local democracy to support one group of society ?
How about parties say what they plan to do up front. What the cost will be for the voters and let the voters decide.
Yep, agree 100%.
And if they do not, vote them out
But do not have someone sat hundreds of miles away, unelected, making those decisions about what you can and cannot spend and what you are allowed to spend it on.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
Ed Miliband has principles and if you don’t like those he has other ones.
Miliband willing to approve North Sea oil to land job as chancellor
Energy Secretary wants to prove he is a ‘pragmatist’ rather than a ‘zealot’ on environmental policy to help his case for being chancellor
Ed Miliband wants to approve drilling in the North Sea to calm market jitters about his possible appointment as chancellor and prove he is no net zero “zealot”.
The Energy Secretary has privately signalled his willingness to grant consent for drilling at the Jackdaw gas field but cannot publicly confirm the move until a consultation closes next month.
Jackdaw, off the coast of Aberdeen, is one of two licences in the North Sea currently held in legal limbo. The other site, Rosebank, would produce oil to be sold in a global market, but Jackdaw would be able to provide enough fuel to heat 1.4 million British homes this winter.
A sensible move but might not help Burnham with squeezing the Green vote, though would help him squeeze some ex Labour voters who have gone Reform
Also 100% expect any decision to go ahead to be Judicially Reviewed - I seem to recall that is what overturned the previous decision to go ahead.
If I recall - and I welcome corrections as I have not looked it up - the decision made on the basis of contribution to overall global warming.
I think that a weak justification, though I would perhaps argue that other criteria could be more valid - such as if it would be many years to come on stream.
OTOH to me a long term strategic for a secure aviation fuel supply would weigh on the other side.
I wonder how Burnhams view of ‘screw the Bond markets’ is going to last in power.
Was never this bad when Truss, supposedly, crashed the economy.
Has Burnham expressed a view of "screw the bond markets"?
He has committed to existing fiscal guidelines. He also has a certain amount of headroom iirc as RR gave herself more generous margins after the 2024 ,mess-up.
Standing in General Elections delivers a significant amount of local publicity for a candidate in return for 10 signatures and £500. There is a balance between open democracy and taking the p**s. Looking at you Nigel.
I wrote.to my MP in March 2020 to express my concerns about the C19 emergency measures bill because I was concerned that the suspension of normal procurement procedures could lead to corruption I mean who could have possibly foreseen that a Boris Johnson led conservative government would have filled their boots in a national crisis.
I wonder how Burnhams view of ‘screw the Bond markets’ is going to last in power.
Was never this bad when Truss, supposedly, crashed the economy.
Has Burnham expressed a view of "screw the bond markets"?
He has committed to existing fiscal guidelines. He also has a certain amount of headroom iirc as RR gave herself more generous margins after the 2024 ,mess-up.
He certainly did prior to committing to the fiscal guidelines and prior to Makerfield.
He committed to the fiscal guidelines so as not to scare the horses.
I wonder how Burnhams view of ‘screw the Bond markets’ is going to last in power.
Was never this bad when Truss, supposedly, crashed the economy.
Has Burnham expressed a view of "screw the bond markets"?
He has committed to existing fiscal guidelines. He also has a certain amount of headroom iirc as RR gave herself more generous margins after the 2024 ,mess-up.
The mayor of Greater Manchester said the UK should not be “in hock” to bond markets as he outlined measures that he believed a Labour government should pursue, including a big council housebuilding programme and the nationalisation of utilities paid for with a rise in taxes on the higher paid, a charge on expensive London homes and £40bn of extra borrowing.
It is a bit Trussian - wanting to borrow more money from the bond markets, and simultaneously dissing them and saying that the government could transcend the bond market.
Now, since then, he has trimmed his sails in response to pushback - which shows some level of awareness that Truss didn't manage - but his instincts haven't changed, as we can see with his war bonds idea, as though putting a different label on borrowing somehow makes it not borrowing.
We'll wait and see what he does when he takes over - less than a week now - but I think there's a small, but realistic, chance that he reruns the Truss Calamity from the Left.
Dickie DiDo isn't often right, but the Netanyahu regime of occupation needs sanctioning by the rest of the World. In Lebanon too.
Let's rally Israel round Bibi's flag just as he faces being voted out in October's general election. What could go wrong?
I suppose that is a double edged sword. It all depends on how the voter react to sanctions. Blaming Bibi or blaming the RotW for being nasty to Bibi.
Plus all the viable candidates will likely follow the current policies. Bibi is not a dictator he works within the political system and is constrained by it, IMO he follows the path of least political resistance and is acting in respect to the surrounding peoples as the average Jewish Israeli wants.
Yes and no. Bibi (and others) has also shifted the Overton window in Israel to the right. He is a product of the system, but has in turn influenced the system. And as he's been PM for so long, he's done more than most to influence the system.
Seems the system is likely to drift further rightwards as with the demographics. Continual war, the Israeli bunker mentality: seeing themselves as separate to the region not of it, the current military superiority and absolute American support are making it ever nastier and more belligerent.
We can't blame one man or one party its the culmination of a century of poor choices,
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
I'll break this down for you. Up until the change in the law recently, benefit claimants with 3 or more children only received money for two. Most will be in debt to card companies, the DWP or the local council - perhaps all three. Fining them would simply add to the financial pressures and most likely the fines wouldn't/couldn't be paid. It would waste court time and money for nothing more that a gesture.
It may offend people and generate the two-tier trope but there is a practicality there.
Milliband is hugely in favour of massive devolution isn't he ?
Given the treasury are likely to be one of the blockers to Burnham's main strategic policy, putting someone into that role who will also be seeking to devolve powers from Whitehall would make sense through that lens.
Will he be on board with this
Cross Party group of MP’s tells Burnham to let councils raise tax by how much they want.
Hopefully, it's insane that someone in Whitehall determines what democratically elected councils can and cannot do.
Fiscal devolution, even without the ability to raise corporation and income tax will very greatly change how all this occurs.
Out of interest, can you think of any other democratic nation that has such a controlling centre that blocks the ability for regions to invest to grow their economies as like in this country ?
No, and I’m not against this change in principle. If it happens.
Local govt funding is broken in this country. We cannot stumble on as we are. Change from Labour to Reform to Lib Dem to Tory to Independents and little really changes
Local governments also need to obliged to do less. Allow the electorate to decide what (if any) value add they want on to of this lower starting point.
Out of interest what obligations on them would you reduce ?
SEND provision ?
Adult care ?
At some point they’ll both have to be capped under a similar regime to NICE.
IMHO, local government should be able to raise council tax by any amount they like, but only by referendum. If the voters aren't willing for councils to have more money, then they shouldn't have it.
The flip side of this is that local government should have complete freedom to decide what services they provide to their area. The whole debate is poisoned by the fact that local government effectively has its cost base fixed by central government, and large chunks of its funding is also ring fenced for things which might well not be the council's priorities.
If councils could provide budget offers with a choce between "council tax at level x, services y and z are cut back" or "council tax at x+10%, services y, and z fully funded" then people would have a real choice about what they pay and what they get.
They’ve tried that before and people generally don’t tend to vote as the polticians want them to.
Should there be a referendum when local councillors wish to cut services to ?
Or do we only put obstacles in the way of local democracy to support one group of society ?
How about parties say what they plan to do up front. What the cost will be for the voters and let the voters decide.
Yep, agree 100%.
And if they do not, vote them out
But do not have someone sat hundreds of miles away, unelected, making those decisions about what you can and cannot spend and what you are allowed to spend it on.
Much of the problem is disconnecting responsibilities from the revenue raising powers to fund them.
So SEND provision is mandated by national level laws, to be implemented by local councils. As a legal responsibility. Out of budgets that are largely set by central government.
And they can’t even raise taxes as an option.
The beauty of this is that the government can claim they are capping Council Tax. Yay! And mandating SEND provision. Yay! The councillors can tell the world that they have no option but to pass the budget that is (essentially) mandated. Yay!
Milliband is hugely in favour of massive devolution isn't he ?
Given the treasury are likely to be one of the blockers to Burnham's main strategic policy, putting someone into that role who will also be seeking to devolve powers from Whitehall would make sense through that lens.
Will he be on board with this
Cross Party group of MP’s tells Burnham to let councils raise tax by how much they want.
Hopefully, it's insane that someone in Whitehall determines what democratically elected councils can and cannot do.
Fiscal devolution, even without the ability to raise corporation and income tax will very greatly change how all this occurs.
Out of interest, can you think of any other democratic nation that has such a controlling centre that blocks the ability for regions to invest to grow their economies as like in this country ?
No, and I’m not against this change in principle. If it happens.
Local govt funding is broken in this country. We cannot stumble on as we are. Change from Labour to Reform to Lib Dem to Tory to Independents and little really changes
Local governments also need to obliged to do less. Allow the electorate to decide what (if any) value add they want on to of this lower starting point.
Out of interest what obligations on them would you reduce ?
SEND provision ?
Adult care ?
At some point they’ll both have to be capped under a similar regime to NICE.
IMHO, local government should be able to raise council tax by any amount they like, but only by referendum. If the voters aren't willing for councils to have more money, then they shouldn't have it.
The flip side of this is that local government should have complete freedom to decide what services they provide to their area. The whole debate is poisoned by the fact that local government effectively has its cost base fixed by central government, and large chunks of its funding is also ring fenced for things which might well not be the council's priorities.
If councils could provide budget offers with a choce between "council tax at level x, services y and z are cut back" or "council tax at x+10%, services y, and z fully funded" then people would have a real choice about what they pay and what they get.
They’ve tried that before and people generally don’t tend to vote as the polticians want them to.
Should there be a referendum when local councillors wish to cut services to ?
Or do we only put obstacles in the way of local democracy to support one group of society ?
How about parties say what they plan to do up front. What the cost will be for the voters and let the voters decide.
Yep, agree 100%.
And if they do not, vote them out
But do not have someone sat hundreds of miles away, unelected, making those decisions about what you can and cannot spend and what you are allowed to spend it on.
Much of the problem is disconnecting responsibilities from the revenue raising powers to fund them.
So SEND provision is mandated by national level laws, to be implemented by local councils. As a legal responsibility. Out of budgets that are largely set by central government.
And they can’t even raise taxes as an option.
The beauty of this is that the government can claim they are capping Council Tax. Yay! And mandating SEND provision. Yay! The councillors can tell the world that they have no option but to pass the budget that is (essentially) mandated. Yay!
Everyone is in power. No one is responsible. Yay!
Exactly
People are acting as if devolution of powers means we continue on as today
We don't
The power to do things differently is what is coming
The power to tax more, or less, to provide more or fewer services
and if you do not like it, you can hold the elected people to account, unlike today that for some reason many seem determined to hold onto
I wonder how Burnhams view of ‘screw the Bond markets’ is going to last in power.
Was never this bad when Truss, supposedly, crashed the economy.
Has Burnham expressed a view of "screw the bond markets"?
He has committed to existing fiscal guidelines. He also has a certain amount of headroom iirc as RR gave herself more generous margins after the 2024 ,mess-up.
He certainly did prior to committing to the fiscal guidelines and prior to Makerfield.
He committed to the fiscal guidelines so as not to scare the horses.
We'll find out. My call is that he has limited headroom for borrowing in the first 2 years, and that is then dependent on the economy having improved.
That latter is very possible, though unclear - with a fair number of headwinds, especially around vulnerability to international trends due to our isolation and the dominance of our financial sector.
Switching subjects. Have we done Gibraltar and their providing Madrid with all tax information on activity in the area. Must affect the gambling companies there who might want to move elsewhere
Milliband is hugely in favour of massive devolution isn't he ?
Given the treasury are likely to be one of the blockers to Burnham's main strategic policy, putting someone into that role who will also be seeking to devolve powers from Whitehall would make sense through that lens.
Will he be on board with this
Cross Party group of MP’s tells Burnham to let councils raise tax by how much they want.
Hopefully, it's insane that someone in Whitehall determines what democratically elected councils can and cannot do.
Fiscal devolution, even without the ability to raise corporation and income tax will very greatly change how all this occurs.
Out of interest, can you think of any other democratic nation that has such a controlling centre that blocks the ability for regions to invest to grow their economies as like in this country ?
No, and I’m not against this change in principle. If it happens.
Local govt funding is broken in this country. We cannot stumble on as we are. Change from Labour to Reform to Lib Dem to Tory to Independents and little really changes
Local governments also need to obliged to do less. Allow the electorate to decide what (if any) value add they want on to of this lower starting point.
Out of interest what obligations on them would you reduce ?
SEND provision ?
Adult care ?
At some point they’ll both have to be capped under a similar regime to NICE.
IMHO, local government should be able to raise council tax by any amount they like, but only by referendum. If the voters aren't willing for councils to have more money, then they shouldn't have it.
The flip side of this is that local government should have complete freedom to decide what services they provide to their area. The whole debate is poisoned by the fact that local government effectively has its cost base fixed by central government, and large chunks of its funding is also ring fenced for things which might well not be the council's priorities.
If councils could provide budget offers with a choce between "council tax at level x, services y and z are cut back" or "council tax at x+10%, services y, and z fully funded" then people would have a real choice about what they pay and what they get.
They’ve tried that before and people generally don’t tend to vote as the polticians want them to.
Should there be a referendum when local councillors wish to cut services to ?
Or do we only put obstacles in the way of local democracy to support one group of society ?
How about parties say what they plan to do up front. What the cost will be for the voters and let the voters decide.
Yep, agree 100%.
And if they do not, vote them out
But do not have someone sat hundreds of miles away, unelected, making those decisions about what you can and cannot spend and what you are allowed to spend it on.
Much of the problem is disconnecting responsibilities from the revenue raising powers to fund them.
So SEND provision is mandated by national level laws, to be implemented by local councils. As a legal responsibility. Out of budgets that are largely set by central government.
And they can’t even raise taxes as an option.
The beauty of this is that the government can claim they are capping Council Tax. Yay! And mandating SEND provision. Yay! The councillors can tell the world that they have no option but to pass the budget that is (essentially) mandated. Yay!
Everyone is in power. No one is responsible. Yay!
Exactly
People are acting as if devolution of powers means we continue on as today
We don't
The power to do things differently is what is coming
The power to tax more, or less, to provide more or fewer services
and if you do not like it, you can hold the elected people to account, unlike today that for some reason many seem determined to hold onto
I have my doubts that a Prime Minister - faced with an outrage campaign - will be able to say, "Nuffink to do wiv me, guv. That's the decision of the local council."
Even when it really is nothing to do with a Prime Minister, they still all want to say how much they care, and how they're calling in the supermarkets to lower food price inflation, or whatever other Canute-like thing they're pretending to do. The public outcry will be, "You have the power to stop this. Why won't you act? Will no-one think of the cute fluffy bunny-wunnies?!?"
They wasted more than that on prolonging the "gold standard" mass PCR testing, rather than move more quickly to the massively cheaper - and more practically effective - lateral flow tests.
Advances in technology mean that we're unlikely to repeat that, but our addiction to "world beating"/"gold standard" (and inability to seriously question whether something actually is) regularly costs us billions. See also military procurement.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
I'll break this down for you. Up until the change in the law recently, benefit claimants with 3 or more children only received money for two. Most will be in debt to card companies, the DWP or the local council - perhaps all three. Fining them would simply add to the financial pressures and most likely the fines wouldn't/couldn't be paid. It would waste court time and money for nothing more that a gesture.
It may offend people and generate the two-tier trope but there is a practicality there.
So basically fine/screw over the people working you know you will be able to get money from for,doing something others can just do at will.
The fines are there to prevent a behaviour they don’t want. In this case using excessive water in the garden. So you’re effectively penalising some water users but allowing others to carry on with no fear of any consequence for a behaviour that is not desirable.
It is two tier and is manifestly unfair on those in the relevant areas.
By your logic we may as well let benefits claimants speed, park without paying for a ticket or do anything they like as the fine would be unlikely to be paid.
MPs more likely to be killed than members of armed forces or police officers, Bernard Jenkin says
'Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was now an “unfortunate statistical fact that as a member of parliament you are more likely to meet a violent death than a member of Her Majesty’s armed forces or a member of the British police forces”.'
I wonder how Burnhams view of ‘screw the Bond markets’ is going to last in power.
Was never this bad when Truss, supposedly, crashed the economy.
Has Burnham expressed a view of "screw the bond markets"?
He has committed to existing fiscal guidelines. He also has a certain amount of headroom iirc as RR gave herself more generous margins after the 2024 ,mess-up.
He certainly did prior to committing to the fiscal guidelines and prior to Makerfield.
He committed to the fiscal guidelines so as not to scare the horses.
We'll find out. My call is that he has limited headroom for borrowing in the first 2 years, and that is then dependent on the economy having improved.
That latter is very possible, though unclear - with a fair number of headwinds, especially around vulnerability to international trends due to our isolation and the dominance of our financial sector.
That’s a call that is easy to make given it is constantly being rehashed on social media and the MSM.
Not really relevant to my point of his view of the bond markets. Our 10 year is a good 1% above our European peers.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
It isn't for all benefits claimants. There seems to be various criteria, some of which do seem to be ridiculous.
There are some exceptions for animals, too.
Anyway, I'm glad we have our own well, even if it did set us back more than €3,000 for the water treatment equipment.
I made the mistake of reading that article.
To be honest if you accept that certain folks (the disabled, those who’ve just laid turf, certain animal owners) should be exempt from hosepipe bans, then the private water companies have to find a way of identifying those individuals. In this example the company has decided that those on their social tariff type arrangement (that captures the disabled) is the best way of applying that exemption.
Of course the fact that there are others on that arrangement that could presumably lift up a watering can is not really an example of two tier justice. More accurately it is one where the private company providing the water doesn’t have sufficient information on its customers and so is doing the best it can.
But of course that is not news.
Hilariously the Telegraph largely covered the exemptions in their article titled “how to ‘legally’ get round hosepipe bans” Published, according to Apple News, at 12:00 today.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
I'll break this down for you. Up until the change in the law recently, benefit claimants with 3 or more children only received money for two. Most will be in debt to card companies, the DWP or the local council - perhaps all three. Fining them would simply add to the financial pressures and most likely the fines wouldn't/couldn't be paid. It would waste court time and money for nothing more that a gesture.
It may offend people and generate the two-tier trope but there is a practicality there.
It's standard Telegraph Trolling to set off their outrage munchkins, and it has worked this morning.
"Can" is doing a lot of work in that headline: Benefits Claimants - MILLIONS of them.
The actual people they are talking about are those on a social water tariff called Watersure, which has a grand total of 300k people on it nationwide. Of those, 60k are within areas of hosepipe bans. Watersure aiui caps the bill, so only 60k may benefit since only 2 areas have bans according to the parts of the article not seen on social media.
The scheme has been in place since 1999, and was not cancelled during 14 years of Conservative lead Goverment.
A typical recipient would be a household with someone with a medical condition like Crohn's Disease or Weeping Skin Disease, where you need to wash your clothes much more. There's no indication whatsoever that these will be using hosepipes. For the Telegraph to demonise such people is despicable.
If the Telegraph want to be credibly outraged, then they should focus on people who do not have water meters, or who empty our reservoirs to water their gardens so causing the hosepipe ban in the first place.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
I'll break this down for you. Up until the change in the law recently, benefit claimants with 3 or more children only received money for two. Most will be in debt to card companies, the DWP or the local council - perhaps all three. Fining them would simply add to the financial pressures and most likely the fines wouldn't/couldn't be paid. It would waste court time and money for nothing more that a gesture.
It may offend people and generate the two-tier trope but there is a practicality there.
So basically fine/screw over the people working you know you will be able to get money from for,doing something others can just do at will.
The fines are there to prevent a behaviour they don’t want. In this case using excessive water in the garden. So you’re effectively penalising some water users but allowing others to carry on with no fear of any consequence for a behaviour that is not desirable.
It is two tier and is manifestly unfair on those in the relevant areas.
By your logic we may as well let benefits claimants speed, park without paying for a ticket or do anything they like as the fine would be unlikely to be paid.
So what's the answer then?
There's not much point trying to fine people who don't have money. So then you end up looking at other punishments for non-payment of fines. We could (and do) send people to prison for that, but I'm not sure that's ideal either.
And there's also the flipside to consider. Some people and businesses feel that they can speed, park without paying for a ticket or do anything they like as the fine is a trivial amount of money for them. Again, that's not especially fair, but people on the right have traditionally been robust in saying that life isn't always fair- get over it. Frankly, I'd rather be in the slice of society where paying fines is a meaningful annoyance than the one the powers that be don't try and levy them.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
I'll break this down for you. Up until the change in the law recently, benefit claimants with 3 or more children only received money for two. Most will be in debt to card companies, the DWP or the local council - perhaps all three. Fining them would simply add to the financial pressures and most likely the fines wouldn't/couldn't be paid. It would waste court time and money for nothing more that a gesture.
It may offend people and generate the two-tier trope but there is a practicality there.
That's standard Telegraph Trolling to set off the outrage munchkins, and it has worked this morning.
"Can" is doing a lot of work in that headline: Benefits Claimants - MILLIONS of them.
The actual people they are talking about are those on a social water tariff called Watersure, which has a grand total of 300k people on it nationwide. Of those, 60k are within areas of hosepipe bans. Watersure aiui caps the bill, so only 60k may benefit since only 2 areas have bans according to the parts of the article not seen on social media.
The scheme has been in place since 1999, and was not cancelled during 14 years of Conservative lead Goverment.
A typical recipient would be a household with someone with a medical condition like Crohn's Disease or Weeping Skin Disease, where you need to wash your clothes much more. There's no indication whatsoever that these will be using hosepipes. For the Telegraph to demonise such people is despicable.
If the Telegraph want to be credibly outraged, then they should focus on people who do not have water meters, or who empty our reservoirs to water their gardens so causing the hosepipe ban in the first place.
Why can't people use PIP or child benefit or UC for this purpose? Why do we need a special scheme?
Why are we doing redistributive activities inside private firms rather than having the government do it? It's another way in which private water firms aren't really private. So maybe we should stop pretending and re-nationalise.
If you've been wondering what old @stodge has been doing the last week or so...
Well, you're wrong.
I have been visiting Manchester looking for something called "the North" which I'm told exists and will be running the country before long. Now, based on last week, Manchester is England's Oven and staying close to what I'm told the locals call "Crackadilly Gardens" in a hotel with no air conditioning (some might call it a bedroom, I'd call it a sauna with a bed), it's still a place of energy and dynamism.
Like most cities, the gap between those have and those who don't is stark and reminders of the dark paths down which mental health and addiction can lead are everywhere.
I have to say for breakfast/brunch venues, Manchester is quite superb with top marks to Cafe 19, Moose and Coffee Lab and a honourable mention to North Star in Dale Street which does a full English Japanese style. Put another way, what happens in chicken yakitori club stays in chicken yakitori club.
Trips out took us to Buxton, Lancaster, Altrincham and a Saturday afternoon watching the money in Didsbury Village as a reminder suburban Cheshire can rival if not surpass even Surrey for comfort, nay affluence.
Did I find "the North"? No, for of course it does not exist anymore than "the south" exists. Britain and indeed England is far more complex and nuanced and defies easy attempts at pigeon holing, categorisation or demonisation just as "all" those on benefits will be able to water their gradens while "hard working British families" will be left with dirty cars and deserts (or desserts) apparently.
Someone posts a video claiming to be a machete attack in Manchester and one of my silly friends claims we are in danger - antisocial media plies on fears, prejudices and ignorance. It's not easy to support freedom of speech and see it abused and corrupted the way it is by those who post unverifiable nonsense to build a climate.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
I'll break this down for you. Up until the change in the law recently, benefit claimants with 3 or more children only received money for two. Most will be in debt to card companies, the DWP or the local council - perhaps all three. Fining them would simply add to the financial pressures and most likely the fines wouldn't/couldn't be paid. It would waste court time and money for nothing more that a gesture.
It may offend people and generate the two-tier trope but there is a practicality there.
So basically fine/screw over the people working you know you will be able to get money from for,doing something others can just do at will.
The fines are there to prevent a behaviour they don’t want. In this case using excessive water in the garden. So you’re effectively penalising some water users but allowing others to carry on with no fear of any consequence for a behaviour that is not desirable.
It is two tier and is manifestly unfair on those in the relevant areas.
By your logic we may as well let benefits claimants speed, park without paying for a ticket or do anything they like as the fine would be unlikely to be paid.
There is nothing in your answer I can disagree with - except taking the arguments to a silly level with regards to your last sentence. Why not sit opposite these people and hear their stories. Understand why they are usually in the situations they find themselves and come back with the experience to comment. You have time, experience of life, an above average intelligence so well suited to giving guidance and support. I can guarantee life won't be as black and white afterwards
Of interest to some here, I think. A couple of newly released documents related to rural active travel. These are quite important and substantial, and will I think be key for the next decade.
Active Travel England:
Designing accessible rural active travel Guidance on planning and designing walking, wheeling and cycling routes and facilities in rural areas, and a lot of case studies.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
I'll break this down for you. Up until the change in the law recently, benefit claimants with 3 or more children only received money for two. Most will be in debt to card companies, the DWP or the local council - perhaps all three. Fining them would simply add to the financial pressures and most likely the fines wouldn't/couldn't be paid. It would waste court time and money for nothing more that a gesture.
It may offend people and generate the two-tier trope but there is a practicality there.
So basically fine/screw over the people working you know you will be able to get money from for,doing something others can just do at will.
The fines are there to prevent a behaviour they don’t want. In this case using excessive water in the garden. So you’re effectively penalising some water users but allowing others to carry on with no fear of any consequence for a behaviour that is not desirable.
It is two tier and is manifestly unfair on those in the relevant areas.
By your logic we may as well let benefits claimants speed, park without paying for a ticket or do anything they like as the fine would be unlikely to be paid.
So what's the answer then?
There's not much point trying to fine people who don't have money. So then you end up looking at other punishments for non-payment of fines. We could (and do) send people to prison for that, but I'm not sure that's ideal either.
And there's also the flipside to consider. Some people and businesses feel that they can speed, park without paying for a ticket or do anything they like as the fine is a trivial amount of money for them. Again, that's not especially fair, but people on the right have traditionally been robust in saying that life isn't always fair- get over it. Frankly, I'd rather be in the slice of society where paying fines is a meaningful annoyance than the one the powers that be don't try and levy them.
Fine them and deduct the fine at source from their benefit payment over a period of time.
There has to be consequences for behaviour that contravenes relevant laws. If there aren’t people will just carry on without fear of any comeback.
As we have seen with people walking into shops and walking out with stuff
There will come a time when those that play by the rules and accept them and potential consequences just say ‘screw this’ and bad behaviour will spread more.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
I'll break this down for you. Up until the change in the law recently, benefit claimants with 3 or more children only received money for two. Most will be in debt to card companies, the DWP or the local council - perhaps all three. Fining them would simply add to the financial pressures and most likely the fines wouldn't/couldn't be paid. It would waste court time and money for nothing more that a gesture.
It may offend people and generate the two-tier trope but there is a practicality there.
So basically fine/screw over the people working you know you will be able to get money from for,doing something others can just do at will.
The fines are there to prevent a behaviour they don’t want. In this case using excessive water in the garden. So you’re effectively penalising some water users but allowing others to carry on with no fear of any consequence for a behaviour that is not desirable.
It is two tier and is manifestly unfair on those in the relevant areas.
By your logic we may as well let benefits claimants speed, park without paying for a ticket or do anything they like as the fine would be unlikely to be paid.
So what's the answer then?
There's not much point trying to fine people who don't have money. So then you end up looking at other punishments for non-payment of fines. We could (and do) send people to prison for that, but I'm not sure that's ideal either.
And there's also the flipside to consider. Some people and businesses feel that they can speed, park without paying for a ticket or do anything they like as the fine is a trivial amount of money for them. Again, that's not especially fair, but people on the right have traditionally been robust in saying that life isn't always fair- get over it. Frankly, I'd rather be in the slice of society where paying fines is a meaningful annoyance than the one the powers that be don't try and levy them.
Fine them and deduct the fine at source from their benefit payment over a period of time.
There has to be consequences for behaviour that contravenes relevant laws. If there aren’t people will just carry on without fear of any comeback.
As we have seen with people walking into shops and walking out with stuff
There will come a time when those that play by the rules and accept them and potential consequences just say ‘screw this’ and bad behaviour will spread more.
That’s what’s known as moving from a high-trust society to a low-trust society.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
I'll break this down for you. Up until the change in the law recently, benefit claimants with 3 or more children only received money for two. Most will be in debt to card companies, the DWP or the local council - perhaps all three. Fining them would simply add to the financial pressures and most likely the fines wouldn't/couldn't be paid. It would waste court time and money for nothing more that a gesture.
It may offend people and generate the two-tier trope but there is a practicality there.
That's standard Telegraph Trolling to set off the outrage munchkins, and it has worked this morning.
"Can" is doing a lot of work in that headline: Benefits Claimants - MILLIONS of them.
The actual people they are talking about are those on a social water tariff called Watersure, which has a grand total of 300k people on it nationwide. Of those, 60k are within areas of hosepipe bans. Watersure aiui caps the bill, so only 60k may benefit since only 2 areas have bans according to the parts of the article not seen on social media.
The scheme has been in place since 1999, and was not cancelled during 14 years of Conservative lead Goverment.
A typical recipient would be a household with someone with a medical condition like Crohn's Disease or Weeping Skin Disease, where you need to wash your clothes much more. There's no indication whatsoever that these will be using hosepipes. For the Telegraph to demonise such people is despicable.
If the Telegraph want to be credibly outraged, then they should focus on people who do not have water meters, or who empty our reservoirs to water their gardens so causing the hosepipe ban in the first place.
Why can't people use PIP or child benefit or UC for this purpose? Why do we need a special scheme?
Why are we doing redistributive activities inside private firms rather than having the government do it? It's another way in which private water firms aren't really private. So maybe we should stop pretending and re-nationalise.
It's the private company that were given the powers to start the prosecution process. The statutory powers of old utilities and rail companies were flipped over during the privatisation process. So the water utilities are basically saying they have the power to take individuals to court or a fine in lieu of prosecution but are declining to do so. So it's a two tier private sector - those with statutory powers and those without.
Remember that the next time you pay your TV licence. (Life is not black and white - apart from in Newcastle)
Milliband is hugely in favour of massive devolution isn't he ?
Given the treasury are likely to be one of the blockers to Burnham's main strategic policy, putting someone into that role who will also be seeking to devolve powers from Whitehall would make sense through that lens.
Will he be on board with this
Cross Party group of MP’s tells Burnham to let councils raise tax by how much they want.
Hopefully, it's insane that someone in Whitehall determines what democratically elected councils can and cannot do.
Fiscal devolution, even without the ability to raise corporation and income tax will very greatly change how all this occurs.
Out of interest, can you think of any other democratic nation that has such a controlling centre that blocks the ability for regions to invest to grow their economies as like in this country ?
No, and I’m not against this change in principle. If it happens.
Local govt funding is broken in this country. We cannot stumble on as we are. Change from Labour to Reform to Lib Dem to Tory to Independents and little really changes
Local governments also need to obliged to do less. Allow the electorate to decide what (if any) value add they want on to of this lower starting point.
Out of interest what obligations on them would you reduce ?
SEND provision ?
Adult care ?
At some point they’ll both have to be capped under a similar regime to NICE.
IMHO, local government should be able to raise council tax by any amount they like, but only by referendum. If the voters aren't willing for councils to have more money, then they shouldn't have it.
The flip side of this is that local government should have complete freedom to decide what services they provide to their area. The whole debate is poisoned by the fact that local government effectively has its cost base fixed by central government, and large chunks of its funding is also ring fenced for things which might well not be the council's priorities.
If councils could provide budget offers with a choce between "council tax at level x, services y and z are cut back" or "council tax at x+10%, services y, and z fully funded" then people would have a real choice about what they pay and what they get.
They’ve tried that before and people generally don’t tend to vote as the polticians want them to.
Should there be a referendum when local councillors wish to cut services to ?
Or do we only put obstacles in the way of local democracy to support one group of society ?
How about parties say what they plan to do up front. What the cost will be for the voters and let the voters decide.
Yep, agree 100%.
And if they do not, vote them out
But do not have someone sat hundreds of miles away, unelected, making those decisions about what you can and cannot spend and what you are allowed to spend it on.
Much of the problem is disconnecting responsibilities from the revenue raising powers to fund them.
So SEND provision is mandated by national level laws, to be implemented by local councils. As a legal responsibility. Out of budgets that are largely set by central government.
And they can’t even raise taxes as an option.
The beauty of this is that the government can claim they are capping Council Tax. Yay! And mandating SEND provision. Yay! The councillors can tell the world that they have no option but to pass the budget that is (essentially) mandated. Yay!
Everyone is in power. No one is responsible. Yay!
Exactly
People are acting as if devolution of powers means we continue on as today
We don't
The power to do things differently is what is coming
The power to tax more, or less, to provide more or fewer services
and if you do not like it, you can hold the elected people to account, unlike today that for some reason many seem determined to hold onto
We have the examples of Scotland and Wales where devolution has been in place for 30 years. With varying levels fiscal and legislative powers, probably far beyond what the patchwork of metro areas and shires will get. The lessons from devolution in the real world is added costs, complications and for the most part far worse performance. Combine this with little regional media to hold devolved polities to account and you don't have to be much of a soothsayer to predict it's not going to live up to expectations.
If you've been wondering what old @stodge has been doing the last week or so...
Well, you're wrong.
I have been visiting Manchester looking for something called "the North" which I'm told exists and will be running the country before long. Now, based on last week, Manchester is England's Oven and staying close to what I'm told the locals call "Crackadilly Gardens" in a hotel with no air conditioning (some might call it a bedroom, I'd call it a sauna with a bed), it's still a place of energy and dynamism.
Like most cities, the gap between those have and those who don't is stark and reminders of the dark paths down which mental health and addiction can lead are everywhere.
I have to say for breakfast/brunch venues, Manchester is quite superb with top marks to Cafe 19, Moose and Coffee Lab and a honourable mention to North Star in Dale Street which does a full English Japanese style. Put another way, what happens in chicken yakitori club stays in chicken yakitori club.
Trips out took us to Buxton, Lancaster, Altrincham and a Saturday afternoon watching the money in Didsbury Village as a reminder suburban Cheshire can rival if not surpass even Surrey for comfort, nay affluence.
Did I find "the North"? No, for of course it does not exist anymore than "the south" exists. Britain and indeed England is far more complex and nuanced and defies easy attempts at pigeon holing, categorisation or demonisation just as "all" those on benefits will be able to water their gradens while "hard working British families" will be left with dirty cars and deserts (or desserts) apparently.
Someone posts a video claiming to be a machete attack in Manchester and one of my silly friends claims we are in danger - antisocial media plies on fears, prejudices and ignorance. It's not easy to support freedom of speech and see it abused and corrupted the way it is by those who post unverifiable nonsense to build a climate.
The North isn’t a place it is a state of mind (or something like that).
Glad you had fun up in the Tropical North West. Centre of Manchester has changed so much in the last few years - but like everywhere there are those, that for their own reasons and society failings, fall between the cracks. Some of these challenges are more noticeable in the mill towns around Manchester.
Although point of order Didsbury village distinctly not Cheshire. Probably more of a Dulwich / Wimbledon Village comparison.
As an aside I remember an Armando Ianucci (sic) joke that went something like “Cheshire is the Surrey of the North, unless you are in Sussex when the Surrey of the North is in fact Surrey” - well I found it funny.
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
I'll break this down for you. Up until the change in the law recently, benefit claimants with 3 or more children only received money for two. Most will be in debt to card companies, the DWP or the local council - perhaps all three. Fining them would simply add to the financial pressures and most likely the fines wouldn't/couldn't be paid. It would waste court time and money for nothing more that a gesture.
It may offend people and generate the two-tier trope but there is a practicality there.
That's standard Telegraph Trolling to set off the outrage munchkins, and it has worked this morning.
"Can" is doing a lot of work in that headline: Benefits Claimants - MILLIONS of them.
The actual people they are talking about are those on a social water tariff called Watersure, which has a grand total of 300k people on it nationwide. Of those, 60k are within areas of hosepipe bans. Watersure aiui caps the bill, so only 60k may benefit since only 2 areas have bans according to the parts of the article not seen on social media.
The scheme has been in place since 1999, and was not cancelled during 14 years of Conservative lead Goverment.
A typical recipient would be a household with someone with a medical condition like Crohn's Disease or Weeping Skin Disease, where you need to wash your clothes much more. There's no indication whatsoever that these will be using hosepipes. For the Telegraph to demonise such people is despicable.
If the Telegraph want to be credibly outraged, then they should focus on people who do not have water meters, or who empty our reservoirs to water their gardens so causing the hosepipe ban in the first place.
Why can't people use PIP or child benefit or UC for this purpose? Why do we need a special scheme?
Why are we doing redistributive activities inside private firms rather than having the government do it? It's another way in which private water firms aren't really private. So maybe we should stop pretending and re-nationalise.
It's the private company that were given the powers to start the prosecution process. The statutory powers of old utilities and rail companies were flipped over during the privatisation process. So the water utilities are basically saying they have the power to take individuals to court or a fine in lieu of prosecution but are declining to do so. So it's a two tier private sector - those with statutory powers and those without.
Remember that the next time you pay your TV licence. (Life is not black and white - apart from in Newcastle)
Sorry, I was referring to Watersure. I should have bolded that para in MattW's comment when replying but I was too lazy.
If you've been wondering what old @stodge has been doing the last week or so...
Well, you're wrong.
I have been visiting Manchester looking for something called "the North" which I'm told exists and will be running the country before long. Now, based on last week, Manchester is England's Oven and staying close to what I'm told the locals call "Crackadilly Gardens" in a hotel with no air conditioning (some might call it a bedroom, I'd call it a sauna with a bed), it's still a place of energy and dynamism.
Like most cities, the gap between those have and those who don't is stark and reminders of the dark paths down which mental health and addiction can lead are everywhere.
I have to say for breakfast/brunch venues, Manchester is quite superb with top marks to Cafe 19, Moose and Coffee Lab and a honourable mention to North Star in Dale Street which does a full English Japanese style. Put another way, what happens in chicken yakitori club stays in chicken yakitori club.
Trips out took us to Buxton, Lancaster, Altrincham and a Saturday afternoon watching the money in Didsbury Village as a reminder suburban Cheshire can rival if not surpass even Surrey for comfort, nay affluence.
Did I find "the North"? No, for of course it does not exist anymore than "the south" exists. Britain and indeed England is far more complex and nuanced and defies easy attempts at pigeon holing, categorisation or demonisation just as "all" those on benefits will be able to water their gradens while "hard working British families" will be left with dirty cars and deserts (or desserts) apparently.
Someone posts a video claiming to be a machete attack in Manchester and one of my silly friends claims we are in danger - antisocial media plies on fears, prejudices and ignorance. It's not easy to support freedom of speech and see it abused and corrupted the way it is by those who post unverifiable nonsense to build a climate.
You've been to Manchester? You should have said - I'd have given you a tour!
I'd say the North does very much exist - though like all psychogeography it is very hard to pin down. Its distinction from the south isn't really about wealth. What is IS about is really the subject of a whole book, rather than a brief post on the internet, and no-one's book yet - not Stuart Maconie, not Simon Armitage, not Brian Groom - has yet pinned the whole thing down entirely to my satisfaction, though all give it a good go. I do think you can distinguish it, though of course in a big blob of 15 million people there is internal diversity. Also, a pedant notes: Didsbury is on the Lancashire side of the river.
If you've been wondering what old @stodge has been doing the last week or so...
Well, you're wrong.
I have been visiting Manchester looking for something called "the North" which I'm told exists and will be running the country before long. Now, based on last week, Manchester is England's Oven and staying close to what I'm told the locals call "Crackadilly Gardens" in a hotel with no air conditioning (some might call it a bedroom, I'd call it a sauna with a bed), it's still a place of energy and dynamism.
Like most cities, the gap between those have and those who don't is stark and reminders of the dark paths down which mental health and addiction can lead are everywhere.
I have to say for breakfast/brunch venues, Manchester is quite superb with top marks to Cafe 19, Moose and Coffee Lab and a honourable mention to North Star in Dale Street which does a full English Japanese style. Put another way, what happens in chicken yakitori club stays in chicken yakitori club.
Trips out took us to Buxton, Lancaster, Altrincham and a Saturday afternoon watching the money in Didsbury Village as a reminder suburban Cheshire can rival if not surpass even Surrey for comfort, nay affluence.
Did I find "the North"? No, for of course it does not exist anymore than "the south" exists. Britain and indeed England is far more complex and nuanced and defies easy attempts at pigeon holing, categorisation or demonisation just as "all" those on benefits will be able to water their gradens while "hard working British families" will be left with dirty cars and deserts (or desserts) apparently.
Someone posts a video claiming to be a machete attack in Manchester and one of my silly friends claims we are in danger - antisocial media plies on fears, prejudices and ignorance. It's not easy to support freedom of speech and see it abused and corrupted the way it is by those who post unverifiable nonsense to build a climate.
The North isn’t a place it is a state of mind (or something like that).
Glad you had fun up in the Tropical North West. Centre of Manchester has changed so much in the last few years - but like everywhere there are those, that for their own reasons and society failings, fall between the cracks. Some of these challenges are more noticeable in the mill towns around Manchester.
Although point of order Didsbury village distinctly not Cheshire. Probably more of a Dulwich / Wimbledon Village comparison.
As an aside I remember an Armando Ianucci (sic) joke that went something like “Cheshire is the Surrey of the North, unless you are in Sussex when the Surrey of the North is in fact Surrey” - well I found it funny.
Of course, Jim, I was having a wee josh at those getting over excited about Andy Burnham.
Thank you for the correction re: Didsbury - we travelled on the Metrolink (the Manchester equivalent of the London Underground with the main difference it's 100% above ground while the London Underground is only 55% above ground).
I assume places like Knutsford, Macclesfield and Congleton are more the wealthy bits of suburban Cheshire. We went to Chester yesterday and I enjoyed a visit round the Cathedral - it's no Canterbury or York Minster but not without appeal. Mrs Stodge "did" the shops.
Should we be concerned about the renewed shenanigans in the Gulf? WTI back up to around $80 a barrel and Brent to $85 so basically where it was a month ago and still above the $65 - $67 at the end of February.
As someone argued earlier, are we looking, much as we did with Iraq in the "No Fly" period of occasional bursts of violence followed by periods of relative calm for a longer or shorter period? It took an invasion and regime change to end that stand off but is there really any appetite in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran? It doesn't seem likely.
Should we be concerned about the renewed shenanigans in the Gulf? WTI back up to around $80 a barrel and Brent to $85 so basically where it was a month ago and still above the $65 - $67 at the end of February.
As someone argued earlier, are we looking, much as we did with Iraq in the "No Fly" period of occasional bursts of violence followed by periods of relative calm for a longer or shorter period? It took an invasion and regime change to end that stand off but is there really any appetite in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran? It doesn't seem likely.
No and yes. The yes bit is that we import a lot of our energy needs. The price goes up and down and the fact that we import it really doesn't change that. However a break in the energy market would leave us looking like fools.
Should we be concerned about the renewed shenanigans in the Gulf? WTI back up to around $80 a barrel and Brent to $85 so basically where it was a month ago and still above the $65 - $67 at the end of February.
As someone argued earlier, are we looking, much as we did with Iraq in the "No Fly" period of occasional bursts of violence followed by periods of relative calm for a longer or shorter period? It took an invasion and regime change to end that stand off but is there really any appetite in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran? It doesn't seem likely.
They don't the capacity for a ground invasion.
How would you get a couple of hundred thousand troops into Iraq ?
Should we be concerned about the renewed shenanigans in the Gulf? WTI back up to around $80 a barrel and Brent to $85 so basically where it was a month ago and still above the $65 - $67 at the end of February.
As someone argued earlier, are we looking, much as we did with Iraq in the "No Fly" period of occasional bursts of violence followed by periods of relative calm for a longer or shorter period? It took an invasion and regime change to end that stand off but is there really any appetite in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran? It doesn't seem likely.
They don't the capacity for a ground invasion.
How would you get a couple of hundred thousand troops into Iraq ?
The Civil Reserve Air Fleet? Feeding them would be another matter.
If you've been wondering what old @stodge has been doing the last week or so...
Well, you're wrong.
I have been visiting Manchester looking for something called "the North" which I'm told exists and will be running the country before long. Now, based on last week, Manchester is England's Oven and staying close to what I'm told the locals call "Crackadilly Gardens" in a hotel with no air conditioning (some might call it a bedroom, I'd call it a sauna with a bed), it's still a place of energy and dynamism.
Like most cities, the gap between those have and those who don't is stark and reminders of the dark paths down which mental health and addiction can lead are everywhere.
I have to say for breakfast/brunch venues, Manchester is quite superb with top marks to Cafe 19, Moose and Coffee Lab and a honourable mention to North Star in Dale Street which does a full English Japanese style. Put another way, what happens in chicken yakitori club stays in chicken yakitori club.
Trips out took us to Buxton, Lancaster, Altrincham and a Saturday afternoon watching the money in Didsbury Village as a reminder suburban Cheshire can rival if not surpass even Surrey for comfort, nay affluence.
Did I find "the North"? No, for of course it does not exist anymore than "the south" exists. Britain and indeed England is far more complex and nuanced and defies easy attempts at pigeon holing, categorisation or demonisation just as "all" those on benefits will be able to water their gradens while "hard working British families" will be left with dirty cars and deserts (or desserts) apparently.
Someone posts a video claiming to be a machete attack in Manchester and one of my silly friends claims we are in danger - antisocial media plies on fears, prejudices and ignorance. It's not easy to support freedom of speech and see it abused and corrupted the way it is by those who post unverifiable nonsense to build a climate.
The North isn’t a place it is a state of mind (or something like that).
Glad you had fun up in the Tropical North West. Centre of Manchester has changed so much in the last few years - but like everywhere there are those, that for their own reasons and society failings, fall between the cracks. Some of these challenges are more noticeable in the mill towns around Manchester.
Although point of order Didsbury village distinctly not Cheshire. Probably more of a Dulwich / Wimbledon Village comparison.
As an aside I remember an Armando Ianucci (sic) joke that went something like “Cheshire is the Surrey of the North, unless you are in Sussex when the Surrey of the North is in fact Surrey” - well I found it funny.
Of course, Jim, I was having a wee josh at those getting over excited about Andy Burnham.
Thank you for the correction re: Didsbury - we travelled on the Metrolink (the Manchester equivalent of the London Underground with the main difference it's 100% above ground while the London Underground is only 55% above ground).
I assume places like Knutsford, Macclesfield and Congleton are more the wealthy bits of suburban Cheshire. We went to Chester yesterday and I enjoyed a visit round the Cathedral - it's no Canterbury or York Minster but not without appeal. Mrs Stodge "did" the shops.
Chester is a nice spot. Hope you checked out all the Roman stuff too (something that London doesn’t have too much of).
As someone who’s recently returned from the South to the North I always think the scale of London sets it apart from the rest of the country. It is nine old million people plus those that work in London. Manchester has nowhere near that and it shows, but there are benefits.
The folk of Knutsford will be spluttering into their pink gins by putting Macc and Cong in the same bracket as them. Folk there still look down on Wilmslow and Alderly Edge as “fur coat, no knickers” territory.
If you've been wondering what old @stodge has been doing the last week or so...
Well, you're wrong.
I have been visiting Manchester looking for something called "the North" which I'm told exists and will be running the country before long. Now, based on last week, Manchester is England's Oven and staying close to what I'm told the locals call "Crackadilly Gardens" in a hotel with no air conditioning (some might call it a bedroom, I'd call it a sauna with a bed), it's still a place of energy and dynamism.
Like most cities, the gap between those have and those who don't is stark and reminders of the dark paths down which mental health and addiction can lead are everywhere.
I have to say for breakfast/brunch venues, Manchester is quite superb with top marks to Cafe 19, Moose and Coffee Lab and a honourable mention to North Star in Dale Street which does a full English Japanese style. Put another way, what happens in chicken yakitori club stays in chicken yakitori club.
Trips out took us to Buxton, Lancaster, Altrincham and a Saturday afternoon watching the money in Didsbury Village as a reminder suburban Cheshire can rival if not surpass even Surrey for comfort, nay affluence.
Did I find "the North"? No, for of course it does not exist anymore than "the south" exists. Britain and indeed England is far more complex and nuanced and defies easy attempts at pigeon holing, categorisation or demonisation just as "all" those on benefits will be able to water their gradens while "hard working British families" will be left with dirty cars and deserts (or desserts) apparently.
Someone posts a video claiming to be a machete attack in Manchester and one of my silly friends claims we are in danger - antisocial media plies on fears, prejudices and ignorance. It's not easy to support freedom of speech and see it abused and corrupted the way it is by those who post unverifiable nonsense to build a climate.
The North isn’t a place it is a state of mind (or something like that).
Glad you had fun up in the Tropical North West. Centre of Manchester has changed so much in the last few years - but like everywhere there are those, that for their own reasons and society failings, fall between the cracks. Some of these challenges are more noticeable in the mill towns around Manchester.
Although point of order Didsbury village distinctly not Cheshire. Probably more of a Dulwich / Wimbledon Village comparison.
As an aside I remember an Armando Ianucci (sic) joke that went something like “Cheshire is the Surrey of the North, unless you are in Sussex when the Surrey of the North is in fact Surrey” - well I found it funny.
Of course, Jim, I was having a wee josh at those getting over excited about Andy Burnham.
Thank you for the correction re: Didsbury - we travelled on the Metrolink (the Manchester equivalent of the London Underground with the main difference it's 100% above ground while the London Underground is only 55% above ground).
I assume places like Knutsford, Macclesfield and Congleton are more the wealthy bits of suburban Cheshire. We went to Chester yesterday and I enjoyed a visit round the Cathedral - it's no Canterbury or York Minster but not without appeal. Mrs Stodge "did" the shops.
The Armando Ianucci joke Jim the Lurker refers to is from 'People Like Us' - the lawyer episode, I think. It has stuck with me for years - one of my favourite jokes the telly has given me - pleased to hear it referred to here.
The wealthy bits of suburban East Cheshire are in a diamond described by Knutsford-Hale-Prestbury-Nether Alderley. There's a fair amount of wealth outside this too - Poynton, Bramhall, Lymm, Holmes Chapel aren't short of a bob or two, but the real focus is that diamond. Macclesfield and Congleton are comfortably off Pennine towns - nice places to live, certainly, but I wouldn't necessarily assume someone from one of those places is super-wealthy in the same way that I would someone from Alderley Edge. (Macclesfield, of course, is home to the Macc Lads, whom ought to be studied by every student of Northernness - the characters portrayed in their songs are very much not the superwealthy, though interestingly the band themselves were all from the private school King's Macclesfield.) In West Cheshire, interestingly it strikes me now, the wealthy bits are pretty well correlated with geology, following the sandstone belt down the west of the Wirral through Chester down towards 'deep' Cheshire - Peckforton, Cholmondley, Marbury - old money, polo playing country - with a little spur up to Frodsham. These two wealthy bits are separated by the mixed industrial salt-and-chemicals belt - Middlewich/Winsford - Northwich-Runcorn.
I'm glad you visited Chester: there is a temptation to think of it as 'cathedral city' and therefore compare it unfavourably to other cathedrals, but is is a remarkable place in its own right - the city walls and the rows are both better examples of their sort than anywhere else in Britain. (The cathedral is dedicated to St. Werburgh, an obscure dark ages saint who specialised in goose-based miracles.)
Should we be concerned about the renewed shenanigans in the Gulf? WTI back up to around $80 a barrel and Brent to $85 so basically where it was a month ago and still above the $65 - $67 at the end of February.
As someone argued earlier, are we looking, much as we did with Iraq in the "No Fly" period of occasional bursts of violence followed by periods of relative calm for a longer or shorter period? It took an invasion and regime change to end that stand off but is there really any appetite in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran? It doesn't seem likely.
They don't the capacity for a ground invasion.
How would you get a couple of hundred thousand troops into Iraq ?
If you've been wondering what old @stodge has been doing the last week or so...
Well, you're wrong.
I have been visiting Manchester looking for something called "the North" which I'm told exists and will be running the country before long. Now, based on last week, Manchester is England's Oven and staying close to what I'm told the locals call "Crackadilly Gardens" in a hotel with no air conditioning (some might call it a bedroom, I'd call it a sauna with a bed), it's still a place of energy and dynamism.
Like most cities, the gap between those have and those who don't is stark and reminders of the dark paths down which mental health and addiction can lead are everywhere.
I have to say for breakfast/brunch venues, Manchester is quite superb with top marks to Cafe 19, Moose and Coffee Lab and a honourable mention to North Star in Dale Street which does a full English Japanese style. Put another way, what happens in chicken yakitori club stays in chicken yakitori club.
Trips out took us to Buxton, Lancaster, Altrincham and a Saturday afternoon watching the money in Didsbury Village as a reminder suburban Cheshire can rival if not surpass even Surrey for comfort, nay affluence.
Did I find "the North"? No, for of course it does not exist anymore than "the south" exists. Britain and indeed England is far more complex and nuanced and defies easy attempts at pigeon holing, categorisation or demonisation just as "all" those on benefits will be able to water their gradens while "hard working British families" will be left with dirty cars and deserts (or desserts) apparently.
Someone posts a video claiming to be a machete attack in Manchester and one of my silly friends claims we are in danger - antisocial media plies on fears, prejudices and ignorance. It's not easy to support freedom of speech and see it abused and corrupted the way it is by those who post unverifiable nonsense to build a climate.
The North isn’t a place it is a state of mind (or something like that).
Glad you had fun up in the Tropical North West. Centre of Manchester has changed so much in the last few years - but like everywhere there are those, that for their own reasons and society failings, fall between the cracks. Some of these challenges are more noticeable in the mill towns around Manchester.
Although point of order Didsbury village distinctly not Cheshire. Probably more of a Dulwich / Wimbledon Village comparison.
As an aside I remember an Armando Ianucci (sic) joke that went something like “Cheshire is the Surrey of the North, unless you are in Sussex when the Surrey of the North is in fact Surrey” - well I found it funny.
Of course, Jim, I was having a wee josh at those getting over excited about Andy Burnham.
Thank you for the correction re: Didsbury - we travelled on the Metrolink (the Manchester equivalent of the London Underground with the main difference it's 100% above ground while the London Underground is only 55% above ground).
I assume places like Knutsford, Macclesfield and Congleton are more the wealthy bits of suburban Cheshire. We went to Chester yesterday and I enjoyed a visit round the Cathedral - it's no Canterbury or York Minster but not without appeal. Mrs Stodge "did" the shops.
Chester is a nice spot. Hope you checked out all the Roman stuff too (something that London doesn’t have too much of).
As someone who’s recently returned from the South to the North I always think the scale of London sets it apart from the rest of the country. It is nine old million people plus those that work in London. Manchester has nowhere near that and it shows, but there are benefits.
The folk of Knutsford will be spluttering into their pink gins by putting Macc and Cong in the same bracket as them. Folk there still look down on Wilmslow and Alderly Edge as “fur coat, no knickers” territory.
You and I are having the same conversation in parallel Jim! Whereabouts in the north are you? I've been thinking about what distinguished the south from the north, and had a similar thought: everywhere in the south (actually specifically the south east) relates to London in some way in a way.
Should we be concerned about the renewed shenanigans in the Gulf? WTI back up to around $80 a barrel and Brent to $85 so basically where it was a month ago and still above the $65 - $67 at the end of February.
As someone argued earlier, are we looking, much as we did with Iraq in the "No Fly" period of occasional bursts of violence followed by periods of relative calm for a longer or shorter period? It took an invasion and regime change to end that stand off but is there really any appetite in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran? It doesn't seem likely.
They don't the capacity for a ground invasion.
How would you get a couple of hundred thousand troops into Iraq ?
The US could seize and could hold some few strategic points. Kharg Island or the like. But the exit which would have to happen in the medium term would just be a disaster.
I'm reasonably sure that Trump will attempt to seize Kharg Island. It's his only play in a game he lost long ago.
Should we be concerned about the renewed shenanigans in the Gulf? WTI back up to around $80 a barrel and Brent to $85 so basically where it was a month ago and still above the $65 - $67 at the end of February.
As someone argued earlier, are we looking, much as we did with Iraq in the "No Fly" period of occasional bursts of violence followed by periods of relative calm for a longer or shorter period? It took an invasion and regime change to end that stand off but is there really any appetite in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran? It doesn't seem likely.
They don't the capacity for a ground invasion.
How would you get a couple of hundred thousand troops into Iraq ?
The Civil Reserve Air Fleet? Feeding them would be another matter.
Sorry, typo: into Iran. Iraq is not going to host a US invasion of its neighbour.
The US has the capacity to get, maybe, 20k troops ashore. That's not an invasion; it's an extremely expensive and dangerous field trip.
There's a general failure to understand scale in ground operations.
See also the Watling link I posted earlier regarding Ukraine. ..'there were more Russian soldiers attacking Pokrovsk, which is one medium-sized town in Donbass last year, than are in the entire British Army. And so, when people think of it in manoeuvrist terms they're like, “well, maybe you go left flanking”. It's like, “yeah, there's another force there and it's also as big as the entire British Army, right?” There is not empty space here that you can just cut through. These are really large formations and, unless you can inflict a pretty high threshold of damage within a limited period of time, then you're not going to break through.'..
Betting post: England appear to be favourites to qualify from their semi-final with Argentina tomorrow. This is madness, surely? Argentina are not only very good but will cheat, they will get away with it, and they will win. I'd say a chance of England getting through tomorrow's match is less than 20%, rather than the greater than 50% the odds appear to imply.
There's a general failure to understand scale in ground operations.
See also the Watling link I posted earlier regarding Ukraine. ..'there were more Russian soldiers attacking Pokrovsk, which is one medium-sized town in Donbass last year, than are in the entire British Army. And so, when people think of it in manoeuvrist terms they're like, “well, maybe you go left flanking”. It's like, “yeah, there's another force there and it's also as big as the entire British Army, right?” There is not empty space here that you can just cut through. These are really large formations and, unless you can inflict a pretty high threshold of damage within a limited period of time, then you're not going to break through.'..
If you stationed the British Army around our coast watching for Russian threats they'd have to be great sprinters to make it a proper network.
If the Russians landed 20 thousand troops in Essex we really wouldn't spot it for a while.
(Increased pregnancy rates would likely be the first sign)
Betting post: England appear to be favourites to qualify from their semi-final with Argentina tomorrow. This is madness, surely? Argentina are not only very good but will cheat, they will get away with it, and they will win. I'd say a chance of England getting through tomorrow's match is less than 20%, rather than the greater than 50% the odds appear to imply.
Betting as a way of showing support, rather than as a way of collecting profits.
Suspect that (on topic!) there's a similar effect with some political betting.
If you've been wondering what old @stodge has been doing the last week or so...
Well, you're wrong.
I have been visiting Manchester looking for something called "the North" which I'm told exists and will be running the country before long. Now, based on last week, Manchester is England's Oven and staying close to what I'm told the locals call "Crackadilly Gardens" in a hotel with no air conditioning (some might call it a bedroom, I'd call it a sauna with a bed), it's still a place of energy and dynamism.
Like most cities, the gap between those have and those who don't is stark and reminders of the dark paths down which mental health and addiction can lead are everywhere.
I have to say for breakfast/brunch venues, Manchester is quite superb with top marks to Cafe 19, Moose and Coffee Lab and a honourable mention to North Star in Dale Street which does a full English Japanese style. Put another way, what happens in chicken yakitori club stays in chicken yakitori club.
Trips out took us to Buxton, Lancaster, Altrincham and a Saturday afternoon watching the money in Didsbury Village as a reminder suburban Cheshire can rival if not surpass even Surrey for comfort, nay affluence.
Did I find "the North"? No, for of course it does not exist anymore than "the south" exists. Britain and indeed England is far more complex and nuanced and defies easy attempts at pigeon holing, categorisation or demonisation just as "all" those on benefits will be able to water their gradens while "hard working British families" will be left with dirty cars and deserts (or desserts) apparently.
Someone posts a video claiming to be a machete attack in Manchester and one of my silly friends claims we are in danger - antisocial media plies on fears, prejudices and ignorance. It's not easy to support freedom of speech and see it abused and corrupted the way it is by those who post unverifiable nonsense to build a climate.
The North isn’t a place it is a state of mind (or something like that).
Glad you had fun up in the Tropical North West. Centre of Manchester has changed so much in the last few years - but like everywhere there are those, that for their own reasons and society failings, fall between the cracks. Some of these challenges are more noticeable in the mill towns around Manchester.
Although point of order Didsbury village distinctly not Cheshire. Probably more of a Dulwich / Wimbledon Village comparison.
As an aside I remember an Armando Ianucci (sic) joke that went something like “Cheshire is the Surrey of the North, unless you are in Sussex when the Surrey of the North is in fact Surrey” - well I found it funny.
Of course, Jim, I was having a wee josh at those getting over excited about Andy Burnham.
Thank you for the correction re: Didsbury - we travelled on the Metrolink (the Manchester equivalent of the London Underground with the main difference it's 100% above ground while the London Underground is only 55% above ground).
I assume places like Knutsford, Macclesfield and Congleton are more the wealthy bits of suburban Cheshire. We went to Chester yesterday and I enjoyed a visit round the Cathedral - it's no Canterbury or York Minster but not without appeal. Mrs Stodge "did" the shops.
The Armando Ianucci joke Jim the Lurker refers to is from 'People Like Us' - the lawyer episode, I think. It has stuck with me for years - one of my favourite jokes the telly has given me - pleased to hear it referred to here.
The wealthy bits of suburban East Cheshire are in a diamond described by Knutsford-Hale-Prestbury-Nether Alderley. There's a fair amount of wealth outside this too - Poynton, Bramhall, Lymm, Holmes Chapel aren't short of a bob or two, but the real focus is that diamond. Macclesfield and Congleton are comfortably off Pennine towns - nice places to live, certainly, but I wouldn't necessarily assume someone from one of those places is super-wealthy in the same way that I would someone from Alderley Edge. (Macclesfield, of course, is home to the Macc Lads, whom ought to be studied by every student of Northernness - the characters portrayed in their songs are very much not the superwealthy, though interestingly the band themselves were all from the private school King's Macclesfield.) In West Cheshire, interestingly it strikes me now, the wealthy bits are pretty well correlated with geology, following the sandstone belt down the west of the Wirral through Chester down towards 'deep' Cheshire - Peckforton, Cholmondley, Marbury - old money, polo playing country - with a little spur up to Frodsham. These two wealthy bits are separated by the mixed industrial salt-and-chemicals belt - Middlewich/Winsford - Northwich-Runcorn.
I'm glad you visited Chester: there is a temptation to think of it as 'cathedral city' and therefore compare it unfavourably to other cathedrals, but is is a remarkable place in its own right - the city walls and the rows are both better examples of their sort than anywhere else in Britain. (The cathedral is dedicated to St. Werburgh, an obscure dark ages saint who specialised in goose-based miracles.)
Talking of which - I'm off to Prestbury right now. A daughter is playing in a cricket match there. Back later...
Should we be concerned about the renewed shenanigans in the Gulf? WTI back up to around $80 a barrel and Brent to $85 so basically where it was a month ago and still above the $65 - $67 at the end of February.
As someone argued earlier, are we looking, much as we did with Iraq in the "No Fly" period of occasional bursts of violence followed by periods of relative calm for a longer or shorter period? It took an invasion and regime change to end that stand off but is there really any appetite in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran? It doesn't seem likely.
Two positives.
Firstly, @Casino_Royale was right, and we didn't run out of jet fuel, or diesel, etc. Refineries did a lot of work to fill the gaps, and China used its reserves to massively cut imports.
Secondly, we're already four and a half months into this, so we're four and a half months closer to pipelines that bypass the strait, to other producers increasing output to make up the deficit, to installing enough renewables that we don't need fossil fuels from the Middle East, to making the Strait increasingly irrelevant.
It's really bad for Kuwait and Iraq, and some of the other Gulf States, and the higher oil price is a boon for Putin, but it keeps Trump busy and distracted from any other escapades. I'm inclined to just leave him to it.
If you've been wondering what old @stodge has been doing the last week or so...
Well, you're wrong.
I have been visiting Manchester looking for something called "the North" which I'm told exists and will be running the country before long. Now, based on last week, Manchester is England's Oven and staying close to what I'm told the locals call "Crackadilly Gardens" in a hotel with no air conditioning (some might call it a bedroom, I'd call it a sauna with a bed), it's still a place of energy and dynamism.
Like most cities, the gap between those have and those who don't is stark and reminders of the dark paths down which mental health and addiction can lead are everywhere.
I have to say for breakfast/brunch venues, Manchester is quite superb with top marks to Cafe 19, Moose and Coffee Lab and a honourable mention to North Star in Dale Street which does a full English Japanese style. Put another way, what happens in chicken yakitori club stays in chicken yakitori club.
Trips out took us to Buxton, Lancaster, Altrincham and a Saturday afternoon watching the money in Didsbury Village as a reminder suburban Cheshire can rival if not surpass even Surrey for comfort, nay affluence.
Did I find "the North"? No, for of course it does not exist anymore than "the south" exists. Britain and indeed England is far more complex and nuanced and defies easy attempts at pigeon holing, categorisation or demonisation just as "all" those on benefits will be able to water their gradens while "hard working British families" will be left with dirty cars and deserts (or desserts) apparently.
Someone posts a video claiming to be a machete attack in Manchester and one of my silly friends claims we are in danger - antisocial media plies on fears, prejudices and ignorance. It's not easy to support freedom of speech and see it abused and corrupted the way it is by those who post unverifiable nonsense to build a climate.
The North isn’t a place it is a state of mind (or something like that).
Glad you had fun up in the Tropical North West. Centre of Manchester has changed so much in the last few years - but like everywhere there are those, that for their own reasons and society failings, fall between the cracks. Some of these challenges are more noticeable in the mill towns around Manchester.
Although point of order Didsbury village distinctly not Cheshire. Probably more of a Dulwich / Wimbledon Village comparison.
As an aside I remember an Armando Ianucci (sic) joke that went something like “Cheshire is the Surrey of the North, unless you are in Sussex when the Surrey of the North is in fact Surrey” - well I found it funny.
Of course, Jim, I was having a wee josh at those getting over excited about Andy Burnham.
Thank you for the correction re: Didsbury - we travelled on the Metrolink (the Manchester equivalent of the London Underground with the main difference it's 100% above ground while the London Underground is only 55% above ground).
I assume places like Knutsford, Macclesfield and Congleton are more the wealthy bits of suburban Cheshire. We went to Chester yesterday and I enjoyed a visit round the Cathedral - it's no Canterbury or York Minster but not without appeal. Mrs Stodge "did" the shops.
Chester is a nice spot. Hope you checked out all the Roman stuff too (something that London doesn’t have too much of).
As someone who’s recently returned from the South to the North I always think the scale of London sets it apart from the rest of the country. It is nine old million people plus those that work in London. Manchester has nowhere near that and it shows, but there are benefits.
The folk of Knutsford will be spluttering into their pink gins by putting Macc and Cong in the same bracket as them. Folk there still look down on Wilmslow and Alderly Edge as “fur coat, no knickers” territory.
You and I are having the same conversation in parallel Jim! Whereabouts in the north are you? I've been thinking about what distinguished the south from the north, and had a similar thought: everywhere in the south (actually specifically the south east) relates to London in some way in a way.
Ooh, I reckon there's quite a bit in that. The Portsmouth/Southampton "Solent City" sometimes behaves like a bit of the north that's fallen off and tucked back in behind the Isle of Wight to keep it safe. Just far enough from the gravity of London to form an independent entity. So Brighton is London-by-the-Sea... Does a similar Londonshed exist in Kent?
Following on from that, does it help us make sense of the map of Reform support? South West Essex clearly has no geographic right to deny that it's part of Greater Greater London, but it hates the idea- and that strip from Romford to about Basildon is very very Reformy.
If you've been wondering what old @stodge has been doing the last week or so...
Well, you're wrong.
I have been visiting Manchester looking for something called "the North" which I'm told exists and will be running the country before long. Now, based on last week, Manchester is England's Oven and staying close to what I'm told the locals call "Crackadilly Gardens" in a hotel with no air conditioning (some might call it a bedroom, I'd call it a sauna with a bed), it's still a place of energy and dynamism.
Like most cities, the gap between those have and those who don't is stark and reminders of the dark paths down which mental health and addiction can lead are everywhere.
I have to say for breakfast/brunch venues, Manchester is quite superb with top marks to Cafe 19, Moose and Coffee Lab and a honourable mention to North Star in Dale Street which does a full English Japanese style. Put another way, what happens in chicken yakitori club stays in chicken yakitori club.
Trips out took us to Buxton, Lancaster, Altrincham and a Saturday afternoon watching the money in Didsbury Village as a reminder suburban Cheshire can rival if not surpass even Surrey for comfort, nay affluence.
Did I find "the North"? No, for of course it does not exist anymore than "the south" exists. Britain and indeed England is far more complex and nuanced and defies easy attempts at pigeon holing, categorisation or demonisation just as "all" those on benefits will be able to water their gradens while "hard working British families" will be left with dirty cars and deserts (or desserts) apparently.
Someone posts a video claiming to be a machete attack in Manchester and one of my silly friends claims we are in danger - antisocial media plies on fears, prejudices and ignorance. It's not easy to support freedom of speech and see it abused and corrupted the way it is by those who post unverifiable nonsense to build a climate.
The North isn’t a place it is a state of mind (or something like that).
Glad you had fun up in the Tropical North West. Centre of Manchester has changed so much in the last few years - but like everywhere there are those, that for their own reasons and society failings, fall between the cracks. Some of these challenges are more noticeable in the mill towns around Manchester.
Although point of order Didsbury village distinctly not Cheshire. Probably more of a Dulwich / Wimbledon Village comparison.
As an aside I remember an Armando Ianucci (sic) joke that went something like “Cheshire is the Surrey of the North, unless you are in Sussex when the Surrey of the North is in fact Surrey” - well I found it funny.
Of course, Jim, I was having a wee josh at those getting over excited about Andy Burnham.
Thank you for the correction re: Didsbury - we travelled on the Metrolink (the Manchester equivalent of the London Underground with the main difference it's 100% above ground while the London Underground is only 55% above ground).
I assume places like Knutsford, Macclesfield and Congleton are more the wealthy bits of suburban Cheshire. We went to Chester yesterday and I enjoyed a visit round the Cathedral - it's no Canterbury or York Minster but not without appeal. Mrs Stodge "did" the shops.
Chester is a nice spot. Hope you checked out all the Roman stuff too (something that London doesn’t have too much of).
As someone who’s recently returned from the South to the North I always think the scale of London sets it apart from the rest of the country. It is nine old million people plus those that work in London. Manchester has nowhere near that and it shows, but there are benefits.
The folk of Knutsford will be spluttering into their pink gins by putting Macc and Cong in the same bracket as them. Folk there still look down on Wilmslow and Alderly Edge as “fur coat, no knickers” territory.
You and I are having the same conversation in parallel Jim! Whereabouts in the north are you? I've been thinking about what distinguished the south from the north, and had a similar thought: everywhere in the south (actually specifically the south east) relates to London in some way in a way.
Ooh, I reckon there's quite a bit in that. The Portsmouth/Southampton "Solent City" sometimes behaves like a bit of the north that's fallen off and tucked back in behind the Isle of Wight to keep it safe. Just far enough from the gravity of London to form an independent entity. So Brighton is London-by-the-Sea... Does a similar Londonshed exist in Kent?
Following on from that, does it help us make sense of the map of Reform support? South West Essex clearly has no geographic right to deny that it's part of Greater Greater London, but it hates the idea- and that strip from Romford to about Basildon is very very Reformy.
I was half expecting Farage to, pace Jonathan Aitken, witter on about "the sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play" but given how that turned out for Aitken, probably not a good move.
Am I right in thinking even if Farage is re-elected, the Standards Committee could still throw him out of Parliament thereby forcing a second by-election in which Farage (presumably) would be unable to stand? I presume Farage is hoping a strong re-election will put pressure on the aforementioned Standards Committee to, if not, exonerate him entirely then perhaps to ensure it's more of a slap on the wrist than a kick in the gonads.
Farage remains an MP and life goes on as normally as it ever can and all we are out is the cost of the by-election and the prevailing questions about donations and contributions which will dog (so to apeak) Farage all the way to the next GE and perhaps beyond.
As for Count Bin-fahsay, I've seen him interviewed. I'm sure we can all understand his frustration at urinal facilities in west London pubs but how far will the joke take him and what will we do if he gets there?
Should we be concerned about the renewed shenanigans in the Gulf? WTI back up to around $80 a barrel and Brent to $85 so basically where it was a month ago and still above the $65 - $67 at the end of February.
As someone argued earlier, are we looking, much as we did with Iraq in the "No Fly" period of occasional bursts of violence followed by periods of relative calm for a longer or shorter period? It took an invasion and regime change to end that stand off but is there really any appetite in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran? It doesn't seem likely.
Two positives.
Firstly, @Casino_Royale was right, and we didn't run out of jet fuel, or diesel, etc. Refineries did a lot of work to fill the gaps, and China used its reserves to massively cut imports.
Secondly, we're already four and a half months into this, so we're four and a half months closer to pipelines that bypass the strait, to other producers increasing output to make up the deficit, to installing enough renewables that we don't need fossil fuels from the Middle East, to making the Strait increasingly irrelevant.
It's really bad for Kuwait and Iraq, and some of the other Gulf States, and the higher oil price is a boon for Putin, but it keeps Trump busy and distracted from any other escapades. I'm inclined to just leave him to it.
Qatar, who are currently in 4 days of national mourning for the Emir's late father, also suffering.
Betting post: England appear to be favourites to qualify from their semi-final with Argentina tomorrow. This is madness, surely? Argentina are not only very good but will cheat, they will get away with it, and they will win. I'd say a chance of England getting through tomorrow's match is less than 20%, rather than the greater than 50% the odds appear to imply.
You’re looking at English bookmakers, who have a large pile of small bets on their own team to win.
England at football championships are always poor value, because the money on them is patriotic rather than informed.
It feels like we're living in a poorly written soap. Neither the Anne-Widdecombe-gets-murdered storyline nor the Farage-calls-a-needless-byelection-and-loses-to-Binface storyline are remotely believable. Nor for that matter is wildfires in the notoriously-moist Greater Manchester. Put some effort in, writers!
I thought there were fires around Manchester a few years ago?
You're right, I was being slightly flippant. But - if you're here - it does add an air of unreality.
Still the BBC haven't got their story straight.
First, the Dovestones fire was pouring smoke over Manchester. Wrong, it wasn't, it was the Tintwistle fire, which coincidentally caused intermittent fire service call outs to localities in Huddersfield back in June when the wind was coming from the south.
Now to the BBC, it's billed as the Tintwistle fire near Dovestones as if there is one fire. Wrong - the two locations are the other side of the same hill, but they are separated by about 5 miles as the crow flies, or about 12 miles by road.
Two separate fires - (1) smaller one at Dovestones, attended by GM and contributing a little smoke, (2) larger one above Tintwistle, attended by Derbyshire, but sending smoke across Manchester.
The satellite picture the BBC are using tells this entire story as both of the fires and their smoke trails can be seen.
Should we be concerned about the renewed shenanigans in the Gulf? WTI back up to around $80 a barrel and Brent to $85 so basically where it was a month ago and still above the $65 - $67 at the end of February.
As someone argued earlier, are we looking, much as we did with Iraq in the "No Fly" period of occasional bursts of violence followed by periods of relative calm for a longer or shorter period? It took an invasion and regime change to end that stand off but is there really any appetite in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran? It doesn't seem likely.
They don't the capacity for a ground invasion.
How would you get a couple of hundred thousand troops into Iraq ?
The Civil Reserve Air Fleet? Feeding them would be another matter.
Sorry, typo: into Iran. Iraq is not going to host a US invasion of its neighbour.
The US has the capacity to get, maybe, 20k troops ashore. That's not an invasion; it's an extremely expensive and dangerous field trip.
Is the only viable route for a land invasion via Turkey? They also have the troop numbers. It's not going to happen, but if it were, you'd want Erdoğan on board.
Betting post: England appear to be favourites to qualify from their semi-final with Argentina tomorrow. This is madness, surely? Argentina are not only very good but will cheat, they will get away with it, and they will win. I'd say a chance of England getting through tomorrow's match is less than 20%, rather than the greater than 50% the odds appear to imply.
You’re looking at English bookmakers, who have a large pile of small bets on their own team to win.
England at football championships are always poor value, because the money on them is patriotic rather than informed.
Although OPTA have them as slight favourites too, and that's based on results, rather than betting.
England are also very good - with plenty of pundits suggesting they're better than Argentina. They're top 4 ranked in the World, reached semis/finals in three of the last four major tournaments (and were the better team against France when they went out at the QF stage in 2022).
Comments
That was to some extent the old Soviet system, which persisted in Ukraine until the war forced innovation.
One thing he misses in terms of supply sovereignty is that a lot of the critical materials for defence, beyond the rare earths, are by products of large scale industrial mining of more basic commodities.
Copper mining for tellurium; molybdenum; selenium; rhenium / zinc for gallium; germanium; indium; cadmium / nickel for platinum group metals / aluminium for scandium etc.
So you've got to return to that kind of mining before you can think of setting up the processing for those things. The capital involved is enormous.
https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/14/man-dressed-fox-pulls-clacton-election-become-a-circus-29131323/
It's actually very sensible:
https://x.com/ProtectTheWild_/status/2076728474308431970
Or do we only put obstacles in the way of local democracy to support one group of society ?
"Benefits claimants can ignore hosepipe ban
MPs criticise ‘two-tier’ restrictions that allow benefits recipients with three children to hose their gardens"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/13/benefits-claimants-can-ignore-hosepipe-ban/
He was offered the same level as the official opposition leader Badenoch and turned it down so he should just STFU and stop playing the martyr.
I saw that in my Google feed yesterday and thought before discovering the source " I bet that's the DT".
Remember, it’s all been done before.
ETA casualty on the track, apparently.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/east-croydon-fire-trains-thameslink-overground-weaver-line-tube-b1289891.html
Anyway didn't Christopher Harborne sub him five million quid for his security?
It really pays less and less in this country to work full time, strive and get on.
You use your hosepipe. Get a fine.
The dole bludger down at number 7 can use theirs all day without any comeback.
Nuts but plenty will justify it.
However being arrested goes on background checks and is taken by the general public to mean guilt.
What we need is the system in some other countries where there is a category before arrest, which is about the police bringing people in for formal interviews etc.
"Almost half of Coastguard workers could quit after the Government stops paying them, an MP has claimed.
Joe Robertson, the Conservative MP for Isle of Wight East, said as much as 44 per cent of the workforce was considering walking away from the life-saving service when HM Coastguard stops paying call-out fees in September.
The vast majority of the Coastguard is made up of about 3,500 volunteers who help those in distress along 11,000 miles of British coastline.
Until now, they have been able to claim just over £12 per hour for responding to emergency call-outs or undertaking rigorous training exercises.
However, Labour has decided to cut their pay after a court ruled that the volunteers counted as workers because of it, which means they are entitled to employment rights."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/13/coastguard-workers-could-quiet-pay-call-out-fees-scrapped
I agree. The Netanyahu govt should be sanctioned. Its behaviour is reprehensible
But what you’ll get is accusation of Jew hate and comments like ‘why don’t you care about what’s going on in Sudan’ or,some other such place.
For too long we’ve turned a blind eye to what Israel does and, worse than that, aided and abetted them.
There are some exceptions for animals, too.
Anyway, I'm glad we have our own well, even if it did set us back more than €3,000 for the water treatment equipment.
And I think we need a good deal longer to determine how successful the extensive changes under healey in the procurement setup have been. It would be classic British short-termism * that it is all thrown up in the air and deranged, amid "total failure - we will fix it" declaration, before we even get a chance to recognise what has worked.
* The "not invented by me" syndrome by whoever is the new broom in 2-8 years.
And if they do not, vote them out
But do not have someone sat hundreds of miles away, unelected, making those decisions about what you can and cannot spend and what you are allowed to spend it on.
I think that a weak justification, though I would perhaps argue that other criteria could be more valid - such as if it would be many years to come on stream.
OTOH to me a long term strategic for a secure aviation fuel supply would weigh on the other side.
https://x.com/SkyFootball/status/2076979418757583135/video/1?s=61
He has committed to existing fiscal guidelines. He also has a certain amount of headroom iirc as RR gave herself more generous margins after the 2024 ,mess-up.
I mean who could have possibly foreseen that a Boris Johnson led conservative government would have filled their boots in a national crisis.
He committed to the fiscal guidelines so as not to scare the horses.
The mayor of Greater Manchester said the UK should not be “in hock” to bond markets as he outlined measures that he believed a Labour government should pursue, including a big council housebuilding programme and the nationalisation of utilities paid for with a rise in taxes on the higher paid, a charge on expensive London homes and £40bn of extra borrowing.
It is a bit Trussian - wanting to borrow more money from the bond markets, and simultaneously dissing them and saying that the government could transcend the bond market.
Now, since then, he has trimmed his sails in response to pushback - which shows some level of awareness that Truss didn't manage - but his instincts haven't changed, as we can see with his war bonds idea, as though putting a different label on borrowing somehow makes it not borrowing.
We'll wait and see what he does when he takes over - less than a week now - but I think there's a small, but realistic, chance that he reruns the Truss Calamity from the Left.
We can't blame one man or one party its the culmination of a century of poor choices,
https://archivegenocide.com/
It may offend people and generate the two-tier trope but there is a practicality there.
So SEND provision is mandated by national level laws, to be implemented by local councils. As a legal responsibility. Out of budgets that are largely set by central government.
And they can’t even raise taxes as an option.
The beauty of this is that the government can claim they are capping Council Tax. Yay! And mandating SEND provision. Yay! The councillors can tell the world that they have no option but to pass the budget that is (essentially) mandated. Yay!
Everyone is in power. No one is responsible. Yay!
People are acting as if devolution of powers means we continue on as today
We don't
The power to do things differently is what is coming
The power to tax more, or less, to provide more or fewer services
and if you do not like it, you can hold the elected people to account, unlike today that for some reason many seem determined to hold onto
That latter is very possible, though unclear - with a fair number of headwinds, especially around vulnerability to international trends due to our isolation and the dominance of our financial sector.
https://en.ara.cat/international/the-fence-that-separated-gibraltar-from-linea-concepcion-since-1730-falls_1_5798081.html?giveAway=5KWGn2XwkjYCaZog
Even when it really is nothing to do with a Prime Minister, they still all want to say how much they care, and how they're calling in the supermarkets to lower food price inflation, or whatever other Canute-like thing they're pretending to do. The public outcry will be, "You have the power to stop this. Why won't you act? Will no-one think of the cute fluffy bunny-wunnies?!?"
Reflecting pool gets drained. No sign of the supposed slashes by vandals Trump claimed... although he's repeated those claims anyway.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/14/boris-johnson-government-wasted-vast-sums-on-ppe-covid-inquiry-finds
They wasted more than that on prolonging the "gold standard" mass PCR testing, rather than move more quickly to the massively cheaper - and more practically effective - lateral flow tests.
Advances in technology mean that we're unlikely to repeat that, but our addiction to "world beating"/"gold standard" (and inability to seriously question whether something actually is) regularly costs us billions.
See also military procurement.
So basically fine/screw over the people working you know you will be able to get money from for,doing something others can just do at will.
The fines are there to prevent a behaviour they don’t want. In this case using excessive water in the garden. So you’re effectively penalising some water users but allowing others to carry on with no fear of any consequence for a behaviour that is not desirable.
It is two tier and is manifestly unfair on those in the relevant areas.
By your logic we may as well let benefits claimants speed, park without paying for a ticket or do anything they like as the fine would be unlikely to be paid.
'Bernard Jenkin (Con) said it was now an “unfortunate statistical fact that as a member of parliament you are more likely to meet a violent death than a member of Her Majesty’s armed forces or a member of the British police forces”.'
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/jul/13/shabana-mahmood-migration-rochdale-grooming-gang-pakistan-visas-immigration-andy-burnham-labour
Not really relevant to my point of his view of the bond markets. Our 10 year is a good 1% above our European peers.
To be honest if you accept that certain folks (the disabled, those who’ve just laid turf, certain animal owners) should be exempt from hosepipe bans, then the private water companies have to find a way of identifying those individuals. In this example the company has decided that those on their social tariff type arrangement (that captures the disabled) is the best way of applying that exemption.
Of course the fact that there are others on that arrangement that could presumably lift up a watering can is not really an example of two tier justice. More accurately it is one where the private company providing the water doesn’t have sufficient information on its customers and so is doing the best it can.
But of course that is not news.
Hilariously the Telegraph largely covered the exemptions in their article titled “how to ‘legally’ get round hosepipe bans” Published, according to Apple News, at 12:00 today.
"Can" is doing a lot of work in that headline: Benefits Claimants - MILLIONS of them.
The actual people they are talking about are those on a social water tariff called Watersure, which has a grand total of 300k people on it nationwide. Of those, 60k are within areas of hosepipe bans. Watersure aiui caps the bill, so only 60k may benefit since only 2 areas have bans according to the parts of the article not seen on social media.
The scheme has been in place since 1999, and was not cancelled during 14 years of Conservative lead Goverment.
A typical recipient would be a household with someone with a medical condition like Crohn's Disease or Weeping Skin Disease, where you need to wash your clothes much more. There's no indication whatsoever that these will be using hosepipes. For the Telegraph to demonise such people is despicable.
If the Telegraph want to be credibly outraged, then they should focus on people who do not have water meters, or who empty our reservoirs to water their gardens so causing the hosepipe ban in the first place.
Full article link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/eb0dd4f66c17b064
There's not much point trying to fine people who don't have money. So then you end up looking at other punishments for non-payment of fines. We could (and do) send people to prison for that, but I'm not sure that's ideal either.
And there's also the flipside to consider. Some people and businesses feel that they can speed, park without paying for a ticket or do anything they like as the fine is a trivial amount of money for them. Again, that's not especially fair, but people on the right have traditionally been robust in saying that life isn't always fair- get over it. Frankly, I'd rather be in the slice of society where paying fines is a meaningful annoyance than the one the powers that be don't try and levy them.
Why are we doing redistributive activities inside private firms rather than having the government do it? It's another way in which private water firms aren't really private. So maybe we should stop pretending and re-nationalise.
If you've been wondering what old @stodge has been doing the last week or so...
Well, you're wrong.
I have been visiting Manchester looking for something called "the North" which I'm told exists and will be running the country before long. Now, based on last week, Manchester is England's Oven and staying close to what I'm told the locals call "Crackadilly Gardens" in a hotel with no air conditioning (some might call it a bedroom, I'd call it a sauna with a bed), it's still a place of energy and dynamism.
Like most cities, the gap between those have and those who don't is stark and reminders of the dark paths down which mental health and addiction can lead are everywhere.
I have to say for breakfast/brunch venues, Manchester is quite superb with top marks to Cafe 19, Moose and Coffee Lab and a honourable mention to North Star in Dale Street which does a full English Japanese style. Put another way, what happens in chicken yakitori club stays in chicken yakitori club.
Trips out took us to Buxton, Lancaster, Altrincham and a Saturday afternoon watching the money in Didsbury Village as a reminder suburban Cheshire can rival if not surpass even Surrey for comfort, nay affluence.
Did I find "the North"? No, for of course it does not exist anymore than "the south" exists. Britain and indeed England is far more complex and nuanced and defies easy attempts at pigeon holing, categorisation or demonisation just as "all" those on benefits will be able to water their gradens while "hard working British families" will be left with dirty cars and deserts (or desserts) apparently.
Someone posts a video claiming to be a machete attack in Manchester and one of my silly friends claims we are in danger - antisocial media plies on fears, prejudices and ignorance. It's not easy to support freedom of speech and see it abused and corrupted the way it is by those who post unverifiable nonsense to build a climate.
Trump today: the US “as a matter of fairness will be reimbursed at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped.”
https://x.com/jimsciutto/status/2076797222327292286
Agents of chaos.
Active Travel England:
Designing accessible rural active travel
Guidance on planning and designing walking, wheeling and cycling routes and facilities in rural areas, and a lot of case studies.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/designing-accessible-rural-active-travel
A toolkit on the practical process of doing it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zvjSNPZLcdPYbVBN8Wxu2yzdXTpuAsE77XcoV1nblgk/edit?tab=t.0
(These are very substantial pieces of work - be warned.)
There has to be consequences for behaviour that contravenes relevant laws. If there aren’t people will just carry on without fear of any comeback.
As we have seen with people walking into shops and walking out with stuff
There will come a time when those that play by the rules and accept them and potential consequences just say ‘screw this’ and bad behaviour will spread more.
Remember that the next time you pay your TV licence. (Life is not black and white - apart from in Newcastle)
Yesterday. Buy IBM
Today, it crashes
https://x.com/antibearthesis/status/2077001546529735030?s=61
Glad you had fun up in the Tropical North West. Centre of Manchester has changed so much in the last few years - but like everywhere there are those, that for their own reasons and society failings, fall between the cracks. Some of these challenges are more noticeable in the mill towns around Manchester.
Although point of order Didsbury village distinctly not Cheshire. Probably more of a Dulwich / Wimbledon Village comparison.
As an aside I remember an Armando Ianucci (sic) joke that went something like “Cheshire is the Surrey of the North, unless you are in Sussex when the Surrey of the North is in fact Surrey” - well I found it funny.
I'd say the North does very much exist - though like all psychogeography it is very hard to pin down. Its distinction from the south isn't really about wealth. What is IS about is really the subject of a whole book, rather than a brief post on the internet, and no-one's book yet - not Stuart Maconie, not Simon Armitage, not Brian Groom - has yet pinned the whole thing down entirely to my satisfaction, though all give it a good go. I do think you can distinguish it, though of course in a big blob of 15 million people there is internal diversity.
Also, a pedant notes: Didsbury is on the Lancashire side of the river.
Thank you for the correction re: Didsbury - we travelled on the Metrolink (the Manchester equivalent of the London Underground with the main difference it's 100% above ground while the London Underground is only 55% above ground).
I assume places like Knutsford, Macclesfield and Congleton are more the wealthy bits of suburban Cheshire. We went to Chester yesterday and I enjoyed a visit round the Cathedral - it's no Canterbury or York Minster but not without appeal. Mrs Stodge "did" the shops.
As someone argued earlier, are we looking, much as we did with Iraq in the "No Fly" period of occasional bursts of violence followed by periods of relative calm for a longer or shorter period? It took an invasion and regime change to end that stand off but is there really any appetite in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran? It doesn't seem likely.
How would you get a couple of hundred thousand troops into Iraq ?
As someone who’s recently returned from the South to the North I always think the scale of London sets it apart from the rest of the country. It is nine old million people plus those that work in London. Manchester has nowhere near that and it shows, but there are benefits.
The folk of Knutsford will be spluttering into their pink gins by putting Macc and Cong in the same bracket as them. Folk there still look down on Wilmslow and Alderly Edge as “fur coat, no knickers” territory.
The wealthy bits of suburban East Cheshire are in a diamond described by Knutsford-Hale-Prestbury-Nether Alderley. There's a fair amount of wealth outside this too - Poynton, Bramhall, Lymm, Holmes Chapel aren't short of a bob or two, but the real focus is that diamond. Macclesfield and Congleton are comfortably off Pennine towns - nice places to live, certainly, but I wouldn't necessarily assume someone from one of those places is super-wealthy in the same way that I would someone from Alderley Edge. (Macclesfield, of course, is home to the Macc Lads, whom ought to be studied by every student of Northernness - the characters portrayed in their songs are very much not the superwealthy, though interestingly the band themselves were all from the private school King's Macclesfield.)
In West Cheshire, interestingly it strikes me now, the wealthy bits are pretty well correlated with geology, following the sandstone belt down the west of the Wirral through Chester down towards 'deep' Cheshire - Peckforton, Cholmondley, Marbury - old money, polo playing country - with a little spur up to Frodsham. These two wealthy bits are separated by the mixed industrial salt-and-chemicals belt - Middlewich/Winsford - Northwich-Runcorn.
I'm glad you visited Chester: there is a temptation to think of it as 'cathedral city' and therefore compare it unfavourably to other cathedrals, but is is a remarkable place in its own right - the city walls and the rows are both better examples of their sort than anywhere else in Britain. (The cathedral is dedicated to St. Werburgh, an obscure dark ages saint who specialised in goose-based miracles.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Iraq_War
I'm reasonably sure that Trump will attempt to seize Kharg Island. It's his only play in a game he lost long ago.
Iraq is not going to host a US invasion of its neighbour.
The US has the capacity to get, maybe, 20k troops ashore.
That's not an invasion; it's an extremely expensive and dangerous field trip.
See also the Watling link I posted earlier regarding Ukraine.
..'there were more Russian soldiers attacking Pokrovsk, which is one medium-sized town in Donbass last year, than are in the entire British Army. And so, when people think of it in manoeuvrist terms they're like, “well, maybe you go left flanking”. It's like, “yeah, there's another force there and it's also as big as the entire British Army, right?” There is not empty space here that you can just cut through. These are really large formations and, unless you can inflict a pretty high threshold of damage within a limited period of time, then you're not going to break through.'..
If the Russians landed 20 thousand troops in Essex we really wouldn't spot it for a while.
(Increased pregnancy rates would likely be the first sign)
Suspect that (on topic!) there's a similar effect with some political betting.
Firstly, @Casino_Royale was right, and we didn't run out of jet fuel, or diesel, etc. Refineries did a lot of work to fill the gaps, and China used its reserves to massively cut imports.
Secondly, we're already four and a half months into this, so we're four and a half months closer to pipelines that bypass the strait, to other producers increasing output to make up the deficit, to installing enough renewables that we don't need fossil fuels from the Middle East, to making the Strait increasingly irrelevant.
It's really bad for Kuwait and Iraq, and some of the other Gulf States, and the higher oil price is a boon for Putin, but it keeps Trump busy and distracted from any other escapades. I'm inclined to just leave him to it.
Following on from that, does it help us make sense of the map of Reform support? South West Essex clearly has no geographic right to deny that it's part of Greater Greater London, but it hates the idea- and that strip from Romford to about Basildon is very very Reformy.
Margate.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c05y579g563t
I was half expecting Farage to, pace Jonathan Aitken, witter on about "the sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play" but given how that turned out for Aitken, probably not a good move.
Am I right in thinking even if Farage is re-elected, the Standards Committee could still throw him out of Parliament thereby forcing a second by-election in which Farage (presumably) would be unable to stand? I presume Farage is hoping a strong re-election will put pressure on the aforementioned Standards Committee to, if not, exonerate him entirely then perhaps to ensure it's more of a slap on the wrist than a kick in the gonads.
Farage remains an MP and life goes on as normally as it ever can and all we are out is the cost of the by-election and the prevailing questions about donations and contributions which will dog (so to apeak) Farage all the way to the next GE and perhaps beyond.
As for Count Bin-fahsay, I've seen him interviewed. I'm sure we can all understand his frustration at urinal facilities in west London pubs but how far will the joke take him and what will we do if he gets there?
England at football championships are always poor value, because the money on them is patriotic rather than informed.
First, the Dovestones fire was pouring smoke over Manchester. Wrong, it wasn't, it was the Tintwistle fire, which coincidentally caused intermittent fire service call outs to localities in Huddersfield back in June when the wind was coming from the south.
Now to the BBC, it's billed as the Tintwistle fire near Dovestones as if there is one fire. Wrong - the two locations are the other side of the same hill, but they are separated by about 5 miles as the crow flies, or about 12 miles by road.
Two separate fires - (1) smaller one at Dovestones, attended by GM and contributing a little smoke, (2) larger one above Tintwistle, attended by Derbyshire, but sending smoke across Manchester.
The satellite picture the BBC are using tells this entire story as both of the fires and their smoke trails can be seen.
After the killing of Ann Widdecombe, Count Binface is suddenly a lot less funny"
https://x.com/JohnRentoul/status/2076985776538087720
England are also very good - with plenty of pundits suggesting they're better than Argentina. They're top 4 ranked in the World, reached semis/finals in three of the last four major tournaments (and were the better team against France when they went out at the QF stage in 2022).
https://theanalyst.com/competition/fifa-world-cup