RugbyRebels

Sandydragon wrote:

Son of Mathonwy wrote:

Zhivago wrote:Leaked memo from Tory HQ that shows that they're in panic mode about Scottish Independence.

Relevant to our current topic:
.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... dependence

I can't shake the suspicion that, in extremis, Cummings (and hence Johnson) would seriously consider Scottish independence to lock in the Tories' majority in the rest of the UK.

It would once have been unthinkable for a Conservative PM to be responsible for the break up of the Union. However, Boris et al are content for NI to effectively be treated differently in order to leave the EU, potentially hastening reunification in Ireland. Many little Englanders who happen to be Conservative Party members probably see Scotland as a bunch of scroungers who just siphon money off England (ignoring that Britain only became a pre-eminent world power because of the total contribution of the UK) so the fall out on Boris would probably be less than it once was.

Its also probably a correct assumption that by removing Scotland from the picture, the chances of anyone else winning a majority in the HoC is pretty slim. It would literally take a Blair style landslide (and the follow on effect as that landslide is gradually whittled down)

Pretty sure too many Tories have a great fondness for grouse moors to allow Scotland to leave.

Zhivago wrote:

Sandydragon wrote:

Son of Mathonwy wrote: I can't shake the suspicion that, in extremis, Cummings (and hence Johnson) would seriously consider Scottish independence to lock in the Tories' majority in the rest of the UK.

It would once have been unthinkable for a Conservative PM to be responsible for the break up of the Union. However, Boris et al are content for NI to effectively be treated differently in order to leave the EU, potentially hastening reunification in Ireland. Many little Englanders who happen to be Conservative Party members probably see Scotland as a bunch of scroungers who just siphon money off England (ignoring that Britain only became a pre-eminent world power because of the total contribution of the UK) so the fall out on Boris would probably be less than it once was.

Its also probably a correct assumption that by removing Scotland from the picture, the chances of anyone else winning a majority in the HoC is pretty slim. It would literally take a Blair style landslide (and the follow on effect as that landslide is gradually whittled down)

Pretty sure too many Tories have a great fondness for grouse moors to allow Scotland to leave.

Not so sure anymore. For every toff who likes to slaughter the Scottish wildlife, theres probably 10 John Bull types who think that Scotland is leeching off England.

OK, maybe not 10 to 1, but certainly the certainty that I once had that the Conservative Party would never let Scotland go is not there any more.

Sandydragon wrote:

Zhivago wrote:

Sandydragon wrote:
It would once have been unthinkable for a Conservative PM to be responsible for the break up of the Union. However, Boris et al are content for NI to effectively be treated differently in order to leave the EU, potentially hastening reunification in Ireland. Many little Englanders who happen to be Conservative Party members probably see Scotland as a bunch of scroungers who just siphon money off England (ignoring that Britain only became a pre-eminent world power because of the total contribution of the UK) so the fall out on Boris would probably be less than it once was.

Its also probably a correct assumption that by removing Scotland from the picture, the chances of anyone else winning a majority in the HoC is pretty slim. It would literally take a Blair style landslide (and the follow on effect as that landslide is gradually whittled down)

Pretty sure too many Tories have a great fondness for grouse moors to allow Scotland to leave.

Not so sure anymore. For every toff who likes to slaughter the Scottish wildlife, theres probably 10 John Bull types who think that Scotland is leeching off England.

OK, maybe not 10 to 1, but certainly the certainty that I once had that the Conservative Party would never let Scotland go is not there any more.

I think there are an increasing number of nationalists in the Tory party in England that would love to get the chance to exploit Scottish independence - and Irish reunification - for their own interests. It has of course been the long game of scottish nationalists for a while - keep annoying the English right until they lose patience, and then play the victim card again. It's fascinating, in a horrible way, to see it play out in front of us, but then nationalism does seem to be increasing in favour everywhere.

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Donny osmond wrote:

Sandydragon wrote:

Zhivago wrote:
Pretty sure too many Tories have a great fondness for grouse moors to allow Scotland to leave.

Not so sure anymore. For every toff who likes to slaughter the Scottish wildlife, theres probably 10 John Bull types who think that Scotland is leeching off England.

OK, maybe not 10 to 1, but certainly the certainty that I once had that the Conservative Party would never let Scotland go is not there any more.

I think there are an increasing number of nationalists in the Tory party in England that would love to get the chance to exploit Scottish independence - and Irish reunification - for their own interests. It has of course been the long game of scottish nationalists for a while - keep annoying the English right until they lose patience, and then play the victim card again. It's fascinating, in a horrible way, to see it play out in front of us, but then nationalism does seem to be increasing in favour everywhere.

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It doesn't even end with England, Cornwall and London are to the fore of wanting away from Westminster, but the push isn't going to stop with getting rid of dodgy left leaning voters outside of England. And too in time voting patterns in England would correct anyway, supposing the Tories haven't by then prorogued parliament and ceased voting citing a long and distant casting of the peoples' will that need never be questioned again.

@RussInCheshire

#TheWeekInTory


“Amazingly, this is my third #TheWeekInTory in 7 days, and if anybody wants to pay for me to go somewhere comparatively sane and relaxing for a week, I’m up for it.


I hear Mogadishu is nice.


Anyway, buckle up, here we go...


1. Previously on The Week In Tory: the govt campaigned for Brexit so we can “look after our own”, and then immediately voted not to


2. Instead they opted to let up to 900,000 children go hungry during school holidays, including – bless you Santa Johnson – Christmas


3. In July, when the govt lifted the original lockdown, Rishi Sunak, the nicest Tory, tweeted “I can’t wait to get back to the pub”


4. This week he voted to let thousands of kids starve, and as a result was barred for life from his local


5. Ben Bradley, a Tory MP and Al Murray character made of Lego, spent last week appealing for justice and opportunity for “working class white boys who have been left behind”


6. He then voted to deprive them of food


7. Then this stout defender of the working class said food vouchers for poor kids will just end up being used in brothels and crack dens


8. He said he knows kids living in these conditions, and yet, like a true humanitarian, he appears to have done absolutely nothing about it


9. He also overlooks the fact that the vouchers can only be used to buy food, and I’ve yet to find evidence that crack dens commonly set up a tuck shop


10. He then invited his critics to visit “one of the country’s most deprived schools, who’s Head agrees with me”


11. The school’s governors replied to say neither they, nor the Head, agreed with him


12. It’s Monday, and most experts estimate that by Wednesday afternoon, Ben Bradley will have dug himself a hole deep enough to see kangaroos


13. Tory MP Gary Sambrook said it was OK for kids to go hungry during holidays, because they’ve “been benefiting from free school meals during term time”. It will come as a shock to Sambrook to discover humans require food on quite a regular basis


14. Tory peer Baroness Barran went on radio and said Tories had done other things to help poor children, such as extra money for emergency Universal Credit


15. So the govt announced it was reducing emergency Universal Credit by £20 a week


16. Tory MP Selaine Saxby said if businesses help starving kids she “very much hopes they will not be seeking any further govt support”


17. Selaine Saxby consistently votes against measures to reduce tax avoidance, cos avoiding tax is the sort of govt support she’s fine with


18. McDonalds offered 1m free meals over half term, proving to the govt that it is possible for clowns to make moral decisions


19. At a Downing St press conference, the govt repeatedly declined invitations from the media to praise businesses providing meals to hungry children


20. Matt Hancock said local councils had been provided with “a huge amount of extra investment” to feed kids


21. Since 2010, Tories cut funding to local councils by 60%


22. The Tory council in Boris Johnson’s own constituency joined the campaign to give free school meals


23. Matt Hancock, a sentient teaspoon and ever-dependable master of detail, went on radio and said there had been “lines of communication” between Boris Johnson and Marcus Rashford


24. Marcus Rashford said there hadn’t


25. 2000 paediatricians condemned the govt


26. The Children’s Commissioner it was “like something out of the pages of Oliver Twist”


27. An anonymous Tory MP said it was a “political disaster” and he had “never known so many Conservative MPs and council leaders so angry”


28. Senior Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin said the govt had “misunderstood the mood of the country”


29. Tobias Ellwood, Tory MP and spine-donor, voted with the govt, but is now openly calling for the policy to change


30. Multiple Tory MPs have predicted a U-turn, which means at least the govt won’t go hungry over the holidays: it’ll have all those lovely words to eat


31. And then, cos they don’t know when to stop, the govt cut the laptop allocation for England’s most deprived schools by 80%


32. In a not-at-all-obvious attempt to distract attention, 112 Tory MPs (98% of whom had just voted to let children starve at Christmas) wrote to Keir Starmer to complain of the “widespread abuse” they received as a result of Angela Rayner calling one of them “scum”


33. They must have been unable to find a pen and paper when there was a 375% increase in Islamophobic incidents after Boris Johnson referred to Muslim women as “letterboxes” and "bank robbers"


34. They were probably having difficulty with a gummed-up biro when Boris Johnson called gay men “bum boys”. or said black people were “picaninnies with watermelon smiles”, or said in parliament that proven death threats against female Labour MPs were "humbug"


35. And perhaps they didn’t have an address for Home Secretary and Thor’s sister Priti Patel after she made an incendiary speech attacking "lefty" immigration lawyers, one of who was stabbed 4 days later by a far-right activist


36. Speaking of witch – tsk, me and my spelling – more than 800 lawyers and judges wrote to the govt demanding an apology from Priti Patel, and saying her “rhetoric and hostility” risks “undermining the rule of law”


37. After demanding local councils “build build build”, Michael Gove personally stepped in to oppose building in his constituency


38. There’s a fine line between spin and outright lies, and that is just one of many lines Michael Gove has caused to disappear


39. The govt confirmed it was going to start charging 20% VAT on PPE. In a pandemic


40. The govt said it would be fine, cos care homes can claim back the VAT


41. But the govt’s own advice says “Care homes … are unlikely to be able to recover any VAT on PPE”


42. Rishi Sunak said he would provide the NHS with “whatever resources it needs” to cope with the pandemic, which is why the NHS is £1bn short of funds needed to pay wages to the end of the year


43. SAGE said Test and Trace, the centrepiece of our Covid strategy, was “having only a marginal impact”


44. Test and Trace system achieved new heroic heights, as it was revealed of 268m records, just 104 cases had been pursued


45. Labour’s NHS IT System was described by Tories as “one of the worse scandals ever in terms of waste of public money”, costing £12bn over 6 years


46. By contrast, the Test and Trace system has spent £12bn in just 4 months and failed to meet a single target set for it


47. Tory MP Bernard Jenkin called for Dido Harding to be sacked


48. Matt Hancock said he had (finally) published the highly critical 2016 report into the UK’s lack of preparedness for a pandemic, which his dept had seen and then done nothing at all to act upon


49. Due to some terrible and entirely unpredictable oversight, the version he published was incomplete and heavily redacted, cos that’s exactly what you’d do if it wasn’t massively embarrassing


50. Only 211 days since South Korea started mandatory test and quarantine at its airports, the UK govt announced plans to do the same


51. Except unlike South Korea we’ll charge people for tests


53. Deaths per million in South Korea: 8


54. Deaths per million in UK: 665


54. It was then reported that Bankers and Hedge Fund Managers would be exempt from quarantine because obviously the virus, a non-living sub-microscopic entity with no brain or nervous system, will figure out how rich you are before deciding whether to infect you


55. Boris Johnson held a meeting with UK business leaders, and urged them to follow the govt’s guidance in preparing for Brexit


56. The govt hasn’t agreed a deal, so has not yet issued final guidance for preparing for Brexit


57. Then it was reported Boris Johnson won’t make a decision about whether to accept a Brexit deal until he finds out if Trump has won the election, because an important part of Taking Back Control is not being able to decide a thing until we find out what Donald is up to


58. Assuming the election happens cleanly (and Trump is involved, so god knows) this leaves businesses just 31 working days to implement a plan for the end of a 41 year period of stability, in the middle of a pandemic that most believe will be at the peak of its second wave


59. But huzzah! the govt announced a deal with Japan that was “even better than the one Japan has with the EU”


60. But whoops! the EU/Japan deal prevents either side from offering better terms to anybody else, and our deal with Japan is 5% of the one we lose with the EU


61. The former ambassador to USA (under both Tory and Labour govts) said the UK’s plans for handling a Joe Biden presidency are “profoundly clumsy and stupid” and that “Number 10 is absolutely clueless” about how to manage a post-Brexit relationship with the USA


62. Between them, the EU and USA account for around 60% of the UK’s total trade, so deliberately losing one, and then accidentally losing another is definitely a reason to be intensely relaxed about the whole thing


63. And that's why, spurred by their stunning victory over UK trade, a group of Tory MPs led by Steve Baker, a scale model of C3P0 made entirely out of ham, is urging the formation of a “European Research Group for the pandemic”


Gas and air, please. In heroic quantities”

54. Was a further confirmation we're not all in this together

55. Is the bane of my reality because they seem to think telling us we need to prepare for something is the same as telling us what we need to prepare for


And I don't remotely understand why you wouldn't want to feed children, it's a cheap existing model to use, you can ensure for anyone willing to partake some of the worst of food poverty is averted, it's a big stress relief for some families really up against it, you get a big chance into which some at risk kids might be able to report some problems that otherwise could stay hidden, it's a model into which those supplying catering can sell into... it's just baffling this isn't an obvious thing to do. Even if one takes the point there's alway an issue to force a government on and if they cave on this it'd just be something else there's this hill isn't defensible absent of trebling UC

The absolute best case for refusing to feed children is every policy is being viewed threw the lens of can this win Tory votes at upcoming elections, if not and it'd more obviously help Labour voters or non voters don't sign off on it. Which means the best case is they're not a national government, which is in itself appalling.

Digby wrote:55. Is the bane of my reality because they seem to think telling us we need to prepare for something is the same as telling us what we need to prepare for

They've made sure they've said it enough, that business is not properly prepared, business is complacent. So when the catastrophe comes they can blame business (after blaming the EU of course).

No matter than business still doesn't know what it needs to do to prepare. Or that the biggest problems cannot be prepared for eg tariffs being applied to our exports to the EU.

Son of Mathonwy wrote:

Digby wrote:55. Is the bane of my reality because they seem to think telling us we need to prepare for something is the same as telling us what we need to prepare for

They've made sure they've said it enough, that business is not properly prepared, business is complacent. So when the catastrophe comes they can blame business (after blaming the EU of course).

No matter than business still doesn't know what it needs to do to prepare. Or that the biggest problems cannot be prepared for eg tariffs being applied to our exports to the EU.

I don't think tariffs are actually one of the bigger problems, it's daft to be facing them but they're quite simple albeit unwelcome. Though yes they do seem to be establishing reason to pass the buck, as they do with telling the public it's their fault Covid is spreading.

Winners want the ball, HMG is desperate to get rid of the ball

The not feeding children thing is just the plain weirdest thing to have happened in politics for a long time.

Even if you accept that there's a conversation to be had about personal responsibility versus state aid.... using hungry children at Christmas during a pandemic as an opening to that conversation is just... weird?

Nasty, yes, blind to reality, certainly, but even allowing for those things, what do they seriously think anyone is going to make of it?

I can usually see where the Tories are coming from, and on the odd occasion might even have some sympathy with whatever it is they are saying at the time, but how in the holy hell can they think anyone is going to look at how they've started this and think it's a rationale to get on board with?

It's just terrible politics, and I think signifies a deeper malaise in politics that is giving us too many who think politics is just about getting elected and don't give any mind to the on going administration of society.

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Donny osmond wrote:The not feeding children thing is just the plain weirdest thing to have happened in politics for a long time.

Even if you accept that there's a conversation to be had about personal responsibility versus state aid.... using hungry children at Christmas during a pandemic as an opening to that conversation is just... weird?

Nasty, yes, blind to reality, certainly, but even allowing for those things, what do they seriously think anyone is going to make of it?

I can usually see where the Tories are coming from, and on the odd occasion might even have some sympathy with whatever it is they are saying at the time, but how in the holy hell can they think anyone is going to look at how they've started this and think it's a rationale to get on board with?

It's just terrible politics, and I think signifies a deeper malaise in politics that is giving us too many who think politics is just about getting elected and don't give any mind to the on going administration of society.

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They're coming over all Dickensian and it's not even Christmas yet.

Assuming the morality of it is not a problem for them, it's still hard to see how they can think this is a good look. But then I haven't read the Daily Mail's take on it.

Indian child poverty charity offers free school meals in England

Akshaya Patra, which feeds millions in India, opens first of three planned kitchens

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... eals-in-uk?


A charity that feeds millions of poor children in India has joined the drive to end holiday hunger in England and distributed its first meals from a new kitchen in Watford.

Hot vegetarian dishes cooked for less than £2 each using a model developed to feed the hungry in cities such as Mumbai and Ahmedabad were dispatched to a school in north London on Tuesday amid growing pressure on the government to reverse its decision not to fund free school meals this half-term.

From t'FT:

It always seems to be too soon. It was too soon for the UK to lock down in early March, when other European countries had already done so. It was too soon for Boris Johnson to reimpose national restrictions in September, when scientific advisers privately called for them.

Now the UK prime minister’s allies tell us it is too soon to judge his government’s performance. They may be right. We don’t know how the pandemic will end — and other countries, including France, Italy, Spain and Scotland, which manages its own health service, have suffered similar peaks and troughs to England. If the UK government has erred, others have too, in different ways.

Yet it is not too early to judge the performance of Mr Johnson himself because we have already seen the pattern. His missteps over coronavirus have closely followed those he made over Brexit. In both cases, he insisted on seeing what he wanted to see. He saw a world where the British economy would blossom by shunning its largest trading partner, and where a virus would disappear while he shook hands with its victims. That world did not exist.

Mr Johnson went beyond patriotism to embrace British exceptionalism. As coronavirus spread in early February, he mocked the idea that it would affect the global economy, insisting that the UK was “ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles”, and act “as the supercharged champion” of free trade.

If you are not Superman, taking off your spectacles just leaves you blindly optimistic. With Brexit, Mr Johnson insisted “Global Britain” would defy the laws of trade gravity; with coronavirus, it would build a “world-beating” test-and-trace system. Mr Johnson is not one for details. There was no sense of how these goals could be achieved — and they have not been. His global rhetoric only exposed his parochialism.

Futile promises are a hallmark of Mr Johnson’s leadership. During the campaign for Brexit he said the Irish border would be “absolutely unchanged”. Running for the Conservative party leadership he said the UK would leave the EU on October 31 of last year, “do or die”. With Covid-19, his pledges were less cynical, but still beyond his control. He suggested that the UK would turn the tide by June and, in July, said there would be a “significant return to normality” by Christmas. Some people are born to mislead.

Mr Johnson has been most at ease attacking the proposals of others, then stealing them. When his predecessor Theresa May came up with a Brexit deal that avoided a hard border on the island of Ireland, he likened it to a “suicide vest”. When Labour leader Keir Starmer proposed a two-week “circuit breaker” lockdown last month, Mr Johnson dismissed it as offering endless “misery”. In both cases, he ended up adopting the bulk of the proposals that he had lambasted.

His favoured tactic has been to wait until the last moment before U-turning. Whatever the political merits of this strategy, its real-world effects are likely to be disastrous. As Brexit talks drag on, businesses do not know what trading arrangements with the EU will be in two months. Thousands more Britons are now forecast to die of Covid-19 than would have been the case had lockdown been implemented in September.

Mr Johnson has his strengths. This time a year ago, he began an election campaign that made even some Remainers believe Brexit could be swiftly solved. After leaving intensive care in April, he gave an inspiring tribute to the medical team who had treated him for Covid-19. He is an ideal salesman of ideas, which is why his interest in climate change is so welcome.

The problem is that he does not stick to an idea. His signature on any topic is incoherence. He is pro-individual liberty and pro-public health. He likes low taxes and a big state. He wants to boost business, while refusing to listen to it. He does not want a culture war, but he doesn’t stop his government from fighting one. He wants to be the hero and expects everyone else to do the work.

Democratic accountability is an art, not a science — and not a very sophisticated one. Some leaders are punished for events on their watch for which they bear no blame. Some escape the blame for their misdeeds.

Mr Johnson may get lucky with Brexit: while voters now think voting to leave the EU was a bad idea, their minds are elsewhere. But he can have no complaint about being held responsible for the UK’s pandemic failings. He has made the same mistakes at least twice and now looks unlikely to remain in office beyond 2024. Whatever challenge faces him before then, he will probably make the same mistakes again.

Good article. Boris is a showman with no real ability to translate his pie in the sky ambitions into reality. It’s been a suspicion for a while, but people like Boris (the front men/women) need a good supporting team. I suspect his team was much more competent whilst he was Mayor of London, allowing him to be the chairman of the board whilst someone else did the executive hard graft.

Now the role is huge (even without covid and Brexit) and I don’t think he has the same level of support around him.Cummings is an intelligent bloke who wants to ram through reforms, but he struggles to get the buy in required to effect that change efficiently.And the cabinet are almost universally crap. Love him or hate him, but Gove is no mug. The rest however are a liability. But because of his own inadequacies (and his need to have a Brexit supporting cabinet) he resists the requirement to have a strong second who can support him.

Son of Mathonwy wrote:

Donny osmond wrote:The not feeding children thing is just the plain weirdest thing to have happened in politics for a long time.

Even if you accept that there's a conversation to be had about personal responsibility versus state aid.... using hungry children at Christmas during a pandemic as an opening to that conversation is just... weird?

Nasty, yes, blind to reality, certainly, but even allowing for those things, what do they seriously think anyone is going to make of it?

I can usually see where the Tories are coming from, and on the odd occasion might even have some sympathy with whatever it is they are saying at the time, but how in the holy hell can they think anyone is going to look at how they've started this and think it's a rationale to get on board with?

It's just terrible politics, and I think signifies a deeper malaise in politics that is giving us too many who think politics is just about getting elected and don't give any mind to the on going administration of society.

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They're coming over all Dickensian and it's not even Christmas yet.

Assuming the morality of it is not a problem for them, it's still hard to see how they can think this is a good look. But then I haven't read the Daily Mail's take on it.

Hahahahaha and now the useless fecker has thrown all his MPs who voted against it under the bus by doing it anyway. The Most Stupid Politics You've Ever Seen just got severely more stupid.

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Marcus is now the new Joanna Lumley forcing HMG to make a change from a weird and clearly unsustainable position that almost no one thinks they should have tried to hold the line on in the first place

Donny osmond wrote:

Son of Mathonwy wrote:

Donny osmond wrote:The not feeding children thing is just the plain weirdest thing to have happened in politics for a long time.

Even if you accept that there's a conversation to be had about personal responsibility versus state aid.... using hungry children at Christmas during a pandemic as an opening to that conversation is just... weird?

Nasty, yes, blind to reality, certainly, but even allowing for those things, what do they seriously think anyone is going to make of it?

I can usually see where the Tories are coming from, and on the odd occasion might even have some sympathy with whatever it is they are saying at the time, but how in the holy hell can they think anyone is going to look at how they've started this and think it's a rationale to get on board with?

It's just terrible politics, and I think signifies a deeper malaise in politics that is giving us too many who think politics is just about getting elected and don't give any mind to the on going administration of society.

Sent from my CPH1951 using Tapatalk

They're coming over all Dickensian and it's not even Christmas yet.

Assuming the morality of it is not a problem for them, it's still hard to see how they can think this is a good look. But then I haven't read the Daily Mail's take on it.

Hahahahaha and now the useless fecker has thrown all his MPs who voted against it under the bus by doing it anyway. The Most Stupid Politics You've Ever Seen just got severely more stupid.

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Feeling his own political mortality after his buddy in the States went down. And maybe he also noticed that Labour is ahead in the polls.

Digby wrote:Marcus is now the new Joanna Lumley forcing HMG to make a change from a weird and clearly unsustainable position that almost no one thinks they should have tried to hold the line on in the first place

What I like best is that they haven't twigged that he's a) not just interested in this one immediate issue, but very interested in child poverty in general having experienced it himself, and b) not going away. So twice now they've caved to his immediate demands with the expectation that he will fuck off and go back to football (with an MBE), and have been completely blindsided by the fact that he's still interested the next time the issue comes up. "But we fed the children once already! What do you mean you want them to continue being fed?! How many meals do children eat, anyway!?"

It is nice that "we should aim to eradicate child poverty in this incredibly rich country" is slowly becoming a mainstream opinion rather than whacky crazy liberal shit, although I wish the populace didn't have to have a footballer lead them there, rather than it just being considered moral.

Puja

Puja wrote:

Digby wrote:Marcus is now the new Joanna Lumley forcing HMG to make a change from a weird and clearly unsustainable position that almost no one thinks they should have tried to hold the line on in the first place

What I like best is that they haven't twigged that he's a) not just interested in this one immediate issue, but very interested in child poverty in general having experienced it himself, and b) not going away. So twice now they've caved to his immediate demands with the expectation that he will fuck off and go back to football (with an MBE), and have been completely blindsided by the fact that he's still interested the next time the issue comes up. "But we fed the children once already! What do you mean you want them to continue being fed?! How many meals do children eat, anyway!?"

It is nice that "we should aim to eradicate child poverty in this incredibly rich country" is slowly becoming a mainstream opinion rather than whacky crazy liberal shit, although I wish the populace didn't have to have a footballer lead them there, rather than it just being considered moral.

Puja

You do wonder if they thought the MBE was enough, because it did look like the sort of bribe that gets made with the gongs

Digby wrote:

Puja wrote:

Digby wrote:Marcus is now the new Joanna Lumley forcing HMG to make a change from a weird and clearly unsustainable position that almost no one thinks they should have tried to hold the line on in the first place

What I like best is that they haven't twigged that he's a) not just interested in this one immediate issue, but very interested in child poverty in general having experienced it himself, and b) not going away. So twice now they've caved to his immediate demands with the expectation that he will fuck off and go back to football (with an MBE), and have been completely blindsided by the fact that he's still interested the next time the issue comes up. "But we fed the children once already! What do you mean you want them to continue being fed?! How many meals do children eat, anyway!?"

It is nice that "we should aim to eradicate child poverty in this incredibly rich country" is slowly becoming a mainstream opinion rather than whacky crazy liberal shit, although I wish the populace didn't have to have a footballer lead them there, rather than it just being considered moral.

Puja

You do wonder if they thought the MBE was enough, because it did look like the sort of bribe that gets made with the gongs

In their world, getting on the track of picking up honours is huge. Maybe they think it was a childhood dream of his, too. They really do struggle to imagine themselves in anyone else's position.

It's not as if borrowing money is actually a problem at the moment.

Heard a good piece on the BBC (I know right) the other day. It was one of those wordy late night pieces that nobody ever hears. But the idea they were putting forwards was that because the cost of borrowing is so low it might actually be a way of making money for the government. Basically, issue a load of 20 year bonds at !.5%/annum. Watch the inflation rate make the total amount payable have the spending power of around half that it did when you borrowed it. They gave the example of having £1000. After 1 year with that money in the bank at 1.5% you have circa £1015. Unfortunately the bike you were going to spend £1000 on has gone up in price and is now £1030. You used to have the money to buy it but now you don't. The government is in the position to take advantage of the reverse of this, buy their bike today and pay back an amount that won't buy one in the future.

canta_brian wrote:It's not as if borrowing money is actually a problem at the moment.

Heard a good piece on the BBC (I know right) the other day. It was one of those wordy late night pieces that nobody ever hears. But the idea they were putting forwards was that because the cost of borrowing is so low it might actually be a way of making money for the government. Basically, issue a load of 20 year bonds at !.5%/annum. Watch the inflation rate make the total amount payable have the spending power of around half that it did when you borrowed it. They gave the example of having £1000. After 1 year with that money in the bank at 1.5% you have circa £1015. Unfortunately the bike you were going to spend £1000 on has gone up in price and is now £1030. You used to have the money to buy it but now you don't. The government is in the position to take advantage of the reverse of this, buy their bike today and pay back an amount that won't buy one in the future.

Of course that depends on if the money is going towards something useful, rather than just being funnelled to consultants who just happen to be friends with ministers.

Puja

I just had a good old read of this thread.

It's pretty grim.

Luckily our politics is making a change for the better, witness Lord Kilclooney querying on twitter:

"What happens if Biden moves on and the Indian becomes President. Who then becomes Vice President?"

Having been rebuked for this he's getting cross people are querying his good character, noting in response to the Speaker saying he should retract that the Speaker was misinformed. Which is clearly bollocks, the Speaker like anyone else can read exactly what he wrote and conclude the fat old wanker lacks basic civility

He went one better:

""I had never heard of her nor knew her name is Harris. India is quite rightly celebrating that an Indian, who has USA citizenship, has been appointed Vice President elect"


Why does he have a job?

Northern Ireland is our Florida, or at least it is as soon as someone does something stupid like mention Ireland or Britain, otherwise it's a very nice place.