Me as well. Events have painted the LDs into the corner of being the status quo party, which runs contrary to their history (well the Liberal side of it at least) and is the worst possible place to be right now. Like Fox my younger self wouldn't be here.
The Lib Dems, in my opinion, need to reinvent themselves as the unashamedly internationalist party. There's 30% of the electorate up for grabs. Brexit is a symptom of the issue they would fight on, not the entire issue of itself.
They would lose some of their remaining rural heartlands, but I think they need to go for it.
In my view, the missed opportunity was not painting ourselves as the unashamed champion of the younger generation, which is the position the party was starting to carve out for itself in the 2000s until Clegg went haywire on tuition fees. Brexit slots happily into an intergenerational-fairness agenda alongside fairer taxes, fairer politics, and action on the housing market, etc.
Fighting the whole election on reversing Brexit and saying nothing meaningful on the rest of it was a colossal mistake, leaving us only the constituency of relatively well-off people who have done well out of so-called globalisation and internationalism (until we hit them with the mansion tax).
I can see your argument. I need to challenge you on "fairer" taxes and "fairer" politics. What do you mean by "fair", specifically? All parties contend their policies are fair. Do you mean redistribution, more welfare and more State enterprise, as Labour propose? That's certainly a line the Lib Dems could take, but they would compete directly with Labour on its own turf. They would be a me-too party.
If they go for an internationalist first line, they will hit very different opinions on State enterprise and welfare from people who do think Britain's place is at the heart of an interconnected world. The way to deal with that is to de-emphasise the State welfare issue and come up with a moderation, like CDU's social market economy model. The advantage of he internationalist first line for the Lib Dems is that it is unique to them, now the two main parties are very much nativist. The risk is that their vote gets squeezed if the putative internationalists decide the State welfare issue is the important one, either for or against.
It certainly is the case that the Libs Dems need to do something
If that's true, that means the EU have moved to the UK position, and accepted May's compromise as a way of taking this issue off the table, and moving onto the next.
That is telling, because it tells us the EU is also worried about no deal as well.
No - it tells us that the EU got its bottom line: the UK Parliament will not be able to legislate away the citizens' rights agreed in a final deal. The only way Parliament could change such rights would be to repeal the entire deal. Where there may be EU movement is on the Irish border question, but we shall see.
The question I have to those who seem to think Corbyn is the Messiah how far is he and labour ahead in the polling. The polling evidence still shows Theresa May ahead as best PM, and the polls movement is no more than MOE.
Labour and Corbyn should be out of sight and they are not. The audience in question time were far from Corbyn friendly and the various vox pops have shown considerable support for May
I have no idea how this pans out and to be honest neither has anyone else. Politics has never been so unpredictable
You contradict yourself. Counting on the polling, but saying things have never been so unpredictable.
The real nightmare for the Tories is a
Yes I would agree regarding Emily Thornberry , I was very impressed with her during the General Election campaign.
I am not so sure.
One message of the last few years is that people are willing to vote for radicals, particularly when they feel under threat.
I think you are correct Fox , just difficult for an old centrist like myself to grasp the changing reality.
Very centre.
The country.
Me here.
Surely any age?
As of.
Anyone who's upper middle class is living in clover.
I was born working class and, by your definition, am now upper middle class. That suits me. I guess the point is that the route I took was possible back in the day and many took it. It's not anymore. When I bought my first flat in London in the early 1990s it cost £60,000 - two bedrooms and a little garden, in N19. Between us, my wife and I were earning around £35,000 pa as a teacher and as a junior B2B journalist respectively. Today, the same flat would cost around £500,000 and our salaries would be around £50,000. That is the problem.
Whilst that's true, you've got to factor in other living costs that have drastically come down - consumer goods, clothing, motoring, holidays and utilities.
No doubt I have more disposable income, and more things to do with it, now, after housing and transport that my parents or uncle did, who ate out only about 3-4 times a year, and only took a single week holiday in Cornwall.
CycleFree wrote: "The English may have paid others to do their fighting for them, usually against the French, but they have yet to sell bits of their country off."
The English don't have a country they can sell off, but the British...well, what do we call what happened to Diego Garcia? And which out of Britain and France is it that allows foreign military bases on its own metropolitan territory? It's the trophy cabinet north of the Channel that has by far the most brown tongue medals. Which is why Britain wasn't allowed in the EEC after Suez.
We can sell off Gibraltar to Spain, The Malvinas to the Argentinians, and the Channel Islands to the French for starters.
What would be a good price? I would be amused if Spain or the Argentines literally just offered a cash figure for either.
We could do a Hong Kong and offer a 99 year leasehold on them, for a fee/annual rent.
Sounds like a pretty poor deal, since we'd then get them back in 100 years.
But after 99 years of Iberian rule, the people of Gibraltar might prefer Spanish rule.
They might even hold a referendum on joining Spain.
Our naval base in Gib is probably the most valuable military asset we still hold.
If that's true, that means the EU have moved to the UK position, and accepted May's compromise as a way of taking this issue off the table, and moving onto the next.
That is telling, because it tells us the EU is also worried about no deal as well.
No - it tells us that the EU got its bottom line: the UK Parliament will not be able to legislate away the citizens' rights agreed in a final deal. The only way Parliament could change such rights would be to repeal the entire deal. Where there may be EU movement is on the Irish border question, but we shall see.
Wrong. Straw man. The UK Parliament was never trying to negotiate away existing citizen's rights in the final deal. The issue was ECJ having supreme oversight, versus the UK being trusted to exclusively guarantee those rights via UK courts.
The compromise is that both will be involved, which I find very interesting, but let's wait and see for the precise wording.
Stop trying to denigrate everything HMG and the UK does, open your eyes, and recognise movement when you see it, and what that tells us.
Otherwise your analysis is wrong because it is always filtered through your blinkers, and therefore bias.
Me as well. Events have painted the LDs into the corner of being the status quo party, which runs contrary to their history (well the Liberal side of it at least) and is the worst possible place to be right now. Like Fox my younger self wouldn't be here.
The Lib Dems, in my opinion, need to reinvent themselves as the unashamedly internationalist party. There's 30% of the electorate up for grabs. Brexit is a symptom of the issue they would fight on, not the entire issue of itself.
They would lose some of their remaining rural heartlands, but I think they need to go for it.
In my view, the missed opportunity was not painting ourselves as the unashamed champion of the younger generation, which is the position the party was starting to carve out for itself in the 2000s until Clegg went haywire on tuition fees. Brexit slots happily into an intergenerational-fairness agenda alongside fairer taxes, fairer politics, and action on the housing market, etc.
Fighting the whole election on reversing Brexit and saying nothing meaningful on the rest of it was a colossal mistake, leaving us only the constituency of relatively well-off people who have done well out of so-called globalisation and internationalism (until we hit them with the mansion tax).
Which is why Vince was such a bad choice. He was the architect of Tuition fees and apart from Brexit rejection has no other real policy.
He's very keen on lifelong learning accounts, which I think is a very good idea with the way modern life and work are going - but I'm probably prejudiced on this, because I've waxed lyrical on the subject to most of my friends in the past and seeing someone pick up on it and run with it makes me enthusiastic.
The LibDems have tons of good policies on the detail, but never manage to find a big picture.
I'd say they never manage to enunciate the big picture. Their core principle is "empowering people to live their own lives" (nb, not "THE people", but just all people), from both positive and negative freedoms.
The question I have to those who seem to think Corbyn is the Messiah how far is he and labour ahead in the polling. The polling evidence still shows Theresa May ahead as best PM, and the polls movement is no more than MOE.
L
You contradict yourself. Counting on the polling, but saying things have never been so unpredictable.
The real nightmare for the Tories is a
Yes I would agree regarding Emily Thornberry , I was very impressed with her during the General Election campaign.
I am not so sure.
One message of the last few years is that people are willing to vote for radicals, particularly when they feel under threat.
I think you are correct Fox , just difficult for an old centrist like myself to grasp the changing reality.
Very much in the same place as you, Dr Fox. I've not been able to bring myself to cancel mine either, but frustrated at the party's seeming inability to get tractive effort through the Serengeti like spaces of the current centre.
The Tories are bereft of ideas they can sell to the country.
Me as well.
Surely if a party's ideas are good they should be good to us at any age?
As a baby boomer, house owner with a secure job, pension and no debt, I am in a position that Fox jr can only dream of.
Surely that should be as an upper middle class baby boomer.
While young people do have legitimate grievances, there is a tendency to compare their life chances with those of upper middle class components of older age cohorts, rather than lower middle class or working class components, most of whom never went to university, grew up in housing that was dismal by modern standards, and may have experienced unemployment.
Anyone who's upper middle class is living in clover.
My dad was a salesman, my mum a secretary turned housewife. I went to state comprehensives.
I was handed nothing on a plate. My sole inheritance was £1000 from my grandfather.
And, you bathed in a coaltub and went outside to the privvy at night.
CycleFree wrote: "The English may have paid others to do their fighting for them, usually against the French, but they have yet to sell bits of their country off."
The English don't have a country they can sell off, but the British...well, what do we call what happened to Diego Garcia? And which out of Britain and France is it that allows foreign military bases on its own metropolitan territory? It's the trophy cabinet north of the Channel that has by far the most brown tongue medals. Which is why Britain wasn't allowed in the EEC after Suez.
We can sell off Gibraltar to Spain, The Malvinas to the Argentinians, and the Channel Islands to the French for starters.
What would be a good price? I would be amused if Spain or the Argentines literally just offered a cash figure for either.
We could do a Hong Kong and offer a 99 year leasehold on them, for a fee/annual rent.
Sounds like a pretty poor deal, since we'd then get them back in 100 years.
But after 99 years of Iberian rule, the people of Gibraltar might prefer Spanish rule.
They might even hold a referendum on joining Spain.
Our naval base in Gib is probably the most valuable military asset we still hold.
The naval dockyard was privatised in the 80s. The Gibraltar "squadron" now shares a modest boathouse with the police.
The question I have to those who seem to think Corbyn is the Messiah how far is he and labour ahead in the polling. The polling evidence still shows Theresa May ahead as best PM, and the polls movement is no more than MOE.
Labour and Corbyn should be out of sight and they are not. The audience in question time were far from Corbyn friendly and the various vox pops have shown considerable support for May
I have no idea how this pans out and to be honest neither has anyone else. Politics has never been so unpredictable
You contradict yourself. Counting on the polling, but saying things have never been so unpredictable.
The real nightmare for the Tories is a
Yes I would agree regarding Emily Thornberry , I was very impressed with her during the General Election campaign.
I am not so sure.
One threat.
I reality.
Very centre.
The country.
Me here.
Surely any age?
As of.
Anyone who's upper middle class is living in clover.
I was born working class and, by your definition, am now upper middle class. That suits me. I guess the point is that the route I took was possible back in the day and many took it. It's not anymore. When I bought my first flat in London in the early 1990s it cost £60,000 - two bedrooms and a little garden, in N19. Between us, my wife and I were earning around £35,000 pa as a teacher and as a junior B2B journalist respectively. Today, the same flat would cost around £500,000 and our salaries would be around £50,000. That is the problem.
Whilst that's true, you've got to factor in other living costs that have drastically come down - consumer goods, clothing, motoring, holidays and utilities.
No doubt I have more disposable income, and more things to do with it, now, after housing and transport that my parents or uncle did, who ate out only about 3-4 times a year, and only took a single week holiday in Cornwall.
We got a mortgage and a foot on the property ladder, our equivalents today would not. That is the big difference.
The question I have to those who seem to think Corbyn is the Messiah how far is he and labour ahead in the polling. The polling evidence still shows Theresa May ahead as best PM, and the polls movement is no more than MOE.
Labour and Corbyn ictable
You contradict yourself. Counting on the polling,
The real nightmare for the Tories is a
Yes I would agree regarding Emily Thornberry , I was very impressed with her during the General Election campaign.
I am not so sure.
One message of the last few years is that people are willing to vote for radicals, particularly when they feel under threat.
I think you are correct Fox , just difficult for an old centrist like myself to grasp the changing reality.
Very much in the same place as you, Dr Fox. I've not been able to bring myself to cancel mine either, but frustrated at the party's seeming inability to get tractive effort through the Serengeti like spaces of the current centre.
The Tories are bereft of ideas they can sell to the country.
Me as well.
Surely if a party's ideas are good they should be good to us at any age?
As a baby boomer, house owner with a secure job, pension and no debt, I am in a position that Fox jr can only dream of.
Surely that should be as an upper middle class baby boomer.
While young people do have legitimate grievances, there is a tendency to compare their life chances with those of upper middle class components of older age cohorts, rather than lower middle class or working class components, most of whom never went to university, grew up in housing that was dismal by modern standards, and may have experienced unemployment.
Anyone who's upper middle class is living in clover.
My dad was a salesman, my mum a secretary turned housewife. I went to state comprehensives.
I was handed nothing on a plate. My sole inheritance was £1000 from my grandfather.
I didn't say you were handed anything on a plate. But, you rose up the social ladder in a way that many of your contemporaries did not. They might well regard today's young people as being more fortunate than they were.
"My sole inheritance was £1000 from my grandfather."
You were lucky (sorry, couldn't resist it).
The problem is that people compare themselves with the successful. A nineteen-fifties upbringing in a council house, a father who was a labourer and a mother who did part-time work as a cleaner when the six kids allowed, probably made me deprived but it never felt like it. Everyone I knew was in the same boat, apart from those who were worse off.
As an old git, I do fit the stereotype ... "these young 'uns, they don't know they're born." But mixing with better-off people is a mixed blessing, and the young do that to a far greater extent then we ever did.
We have a house with a paid-off mortgage, no dependants, and now find ourselves better off than we've ever been. As the four Yorkshiremen say "Who'd a thought it?" The issue there was all about expectations.
If that's true, that means the EU have moved to the UK position, and accepted May's compromise as a way of taking this issue off the table, and moving onto the next.
That is telling, because it tells us the EU is also worried about no deal as well.
No - it tells us that the EU got its bottom line: the UK Parliament will not be able to legislate away the citizens' rights agreed in a final deal. The only way Parliament could change such rights would be to repeal the entire deal. Where there may be EU movement is on the Irish border question, but we shall see.
Wrong. Straw man. The UK Parliament was never trying to negotiate away existing citizen's rights in the final deal. The issue was ECJ having supreme oversight, versus the UK being trusted to exclusively guarantee those rights via UK courts.
The compromise is that both will be involved, which I find very interesting, but let's wait and see for the precise wording.
Stop trying to denigrate everything HMG and the UK does, open your eyes, and recognise movement when you see it, and what that tells us.
Otherwise your analysis is wrong because it is always filtered through your blinkers, and therefore bias.
I wish I could be as unbiased as you :-D
The current UK Parliament may not have tried to water down whatever citizens' rights are agreed, but that may not have applied to future ones. Now, any future Parliament that does wish to water down rights will only be able to do so by repealing the entire framework of the final EU/UK deal. That is a far higher level of protection than the UK government was originally offering. I do not denigrate the government's change of mind, I think it is wholly welcome.
What it shows is that the EU is willing to listen to sensible UK suggestions. That is also very good news.
CycleFree wrote: "The English may have paid others to do their fighting for them, usually against the French, but they have yet to sell bits of their country off."
The English don't have a country they can sell off, but the British...well, what do we call what happened to Diego Garcia? And which out of Britain and France is it that allows foreign military bases on its own metropolitan territory? It's the trophy cabinet north of the Channel that has by far the most brown tongue medals. Which is why Britain wasn't allowed in the EEC after Suez.
We can sell off Gibraltar to Spain, The Malvinas to the Argentinians, and the Channel Islands to the French for starters.
What would be a good price? I would be amused if Spain or the Argentines literally just offered a cash figure for either.
We could do a Hong Kong and offer a 99 year leasehold on them, for a fee/annual rent.
Sounds like a pretty poor deal, since we'd then get them back in 100 years.
But after 99 years of Iberian rule, the people of Gibraltar might prefer Spanish rule.
They might even hold a referendum on joining Spain.
Our naval base in Gib is probably the most valuable military asset we still hold.
The naval dockyard was privatised in the 80s. The Gibraltar "squadron" now shares a modest boathouse with the police.
Talks between the Labour Party and EU Brexit negotiators have intensified as fears grow on the Continent that the Conservatives may lose power to Jeremy Corbyn. Brussels has “significantly” increased back-room talks with Labour in an attempt to guarantee that promises made by the Tory negotiating team would be upheld in the event of a change of government, sources told The Daily Telegraph.
An unnamed source said: “Corbyn is beginning to be taken seriously in Brussels. People didn’t quite know what he wants or what he thinks but that is changing.”
Surely Labour are not bound by Tory promises?. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
Staying in Customs Union and Single Market, while establishing the residency of our EU migrants does work as a solution, and sorts the NI border too.
Kipper apoplexy guaranteed though.
That would suit me. But the difficulty I have with this is that both Corbyn and McDonnell have gone on record saying that they don’t want to be in the Single Market because, as Corbyn has made clear, EU rules would stop him doing a lot of things he would like to do.
So what makes you think that a Corbyn-led Labour government would lead to this soft cuddly BINO outcome?
I do find it amusing that those on the Remain side who bang on about immigration being the only reason people voted for Brexit think that Labour supporting a deal which does not do anything to curb immigration will win them power.
As it happens I would be very happy with a deal that kept us in the Single Market with free movement (although the staying in the Customs Union is a ludicrous idea) but if those Remainers are right then Labour would stand no chance at a General Election.
It seems to me that the only way the Single Market option is a practical solution in terms of current politics is if it is negotiated by the Current government and everything is a done deal before the next election. Even then I am not sure the government would survive long enough to get it through if the Tory backbenchers decide it is a suicide mission.
In my view, the missed opportunity was not painting ourselves as the unashamed champion of the younger generation, which is the position the party was starting to carve out for itself in the 2000s until Clegg went haywire on tuition fees. Brexit slots happily into an intergenerational-fairness agenda alongside fairer taxes, fairer politics, and action on the housing market, etc.
Fighting the whole election on reversing Brexit and saying nothing meaningful on the rest of it was a colossal mistake, leaving us only the constituency of relatively well-off people who have done well out of so-called globalisation and internationalism
I can see your argument. I need to challenge you on "fairer" taxes and "fairer" politics. What do you mean by "fair", specifically? All parties contend their policies are fair. Do you mean redistribution, more welfare and more State enterprise, as Labour propose? That's certainly a line the Lib Dems could take, but they would compete directly with Labour on its own turf. They would be a me-too party.
If they go for an internationalist first line, they will hit very different opinions on State enterprise and welfare from people who do think Britain's place is at the heart of an interconnected world. The way to deal with that is to de-emphasise the State welfare issue and come up with a moderation, like CDU's social market economy model. The advantage of he internationalist first line for the Lib Dems is that it is unique to them, now the two main parties are very much nativist. The risk is that their vote gets squeezed if the putative internationalists decide the State welfare issue is the important one, either for or against.
It certainly is the case that the Libs Dems need to do something
If it were up to me, I would combine tax and NI, at a lower total rate than the current levy on working people (because of the broader base), ramp up taxes on property and wealth, and green taxes, balanced off by a reduction of tax on income and/or spending. The basic principle of tax should be to levy it on things we don't want, like pollution and under-utilised capital, and not so much on things we do want like earning and enterprise.
Obviously this would be very complicated and need transitional arrangements, and provision for asset-rich low income older people, etc. But the current basis of our taxation makes little sense and is itself insanely complicated. Tax evasion is a lot more difficult if levied on stationary assets like property - of all major taxes, income is the hardest to collect.
Labour sees things like wealth taxes as a way to fund its higher spending plans - not as a way to re-shape the way people pay tax, which is a different proposition altogether.
We got a mortgage and a foot on the property ladder, our equivalents today would not. That is the big difference.
Who do you want to blame...
Labour for the credit bubble that inflated house prices on their watch?
Or Labour for the mass immigration that pushed up demand massively?
I don't want to *blame* anyone. House prices have inflated under both Labour and Tory governments and mass immigration has been a feature of the last seven years, as well as the previous 13.
CycleFree wrote: "The English may have paid others to do their fighting for them, usually against the French, but they have yet to sell bits of their country off."
The English don't have a country they can sell off, but the British...well, what do we call what happened to Diego Garcia? And which out of Britain and France is it that allows foreign military bases on its own metropolitan territory? It's the trophy cabinet north of the Channel that has by far the most brown tongue medals. Which is why Britain wasn't allowed in the EEC after Suez.
We can sell off Gibraltar to Spain, The Malvinas to the Argentinians, and the Channel Islands to the French for starters.
What would be a good price? I would be amused if Spain or the Argentines literally just offered a cash figure for either.
We could do a Hong Kong and offer a 99 year leasehold on them, for a fee/annual rent.
Sounds like a pretty poor deal, since we'd then get them back in 100 years.
But after 99 years of Iberian rule, the people of Gibraltar might prefer Spanish rule.
They might even hold a referendum on joining Spain.
Our naval base in Gib is probably the most valuable military asset we still hold.
The naval dockyard was privatised in the 80s. The Gibraltar "squadron" now shares a modest boathouse with the police.
Most of the infrastructure which came to be vital to the war effort was in private hands prior to WW2. It means nothing because in a time of crisis the Government can simply take it over. Not something they can easily do if it is in the hands of a foreign power.
I can see your argument. I need to challenge you on "fairer" taxes and "fairer" politics. What do you mean by "fair", specifically? All parties contend their policies are fair. Do you mean redistribution, more welfare and more State enterprise, as Labour propose? That's certainly a line the Lib Dems could take, but they would compete directly with Labour on its own turf. They would be a me-too party.
If they go for an internationalist first line, they will hit very different opinions on State enterprise and welfare from people who do think Britain's place is at the heart of an interconnected world. The way to deal with that is to de-emphasise the State welfare issue and come up with a moderation, like CDU's social market economy model. The advantage of he internationalist first line for the Lib Dems is that it is unique to them, now the two main parties are very much nativist. The risk is that their vote gets squeezed if the putative internationalists decide the State welfare issue is the important one, either for or against.
It certainly is the case that the Libs Dems need to do something
If it were up to me, I would combine tax and NI, at a lower total rate than the current levy on working people (because of the broader base), ramp up taxes on property and wealth, and green taxes, balanced off by a reduction of tax on income and/or spending. The basic principle of tax should be to levy it on things we don't want, like pollution and under-utilised capital, and not so much on things we do want like earning and enterprise.
Obviously this would be very complicated and need transitional arrangements, and provision for asset-rich low income older people, etc. But the current basis of our taxation makes little sense and is itself insanely complicated. Tax evasion is a lot more difficult if levied on stationary assets like property - of all major taxes, income is the hardest to collect.
Labour sees things like wealth taxes as a way to fund its higher spending plans - not as a way to re-shape the way people pay tax, which is a different proposition altogether.
It is interesting, because down here in the South, at least until 2017, LD voters were generally the 'asset rich low income older people' you describe.
Any national policy like that would kill the local base of the party.
Which is, of course, the main reason why the LDs don't get traction. They're efficient as a pothole NIMBY party.
We got a mortgage and a foot on the property ladder, our equivalents today would not. That is the big difference.
Who do you want to blame...
Labour for the credit bubble that inflated house prices on their watch?
Or Labour for the mass immigration that pushed up demand massively?
I don't want to *blame* anyone. House prices have inflated under both Labour and Tory governments and mass immigration has been a feature of the last seven years, as well as the previous 13.
The 1991-97 period was an incredibly lucky time to buy. Prices had crashed after 1990, and interest rates plummeted when we crashed out of the ERM.
If that's true, that means the EU have moved to the UK position, and accepted May's compromise as a way of taking this issue off the table, and moving onto the next.
That is telling, because it tells us the EU is also worried about no deal as well.
No - it tells us that the EU got its bottom line: the UK Parliament will not be able to legislate away the citizens' rights agreed in a final deal. The only way Parliament could change such rights would be to repeal the entire deal. Where there may be EU movement is on the Irish border question, but we shall see.
Wrong. Straw man. The UK Parliament was never trying to negotiate away existing citizen's rights in the final deal. The issue was ECJ having supreme oversight, versus the UK being trusted to exclusively guarantee those rights via UK courts.
The compromise is that both will be involved, which I find very interesting, but let's wait and see for the precise wording.
Stop trying to denigrate everything HMG and the UK does, open your eyes, and recognise movement when you see it, and what that tells us.
Otherwise your analysis is wrong because it is always filtered through your blinkers, and therefore bias.
I wish I could be as unbiased as you :-D
The current UK Parliament may not have tried to water down whatever citizens' rights are agreed, but that may not have applied to future ones. Now, any future Parliament that does wish to water down rights will only be able to do so by repealing the entire framework of the final EU/UK deal. That is a far higher level of protection than the UK government was originally offering. I do not denigrate the government's change of mind, I think it is wholly welcome.
What it shows is that the EU is willing to listen to sensible UK suggestions. That is also very good news.
If that's true, that means the EU have moved to the UK position, and accepted May's compromise as a way of taking this issue off the table, and moving onto the next.
That is telling, because it tells us the EU is also worried about no deal as well.
No - it tells us that the EU got its bottom line: the UK Parliament will not be able to legislate away the citizens' rights agreed in a final deal. The only way Parliament could change such rights would be to repeal the entire deal. Where there may be EU movement is on the Irish border question, but we shall see.
Wrong. Straw man. The UK Parliament was never trying to negotiate away existing citizen's rights in the final deal. The issue was ECJ having supreme oversight, versus the UK being trusted to exclusively guarantee those rights via UK courts.
The compromise is that both will be involved, which I find very interesting, but let's wait and see for the precise wording.
Stop trying to denigrate everything HMG and the UK does, open your eyes, and recognise movement when you see it, and what that tells us.
Otherwise your analysis is wrong because it is always filtered through your blinkers, and therefore bias.
I wish I could be as unbiased as you :-D
The current UK Parliament may not have tried to water down whatever citizens' rights are agreed, but that may not have applied to future ones. Now, any future Parliament that does wish to water down rights will only be able to do so by repealing the entire framework of the final EU/UK deal. That is a far higher level of protection than the UK government was originally offering. I do not denigrate the government's change of mind, I think it is wholly welcome.
What it shows is that the EU is willing to listen to sensible UK suggestions. That is also very good news.
It sounds like a win/win to me.
Yep. Incorporating rights into the treaty was always going to be a better way to go than ECJ jurisdiction. Personally I would have made the offer before talks even began. We made a big mistake trying to play politics with EU citizens in the UK and that cost us a lot of good will. Hopefully this is the sign of things starting to improve.
Most of the infrastructure which came to be vital to the war effort was in private hands prior to WW2. It means nothing because in a time of crisis the Government can simply take it over. Not something they can easily do if it is in the hands of a foreign power.
Sure, but it's not some strategic crown jewel, it's a commercial dockyard. The real strategic gatekeeper to the Med is NAVSTA Rota near Cadiz.
We got a mortgage and a foot on the property ladder, our equivalents today would not. That is the big difference.
Who do you want to blame...
Labour for the credit bubble that inflated house prices on their watch?
Or Labour for the mass immigration that pushed up demand massively?
I don't want to *blame* anyone. House prices have inflated under both Labour and Tory governments and mass immigration has been a feature of the last seven years, as well as the previous 13.
The 1991-97 period was an incredibly lucky time to buy. Prices had crashed after 1990, and interest rates plummeted when we crashed out of the ERM.
Only if you did not have to move house in that time. I had friends and relatives who had to wait over two years to move because there were practically no buyers
The question I have to those who seem to think Corbyn is the Messiah how far is he and labour ahead in the polling. The polling evidence still shows Theresa May ahead as best PM, and the polls movement is no more than MOE.
L
You contradict yourself. Counting on the polling, but saying things have never been so unpredictable.
The real nightmare for the Tories is a
Yes I would agree regarding Emily Thornberry , I was very impressed with her during the General Election campaign.
I am not so sure.
One message of the last few years is that people are willing to vote for radicals, particularly when they feel under threat.
I think you are correct Fox , just difficult for an old centrist like myself to grasp the changing reality.
Very much in the same place as you, Dr Fox. I've not been able to bring myself to cancel mine either, but frustrated at the party's seeming inability to get tractive effort through the Serengeti like spaces of the current centre.
The Tories are bereft of ideas they can sell to the country.
Me as well.
Surely if a party's ideas are good they should be good to us at any age?
As a baby boomer, house owner with a secure job, pension and no debt, I am in a position that Fox jr can only dream of.
Surely that should be as an upper middle class baby boomer.
While young people do have legitimate grievances, there is a tendency to compare their life chances with those of upper middle class components of older age cohorts, rather than lower middle class or working class components, most of whom never went to university, grew up in housing that was dismal by modern standards, and may have experienced unemployment.
Anyone who's upper middle class is living in clover.
My dad was a salesman, my mum a secretary turned housewife. I went to state comprehensives.
I was handed nothing on a plate. My sole inheritance was £1000 from my grandfather.
And, you bathed in a coaltub and went outside to the privvy at night.
I expect the good doctor's privvy was outside during the day as well. We had a tin bath until the council added external bathrooms in the mid-70s.
For some unexplained reason you have forgotten to tell us the party ratings in the new YouGov Scottish poll - the ratings for the SNP and the ratings for the Tories!
Re-watched Rocky last night. Was struck by the parallels to the recent GE! Bear with me. Local journeyman loser with dubious friends is unexpectedly challenged to battle by the undisputed champion. He takes the opportunity. Gets in shape. Champion sits around not getting in shape or organising or taking opponent seriously. Several members of her backroom team tell her it won't be so easy. They are ignored. Meanwhile, challenger has local youth following him around cheering as he goes through his routine. He comes across surprisingly well on TV. Although incoherent, refuses to engage in trash talk or denigrate his rival He takes several early blows, but refuses to go down. As the fight goes on his training pays off. He begins to land blows. The champion can't understand this. He won't go down,.Eventually, the champ is left holding on waiting for the bell, winning on points. Loser is redeemed in glorious defeat. Bloodied, but standing. Champion is no longer undisputed. 2 drunks in a puddle indeed! Rocky 2 anyone?
I can see your argument. I need to challenge you on "fairer" taxes and "fairer" politics. What do you mean by "fair", specifically? All parties contend their policies are fair. Do you mean redistribution, more welfare and more State enterprise, as Labour propose? That's certainly a line the Lib Dems could take, but they would compete directly with Labour on its own turf. They would be a me-too party.
If they go for an internationalist first line, they will hit very different opinions on State enterprise and welfare from people who do think Britain's place is at the heart of an interconnected world. The way to deal with that is to de-emphasise the State welfare issue and come up with a moderation, like CDU's social market economy model. The advantage of he internationalist first line for the Lib Dems is that it is unique to them, now the two main parties are very much nativist. The risk is that their vote gets squeezed if the putative internationalists decide the State welfare issue is the important one, either for or against.
It certainly is the case that the Libs Dems need to do something
If it were up to me, I would combine tax and NI, at a lower total rate than the current levy on working people (because of the broader base), ramp up taxes on property and wealth, and green taxes, balanced off by a reduction of tax on income and/or spending. The basic principle of tax should be to levy it on things we don't want, like pollution and under-utilised capital, and not so much on things we do want like earning and enterprise.
Obviously this would be very complicated and need transitional arrangements, and provision for asset-rich low income older people, etc. But the current basis of our taxation makes little sense and is itself insanely complicated. Tax evasion is a lot more difficult if levied on stationary assets like property - of all major taxes, income is the hardest to collect.
Labour sees things like wealth taxes as a way to fund its higher spending plans - not as a way to re-shape the way people pay tax, which is a different proposition altogether.
That seems a sensible policy but it also seems rather technocratic. It doesn't translate easily into an idea, such as the internationalist line I was suggesting. But it could be included along with it. So voters would have the choice of the following basic propositions: "Vote Labour because the State should look after people"; "Vote Conservative to put Britain first"; "Vote Lib Dem to be part of the modern world".
For some unexplained reason you have forgotten to tell us the party ratings in the new YouGov Scottish poll - the ratings for the SNP and the ratings for the Tories!
Theresa May has never tried to lead. On luck: Gary Player noted that the harder he practised the luckier he got. Theresa May didn't practise and so couldn't use the luck she got.
Time for someone who is willing to try.
In general yes, but when luck is 'letters falling off the walk' that is out of anyone's hands, though it's her fault she's weak to the point the visual metaphor was so panicking.
Why have letters that are able to fall off in the first place. Yes the letters falling off is not Theresa May's fault, but scrimping on the conference presentation was a choice made by the Conservative party.
I'm guessing here, but what about the following? Some young whippersnapper straight out of uni runs a 'Graphic Design' startup, and his or her uncle, So-and-so MP, is mates with someone in Central Office.
The question I have to those who seem to think Corbyn is the Messiah how far is he and labour ahead in the polling. The polling evidence still shows Theresa May ahead as best PM, and the polls movement is no more than MOE.
Labour and Corbyn ictable
You contradict yourself. Counting on the polling,
The real nightmare for the Tories is a
Yes I would agree regarding Emily Thornberry , I was very impressed with her during the General Election campaign.
I am not so sure.
One message of the last few years is that people are willing to vote for radicals, particularly when they feel under threat.
I think you are correct Fox , just difficult for an old centrist like myself to grasp the changing reality.
Very much in the same place as you, Dr Fox. I've not been able to bring myself to cancel mine either, but frustrated at the party's seeming inability to get tractive effort through the Serengeti like spaces of the current centre.
The Tories are bereft of ideas they can sell to the country.
Me as well.
Surely if a party's ideas are good they should be good to us at any age?
As a baby boomer, house owner with a secure job, pension and no debt, I am in a position that Fox jr can only dream of.
Surely that should be as an upper middle class baby boomer.
While
Anyone who's upper middle class is living in clover.
My dad was a salesman, my mum a secretary turned housewife. I went to state comprehensives.
I was handed nothing on a plate. My sole inheritance was £1000 from my grandfather.
I didn't say you were handed anything on a plate. But, you rose up the social ladder in a way that many of your contemporaries did not. They might well regard today's young people as being more fortunate than they were.
Have a look at the graphs here. My experience is not unusual.
What it shows is that the EU is willing to listen to sensible UK suggestions. That is also very good news.
But not new and not surprising, unless you have only been getting your information from the British press.
Or from arch-remainers on here who have said the EU will do whatever they want to because they hold all cards (an attitude which precludes listening to any of our suggestions, sensible or not).
The question I have to those who seem to think Corbyn is the Messiah how far is he and labour ahead in the polling. The polling evidence still shows Theresa May ahead as best PM, and the polls movement is no more than MOE.
L
You contradict yourself. Counting on the polling, but
The real nightmare for the Tories is a
Yes I would agree regarding Emily Thornberry , I was very impressed with her during the General Election campaign.
I am not so sure.
One message of the last few years is that people are willing to vote for radicals, particularly when they feel under threat.
I think you are correct Fox , just difficult for an old centrist like myself to grasp the changing reality.
Very much in the same place as you, Dr Fox. I've not been able to bring myself to cancel mine either, but frustrated at the party's seeming inability to get tractive effort through the Serengeti like spaces of the current centre.
The Tories are bereft of ideas they can sell to the country.
Me as well.
Surely if a party's ideas are good they should be good to us at any age?
As a baby boomer, house owner with a secure job, pension and no debt, I am in a position that Fox jr can only dream of.
Surely that should be as an upper middle class baby boomer.
While young people do have legitimate grievances, there is a tendency to compare their life chances with those of upper middle class components of older age cohorts, rather than lower middle class or working class components, most of whom never went to university, grew up in housing that was dismal by modern standards, and may have experienced unemployment.
Anyone who's upper middle class is living in clover.
My dad was a salesman, my mum .
And, you bathed in a coaltub and went outside to the privvy at night.
I expect the good doctor's privvy was outside during the day as well. We had a tin bath until the council added external bathrooms in the mid-70s.
Hardly. My dad was a good salesman and always did well on commission. I was brought up in detached owner occupier houses, albeit with several moves with my dads work.
I'm surprised at the opprobrium heaped on Shapps. He seized Welwyn Hatfield from Labour initially by building up a broad and intricate profile of the wishes and concerns of the local electorate. It's now a key marginal, and he must have got wind that Theresa's toxic there and he's toast next time. Why is that something the Tories would want to hand wave away? Shapps is a prophet unheeded in his own land.
There is one massive flaw with this study...not all degrees / universities are the same and we know on average black kids still get worse GCSEs / a-levels and thus go to worse universities and shock their employment outcomes are worse. When 50% of kids are going to uni, the type of degree and where it is from has become more important than ever.
Westminster ratings SNP 40% LABOUR 30%,Tory 23% Lib 5% - making this the THIRD (out of three) full Scottish opinion polls since the election showing an increase in SNP leads.
F1: very unexpected this. Palmer's leaving Renault after the Japanese Grand Prix, to be replaced by Sainz. I wonder if Kvyat will return to Toro Rosso...
The question I have to those who seem to think Corbyn is the Messiah how far is he and labour ahead in the polling. The polling evidence still shows Theresa May ahead as best PM, and the polls movement is no more than MOE.
Labour and Corbyn ictable
You contradict yourself. Counting on the polling,
The real nightmare for the Tories is a
Yes I would agree regarding Emily Thornberry , I was very impressed with her during the General Election campaign.
I am not so sure.
One message of the last few years is that people are willing to vote for radicals, particularly when they feel under threat.
I think you are correct Fox , just difficult for an old centrist like myself to grasp the changing reality.
Very much in the same place as you, Dr Fox. I've not been able to bring myself to cancel mine either, but frustrated at the party's seeming inability to get tractive effort through the Serengeti like spaces of the current centre.
The Tories are bereft of ideas they can sell to the country.
Me as well.
Surely if a party's ideas are good they should be good to us at any age?
As a baby boomer, house owner with a secure job, pension and no debt, I am in a position that Fox jr can only dream of.
Surely that should be as an upper middle class baby boomer.
While
Anyone who's upper middle class is living in clover.
My dad was a salesman, my mum a secretary turned housewife. I went to state comprehensives.
I was handed nothing on a plate. My sole inheritance was £1000 from my grandfather.
I didn't say you were handed anything on a plate. But, you rose up the social ladder in a way that many of your contemporaries did not. They might well regard today's young people as being more fortunate than they were.
Have a look at the graphs here. My experience is not unusual.
Westminster ratings SNP 40% LABOUR 30%,Tory 23% Lib 5% - making this the THIRD (out of three) full Scottish opinion polls since the election showing an increase in SNP leads.
Oh, you mean voting intention?
I was surprised at you drawing attention to ratings given the collapse in Nicola's.....
BAXTERED today's YouGov poll would give the Nats 43 seats (+8), Labour 7 (no change), Tories 8 (-5) and Libs 1 (-3).
At least the weather is nice in Glasgow. Enjoy the SNP conference, and remind Nicola that the idea is to win the iRef2 in 2022....or sometime or other.
Never been a fan of Theresa May, as she has always been very frosty and stubborn. This might have been ideal for a Home Secretary, where you are trying to impose a strong law and order position on the country.
But these qualities are arguably not suited to a modern day Prime Minister, where you need to be more charasmatic and able to win people over. This was shown up during the recent election campaign which led to her being called "Maybot". She could not stop saying "strong and stable", even though there were plenty of helpful advice, telling her to stop it, because it was starting to look very silly.
I don't think May can change her personality and i don't think people will start to like her for the way she is. Whether it is fair or not, people may have made up their minds about her. The media pictures of May meeting Police on the street after Grenfell house, but refusing to meet local people until a few days afterwards. It made her look very inhuman, even though there might have been security reasons. HM The Queen met local people, before Theresa May managed to turn up to a controlled meeting in a local church hall.
You do readers a disservice by not drawing attention to the real news which is that Merkel has ruled out a continuation of the grand coalition so Jamaica is now the only game in town.
Never been a fan of Theresa May, as she has always been very frosty and stubborn. This might have been ideal for a Home Secretary, where you are trying to impose a strong law and order position on the country.
But these qualities are arguably not suited to a modern day Prime Minister, where you need to be more charasmatic and able to win people over. This was shown up during the recent election campaign which led to her being called "Maybot". She could not stop saying "strong and stable", even though there were plenty of helpful advice, telling her to stop it, because it was starting to look very silly.
I don't think May can change her personality and i don't think people will start to like her for the way she is. Whether it is fair or not, people may have made up their minds about her. The media pictures of May meeting Police on the street after Grenfell house, but refusing to meet local people until a few days afterwards. It made her look very inhuman, even though there might have been security reasons. HM The Queen met local people, before Theresa May managed to turn up to a controlled meeting in a local church hall.
Unfortunately, given that I am a natural Conservative voter, my view is even more harsh and is summed up in your first sentence. I thought she was a poor HS, always looking for the authoritarian answer whilst at the same time lacking the political ability to deal with some of the more obvious problems during her tenure.
BAXTERED today's YouGov poll would give the Nats 43 seats (+8), Labour 7 (no change), Tories 8 (-5) and Libs 1 (-3).
At least the weather is nice in Glasgow. Enjoy the SNP conference, and remind Nicola that the idea is to win the iRef2 in 2022....or sometime or other.
You do readers a disservice by not drawing attention to the real news which is that Merkel has ruled out a continuation of the grand coalition so Jamaica is now the only game in town.
I thought I'd backed Jamaica but a search through the antepost slips suggests otherwise. Kudos to NPxMP for the steer (especially if it comes off).
You do readers a disservice by not drawing attention to the real news which is that Merkel has ruled out a continuation of the grand coalition so Jamaica is now the only game in town.
I noticed while shopping today that the front page of the New York Times (possibly a European edition) has Howard Jacobson on Labour's anti-semitic tendencies. By way of contrast, however, our home-grown Jewish Chronicle's front page has Mayor Sadiq lamenting Amber Rudd's refusal to proscribe Hezbollah.
Most of the infrastructure which came to be vital to the war effort was in private hands prior to WW2. It means nothing because in a time of crisis the Government can simply take it over. Not something they can easily do if it is in the hands of a foreign power.
Sure, but it's not some strategic crown jewel, it's a commercial dockyard. The real strategic gatekeeper to the Med is NAVSTA Rota near Cadiz.
The US certainly disagrees with you and consider Gib to be the key asset in the Western Med, not least for its intelligence gathering and communications facilities.
You do readers a disservice by not drawing attention to the real news which is that Merkel has ruled out a continuation of the grand coalition so Jamaica is now the only game in town.
I think youll find Schulz did that for her
she's only catching him up
You may remember Schroeder once tried to rule out the SPD going into coalition with her as leader too and she just dispatched him. Schulz has far less authority to speak for the SPD than Schroeder did at that time.
You do readers a disservice by not drawing attention to the real news which is that Merkel has ruled out a continuation of the grand coalition so Jamaica is now the only game in town.
I think youll find Schulz did that for her
she's only catching him up
You may remember Schroeder once tried to rule out the SPD going into coalition with her as leader too and she just dispatched him. Schulz has far less authority to speak for the SPD than Schroeder did at that time.
Schulz and the SPD ruled it out after the election - keep up
Kind of sums up why Sugar is a third rate TV personality. The irony of not recognising he is the British version of Donald Trump is amusing.
About the only thing he has in common with Trump is having a TV show of the same name.
If you want a British version of Trump, look no further than Branson ...
That's a bit unfair. The British Trump would have to be someone who owns lots of land, is opinionated on architecture and shamelessly merchandises their personal brand. It's Prince Charles!
Kind of sums up why Sugar is a third rate TV personality. The irony of not recognising he is the British version of Donald Trump is amusing.
About the only thing he has in common with Trump is having a TV show of the same name.
If you want a British version of Trump, look no further than Branson ...
Not really. Branson has established a whole series of very successful brands which are still thriving today. Sugar has - or had - Amstrad. A pretty poor electricals business that has never really made a great impact outside of the UK. He reminds a lot of Trump in his self promotion which hides a lifetime of, at best, business mediocrity.
BAXTERED today's YouGov poll would give the Nats 43 seats (+8), Labour 7 (no change), Tories 8 (-5) and Libs 1 (-3).
At least the weather is nice in Glasgow. Enjoy the SNP conference, and remind Nicola that the idea is to win the iRef2 in 2022....or sometime or other.
The question I have to those who seem to think Corbyn is the Messiah how far is he and labour ahead in the polling. The polling evidence still shows Theresa May ahead as best PM, and the polls movement is no more than MOE.
The real nightmare for the Tories is a
Yes I would agree regarding Emily Thornberry , I was very impressed with her during the General Election campaign.
I am not so sure.
One message of the last few years is that people are willing to vote for radicals, particularly when they feel under threat.
I think you are correct Fox , just difficult for an old centrist like myself to grasp the changing reality.
Very centre.
The country.
Me here.
Surely any age?
As of.
Surely that should be as an upper middle class baby boomer.
While young people do have legitimate grievances, there is a tendency to compare their life chances with those of upper middle class components of older age cohorts, rather than lower middle class or working class components, most of whom never went to university, grew up in housing that was dismal by modern standards, and may have experienced unemployment.
Anyone who's upper middle class is living in clover.
I was born working class and, by your definition, am now upper middle class. That suits me. I guess the point is that the route I took was possible back in the day and many took it. It's not anymore. When I bought my first flat in London in the early 1990s it cost £60,000 - two bedrooms and a little garden, in N19. Between us, my wife and I were earning around £35,000 pa as a teacher and as a junior B2B journalist respectively. Today, the same flat would cost around £500,000 and our salaries would be around £50,000. That is the problem.
Very few people are actually upper middle class - eg Archbishop of Canterbury - David Cameron etc.Material wealth has very little to do with it . A roadsweeper who suddenly wins £10 million on the Lottery would not become upper middle class as a result.
Kind of sums up why Sugar is a third rate TV personality. The irony of not recognising he is the British version of Donald Trump is amusing.
About the only thing he has in common with Trump is having a TV show of the same name.
If you want a British version of Trump, look no further than Branson ...
Not really. Branson has established a whole series of very successful brands which are still thriving today. Sugar has - or had - Amstrad. A pretty poor electricals business that has never really made a great impact outside of the UK. He reminds a lot of Trump in his self promotion which hides a lifetime of, at best, business mediocrity.
Branson has only ever had one thing: his Virgin brand. He is a perpetual self-promoter, with remarkably little substance behind (most of the 'Virgin' businesses are owned by others).
On the other hand, Sugar ran a successful computer business - it was low end, but was successful and (relatively) honest. Even if they were a competitor to companies I worked for.
That's where I see the similarity between Branson and Trump: both are (IMV) fundamentally dishonest brands with little if any substance.
I don't particularly like either Branson or Sugar, but I respect what Sugar has achieved much more than Branson.
BAXTERED today's YouGov poll would give the Nats 43 seats (+8), Labour 7 (no change), Tories 8 (-5) and Libs 1 (-3).
In recent years the polls have tended to overestimate SNP support when compared to election results. I suspect Labour would now manage 33% - 35% in Scotland at a Westminster election.
Kind of sums up why Sugar is a third rate TV personality. The irony of not recognising he is the British version of Donald Trump is amusing.
About the only thing he has in common with Trump is having a TV show of the same name.
If you want a British version of Trump, look no further than Branson ...
Not really. Branson has established a whole series of very successful brands which are still thriving today. Sugar has - or had - Amstrad. A pretty poor electricals business that has never really made a great impact outside of the UK. He reminds a lot of Trump in his self promotion which hides a lifetime of, at best, business mediocrity.
That's not really fair. Sugar has had five or six good ideas over his business lifetime, from his early days with a near monopoly on injection-moulded plinths, through all-in-one hifi units in the days when separates ruled, word processors and PCs (he made the PC affordable, and at one point Amstrad was Europe's second-biggest computer maker) and satellite receivers. A valid criticism of Sugar is not that he was better at building businesses than growing them once they were established. Now he is mainly a property developer, a bit like the Donald. He might be a step behind Branson (who led Trump in licensing the brand so appearing to own more than he does) but he is a long way in front of most. To succeed in one business might well be down to luck or connections but Sugar has repeated the trick many times.
Kind of sums up why Sugar is a third rate TV personality. The irony of not recognising he is the British version of Donald Trump is amusing.
About the only thing he has in common with Trump is having a TV show of the same name.
If you want a British version of Trump, look no further than Branson ...
Not really. Branson has established a whole series of very successful brands which are still thriving today. Sugar has - or had - Amstrad. A pretty poor electricals business that has never really made a great impact outside of the UK. He reminds a lot of Trump in his self promotion which hides a lifetime of, at best, business mediocrity.
That's not really fair. Sugar has had five or six good ideas over his business lifetime, from his early days with a near monopoly on injection-moulded plinths, through all-in-one hifi units in the days when separates ruled, word processors and PCs (he made the PC affordable, and at one point Amstrad was Europe's second-biggest computer maker) and satellite receivers. A valid criticism of Sugar is not that he was better at building businesses than growing them once they were established. Now he is mainly a property developer, a bit like the Donald. He might be a step behind Branson (who led Trump in licensing the brand so appearing to own more than he does) but he is a long way in front of most. To succeed in one business might well be down to luck or connections but Sugar has repeated the trick many times.
Truth is that Branson is a bit of a narcissist; Sugar a bit of a bully. Trump is a huge narcissist and bully.
I see a story that Tom Watson has written to the Premier League urging them not to stage matches on Christmas Eve. It sounds like a silly season story, or am I just out of touch?
Watson writes that he is concerned fans will be "forced to choose between their loved ones and their team".
The Labour MP's letter to Scudamore, obtained by BBC Sport, adds: "There's a real danger that some travelling fans would not be able to get home until the early hours of Christmas Day, whilst hundreds of stadium staff and workers would be expected to work rather than spending time with their families at this time of year
I get the part about staff and workers being expected to work when they would not normally, but surely no one would be 'forced' to choose between their loved ones and their team (god forbid they have no loved ones, but that'd be a separate issue), and if fans choose to go who the hell cares what they choose to do?
Amusingly the first comment I see on the story opens with 'why not just abolish religion?' Just leaping into the important stuff, these football stories.
Just to get this right - you are quite happy with the projections below as long as Ms Davidsons declining popularity is declining slower than Ms Sturgeon's popularity while the Prime Minster unpopularity in Scotland is at recoird levels.
List of predicted seat changes
Seat County/Area Predicted Change MP as at 2017 Angus Tayside NAT gain from CON : Kirstene Hair Ayr Carrick Lanark NAT gain from CON : Bill Grant Caithness Highland NAT gain from LIB : Jamie Stone Dunb East Glasgow NAT gain from LIB : Jo Swinson Edinb Wst Edinburgh NAT gain from LIB : Christine Jardine Gordon Grampian NAT gain from CON : Colin Clark Ochil hire Central NAT gain from CON : Luke Graham Stirling Central NAT gain from CON : Stephen Kerr
Just to get this right - you are quite happy with the projections below as long as Ms Davidsons declining popularity is declining slower than Ms Sturgeon's popularity while the Prime Minster unpopularity in Scotland is at recoird levels.
List of predicted seat changes
Seat County/Area Predicted Change MP as at 2017 Angus Tayside NAT gain from CON : Kirstene Hair Ayr Carrick Lanark NAT gain from CON : Bill Grant Caithness Highland NAT gain from LIB : Jamie Stone Dunb East Glasgow NAT gain from LIB : Jo Swinson Edinb Wst Edinburgh NAT gain from LIB : Christine Jardine Gordon Grampian NAT gain from CON : Colin Clark Ochil hire Central NAT gain from CON : Luke Graham Stirling Central NAT gain from CON : Stephen Kerr
In reality I would expect the SNP to win very few of those seats and would probably lose all their Glasgow seats to Labour - plus quite a few others in the Central Belt.
Just to get this right - you are quite happy with the projections below as long as Ms Davidsons declining popularity is declining slower than Ms Sturgeon's popularity while the Prime Minster unpopularity in Scotland is at recoird levels.
List of predicted seat changes
Seat County/Area Predicted Change MP as at 2017 Angus Tayside NAT gain from CON : Kirstene Hair Ayr Carrick Lanark NAT gain from CON : Bill Grant Caithness Highland NAT gain from LIB : Jamie Stone Dunb East Glasgow NAT gain from LIB : Jo Swinson Edinb Wst Edinburgh NAT gain from LIB : Christine Jardine Gordon Grampian NAT gain from CON : Colin Clark Ochil hire Central NAT gain from CON : Luke Graham Stirling Central NAT gain from CON : Stephen Kerr
In reality I would expect the SNP to win very few of those seats and would probably lose all their Glasgow seats to Labour - plus quite a few others in the Central Belt.
I was amazed at how close Labour came to regaining some of those Glascow seats in addition to the one(?) that they won. A couple were within a hundred votes I believe.
Just to get this right - you are quite happy with the projections below as long as Ms Davidsons declining popularity is declining slower than Ms Sturgeon's popularity while the Prime Minster unpopularity in Scotland is at recoird levels.
List of predicted seat changes
Seat County/Area Predicted Change MP as at 2017 Angus Tayside NAT gain from CON : Kirstene Hair Ayr Carrick Lanark NAT gain from CON : Bill Grant Caithness Highland NAT gain from LIB : Jamie Stone Dunb East Glasgow NAT gain from LIB : Jo Swinson Edinb Wst Edinburgh NAT gain from LIB : Christine Jardine Gordon Grampian NAT gain from CON : Colin Clark Ochil hire Central NAT gain from CON : Luke Graham Stirling Central NAT gain from CON : Stephen Kerr
In reality I would expect the SNP to win very few of those seats and would probably lose all their Glasgow seats to Labour - plus quite a few others in the Central Belt.
I was amazed at how close Labour came to regaining some of those Glascow seats in addition to the one(?) that they won. A couple were within a hundred votes I believe.
Indeed - the SNP majority in all their Glasgow seats was pretty narrow. I expect them to lose them all next time.
Just to get this right - you are quite happy with the projections below as long as Ms Davidsons declining popularity is declining slower than Ms Sturgeon's popularity while the Prime Minster unpopularity in Scotland is at recoird levels.
List of predicted seat changes
Seat County/Area Predicted Change MP as at 2017 Angus Tayside NAT gain from CON : Kirstene Hair Ayr Carrick Lanark NAT gain from CON : Bill Grant Caithness Highland NAT gain from LIB : Jamie Stone Dunb East Glasgow NAT gain from LIB : Jo Swinson Edinb Wst Edinburgh NAT gain from LIB : Christine Jardine Gordon Grampian NAT gain from CON : Colin Clark Ochil hire Central NAT gain from CON : Luke Graham Stirling Central NAT gain from CON : Stephen Kerr
In reality I would expect the SNP to win very few of those seats and would probably lose all their Glasgow seats to Labour - plus quite a few others in the Central Belt.
Shhhh! Don't talk about ratings - but you're right - with Corbyn's very strong ratings and Nicola's 20 point drop (compared to Ruth's 4) I suspect the VI numbers flatter to deceive......the surprise is, given May's atrocious ratings the Tories aren't doing worse....
Just to get this right - you are quite happy with the projections below as long as Ms Davidsons declining popularity is declining slower than Ms Sturgeon's popularity while the Prime Minster unpopularity in Scotland is at recoird levels.
List of predicted seat changes
Seat County/Area Predicted Change MP as at 2017 Angus Tayside NAT gain from CON : Kirstene Hair Ayr Carrick Lanark NAT gain from CON : Bill Grant Caithness Highland NAT gain from LIB : Jamie Stone Dunb East Glasgow NAT gain from LIB : Jo Swinson Edinb Wst Edinburgh NAT gain from LIB : Christine Jardine Gordon Grampian NAT gain from CON : Colin Clark Ochil hire Central NAT gain from CON : Luke Graham Stirling Central NAT gain from CON : Stephen Kerr
In reality I would expect the SNP to win very few of those seats and would probably lose all their Glasgow seats to Labour - plus quite a few others in the Central Belt.
Shhhh! Don't talk about ratings - but you're right - with Corbyn's very strong ratings and Nicola's 20 point drop (compared to Ruth's 4) I suspect the VI numbers flatter to deceive......the surprise is, given May's atrocious ratings the Tories aren't doing worse....
Maybe the tories need to revisit that 'separate scottish party' idea before that changes.
Just to get this right - you are quite happy with the projections below as long as Ms Davidsons declining popularity is declining slower than Ms Sturgeon's popularity while the Prime Minster unpopularity in Scotland is at recoird levels.
List of predicted seat changes
Seat County/Area Predicted Change MP as at 2017 Angus Tayside NAT gain from CON : Kirstene Hair Ayr Carrick Lanark NAT gain from CON : Bill Grant Caithness Highland NAT gain from LIB : Jamie Stone Dunb East Glasgow NAT gain from LIB : Jo Swinson Edinb Wst Edinburgh NAT gain from LIB : Christine Jardine Gordon Grampian NAT gain from CON : Colin Clark Ochil hire Central NAT gain from CON : Luke Graham Stirling Central NAT gain from CON : Stephen Kerr
In reality I would expect the SNP to win very few of those seats and would probably lose all their Glasgow seats to Labour - plus quite a few others in the Central Belt.
I was amazed at how close Labour came to regaining some of those Glascow seats in addition to the one(?) that they won. A couple were within a hundred votes I believe.
Just to get this right - you are quite happy with the projections below as long as Ms Davidsons declining popularity is declining slower than Ms Sturgeon's popularity while the Prime Minster unpopularity in Scotland is at recoird levels.
List of predicted seat changes
Seat County/Area Predicted Change MP as at 2017 Angus Tayside NAT gain from CON : Kirstene Hair Ayr Carrick Lanark NAT gain from CON : Bill Grant Caithness Highland NAT gain from LIB : Jamie Stone Dunb East Glasgow NAT gain from LIB : Jo Swinson Edinb Wst Edinburgh NAT gain from LIB : Christine Jardine Gordon Grampian NAT gain from CON : Colin Clark Ochil hire Central NAT gain from CON : Luke Graham Stirling Central NAT gain from CON : Stephen Kerr
In reality I would expect the SNP to win very few of those seats and would probably lose all their Glasgow seats to Labour - plus quite a few others in the Central Belt.
I was amazed at how close Labour came to regaining some of those Glascow seats in addition to the one(?) that they won. A couple were within a hundred votes I believe.
Indeed - the SNP majority in all their Glasgow seats was pretty narrow. I expect them to lose them all next time.
It will take more than the embittered Grant Shapps to remove May -although go she will before the next election. She has been lucky. She was lucky that a pygmy like Grant Shapps tried to topple her. A political crisis will be her downfall and the most likely crisis will be the loss of a by election in a safe Tory seat. The Eastbourne by election in 1990 led to Thatcher's downfall within a month. May's equivalent of Eastbourne will come.
It is of course bad news for Labour because if there is one thing that Labour wants more than anything is to face May at the next election.
It will take more than the embittered Grant Shapps to remove May -although go she will before the next election. She has been lucky. She was lucky that a pygmy like Grant Shapps tried to topple her. A political crisis will be her downfall and the most likely crisis will be the loss of a by election in a safe Tory seat. The Eastbourne by election in 1990 led to Thatcher's downfall within a month. May's equivalent of Eastbourne will come.
It is of course bad news for Labour because if there is one thing that Labour wants more than anything is to face May at the next election.
It will take more than the embittered Grant Shapps to remove May -although go she will before the next election. She has been lucky. She was lucky that a pygmy like Grant Shapps tried to topple her. A political crisis will be her downfall and the most likely crisis will be the loss of a by election in a safe Tory seat. The Eastbourne by election in 1990 led to Thatcher's downfall within a month. May's equivalent of Eastbourne will come.
It is of course bad news for Labour because if there is one thing that Labour wants more than anything is to face May at the next election.
I doubt Shapps did this of his own accord. He was the pit canary, sent in by more powerful forces to judge whether the time is yet right for a full-frontal assault, and to remind Theresa that her days are limited.
Comments
If they go for an internationalist first line, they will hit very different opinions on State enterprise and welfare from people who do think Britain's place is at the heart of an interconnected world. The way to deal with that is to de-emphasise the State welfare issue and come up with a moderation, like CDU's social market economy model. The advantage of he internationalist first line for the Lib Dems is that it is unique to them, now the two main parties are very much nativist. The risk is that their vote gets squeezed if the putative internationalists decide the State welfare issue is the important one, either for or against.
It certainly is the case that the Libs Dems need to do something
No doubt I have more disposable income, and more things to do with it, now, after housing and transport that my parents or uncle did, who ate out only about 3-4 times a year, and only took a single week holiday in Cornwall.
Do we have a winner of the competition?
http://www.zdnet.com/article/disqus-confirms-comments-tool-hacked/
The compromise is that both will be involved, which I find very interesting, but let's wait and see for the precise wording.
Stop trying to denigrate everything HMG and the UK does, open your eyes, and recognise movement when you see it, and what that tells us.
Otherwise your analysis is wrong because it is always filtered through your blinkers, and therefore bias.
All will announced in good time.
Who do you want to blame...
Labour for the credit bubble that inflated house prices on their watch?
Or Labour for the mass immigration that pushed up demand massively?
"My sole inheritance was £1000 from my grandfather."
You were lucky (sorry, couldn't resist it).
The problem is that people compare themselves with the successful. A nineteen-fifties upbringing in a council house, a father who was a labourer and a mother who did part-time work as a cleaner when the six kids allowed, probably made me deprived but it never felt like it. Everyone I knew was in the same boat, apart from those who were worse off.
As an old git, I do fit the stereotype ... "these young 'uns, they don't know they're born." But mixing with better-off people is a mixed blessing, and the young do that to a far greater extent then we ever did.
We have a house with a paid-off mortgage, no dependants, and now find ourselves better off than we've ever been. As the four Yorkshiremen say "Who'd a thought it?" The issue there was all about expectations.
The current UK Parliament may not have tried to water down whatever citizens' rights are agreed, but that may not have applied to future ones. Now, any future Parliament that does wish to water down rights will only be able to do so by repealing the entire framework of the final EU/UK deal. That is a far higher level of protection than the UK government was originally offering. I do not denigrate the government's change of mind, I think it is wholly welcome.
What it shows is that the EU is willing to listen to sensible UK suggestions. That is also very good news.
As it happens I would be very happy with a deal that kept us in the Single Market with free movement (although the staying in the Customs Union is a ludicrous idea) but if those Remainers are right then Labour would stand no chance at a General Election.
It seems to me that the only way the Single Market option is a practical solution in terms of current politics is if it is negotiated by the Current government and everything is a done deal before the next election. Even then I am not sure the government would survive long enough to get it through if the Tory backbenchers decide it is a suicide mission.
Obviously this would be very complicated and need transitional arrangements, and provision for asset-rich low income older people, etc. But the current basis of our taxation makes little sense and is itself insanely complicated. Tax evasion is a lot more difficult if levied on stationary assets like property - of all major taxes, income is the hardest to collect.
Labour sees things like wealth taxes as a way to fund its higher spending plans - not as a way to re-shape the way people pay tax, which is a different proposition altogether.
Any national policy like that would kill the local base of the party.
Which is, of course, the main reason why the LDs don't get traction. They're efficient as a pothole NIMBY party.
Not so much as anything else.
Give it a break.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/10/who-will-replace-theresa-may-runners-and-riders-conservative-leader
Good to see Rory on the list as a dark horse. They claim he has been sounding out donors.
For some unexplained reason you have forgotten to tell us the party ratings in the new YouGov Scottish poll - the ratings for the SNP and the ratings for the Tories!
Bear with me.
Local journeyman loser with dubious friends is unexpectedly challenged to battle by the undisputed champion.
He takes the opportunity. Gets in shape.
Champion sits around not getting in shape or organising or taking opponent seriously. Several members of her backroom team tell her it won't be so easy. They are ignored.
Meanwhile, challenger has local youth following him around cheering as he goes through his routine. He comes across surprisingly well on TV. Although incoherent, refuses to engage in trash talk or denigrate his rival
He takes several early blows, but refuses to go down. As the fight goes on his training pays off. He begins to land blows. The champion can't understand this. He won't go down,.Eventually, the champ is left holding on waiting for the bell, winning on points.
Loser is redeemed in glorious defeat. Bloodied, but standing. Champion is no longer undisputed.
2 drunks in a puddle indeed!
Rocky 2 anyone?
"Patel could yet emerge as the most well-placed of the Brexiteers."
Time to dust off #Priti4Leader
do enlighten us.....
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/916309501615267840
https://twitter.com/CER_Grant/status/916624327583428611
Ethnic minority graduates 'face jobs gap'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41536312
Welwyn Hatfield used to be a bellwether seat, but in common with much of Hertfordshire, as shifted rightwards.
Okay-ish
Gordon Brown
Piers Morgan
Sadiq Khan
Crap
Jezza
Trump
Brexit middle-Englanders
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/07/alan-sugar-in-five-years-middle-england-are-not-going-to-like-themselves
Westminster ratings SNP 40% LABOUR 30%,Tory 23% Lib 5% - making this the THIRD (out of three) full Scottish opinion polls since the election showing an increase in SNP leads.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/41536503
Renault had tried to buy Palmer out of his remaining 2017 contract but he'd declined.
BAXTERED today's YouGov poll would give the Nats 43 seats (+8), Labour 7 (no change), Tories 8 (-5) and Libs 1 (-3).
|I had immense sport informing my wife ( not a donald fan ) where the apprentice came from
I was surprised at you drawing attention to ratings given the collapse in Nicola's.....
https://twitter.com/paulhutcheon/status/916577004648005632
Now third behind Corbyn & Davidson
Theresa
leads party
expected to win election
just holds on with shaky coalition
splits her party
calls for her head
Angela
leads party
expected to win election
just holds on with shaky coalition
splits her party
calls for her head
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/merkel-will-parteitag-zu-jamaika-vereinbarung-15235485.html
But these qualities are arguably not suited to a modern day Prime Minister, where you need to be more charasmatic and able to win people over. This was shown up during the recent election campaign which led to her being called "Maybot". She could not stop saying "strong and stable", even though there were plenty of helpful advice, telling her to stop it, because it was starting to look very silly.
I don't think May can change her personality and i don't think people will start to like her for the way she is. Whether it is fair or not, people may have made up their minds about her. The media pictures of May meeting Police on the street after Grenfell house, but refusing to meet local people until a few days afterwards. It made her look very inhuman, even though there might have been security reasons. HM The Queen met local people, before Theresa May managed to turn up to a controlled meeting in a local church hall.
She is, to my mind, an equally poor PM.
she's only catching him up
I noticed while shopping today that the front page of the New York Times (possibly a European edition) has Howard Jacobson on Labour's anti-semitic tendencies. By way of contrast, however, our home-grown Jewish Chronicle's front page has Mayor Sadiq lamenting Amber Rudd's refusal to proscribe Hezbollah.
If you want a British version of Trump, look no further than Branson ...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/06/the-guardian-view-on-tory-splits-doctrinal-differences
On the other hand, Sugar ran a successful computer business - it was low end, but was successful and (relatively) honest. Even if they were a competitor to companies I worked for.
That's where I see the similarity between Branson and Trump: both are (IMV) fundamentally dishonest brands with little if any substance.
I don't particularly like either Branson or Sugar, but I respect what Sugar has achieved much more than Branson.
Trump is a huge narcissist and bully.
Watson writes that he is concerned fans will be "forced to choose between their loved ones and their team".
The Labour MP's letter to Scudamore, obtained by BBC Sport, adds: "There's a real danger that some travelling fans would not be able to get home until the early hours of Christmas Day, whilst hundreds of stadium staff and workers would be expected to work rather than spending time with their families at this time of year
I get the part about staff and workers being expected to work when they would not normally, but surely no one would be 'forced' to choose between their loved ones and their team (god forbid they have no loved ones, but that'd be a separate issue), and if fans choose to go who the hell cares what they choose to do?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41533575
Amusingly the first comment I see on the story opens with 'why not just abolish religion?' Just leaping into the important stuff, these football stories.
Just to get this right - you are quite happy with the projections below as long as Ms Davidsons declining popularity is declining slower than Ms Sturgeon's popularity while the Prime Minster unpopularity in Scotland is at recoird levels.
List of predicted seat changes
Seat County/Area Predicted Change MP as at 2017
Angus Tayside NAT gain from CON : Kirstene Hair
Ayr Carrick Lanark NAT gain from CON : Bill Grant
Caithness Highland NAT gain from LIB : Jamie Stone
Dunb East Glasgow NAT gain from LIB : Jo Swinson
Edinb Wst Edinburgh NAT gain from LIB : Christine Jardine
Gordon Grampian NAT gain from CON : Colin Clark
Ochil hire Central NAT gain from CON : Luke Graham
Stirling Central NAT gain from CON : Stephen Kerr
A political crisis will be her downfall and the most likely crisis will be the loss of a by election in a safe Tory seat. The Eastbourne by election in 1990 led to Thatcher's downfall within a month. May's equivalent of Eastbourne will come.
It is of course bad news for Labour because if there is one thing that Labour wants more than anything is to face May at the next election.