Top Tories are queuing up to have a go at Boris. Pickles right now on Today is the second of the programme, calling for him to apologise. Aside from the issue itself this underlines his lack of support in the parliamentary party.
The point is that Boris was quite entitled to say what he said and his refusal to apologise for it makes it play even better with the voters. We know that Remain central are scared to death of Boris and this is why - he is saying something that the vast majority agree with whilst the PM is just playing at being politically correct. May is right to be scared of Boris. If she thinks telling him off on this topic is going to help her, then she is delusional.
Which voters? The only voters who count are Conservative backbenchers when they vote for a new leader, and whose top two go to the party in the country. As I've often said before, Boris has been undone by the trashing of Corbyn over antisemitism. Boris has a long and inglorious history and every rival candidate for the leadership will have added this to the list to be shown to backbenchers when campaigning starts. Boris is toast and it doesn't matter how popular he is with the man on the Clapham omnibus who does not get to vote. Boris is not battling Nigel Farage to be Ukip's next leader-of-the-month.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
That's basically an ice-free planet. All of the cities along the eastern American seaboard are underwater, Denmark, Holland and Belgium mostly disappear along with East Anglia, most of Poland and the northern half of Germany. London would be gone, the North and South Downs be a crescent shaped island; the east coast would be somewhere around Northampton.
If the rumours about the amount of hedgies short-selling Tesla stock are correct, it could turn out to be a stroke of genius, but if he hasn’t got all his ducks in a row he’s going to have half of Wall St after his head!
The shorties have already been immensely squeezed given Tesla was around 250 the last time I remember looking at the price
Indeed. It’s going to one to watch today, the rumours are that there’s very little liquidity of shares on the market, compared to the size of the outstanding short positions - as happened with VW and Porsche playing games a few years back. Those holding the shorts are going to have to buy at almost any price to cover their positions, taking huge losses in the process.
Musk is playing a seriously high stakes game, but he’s clearly fed up of all the negative press coming from the hedgies, and having to structure his whole operation around quarterly reporting deadlines rather than simply getting on with business. I say good luck to him!
It seems highly unlikely that Musk has secured the $70bn needed to take Tesla private at $420 per share. To me it looks very much like a case of price manipulation intended to burn the shorts. If he has the money lined up then a formal offer would have been made, not a throwaway comment on twatter.
If he’s not got the cash behind him (Saudis?) then surely he’s in a whole world of trouble with the SEC, who tend to take rather a dim view of such blatant market manipulation? Not to mention the hedgies, who’d happily sue his ass for billions!
Yes, it could end up being one of the most costly tweets if all time. I seriously doubt the Saudis are going to pitch in $70bn, or that the US government would allow such a sale to proceed.
That latter point is the one that makes me wonder what the f is going on. I can't see the US government - yet alone a Trump one - allowing Tesla to be essentially sold to the Saudis - even if Musk somehow get massive or majority voting rights.
So if I'm right about that - and it is a big conditional - then who else has the money?
Another US tech billionaire/company? Weren't Apple interested in cars?
Possibly. But Apple would want full control, and Musk wouldn't want to give that up.
Then again a few years back I said ARM wouldn't be bought out, before they were bought out by a non-tech firm. So what do I know?
If the rumours about the amount of hedgies short-selling Tesla stock are correct, it could turn out to be a stroke of genius, but if he hasn’t got all his ducks in a row he’s going to have half of Wall St after his head!
The shorties have already been immensely squeezed given Tesla was around 250 the last time I remember looking at the price
Indeed. It’s going to one to watch today, the rumours are that there’s very little liquidity of shares on the market, compared to the size of the outstanding short positions - as happened with VW and Porsche playing games a few years back. Those holding the shorts are going to have to buy at almost any price to cover their positions, taking huge losses in the process.
Musk is playing a seriously high stakes game, but he’s clearly fed up of all the negative press coming from the hedgies, and having to structure his whole operation around quarterly reporting deadlines rather than simply getting on with business. I say good luck to him!
It seems highly unlikely that Musk has secured the $70bn needed to take Tesla private at $420 per share. To me it looks very much like a case of price manipulation intended to burn the shorts. If he has the money lined up then a formal offer would have been made, not a throwaway comment on twatter.
If he’s not got the cash behind him (Saudis?) then surely he’s in a whole world of trouble with the SEC, who tend to take rather a dim view of such blatant market manipulation? Not to mention the hedgies, who’d happily sue his ass for billions!
Yes, it could end up being one of the most costly tweets if all time. I seriously doubt the Saudis are going to pitch in $70bn, or that the US government would allow such a sale to proceed.
Does he actually need the full value though, given that he’s offering existing shareholders to keep their shares in the company? So if 80% or 90% of them stay on, with the hedgies selling up, he’ll only(!) need $7bn or $14bn in cash to take the company private.
Why wouldn't the existing shareholders want $420 cash, though? Musk needs to have enough funding to buy out all of the shareholders. Additionally around 35-40% of outstanding shares are held by individuals, how the hell are they going to be shareholders in a private company, also, why wouldn't they take the $420 cash offer?
Musk is almost as bad as Trump when it comes to twatter.
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
What was particularly interesting about this morning's interviews - Wright and Pickles - were the direct answers - "was Boris wrong/offensive?" - "Yes", "should he apologise?" - "Yes". None of the equivocation you normally hear when political friends are under attack.
If Boris is pushed into resigning its a black mark of a humiliation that will hang around him for a while. If he doubles down it is probably game on, since he has nowhere else to go.
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
He’s been a busted flush for years, and has shown himself up by failing to perform in a senior ministerial role. I can’t see the Tory MPs, who know all the stories and skeletons, voting for him to lead them. He didn’t have enough support last time in 2015, which would have been his best opportunity straight after the referendum. Gove will stand against him again if it’s required.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
That's basically an ice-free planet. All of the cities along the eastern American seaboard are underwater, Denmark, Holland and Belgium mostly disappear along with East Anglia, most of Poland and the northern half of Germany. London would be gone, the North and South Downs be a crescent shaped island; the east coast would be somewhere around Northampton.
"The New North" by Laurence Smith, on the rise of northern arctic edge countries such as Finland and Canada by 2050, following more climate change, is an excellent book on all this.
Top Tories are queuing up to have a go at Boris. Pickles right now on Today is the second of the programme, calling for him to apologise. Aside from the issue itself this underlines his lack of support in the parliamentary party.
The point is that Boris was quite entitled to say what he said and his refusal to apologise for it makes it play even better with the voters. We know that Remain central are scared to death of Boris and this is why - he is saying something that the vast majority agree with whilst the PM is just playing at being politically correct. May is right to be scared of Boris. If she thinks telling him off on this topic is going to help her, then she is delusional.
I used to live in Saudi Arabia with my parents. My mother never went out of the house except with my father, and always wore long clothes that covered all skin below the neck. It never occurred to us to have her swanning around in a bikini because it would be racist for the Saudis to object. It is their country, their culture and we respected it without question.
Burkas are an insult to the British culture and an affront to gender equality. I don't think we should ban them, but we have every right to feel that people that wear them are offending us. If pointing this out offends them, tough.
I think most of us understand that this isn't actually about female clothing per se. Whether you ban them in South Australia or not is of course up to you and your fellow Australians.
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
What was particularly interesting about this morning's interviews - Wright and Pickles - were the direct answers - "was Boris wrong/offensive?" - "Yes", "should he apologise?" - "Yes". None of the equivocation you normally hear when political friends are under attack.
If Boris is pushed into resigning its a black mark of a humiliation that will hang around him for a while. If he doubles down it is probably game on, since he has nowhere else to go.
Boris has nothing to resign from, except his seat. That wont happen, until Uxbridge kicks him out over the airport.
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
Well, it's not impossible that Tory MPs will conclude that only Boris can beat Jezza. And they are terrified of Jezza.
It's not impossible. However, fortunately most Tory MPs are more sensible than HYUFD and know that putting up a posh racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability against another posh, possibly racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability is not a fight that would end well for anyone, least of all the country.
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
What was particularly interesting about this morning's interviews - Wright and Pickles - were the direct answers - "was Boris wrong/offensive?" - "Yes", "should he apologise?" - "Yes". None of the equivocation you normally hear when political friends are under attack.
If Boris is pushed into resigning its a black mark of a humiliation that will hang around him for a while. If he doubles down it is probably game on, since he has nowhere else to go.
Boris has nothing to resign from, except his seat. That wont happen, until Uxbridge kicks him out over the airport.
Now Boris being kicked over a whole airport is something I would pay good money to see!
Top Tories are queuing up to have a go at Boris. Pickles right now on Today is the second of the programme, calling for him to apologise. Aside from the issue itself this underlines his lack of support in the parliamentary party.
The point is that Boris was quite entitled to say what he said and his refusal to apologise for it makes it play even better with the voters. We know that Remain central are scared to death of Boris and this is why - he is saying something that the vast majority agree with whilst the PM is just playing at being politically correct. May is right to be scared of Boris. If she thinks telling him off on this topic is going to help her, then she is delusional.
I used to live in Saudi Arabia with my parents. My mother never went out of the house except with my father, and always wore long clothes that covered all skin below the neck. It never occurred to us to have her swanning around in a bikini because it would be racist for the Saudis to object. It is their country, their culture and we respected it without question.
Burkas are an insult to the British culture and an affront to gender equality. I don't think we should ban them, but we have every right to feel that people that wear them are offending us. If pointing this out offends them, tough.
Boris is playing an odd game in my opinion. Surely the game now is to play nicey to the first phase of the selectorate, which is Tory MPs. As soon as put forward to be one of the two in the members vote, then you you tack as far right as you think you need to pick up all the kippers who seem to have joined Tories in recent months.
He only needs to get to the last two. To guarantee that he needs 1/3 +1 of the electorate (ie 106 MPs). In practice 85 would probably be ample and 75 could easily be quite enough.
So the question is, are there 75 deranged Conservative MPs? The evidence suggests that there quite possibly are.
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
Well, it's not impossible that Tory MPs will conclude that only Boris can beat Jezza. And they are terrified of Jezza.
It's not impossible. However, fortunately most Tory MPs are more sensible than HYUFD and know that putting up a posh racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability against another posh, possibly racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability is not a fight that would end well for anyone, least of all the country.
jezza has principles alright. it is just that they are the same ones that Lenin had.
Indeed. It’s going to one to watch today, the rumours are that there’s very little liquidity of shares on the market, compared to the size of the outstanding short positions - as happened with VW and Porsche playing games a few years back. Those holding the shorts are going to have to buy at almost any price to cover their positions, taking huge losses in the process.
Musk is playing a seriously high stakes game, but he’s clearly fed up of all the negative press coming from the hedgies, and having to structure his whole operation around quarterly reporting deadlines rather than simply getting on with business. I say good luck to him!
It seems highly unlikely that Musk has secured the $70bn needed to take Tesla private at $420 per share. To me it looks very much like a case of price manipulation intended to burn the shorts. If he has the money lined up then a formal offer would have been made, not a throwaway comment on twatter.
If he’s not got the cash behind him (Saudis?) then surely he’s in a whole world of trouble with the SEC, who tend to take rather a dim view of such blatant market manipulation? Not to mention the hedgies, who’d happily sue his ass for billions!
Yes, it could end up being one of the most costly tweets if all time. I seriously doubt the Saudis are going to pitch in $70bn, or that the US government would allow such a sale to proceed.
Does he actually need the full value though, given that he’s offering existing shareholders to keep their shares in the company? So if 80% or 90% of them stay on, with the hedgies selling up, he’ll only(!) need $7bn or $14bn in cash to take the company private.
Why wouldn't the existing shareholders want $420 cash, though? Musk needs to have enough funding to buy out all of the shareholders. Additionally around 35-40% of outstanding shares are held by individuals, how the hell are they going to be shareholders in a private company, also, why wouldn't they take the $420 cash offer?
Musk is almost as bad as Trump when it comes to twatter.
He absolutely has to have enough behind him to buy what’s needed, if he doesn’t then he’s screwed. In Tesla’s statement yesterday he said he’ll possibly look to refloat in the future once things had stabilised - presumably hinting at a higher value for the shares in future and hoping that regular shareholders don’t all want out now.
Completely agree with the comparison with Trump. David Cameron was absolutely right about Twitter. Politics would benefit hugely from it shutting down!
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
Well, it's not impossible that Tory MPs will conclude that only Boris can beat Jezza. And they are terrified of Jezza.
It's not impossible. However, fortunately most Tory MPs are more sensible than HYUFD and know that putting up a posh racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability against another posh, possibly racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability is not a fight that would end well for anyone, least of all the country.
jezza has principles alright. it is just that they are the same ones that Lenin had.
The Sun's headline is infinitely better: Joel, 7, never got the chance to be a real fireman as opposed to the Mail's insipid, Enough to break your heart
They've still got it in London Bridge, or wherever the Sun is based now.
If the rumours about the amount of hedgies short-selling Tesla stock are correct, it could turn out to be a stroke of genius, but if he hasn’t got all his ducks in a row he’s going to have half of Wall St after his head!
The shedgies, and having to structure his whole operation around quarterly reporting deadlines rather than simply getting on with business. I say good luck to him!
It seems highly unlikely that Musk has secured the $70bn needed to take Tesla private at $420 per share. To me it looks very much like a case of price manipulation intended to burn the shorts. If he has the money lined up then a formal offer would have been made, not a throwaway comment on twatter.
If he’s not got the cash behind him (Saudis?) then surely he’s in a whole world of trouble with the SEC, who tend to take rather a dim view of such blatant market manipulation? Not to mention the hedgies, who’d happily sue his ass for billions!
Yes, it could end up being one of the most costly tweets if all time. I seriously doubt the Saudis are going to pitch in $70bn, or that the US government would allow such a sale to proceed.
Does he actually need the full value though, given that he’s offering existing shareholders to keep their shares in the company? So if 80% or 90% of them stay on, with the hedgies selling up, he’ll only(!) need $7bn or $14bn in cash to take the company private.
Why wouldn't the existing shareholders want $420 cash, though? Musk needs to have enough funding to buy out all of the shareholders. Additionally around 35-40% of outstanding shares are held by individuals, how the hell are they going to be shareholders in a private company, also, why wouldn't they take the $420 cash offer?
Musk is almost as bad as Trump when it comes to twatter.
Musk says he has funding but does he really ? That's where it could get sticky.
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
Well, it's not impossible that Tory MPs will conclude that only Boris can beat Jezza. And they are terrified of Jezza.
It's not impossible. However, fortunately most Tory MPs are more sensible than HYUFD and know that putting up a posh racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability against another posh, possibly racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability is not a fight that would end well for anyone, least of all the country.
jezza has principles alright. it is just that they are the same ones that Lenin had.
Has he? You mean, about the redistribution of wealth and the championing of the poor? All that kind of stuff?
Because in his last manifesto he promised a vast transfer of wealth from the poor to the middle classes and above, both through the imposition of universal benefits and by a vast increase in borrowing, coupled with the fact that he proposed no meaningful increases in taxation on the wealthy. (I say that because all the proposals he made - e.g. VAT on school fees - would in practice have brought in no extra money.)
So if he has these principles he hammers on about, he hides them very well.
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
Well, it's not impossible that Tory MPs will conclude that only Boris can beat Jezza. And they are terrified of Jezza.
It's not impossible. However, fortunately most Tory MPs are more sensible than HYUFD and know that putting up a posh racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability against another posh, possibly racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability is not a fight that would end well for anyone, least of all the country.
jezza has principles alright. it is just that they are the same ones that Lenin had.
I don't think there's any 'alleged' about it. The Urals Soviet would never have dared take such a decision without at least his (or possibly Trotsky's) tacit support.
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
"The reforms — known internally as "Project Ozark" after initially being named "Project X" — are designed to transform the Lib Dems by opening up the party to the wider public. They were inspired at least in part, by Tom Pitfield, a political strategist who worked for Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, who is currently advising Cable."
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
The video is interesting but contains major omissions. Solar and wind do NOT reduce the need for baseload. Because, simply, there are times when they produce no power at all. Working out their cost on a per kw/h basis is misleading because it ignores the fact that when they are not producing, you need an entirely new plant to take the load. Basically, you need double the capital cost.
Baseload is - by definition - the power that is *always* needed. And that slice of the pie is falling. Instead the grid needs more flexible power, and that is better supplied by natural gas CCGTs which:
(a) are flexible and can power up and down when needed (b) have much lower operating costs (c) now have lower fuel costs
People think coal is cheap because - on a price per calorie basis - coal at the mine exit is cheaper than natural gas. Now, as it happens, Australia has a f*cked up natural gas market, which results in SA and Vic utilities paying some of the highest natural gas prices in the world, despite the country being a large exporter of gas. But that's not the fault of renewables, that is the fault of government policy decisions 15 years ago.
What you say about batteries is not born out by my experience. I am an investor in a company that rents solar panels and batteries to people and takes the economic risk. I.e., we turn up at your door and offer you an all in price per Kwh that's about 20% lower than your local power company's. If we miscalculate, we're buying from the grid at a higher price than we've agreed to sell to the consumer. And batteries increase our returns meaningfully. (We're very conservative with our cycles assumptions.)
Now, the big issue, as I identified in the video, is the death spiral for utilities: falling solar prices encourage people to put panels on the roof, which cuts profits for utilities and forces them to raise prices, which encourage more people to put panels on their roofs.
It’s the only one of these videos I have seen, and I thought it superb. Thanks to RCS for it. I’m interested directly because my borough in London is offering a scheme whereby solar panel companies build panels on homeowners’ roofs in one go, thus (they claim) making the cost per unit much cheaper. I suppose it might be looking into.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
Even assuming runaway global warming, you're not going to see a 60m rise in your lifetime. Around 2m this century is probably the extent of it - 60m would occur over a few millennia. 2m could be rather awkward/expensive for London to manage, though.
The problem is the climate feedback loops, once entered into, are likely to be quite difficult to get out of.
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
Well, it's not impossible that Tory MPs will conclude that only Boris can beat Jezza. And they are terrified of Jezza.
It's not impossible. However, fortunately most Tory MPs are more sensible than HYUFD and know that putting up a posh racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability against another posh, possibly racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability is not a fight that would end well for anyone, least of all the country.
jezza has principles alright. it is just that they are the same ones that Lenin had.
Has he? You mean, about the redistribution of wealth and the championing of the poor? All that kind of stuff?
Because in his last manifesto he promised a vast transfer of wealth from the poor to the middle classes and above, both through the imposition of universal benefits and by a vast increase in borrowing, coupled with the fact that he proposed no meaningful increases in taxation on the wealthy. (I say that because all the proposals he made - e.g. VAT on school fees - would in practice have brought in no extra money.)
So if he has these principles he hammers on about, he hides them very well.
I think you are saying that he hasn't the faintest idea how to put his principles into practice? Which was never a problem as a backbench rebel, since he was always voting against someone else's proposal.
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
Well, it's not impossible that Tory MPs will conclude that only Boris can beat Jezza. And they are terrified of Jezza.
It's not impossible. However, fortunately most Tory MPs are more sensible than HYUFD and know that putting up a posh racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability against another posh, possibly racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability is not a fight that would end well for anyone, least of all the country.
jezza has principles alright. it is just that they are the same ones that Lenin had.
I don't think there's any 'alleged' about it. The Urals Soviet would never have dared take such a decision without at least his (or possibly Trotsky's) tacit support.
I was thinking of all his other crimes to be honest. He preached a load of hot air about people taking power through a type of distributed, community-based democracy, the Soviets, and then set about killing everyone who didn't follow him and his gang of criminals.
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
Well, it's not impossible that Tory MPs will conclude that only Boris can beat Jezza. And they are terrified of Jezza.
It's not impossible. However, fortunately most Tory MPs are more sensible than HYUFD and know that putting up a posh racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability against another posh, possibly racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability is not a fight that would end well for anyone, least of all the country.
Boris is the only Tory who polls better than May, so if not Boris I would back keeping May in place as a Tory member
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
A little bit more than 60 metres and my place becomes beach front property.
Honestly, the height of the sea will be the least of our problems. The total collapse of the food chain will mean it doesn't matter whether you drown or not. You will have starved already.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
A little bit more than 60 metres and my place becomes beach front property.
Honestly, the height of the sea will be the least of our problems. The total collapse of the food chain will mean it doesn't matter whether you drown or not. You will have starved already.
There's always fish, for those like Hertsmere and myself who'll be able to do so from our doorstep.
Mr. Eagles, that's interesting, and between May's incompetence and Corbyn's kinder, gentler politics there is certainly political space for a new party.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
I'm keeping Boris on side in the betting. I think it's unlikely he has given up on being leader. You're right about all of your points, but he has now successfully positioned himself as anti-Chequers, got the backing of JRM and outflanked Gove.
What will LibDems do when 1000s of radical and far right activists join them in order to game the leadership election?
Surely every other party has learned from what happened with Labour “opening up the debate”?
The LDs would end up either taken over by the #FBPE Twittermob who spend all day talking to each other, or a bunch of student anarchists who are always in the news for the wrong reasons.
Luckily the leader has to be an MP, so they’ve 11 to choose from once Uncle Vince stands down.
I think you are saying that he hasn't the faintest idea how to put his principles into practice? Which was never a problem as a backbench rebel, since he was always voting against someone else's proposal.
Well, it may be that, but my impression is more of somebody who says whatever he thinks will appeal to his target audience. For most of his career it's been the far left. At the last election it was those who were suffering from squeezed incomes, especially the comparatively young. He tailored his message accordingly. That is not suggestive of a man of principle.
Edit - a very instructive example is welfare. During his leadership campaign he won massive kudos with the membership for vigorously opposing the cut in the welfare cup, while the other three fell in line with Harman in tacitly supporting it. It isn't I think too much of an exaggeration to say it won him the leadership. Yet in his manifesto he said he would keep welfare cuts, because he needed the money for free university tutition fees.
Now, that really isn't a man who wants to redistribute wealth to the poor. Love them or loathe them, tuition fees are a very progressive tax. Welfare cuts are certainly not.
Mr. Eagles, that's interesting, and between May's incompetence and Corbyn's kinder, gentler politics there is certainly political space for a new party.
Coupled with the antics of shagger Johnson there’s quite a few political orphans out there.
I heard on the radio today that one of the words Boris shouldn't have used about the Burqa was oppresive. That's perfectly reasonable to have a debate on, perhaps needed..
His opponents are making errors, the man on the clapham omnibus won't see much wrong with what Boris has said. It is one of those issues where there is a fundamental disconnect between the broadly liberal media and the rest of the country.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
Go on - do share! (No doubt you have before but I've no idea what you're talking about)
It's a little joke I have to 'test' how much people know about science and engineering. See how many problems you find with the following scheme; some people have taken it seriously. Here is a TL;DR version:
The problem with global warming is sea-level rise, so we need to either stop the sea levels rising, or remove the water. Fortunately we're developing ultra-strong carbon nanotubes for a space elevator. So just arrange several of these into a straw-like shape, put one end in water and the other at a satellite in orbit. As there is a vacuum in space, water will be sucked up into space, from where it can be delivered elsewhere (or made into rocket fuel).
It's a perfect plan, I tell you! I only require a hundred thousand bitcoins to finance development of the prototype!
The only way it makes sense is if Boris thinks he can make himself so popular with the public, that Tory MPs dare not not make him leader.
Which would be ludicrous given that MPs vote secretly so they are under no obligation to back him and have no need to fear deselection if they don't.
Well, it's not impossible that Tory MPs will conclude that only Boris can beat Jezza. And they are terrified of Jezza.
It's not impossible. However, fortunately most Tory MPs are more sensible than HYUFD and know that putting up a posh racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability against another posh, possibly racist populist with a dodgy past, no sense, no principles and no administrative ability is not a fight that would end well for anyone, least of all the country.
Boris is the only Tory who polls better than May, so if not Boris I would back keeping May in place as a Tory member
Except, May is going to be the one handing round the Brexit shit sandwiches.
With Boris distant from Govt., saying "these sandwiches taste like shit...."
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
Mr. Eagles, key could be if they have the votes to try and get a second referendum through. Now that would make things interesting (unlike the tediously predictable politics we've had recently).
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
Go on - do share! (No doubt you have before but I've no idea what you're talking about)
It's a little joke I have to 'test' how much people know about science and engineering. See how many problems you find with the following scheme; some people have taken it seriously. Here is a TL;DR version:
The problem with global warming is sea-level rise, so we need to either stop the sea levels rising, or remove the water. Fortunately we're developing ultra-strong carbon nanotubes for a space elevator. So just arrange several of these into a straw-like shape, put one end in water and the other at a satellite in orbit. As there is a vacuum in space, water will be sucked up into space, from where it can be delivered elsewhere (or made into rocket fuel).
It's a perfect plan, I tell you! I only require a hundred thousand bitcoins to finance development of the prototype!
The early developers of steam engines to pump water out of mines exposed the practical flaws in this scheme some while back.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
Go on - do share! (No doubt you have before but I've no idea what you're talking about)
It's a little joke I have to 'test' how much people know about science and engineering. See how many problems you find with the following scheme; some people have taken it seriously. Here is a TL;DR version:
The problem with global warming is sea-level rise, so we need to either stop the sea levels rising, or remove the water. Fortunately we're developing ultra-strong carbon nanotubes for a space elevator. So just arrange several of these into a straw-like shape, put one end in water and the other at a satellite in orbit. As there is a vacuum in space, water will be sucked up into space, from where it can be delivered elsewhere (or made into rocket fuel).
It's a perfect plan, I tell you! I only require a hundred thousand bitcoins to finance development of the prototype!
Is a pressure gradient of 0.004 pascals/metre enough to overcome the force of gravity ?
What will LibDems do when 1000s of radical and far right activists join them in order to game the leadership election?
Surely every other party has learned from what happened with Labour “opening up the debate”?
The LDs would end up either taken over by the #FBPE Twittermob who spend all day talking to each other, or a bunch of student anarchists who are always in the news for the wrong reasons.
Luckily the leader has to be an MP, so they’ve 11 to choose from once Uncle Vince stands down.
Werent' they changing the rules to open it up more.
Seems like a dangerous game to play here. Politics is being dominated by extremists of all sides.
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
I can't speak for @Cyclefree but personally I would set fire to my ballot paper and drop it in the ballot box.
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
I can't speak for @Cyclefree but personally I would set fire to my ballot paper and drop it in the ballot box.
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
I can't speak for @Cyclefree but personally I would set fire to my ballot paper and drop it in the ballot box.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
Go on - do share! (No doubt you have before but I've no idea what you're talking about)
It's a little joke I have to 'test' how much people know about science and engineering. See how many problems you find with the following scheme; some people have taken it seriously. Here is a TL;DR version:
The problem with global warming is sea-level rise, so we need to either stop the sea levels rising, or remove the water. Fortunately we're developing ultra-strong carbon nanotubes for a space elevator. So just arrange several of these into a straw-like shape, put one end in water and the other at a satellite in orbit. As there is a vacuum in space, water will be sucked up into space, from where it can be delivered elsewhere (or made into rocket fuel).
It's a perfect plan, I tell you! I only require a hundred thousand bitcoins to finance development of the prototype!
Is a pressure gradient of 0.004 pascals/metre enough to overcome the force of gravity ?
You'd also need a helluva lot of heat to stop even seawater from freezing from about four miles above the earth to the vacuum of space......
What will LibDems do when 1000s of radical and far right activists join them in order to game the leadership election?
Surely every other party has learned from what happened with Labour “opening up the debate”?
The LDs would end up either taken over by the #FBPE Twittermob who spend all day talking to each other, or a bunch of student anarchists who are always in the news for the wrong reasons.
Luckily the leader has to be an MP, so they’ve 11 to choose from once Uncle Vince stands down.
Werent' they changing the rules to open it up more.
Seems like a dangerous game to play here. Politics is being dominated by extremists of all sides.
Yes, apparently they’ve been discussing it, let see what their Conference proposes.
It does seem awfully dangerous, as you say the polarisation of politics has many more downside risks than upside risks for any party at the moment.
The big win for the LDs would be a few dozen pro-EU Labour MPs defecting, but that would bring other problems of its own.
Anyway, this is your regular reminder that with Jacob Rees-Mogg apparently falling in behind Boris Johnson, laying Mr R-M at 9 for next Conservative leader has to be as easy a bet as you will find out there.
Today is the Centenary of the highly successful battle of Amiens, probably the decisive battle of the Western Front in 1918. It seems that we are much more willing to mark slaughter rather than victory. This was perhaps the forerunner of modern warfare, with a surprise attack of combined arms and meticulously planned by Canadian, Australian and British troops. A great podcast here on how it went:
I think you are saying that he hasn't the faintest idea how to put his principles into practice? Which was never a problem as a backbench rebel, since he was always voting against someone else's proposal.
Well, it may be that, but my impression is more of somebody who says whatever he thinks will appeal to his target audience. For most of his career it's been the far left. At the last election it was those who were suffering from squeezed incomes, especially the comparatively young. He tailored his message accordingly. That is not suggestive of a man of principle.
Edit - a very instructive example is welfare. During his leadership campaign he won massive kudos with the membership for vigorously opposing the cut in the welfare cup, while the other three fell in line with Harman in tacitly supporting it. It isn't I think too much of an exaggeration to say it won him the leadership. Yet in his manifesto he said he would keep welfare cuts, because he needed the money for free university tutition fees.
Now, that really isn't a man who wants to redistribute wealth to the poor. Love them or loathe them, tuition fees are a very progressive tax. Welfare cuts are certainly not.
Except interest makes them explicitly regressive over a certain earning level
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
No question; vote for the Lib Dems. Forced to choose between two crap alternatives, the only option is to demonstrate unwillingness to choose either.
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
I can't speak for @Cyclefree but personally I would set fire to my ballot paper and drop it in the ballot box.
Ha! I couldn’t vote for either Corbyn or Boris. I’d probably be a wuss and still vote Lib Dem. Last time my constituency was exactly as you described it and as I liked the Lib Dem candidate I felt he needed some reward for his efforts. And the Lib Dems are probably the closest - if not very close - to my own views, though we also occasionally vote Green in the Cyclefree household.
But setting my vote on fire is appealing more and more. It’s quite a Boris-like way for @AlistairM to abstain in person though.
Anyway, this is your regular reminder that with Jacob Rees-Mogg apparently falling in behind Boris Johnson, laying Mr R-M at 9 for next Conservative leader has to be as easy a bet as you will find out there.
It is - the only drawback is at those prices, it ties up a significant amount of betting capital for an indeterminate period.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
Go on - do share! (No doubt you have before but I've no idea what you're talking about)
It's a little joke I have to 'test' how much people know about science and engineering. See how many problems you find with the following scheme; some people have taken it seriously. Here is a TL;DR version:
The problem with global warming is sea-level rise, so we need to either stop the sea levels rising, or remove the water. Fortunately we're developing ultra-strong carbon nanotubes for a space elevator. So just arrange several of these into a straw-like shape, put one end in water and the other at a satellite in orbit. As there is a vacuum in space, water will be sucked up into space, from where it can be delivered elsewhere (or made into rocket fuel).
It's a perfect plan, I tell you! I only require a hundred thousand bitcoins to finance development of the prototype!
Is a pressure gradient of 0.004 pascals/metre enough to overcome the force of gravity ?
You'd also need a helluva lot of heat to stop even seawater from freezing from about four miles above the earth to the vacuum of space......
Plenty of temperature, pressure and suction problems, not to mention construction problems and the fact that a fixed position satellite in orbit needs to be at 3.6x10^7m above Earth.
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
I like to be fair. Having given Corbyn a good kicking time to turn my attention to the Tories.....
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
Go on - do share! (No doubt you have before but I've no idea what you're talking about)
It's a little joke I have to 'test' how much people know about science and engineering. See how many problems you find with the following scheme; some people have taken it seriously. Here is a TL;DR version:
The problem with global warming is sea-level rise, so we need to either stop the sea levels rising, or remove the water. Fortunately we're developing ultra-strong carbon nanotubes for a space elevator. So just arrange several of these into a straw-like shape, put one end in water and the other at a satellite in orbit. As there is a vacuum in space, water will be sucked up into space, from where it can be delivered elsewhere (or made into rocket fuel).
It's a perfect plan, I tell you! I only require a hundred thousand bitcoins to finance development of the prototype!
Is a pressure gradient of 0.004 pascals/metre enough to overcome the force of gravity ?
You'd also need a helluva lot of heat to stop even seawater from freezing from about four miles above the earth to the vacuum of space......
Look, that's typical nay-saying that's sent this country down the drain. With the modest amount of financing I'm looking for, I can sort out these minor technical issues (which are just engineering, after all), and get this solution up and running.
As for how to make money: easy; we charge the governments of the world for removing the water (though coastal ones would pay more), and see the water in orbit for fuel, or send it to Mars!
(well, that sort of thinking worked for Elizabeth Holmes; at least for a decade ...)
Anyway, this is your regular reminder that with Jacob Rees-Mogg apparently falling in behind Boris Johnson, laying Mr R-M at 9 for next Conservative leader has to be as easy a bet as you will find out there.
Lab and Con next leader markets have some silly prices in them. People are still putting money on David Miliband and Ruth Davidson.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
Go on - do share! (No doubt you have before but I've no idea what you're talking about)
It's a little joke I have to 'test' how much people know about science and engineering. See how many problems you find with the following scheme; some people have taken it seriously. Here is a TL;DR version:
The problem with global warming is sea-level rise, so we need to either stop the sea levels rising, or remove the water. Fortunately we're developing ultra-strong carbon nanotubes for a space elevator. So just arrange several of these into a straw-like shape, put one end in water and the other at a satellite in orbit. As there is a vacuum in space, water will be sucked up into space, from where it can be delivered elsewhere (or made into rocket fuel).
It's a perfect plan, I tell you! I only require a hundred thousand bitcoins to finance development of the prototype!
Is a pressure gradient of 0.004 pascals/metre enough to overcome the force of gravity ?
You'd also need a helluva lot of heat to stop even seawater from freezing from about four miles above the earth to the vacuum of space......
Plenty of temperature, pressure and suction problems, not to mention construction problems and the fact that a fixed position satellite in orbit needs to be at 3.6x10^7m above Earth.
Today is the Centenary of the highly successful battle of Amiens, probably the decisive battle of the Western Front in 1918. It seems that we are much more willing to mark slaughter rather than victory. This was perhaps the forerunner of modern warfare, with a surprise attack of combined arms and meticulously planned by Canadian, Australian and British troops. A great podcast here on how it went:
Monash was a very clever general (as were Rawlinson and Byng). His co-ordination of a wide variety of forces was years ahead of its time. It's a shame that such innovators are tarred with the 'Donkeys' brush of the late Alan Clark.
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
I can't speak for @Cyclefree but personally I would set fire to my ballot paper and drop it in the ballot box.
Isn't that illegal?
I'm sure it is.
The best thing is to do what one voter did when I ran for the Council in a straight fight against Labour. He wrote "Can't stand either of them" on his ballot.
I think you are saying that he hasn't the faintest idea how to put his principles into practice? Which was never a problem as a backbench rebel, since he was always voting against someone else's proposal.
Well, it may be that, but my impression is more of somebody who says whatever he thinks will appeal to his target audience. For most of his career it's been the far left. At the last election it was those who were suffering from squeezed incomes, especially the comparatively young. He tailored his message accordingly. That is not suggestive of a man of principle.
Edit - a very instructive example is welfare. During his leadership campaign he won massive kudos with the membership for vigorously opposing the cut in the welfare cup, while the other three fell in line with Harman in tacitly supporting it. It isn't I think too much of an exaggeration to say it won him the leadership. Yet in his manifesto he said he would keep welfare cuts, because he needed the money for free university tutition fees.
Now, that really isn't a man who wants to redistribute wealth to the poor. Love them or loathe them, tuition fees are a very progressive tax. Welfare cuts are certainly not.
Except interest makes them explicitly regressive over a certain earning level
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
I can't speak for @Cyclefree but personally I would set fire to my ballot paper and drop it in the ballot box.
Ha! I couldn’t vote for either Corbyn or Boris. I’d probably be a wuss and still vote Lib Dem. Last time my constituency was exactly as you described it and as I liked the Lib Dem candidate I felt he needed some reward for his efforts. And the Lib Dems are probably the closest - if not very close - to my own views, though we also occasionally vote Green in the Cyclefree household.
But setting my vote on fire is appealing more and more. It’s quite a Boris-like way for @AlistairM to abstain in person though.
Setting *your* vote on fire isn’t the problem though (and it would be a great protest), it’s setting the rest of the ballot box on fire that may cause you to be in a little trouble.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
Go on - do share! (No doubt you have before but I've no idea what you're talking about)
It's a little joke I have to 'test' how much people know about science and engineering. See how many problems you find with the following scheme; some people have taken it seriously. Here is a TL;DR version:
The problem with global warming is sea-level rise, so we need to either stop the sea levels rising, or remove the water. Fortunately we're developing ultra-strong carbon nanotubes for a space elevator. So just arrange several of these into a straw-like shape, put one end in water and the other at a satellite in orbit. As there is a vacuum in space, water will be sucked up into space, from where it can be delivered elsewhere (or made into rocket fuel).
It's a perfect plan, I tell you! I only require a hundred thousand bitcoins to finance development of the prototype!
Is a pressure gradient of 0.004 pascals/metre enough to overcome the force of gravity ?
You'd also need a helluva lot of heat to stop even seawater from freezing from about four miles above the earth to the vacuum of space......
Plenty of temperature, pressure and suction problems, not to mention construction problems and the fact that a fixed position satellite in orbit needs to be at 3.6x10^7m above Earth.
So how about a pipeline to the Moon instead?
Drops the pressure gradient to ~ 0.0004 pascals/metre.
We once had to set fire to a menu in a restaurant in Cannes to get our waiter’s attention. They claimed that the reason we were waiting an hour for our meat was that the gas cooker had gone out so we left and found food elsewhere.
@Roger will probably be on to denounce me soon as some sort of Hartlepool-loving philistine but I loathed the Cote d’Azur: full of grasping over-priced and rather ho-hum restaurants and hotels and if I ever have to see another twee shop full of lavender tat I will set fire to that as well.
With the report yesterday that global warming and temperature rises of 2 to 5 degrees over the next century could lead to the world becoming a 'hothouse' with parts of the earth uninhabitable we certainly need to build on and accelerate the switch to renewables
60 metre sea rises will be interesting. Perhaps not retire to Norfolk after all.
At sixty metres, I'd be living on a little island. Any more and I'd be a bit screwed.
Then again, we'd all be screwed as it would essentially bring down civilisation, especially if rapid.
Time to see if I can get some seed funding for my giant nanotube straw idea again.
Go on - do share! (No doubt you have before but I've no idea what you're talking about)
It's a little joke I have to 'test' how much people know about science and engineering. See how many problems you find with the following scheme; some people have taken it seriously. Here is a TL;DR version:
The problem with global warming is sea-level rise, so we need to either stop the sea levels rising, or remove the water. Fortunately we're developing ultra-strong carbon nanotubes for a space elevator. So just arrange several of these into a straw-like shape, put one end in water and the other at a satellite in orbit. As there is a vacuum in space, water will be sucked up into space, from where it can be delivered elsewhere (or made into rocket fuel).
It's a perfect plan, I tell you! I only require a hundred thousand bitcoins to finance development of the prototype!
Is a pressure gradient of 0.004 pascals/metre enough to overcome the force of gravity ?
You'd also need a helluva lot of heat to stop even seawater from freezing from about four miles above the earth to the vacuum of space......
Look, that's typical nay-saying that's sent this country down the drain. With the modest amount of financing I'm looking for, I can sort out these minor technical issues (which are just engineering, after all), and get this solution up and running.
As for how to make money: easy; we charge the governments of the world for removing the water (though coastal ones would pay more), and see the water in orbit for fuel, or send it to Mars!
(well, that sort of thinking worked for Elizabeth Holmes; at least for a decade ...)
If your finance is in bitcoins, more than enough heat will be generated in mining the bloody things.
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
I can't speak for @Cyclefree but personally I would set fire to my ballot paper and drop it in the ballot box.
Ha! I couldn’t vote for either Corbyn or Boris. I’d probably be a wuss and still vote Lib Dem. Last time my constituency was exactly as you described it and as I liked the Lib Dem candidate I felt he needed some reward for his efforts. And the Lib Dems are probably the closest - if not very close - to my own views, though we also occasionally vote Green in the Cyclefree household.
But setting my vote on fire is appealing more and more. It’s quite a Boris-like way for @AlistairM to abstain in person though.
Setting *your* vote on fire isn’t the problem though (and it would be a great protest), it’s setting the rest of the ballot box on fire that may cause you to be in a little trouble.
People who do that may suffer a jet movement as the fire is put out using a high-powered hose, not well aimed.
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
I can't speak for @Cyclefree but personally I would set fire to my ballot paper and drop it in the ballot box.
Ha! I couldn’t vote for either Corbyn or Boris. I’d probably be a wuss and still vote Lib Dem. Last time my constituency was exactly as you described it and as I liked the Lib Dem candidate I felt he needed some reward for his efforts. And the Lib Dems are probably the closest - if not very close - to my own views, though we also occasionally vote Green in the Cyclefree household.
But setting my vote on fire is appealing more and more. It’s quite a Boris-like way for @AlistairM to abstain in person though.
Setting *your* vote on fire isn’t the problem though (and it would be a great protest), it’s setting the rest of the ballot box on fire that may cause you to be in a little trouble.
We once had to set fire to a menu in a restaurant in Cannes to get our waiter’s attention. They claimed that the reason we were waiting an hour for our meat was that the gas cooker had gone out so we left and found food elsewhere.
@Roger will probably be on to denounce me soon as some sort of Hartlepool-loving philistine but I loathed the Cote d’Azur: full of grasping over-priced and rather ho-hum restaurants and hotels and if I ever have to see another twee shop full of lavender tat I will set fire to that as well.
I once spent a holiday in Menton. As you say, overpriced and rather indifferent food. The apartment stank, the heat was terrible, and I was eaten alive by mosquitoes.
As I recall PB Tories have a somewhat fluid position on pols getting booed: Osbo getting booed at the Olympics a bad thing until you decided he was a c***, Boris being booed outside the French Embassty a bad thing, Salmond getting booed always a good thing.
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
Exactly, you couldn't script a better example of the disconnect between the Westminster/media bubble and the electorate than the Boris row.
I'd expect over 75% of the public would completely agree with Boris and the attacks on him just reignite positive poll ratings for him. Every day it's in the news adds a few % to his rating as next PM.
My advice to him would be to follow up with the only person who should be apologising is May for the shambles she's made of Brexit piece.
Tory MP's will vote for someone who can win, when polls start showing an even greater lead for Boris than any other PM candidate he'll walk into the members vote.
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016; - he should never have been made FS; - he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was; - he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence; - he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully; - his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
Oh, do come off the fence about Boris .
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
I can't speak for @Cyclefree but personally I would set fire to my ballot paper and drop it in the ballot box.
Ha! I couldn’t vote for either Corbyn or Boris. I’d probably be a wuss and still vote Lib Dem. Last time my constituency was exactly as you described it and as I liked the Lib Dem candidate I felt he needed some reward for his efforts. And the Lib Dems are probably the closest - if not very close - to my own views, though we also occasionally vote Green in the Cyclefree household.
But setting my vote on fire is appealing more and more. It’s quite a Boris-like way for @AlistairM to abstain in person though.
Setting *your* vote on fire isn’t the problem though (and it would be a great protest), it’s setting the rest of the ballot box on fire that may cause you to be in a little trouble.
Thanks for both the video and the discussion: advantages and disadvantages of different sources of energy is one of the drier topics at GCSE, so any additional information will help. Now all I need to do is remember it in a months time when I start teaching again.
We once had to set fire to a menu in a restaurant in Cannes to get our waiter’s attention. They claimed that the reason we were waiting an hour for our meat was that the gas cooker had gone out so we left and found food elsewhere.
@Roger will probably be on to denounce me soon as some sort of Hartlepool-loving philistine but I loathed the Cote d’Azur: full of grasping over-priced and rather ho-hum restaurants and hotels and if I ever have to see another twee shop full of lavender tat I will set fire to that as well.
I once spent a holiday in Menton. As you say, overpriced and rather indifferent food. The apartment stank, the heat was terrible, and I was eaten alive by mosquitoes.
Many many years ago, I did the Cote. We camped in a tiny place that no one had heard of, called iirc St Rapheal. Every day we got the local train, did the Cote, beaches etc etc.
Back by train each evening. Next to the station was a small restaurant. the classic 50F (when 10f to £) menu, 3 courses and wine. Superb.
As I recall PB Tories have a somewhat fluid position on pols getting booed: Osbo getting booed at the Olympics a bad thing until you decided he was a c***, Boris being booed outside the French Embassty a bad thing, Salmond getting booed always a good thing.
Comments
Then again a few years back I said ARM wouldn't be bought out, before they were bought out by a non-tech firm. So what do I know?
Musk is almost as bad as Trump when it comes to twatter.
If Boris is pushed into resigning its a black mark of a humiliation that will hang around him for a while. If he doubles down it is probably game on, since he has nowhere else to go.
(Grabs tinfoil hat and ducks.)
So the question is, are there 75 deranged Conservative MPs? The evidence suggests that there quite possibly are.
Completely agree with the comparison with Trump. David Cameron was absolutely right about Twitter. Politics would benefit hugely from it shutting down!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/last-tsar-killed-on-orders-of-lenin-say-romanov-family-358024.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-45107074
The Sun's headline is infinitely better: Joel, 7, never got the chance to be a real fireman as opposed to the Mail's insipid, Enough to break your heart
They've still got it in London Bridge, or wherever the Sun is based now.
Because in his last manifesto he promised a vast transfer of wealth from the poor to the middle classes and above, both through the imposition of universal benefits and by a vast increase in borrowing, coupled with the fact that he proposed no meaningful increases in taxation on the wealthy. (I say that because all the proposals he made - e.g. VAT on school fees - would in practice have brought in no extra money.)
So if he has these principles he hammers on about, he hides them very well.
Stopping Brexit might be a centrist viewpoint in certain parts of SW1, but to the other 99% of the country it certainly isn’t...
- he didn’t have the balls to stand in 2016;
- he should never have been made FS;
- he achieved nothing as FS and probably made Britain's image look worse than it already was;
- he has done nothing useful to come up with workable Brexit proposals - despite his alleged great intelligence;
- he picks on an unimportant issue, comes up with the wrong policy (IMO there is an arguable liberal case for banning the burqa), insults those countries who have instituted a ban and is gratuitously rude about individuals who cannot answer back thereby showing himself to be unscrupulous, wrong-headed and a bully;
- his vote getting abilities are exaggerated, untested against Corbyn and he confuses being an outrageous loudmouth with charisma.
There is no sensible question to which the answer is Boris. The Tories would be daft to choose him.
Here in Cumbria we are ca. 200 feet above sea level so we should be safe. The beach hut may not survive though.....
"The reforms — known internally as "Project Ozark" after initially being named "Project X" — are designed to transform the Lib Dems by opening up the party to the wider public. They were inspired at least in part, by Tom Pitfield, a political strategist who worked for Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, who is currently advising Cable."
Again, I warn that this is madness.
The problem is the climate feedback loops, once entered into, are likely to be quite difficult to get out of.
You're right about all of your points, but he has now successfully positioned himself as anti-Chequers, got the backing of JRM and outflanked Gove.
The LDs would end up either taken over by the #FBPE Twittermob who spend all day talking to each other, or a bunch of student anarchists who are always in the news for the wrong reasons.
Luckily the leader has to be an MP, so they’ve 11 to choose from once Uncle Vince stands down.
Edit - a very instructive example is welfare. During his leadership campaign he won massive kudos with the membership for vigorously opposing the cut in the welfare cup, while the other three fell in line with Harman in tacitly supporting it. It isn't I think too much of an exaggeration to say it won him the leadership. Yet in his manifesto he said he would keep welfare cuts, because he needed the money for free university tutition fees.
Now, that really isn't a man who wants to redistribute wealth to the poor. Love them or loathe them, tuition fees are a very progressive tax. Welfare cuts are certainly not.
personal live-Tweeted mental breakdown on holidayefforts last year?That's perfectly reasonable to have a debate on, perhaps needed..
His opponents are making errors, the man on the clapham omnibus won't see much wrong with what Boris has said. It is one of those issues where there is a fundamental disconnect between the broadly liberal media and the rest of the country.
Because sometimes, there just isn't anyone unpopular enough.
The problem with global warming is sea-level rise, so we need to either stop the sea levels rising, or remove the water. Fortunately we're developing ultra-strong carbon nanotubes for a space elevator. So just arrange several of these into a straw-like shape, put one end in water and the other at a satellite in orbit. As there is a vacuum in space, water will be sucked up into space, from where it can be delivered elsewhere (or made into rocket fuel).
It's a perfect plan, I tell you! I only require a hundred thousand bitcoins to finance development of the prototype!
With Boris distant from Govt., saying "these sandwiches taste like shit...."
What Boris is unquesrionably good at is getting headlines about himself - which, remember, is precisely the quality which propelled Trump to the Wihte House. He makes his riuvals look pallid and obscure by comparison. He is also everything you say - and, I'd add from personal working acquaintance - lazy too. But do most Tory members care about that, or do they simply want someone to beat Corbyn (as HYUFD seems to feel to be the main criterion), even if he turned out to be dreadful?
As a matter of interest, if you were in a Con/Lab marginal with Boris and Corbyn as leaders, and an energetic but clearly hopeless LibDem campaign, what would you do?
Maybe they can recruit Blair and Bad Al Campbell to help them out?
Seems like a dangerous game to play here. Politics is being dominated by extremists of all sides.
United is a good name, I think.
It does seem awfully dangerous, as you say the polarisation of politics has many more downside risks than upside risks for any party at the moment.
The big win for the LDs would be a few dozen pro-EU Labour MPs defecting, but that would bring other problems of its own.
Today is the Centenary of the highly successful battle of Amiens, probably the decisive battle of the Western Front in 1918. It seems that we are much more willing to mark slaughter rather than victory. This was perhaps the forerunner of modern warfare, with a surprise attack of combined arms and meticulously planned by Canadian, Australian and British troops. A great podcast here on how it went:
https://twitter.com/thehistoryguy/status/1027086687762087936?s=19
The fascinating report of the heroism of the tank Musical Box here:
https://twitter.com/CR940/status/1026871441051017216?s=19
Forced to choose between two crap alternatives, the only option is to demonstrate unwillingness to choose either.
But setting my vote on fire is appealing more and more. It’s quite a Boris-like way for @AlistairM to abstain in person though.
As for how to make money: easy; we charge the governments of the world for removing the water (though coastal ones would pay more), and see the water in orbit for fuel, or send it to Mars!
(well, that sort of thinking worked for Elizabeth Holmes; at least for a decade ...)
Lab and Con next leader markets have some silly prices in them. People are still putting money on David Miliband and Ruth Davidson.
@Roger will probably be on to denounce me soon as some sort of Hartlepool-loving philistine but I loathed the Cote d’Azur: full of grasping over-priced and rather ho-hum restaurants and hotels and if I ever have to see another twee shop full of lavender tat I will set fire to that as well.
https://twitter.com/ladyhaja/status/1026887705505001472
I'd expect over 75% of the public would completely agree with Boris and the attacks on him just reignite positive poll ratings for him. Every day it's in the news adds a few % to his rating as next PM.
My advice to him would be to follow up with the only person who should be apologising is May for the shambles she's made of Brexit piece.
Tory MP's will vote for someone who can win, when polls start showing an even greater lead for Boris than any other PM candidate he'll walk into the members vote.
Boris is divisive (not necessarily a bad thing democratically if your side's the bigger) but that works against a candidate at the MP selection stage.
Away from Boris and back in the real world...
https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2018/08/childrens-services-could-suffer-councils-cut-back?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_term=
The financial contagion is spreading beyond a few Conservative-run County Councils and into the Labour-controlled cities.
I love August.
Rattled to extent I don't quite understand.
Back by train each evening. Next to the station was a small restaurant. the classic 50F (when 10f to £) menu, 3 courses and wine. Superb.
sheBoris was so popular.Fixed.