Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Tipping point. Why Scotland’s ultimate independence now looks

135

Comments

  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    Cyclefree said:

    Anyway, sorry to hijack Alaistair’s interesting thread header.

    In topic I don’t feel strongly about Scottish independence. If they want to go, good luck to them.

    Yes, although that is not to say that those who do feel more strongly about it should not urge them not to go. It is, for now, part of our country, our identity, as well.

    I'd also hope a generous and friendly arrangement would follow a vote for independence, but let's be honest, the temptation to be petty and punishing would be immense and I am not sure it would avoided, alas.

    Jeezo, and Massie's one of the brighter Unionists.

    https://twitter.com/WingsScotland/status/1008264719852081152

    I'd have thought a Federal Union, if it were going to work, would have had to have occurred long before now
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883
    RoyalBlue said:

    An unusually poor thread header from Mr Meeks.

    Anybody who thinks a particular header is "poor" should have a go at writing one. I have and it's not easy to do once never mind repeatedly.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited June 2018
    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    Pulpstar said:

    HYUFD said:

    .

    First step equalise it for all employed and self employed
    The reverse, NI should return to its original function and be hypothecated for NHS, social care and welfare funding only
    No. Hypotheticated taxes are always a bad idea, and the whole point of the change would be to bring pension and other unearned income into scope of the tax - meaning that Mr and Mrs Average on PAYE could get a tax cut as a result while still increasing revenue. Conservatives like tax cuts, no?
    I disagree, hypothecae
    There are more workers than pensioners. The people we need to extract more money from are those on comfortably large final salary pensions, it’s either that or property taxes. Phase in the change if you have to, but the vast majority of the electorate are on a standard PAYE job where they notice the deductions from their payslip at the end of the week or month. These people also live in marginal seats.

    The only possible reason I could see for hypotheticated taxes, is to make it more difficult for a theoretical Corbyn government to do stupid things. But he’ll do stupid things anyway. Imagine what hell he could do with an extant property tax.
    Final salary pensions have now ended in almost every private sector company, they still reside in the public sector but even there government will not be able to afford them for too much longer. Most pensions are now defined benefit contributions which also require direct contributions from employee and employer much like the higher National Insurance which will be required for more funding for the NHS and social care anyway (especially as polling shows while higher NI is accepted to pay for them higher property taxes clearly are not and of course it was Corbyn who led the opposition to the dementia tax).
    Final salary schemes may have ended *for new entrants* in the private sector, but there are still millions of retired people in their 50s or early sixties who have already retired on them, and many more in their forties and fifties who will do so in the future. These people are comfortably off, have little or no mortgage and will be future consumers of the health and social care for which they are no longer paying.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,713
    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Anyway, sorry to hijack Alaistair’s interesting thread header.

    In topic I don’t feel strongly about Scottish independence. If they want to go, good luck to them.

    Yes, although that is not to say that those who do feel more strongly about it should not urge them not to go. It is, for now, part of our country, our identity, as well.

    I'd also hope a generous and friendly arrangement would follow a vote for independence, but let's be honest, the temptation to be petty and punishing would be immense and I am not sure it would avoided, alas.

    Jeezo, and Massie's one of the brighter Unionists.

    https://twitter.com/WingsScotland/status/1008264719852081152

    I'd have thought a Federal Union, if it were going to work, would have had to have occurred long before now
    We already have a Federal Union now for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in all but name as they have their own Parliaments or Assemblies and also representatives in the Federal Westminster Parliament.

    The only part of the equation missing is a Parliament or Assembly for England
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. HYUFD, indeed.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,547
    I don't think Brexit makes independence inevitable but it does give impetus to the movement towards independence. Uncertainty and weakness engenders more uncertainty. We are in a situation where disputes in three different countries with different motivations and agendas are feeding off each other: Reunited Ireland, Independent Scotland and England for the English. There was a parallel situation with the Civil Wars (plural) of the 17th century. The United Kingdom isn't getting much of a look-in under the current situation, which is bad news for those that see value in a union of the greater whole.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,082
    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    Scotland is the only part of the country where deaths exceed births. Not exactly the best indicator of a bright future.

    Sounds like a good thing to me. Reducing the population over time would solve a whole host of problems.
    Not really!

    Such a solution, short of a Logan's Run approach, just increases the dependancy ratio and the burden on the remaining workforce.

    It is worth noting that not only do Scots (especially Clydesiders) die young, they have a longer period of ill health than other Britons beforehand. Their DALYs (Disability Adjusted Life Years) are even worse than their life expectancy. There may be little saving to the tax payer of early death, as well as being obviously an undesirable social outcome!
    I would be very interested in any not overly technical description of DALYs you can link to with such regional statistics.
    It is covered very well in Michael Marmot's book The Health Gap, but much of this is just a lay presentation of his report for the UK Government:

    http://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/resources-reports/fair-society-healthy-lives-the-marmot-review
    Many thanks. I will study that. My initial thoughts were that Clydesiders had a particularly onerous burden of heavy engineering such as shipbuilding with significant related health effects combined with large numbers of men in particular dumped on "disability benefits" when that engineering disappeared in their late 40s, early 50s, suffering from inevitable depression and a tendency to drink too much. If that is right, and it may be only part of the story (the climate is damp and unhealthy, for example) some of the effects will disappear in the next generation.
    I don't think that is the explanation. The difference between East and West London, East and West Glasgow, across Washington DC or Sydney all shows much the same gradient, despite very different industries and climates.

    In the UK the difference is not access to Health care in terms of cost (after all that is the same in Tottenham as in Chelsea) the difference is in unhealthy lifestyles, particularly smoking, poor diet, alcohol and drug use, as well as work that is poorly satisfying as well as poorly paid.

    Perhaps we really need to address why so many lives are so bleak, that these are the few transient pleasures left.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,756
    edited June 2018
    kle4 said:

    Jeezo, and Massie's one of the brighter Unionists.

    https://twitter.com/WingsScotland/status/1008264719852081152

    I'd have thought a Federal Union, if it were going to work, would have had to have occurred long before now
    Yep. Also very hard to visualise a politic that didn't want to give over 15 mins to the devolution aspects of Brexit putting itself through the contortions necessary to bring forward such major constitutional change.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,265
    edited June 2018
    Cyclefree said:



    1. I’m sure I remember a few years ago Brown announcing some fantastic NHS settlement which would settle things for years and then again under the coalition. So how soon will the NHS be back asking for more? There must come a time when we say: “ Enough”.

    2. Is this really the most important priority to be spending our money on? What about ...(examples snipped for length)

    3. So maybe we should be thinking about what individuals should be doing for and spending on their own health. And maybe, just maybe, if they make stupid choices, they have to bear the consequences. You know, like adults.

    I hope this money is spent wisely and on those areas of health which need it - mental health, for instance - but I can’t help feeling that in a few years we’ll be back in the same place with yet more demands, more crises, more plugging of gaps. And so some hard thinking is needed about what an NHS should do and what it shouldn’t and what people may have to do and pay for themselves.

    Re 1: Brown's spending did produce a substantial reduction in waiting times - the 18 weeks for non-critical ops was I think pretty broadly accepted as a reasonable period which didn't require further improvement. It's since slipped back steadily and we're back to hearing about the waits of 2 years which were anecdotally common when I was first elected in 1997.

    Re 2: Perhaps. But there's a case for doing several things - it's always possible to argue against X by saying that Y is important too. IMO there is probably a popular majority for increased Government spending on a range of items as you suggest, perhaps financed by a modest rise in basic text, a somewhat larger rise in higher-rate tax and a tax on property/land as David Herdson among others (IIRC) have suggested. The tax cuts on basic rate which Brown made were shrugged off and forgotten within days - the reality is that if you're paying standard rate on say £20K taxable income (which is more than most people pay), a 1p change *either way* is £4/week, not actually a Very Big Deal. At higher rates it's also not that dramatic - my higher-rate income from various sources is £50K, and if higher rate tax went up say 3p that'd be £30/week, which would be noticeable but not really emigration territory, and well worth it if I could have fast, good health care if needed. People dislike tax going on nebulous stuff but hypothecated tax rises would IMO be popular.

    Re 3: Sure. But it's been an objective of Government all my life (I remember my mum being annoyed when I was about 5 and a social worker called to ask how much orange juice I was getting), and it's been found difficult, though not impossible - most people have grasped that smoking kills you and 5 a day veg and some activity are a good idea. We need to keep trying but it's not a get out of jail free card.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124

    Cyclefree said:


    Off the top of my head: why not require people on higher earnings to have health insurance and use it? Why not concentrate the NHS on those things which cannot be provided by health insurance - public health, vaccinations, A&E, child health etc? And yes maybe those who smoke should take the consequences and have to contribute towards the costs and/or go to the back of the queue or have to give up smoking before they get treatment?

    Difficult questions I know. But I think we have to take responsibility for our own health and not simply expect the NHS to be the answer to everything. It should do what it does well. But maybe it has to do less. And if people want what it cannot provide they will have to put their hands in their pockets.

    People - even the less well off - spend enough on holidays and football tickets and all sorts of other luxuries that it is absurd to say that they can’t spend some of that on their own health. That is, if they really mean it when they say they value it.

    And I also think some of the money has to go on keeping expensively trained doctors as doctors. I read the other day that within 5 years of qualifying quite a significant proportion have moved away from medecine. That is an absurd waste of resources.

    People on higher earnings paying more tax so are funding the NHS more than the average person to begin with.

    Likewise people who smoke or drink alcohol are paying tax on their consumption.

    Perhaps a better way to incentivise people to take out private health insurance would be to make the costs tax deductible.
    I'd generally support the idea but remember no private insurance covers pre-existing conditions so there would always need to be an NHS backstop unless you are happy to allow rich people to die.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883
    FF43 said:

    I don't think Brexit makes independence inevitable but it does give impetus to the movement towards independence. Uncertainty and weakness engenders more uncertainty. We are in a situation where disputes in three different countries with different motivations and agendas are feeding off each other: Reunited Ireland, Independent Scotland and England for the English. There was a parallel situation with the Civil Wars (plural) of the 17th century. The United Kingdom isn't getting much of a look-in under the current situation, which is bad news for those that see value in a union of the greater whole.

    Brexit is the obsession and project of the (little) English so it's no wonder that it's causing the thwarts of the Union to flex and groan. I don't give a fuck about Scotland one or the other but I see an inevitably 32 county Ireland as the only good that will come of it.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776
    Sandpit said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    Pulpstar said:

    HYUFD said:

    .

    Final salary pensions have now ended in almost every private sector company, they still reside in the public sector but even there government will not be able to afford them for too much longer. Most pensions are now defined benefit contributions which also require direct contributions from employee and employer much like the higher National Insurance which will be required for more funding for the NHS and social care anyway (especially as polling shows while higher NI is accepted to pay for them higher property taxes clearly are not and of course it was Corbyn who led the opposition to the dementia tax).
    Final salary schemes may have ended *for new entrants* in the private sector, but there are still millions of retired people in their 50s or early sixties who have already retired on them, and many more in their forties and fifties who will do so in the future. These people are comfortably off, have little or no mortgage and will be future consumers of the health and social care for which they are no longer paying.
    We have, right now, the most generously funded generation of pensioners that we will ever have.

    The generational unfairness of younger generations not only carrying tens of thousands of debt (and effectively higher tax rates) for most of their working lives for their own education but also paying tens of billions towards pensions they will not receive anything like the equivalent of is immense. The disgrace of dumping more than £1trn additional debt on them to fund the debt interest on as well just so we can meet these obligations to the favoured generation whose pensions and fripperies are untouchable because of the very sound principle that they vote is a further aggravation. We touch on this from time to time but it amazes me that this does not dominate our politics.
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527

    Pulpstar said:

    So £20bn extra for the NHS by 2023/4 (good) - looks like yet another Labour-inspired policy.

    Is the choice now between New Labour (aka the Tories) and Labour?

    Spending on the NHS will actually be going down.
    https://twitter.com/chrisgiles_/status/1008224284945403904?s=21
    That's incorrect, any % real increase is an increase. Spending has never gone down on the NHS.
    And finally, the tweet says in capitals we should look at the “ANNUAL PERCENTAGE”, and then provides a running average.

    Southam should withdraw his posting -- it really is nonsense statistics.

    Calling a small, ineffectual rise in the historically low NHS spending there’s been since 2010 a Brexit bonus when it is actually funded by extra tax and borrowing sums up the duplicity of this miserable government perfectly. Sadly, thanks to Corbyn it is guaranteed power.

    If you want to know about dodgy use of stats, read the full thread from the FT’s economics editor here:

    https://twitter.com/chrisgiles_/status/1008216901376512001?s=21
    With respect , it does not really have power now - indeed it is barely in office! The Tories only need to lose a handful of seats to make it pretty well impossible to continue even as a paralysed minority Government.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776
    kle4 said:

    While there's much I would agree with in this piece - that the SNP continue to strike a chord, that England has not given due care to devolution matters, that economic difficulties of separation will not by itself prevent independence winning - and have long lamented that I think Scottish independence may be inevitable in the long run given how popular the SNP and their grievances remain even when they are not riding as high as 2015, I do think a case that independence looks inevitable is not made in the header itself.

    Does it look more likely for the reasons given? I'd say yes. Are some unionists still complacent? Undoubtedly. Do I still think it will happen? Regretfully so. But I do think that independence has looked closer before and didn't come to pass and this case presumes no fightback is possible on some arguments which I think there will be.

    Scottish (and Irish) nationalism has a high floor, but a low ceiling. There are not many floating voters to be won over.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,713
    edited June 2018

    Mr. HYUFD, indeed.

    Yes, there has not been the demand for it in England as it normally gets the PM and government it votes for, you have to go back to February 1974 to find the last time it did not.

    However if say Corbyn became PM next time only due to SNP and Welsh Labour MPs votes while England had a majority of Tory MPs as is quite possible on current polls then the pressure from English voters for their own Parliament would increase significantly and would require either the creation of such a Parliament or significant devolution of powers to English county, city and unitary councils equivalent to those currently given to the London Assembly
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,713
    edited June 2018
    Dura_Ace said:

    FF43 said:

    I don't think Brexit makes independence inevitable but it does give impetus to the movement towards independence. Uncertainty and weakness engenders more uncertainty. We are in a situation where disputes in three different countries with different motivations and agendas are feeding off each other: Reunited Ireland, Independent Scotland and England for the English. There was a parallel situation with the Civil Wars (plural) of the 17th century. The United Kingdom isn't getting much of a look-in under the current situation, which is bad news for those that see value in a union of the greater whole.

    Brexit is the obsession and project of the (little) English so it's no wonder that it's causing the thwarts of the Union to flex and groan. I don't give a fuck about Scotland one or the other but I see an inevitably 32 county Ireland as the only good that will come of it.
    Wales voted Leave and as this map of the 2017 general election shows NI is split in two with the border counties almost all voting SF and the interior (bar a patch of Belfast) almost all voting DUP, the latter would declare UDI before they joined the Irish Republic

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2017_(Northern_Ireland)#/media/File:United_Kingdom_general_election,_2017_(Northern_Ireland).svg
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776
    edited June 2018

    Cyclefree said:



    1. I’m sure I remember a few years ago Brown announcing some fantastic NHS settlement which would settle things for years and then again under the coalition. So how soon will the NHS be back asking for more? There must come a time when we say: “ Enough”.

    2. Is this really the most important priority to be spending our money on? What about ...(examples snipped for length)

    3. So maybe we should be thinking about what individuals should be doing for and spending on their own health. And maybe, just maybe, if they make stupid choices, they have to bear the consequences. You know, like adults.
    .

    Re 1: Brown's spending did produce a substantial reduction in waiting times - the 18 weeks for non-critical ops was I think pretty broadly accepted as a reasonable period which didn't require further improvement. It's since slipped back steadily and we're back to hearing about the waits of 2 years which were anecdotally common when I was first elected in 1997.

    Re 2: Perhaps. But there's a case for doing several things - it's always possible to argue against X by saying that Y is important too. IMO there is probably a popular majority for increased Government spending on a range of items as you suggest, perhaps financed by a modest rise in basic text, a somewhat larger rise in higher-rate tax and a tax on property/land as David Herdson among others (IIRC) have suggested. The tax cuts on basic rate which Brown made were shrugged off and forgotten within days - the reality is that if you're paying standard rate on say £20K taxable income (which is more than most people pay), a 1p change *either way* is £4/week, not actually a Very Big Deal. At higher rates it's also not that dramatic - my higher-rate income from various sources is £50K, and if higher rate tax went up say 3p that'd be £30/week, which would be noticeable but not really emigration territory, and well worth it if I could have fast, good health care if needed. People dislike tax going on nebulous stuff but hypothecated tax rises would IMO be popular.

    Re 3: Sure. But it's been an objective of Government all my life (I remember my mum being annoyed when I was about 5 and a social worker called to ask how much orange juice I was getting), and it's been found difficult, though not impossible - most people have grasped that smoking kills you and 5 a day veg and some activity are a good idea. We need to keep trying but it's not a get out of jail free card.
    Re 1: It was pretty much understood at the time that this rate of increase would be a one-off and was unsustainable over the long term.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776
    Foxy said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    I would be very interested in any not overly technical description of DALYs you can link to with such regional statistics.
    It is covered very well in Michael Marmot's book The Health Gap, but much of this is just a lay presentation of his report for the UK Government:

    http://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/resources-reports/fair-society-healthy-lives-the-marmot-review
    Many thanks. I will study that. My initial thoughts were that Clydesiders had a particularly onerous burden of heavy engineering such as shipbuilding with significant related health effects combined with large numbers of men in particular dumped on "disability benefits" when that engineering disappeared in their late 40s, early 50s, suffering from inevitable depression and a tendency to drink too much. If that is right, and it may be only part of the story (the climate is damp and unhealthy, for example) some of the effects will disappear in the next generation.
    I don't think that is the explanation. The difference between East and West London, East and West Glasgow, across Washington DC or Sydney all shows much the same gradient, despite very different industries and climates.

    In the UK the difference is not access to Health care in terms of cost (after all that is the same in Tottenham as in Chelsea) the difference is in unhealthy lifestyles, particularly smoking, poor diet, alcohol and drug use, as well as work that is poorly satisfying as well as poorly paid.

    Perhaps we really need to address why so many lives are so bleak, that these are the few transient pleasures left.
    The executive summary of the report is focussed entirely on earnings rather than geography. I am familiar with that but was interested in your comments on Clydesiders having particularly poor health before their earlier than average deaths.

    We have seen in the US that drug use is now so prevalent that it is reducing overall life expectancy. It would be surprising if Scotland, with the worst hard drug problem in Europe, was not suffering the same effect.

    With shipbuilding we still, even now, have a designated mesothelioma court in the Court of Session which seeks to deal with historical claims mainly arising from exposure to asbestos and poor work practices in long extinct companies. It must be a significant source of long term health problems as well as early deaths.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    I know how seriously we take Pizzas on this site, so I thought this might be of interest,

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-5853083/Pizza-debate-Stefano-Cirene-reveals-right-way-eat-classic-Italian-dish.html

    I don't know about you, but like David Cameron and hotdogs, I always eat my Hawaiian pizzas with a knife and fork.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,265
    Really well-written article with some interesting content, even though it's about Brexit again:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/17/europe-losing-interest-brexit-soap-it-has-bigger-worries
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,038
    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2018

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    It's an unusually astute bit of politics from the government.

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    I imagine she'd now have a majority.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,723

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2018
    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,082
    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    I would be very interested in any not overly technical description of DALYs you can link to with such regional statistics.
    It is covered very well in Michael Marmot's book The Health Gap, but much of this is just a lay presentation of his report for the UK Government:

    http://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/resources-reports/fair-society-healthy-lives-the-marmot-review
    Many thanks. I will study that. My initial thoughts were that Clydesiders had a particularly onerous burden of heavy engineering such as shipbuilding with significant related health effects combined with large numbers of men in particular dumped on "disability benefits" when that engineering disappeared in their late 40s, early 50s, suffering from inevitable depression and a tendency to drink too much. If that is right, and it may be only part of the story (the climate is damp and unhealthy, for example) some of the effects will disappear in the next generation.
    I don't think that is the explanation. The difference between East and West London, East and West Glasgow, across Washington DC or Sydney all shows much the same gradient, despite very different industries and climates.

    In the UK the difference is not access to Health care in terms of cost (after all that is the same in Tottenham as in Chelsea) the difference is in unhealthy lifestyles, particularly smoking, poor diet, alcohol and drug use, as well as work that is poorly satisfying as well as poorly paid.

    Perhaps we really need to address why so many lives are so bleak, that these are the few transient pleasures left.
    The executive summary of the report is focussed entirely on earnings rather than geography. I am familiar with that but was interested in your comments on Clydesiders having particularly poor health before their earlier than average deaths.

    We have seen in the US that drug use is now so prevalent that it is reducing overall life expectancy. It would be surprising if Scotland, with the worst hard drug problem in Europe, was not suffering the same effect.

    With shipbuilding we still, even now, have a designated mesothelioma court in the Court of Session which seeks to deal with historical claims mainly arising from exposure to asbestos and poor work practices in long extinct companies. It must be a significant source of long term health problems as well as early deaths.
    This WHO report on Glasgow may be what you are looking for:

    http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/10/11-021011/en/
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    I'd like to think they'd be phased out.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Sean_F said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    It's an unusually astute bit of politics from the government.

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    I imagine she'd now have a majority.
    https://twitter.com/samcoatestimes/status/1008282417491337216?s=21
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,038

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    I’m sure Mr Khan, who is in charge of policing London, is from the Labour Party.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,044
    And what about social care?
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,723
    Totally O/t, but the BBC has a story about the Titanic.
    'The search for the sunken ship was actually a front for a hunt ordered by President Ronald Reagan to find two lost Cold War submarines.’
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-44488311/the-titanic-the-top-secret-mission-behind-its-discovery
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2018

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    Detection rates are low for all crimes, except homicides.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,723
    Sean_F said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    I'd like to think they'd be phased out.
    Lots of Tory rural seats, though!
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2018
    Sean_F said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    Detection rates are low for all crimes, except homicides.
    I actually think policing approaches needs a massive overhaul. I know the public like bobbies on the beat, but really we should be using ML, data analytics, etc etc etc, but you get the feeling a lot of investigation methods are stick such in the ancient past.

    https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/08/predictive-policing-using-machine-learning-to-detect-patterns-of-crime/

    We need to be smarter, much smarter.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,038

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    I've been pretty consistent in saying that I think our net payments to the EU will reduce in the permanent settlement from c.£9.2bn net per year, to about £3-4bn net per year - a saving of about £5bn per year. But, in the short-term, the next 5-10 years, our growth will probably be slightly beneath the pre-Brexit trend.

    I expect our long-term economic growth to return to trend by about 2030, once a permanent deal has bedded-in, new regulations taken effect, and most of our new trading arrangements with non-EU countries established. Not to mention changes in the global trading environment.

    Therefore, I would expect a net economic Brexit dividend from 2028-2030 onwards (much of our net payment was for political influence in lieu of full eurozone membership, rather than a purely economic investment) but swings & roundabouts during the 2020s.
  • DecrepitJohnLDecrepitJohnL Posts: 13,300
    Sandpit said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    I’m sure Mr Khan, who is in charge of policing London, is from the Labour Party.
    And I'm sure that Theresa May who axed 20,000 police officers is from the Conservative Party.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776

    Sean_F said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    I'd like to think they'd be phased out.
    Lots of Tory rural seats, though!
    I think that farming needs to weaned off subsidies. £2.5 bn a year is going to about 50,000 people. Even in rural constituencies, that means the number of affected voters is in the hundreds, not the thousands.
  • RobCRobC Posts: 398
    Cyclefree said:

    Can I be a little provocative?

    I can. Good!

    Sure: good to see the NHS getting some extra funding.

    But ..... deep breath .....

    1. I’m sure I remember a few years ago Brown announcing some fantastic NHS settlement which would settle things for years and then again under the coalition. So how soon will the NHS be back asking for more? There must come a time when we say: “ Enough”.

    2. Is this really the most important priority to be spending our money on? Especially now at the start of an uncertain future outside the structures we have been used to for 4 decades. What about social care? Or education, skills training, apprenticeships, AI, technology, housing etc? Shouldn’t we be aiming for more than an an economy consisting of coffee shops staffed by people living in overcrowded rented flats who are able to get seen in A&E in less than 4 hours? Health is important but it is not - for an economy - the most important thing. And much of good health for an individual depends on their own choices.

    3. So maybe we should be thinking about what individuals should be doing for and spending on their own health. And maybe, just maybe, if they make stupid choices, they have to bear the consequences. You know, like adults.

    I hope this money is spent wisely and on those areas of health which need it - mental health, for instance - but I can’t help feeling that in a few years we’ll be back in the same place with yet more demands, more crises, more plugging of gaps. And so some hard thinking is needed about what an NHS should do and what it shouldn’t and what people may have to do and pay for themselves.

    On your point 2 it is worth noting that school budgets continue to be severely squeezed. Our local primary school is making 7 teaching assistants redundant at the end of this term.
  • Tesla getting bad press again. Obviously we don't know the cause of the fire, but motor vehicles burst into flame for no apparent reason all the time. We usually put it down as "unexplained electrical fault" on the IRS.....
    Does Tesla have a particularly high number of car fires?

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/17/tesla-fire-video-mary-mccormack-california
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776

    Really well-written article with some interesting content, even though it's about Brexit again:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/17/europe-losing-interest-brexit-soap-it-has-bigger-worries

    Bit too much of an agenda for me but I have said previously that the June Summit is going to have an awful lot to deal with beside Brexit and May will struggle to get the likes of Merkel to devote time to it. I think she is more concerned with Italy (above all), Hungary, Poland, relations with France, the problems caused by immigration and the complete failure of the quota system, the stresses on the EZ... etc etc.

    As I have said before it is not clear whether this will prove good or bad. There may be a desire to just get the deal done and move on. Or there may simply not have been enough hard thinking about what sort of relationship they want with us going forward.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    Phase them out and replace with making it easier to redesignate agricultural land for industrial and residential development.
  • OchEyeOchEye Posts: 1,469
    Sandpit said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    I’m sure Mr Khan, who is in charge of policing London, is from the Labour Party.
    Just as I am sure that the previous incumbent, a certain Boris Johnson, was up until 2 years ago, was in charge of policing for eight years
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,044

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    Phase them out and replace with making it easier to redesignate agricultural land for industrial and residential development.
    https://twitter.com/PJTheEconomist/status/1008256589051170818
  • StereotomyStereotomy Posts: 4,092

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    People seem to be forgetting that the Tory manifesto last year was not about winning votes. They were certain they were going to win a huge majority purely thanks to Corbyn, so the manfiesto was entirely about giving themselves licence to do whatever they want. They certainly didn't want to tie themselves into big spending commitments.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,038
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    I'd like to think they'd be phased out.
    Lots of Tory rural seats, though!
    I think that farming needs to weaned off subsidies. £2.5 bn a year is going to about 50,000 people. Even in rural constituencies, that means the number of affected voters is in the hundreds, not the thousands.
    It would be a different type of farming, focusing on high-end crops, and organic, high-quality, high-animal welfare meats, and dairy products, but I don't think in the medium-term British farming has anything to worry about competing on the global open market without subsidies. Demand is huge.

    That might not be the case in all European countries, but British farmers are quite forward-thinking and entrepreneurial.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    Sean_F said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    I imagine she'd now have a majority.
    Either this or the changes to tuition fees repayment levels would have given the Conservatives a majority.
  • DecrepitJohnLDecrepitJohnL Posts: 13,300

    Sean_F said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    Detection rates are low for all crimes, except homicides.
    I actually think policing approaches needs a massive overhaul. I know the public like bobbies on the beat, but really we should be using ML, data analytics, etc etc etc, but you get the feeling a lot of investigation methods are stick such in the ancient past.

    https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/08/predictive-policing-using-machine-learning-to-detect-patterns-of-crime/

    We need to be smarter, much smarter.
    Didn't they make a film about that? The two current examples people use are Glasgow's anti-gangs initiative based on the way doctors treat epidemics, and New York for big data. In both cases, there is a notable emphasis on preventing crime rather than just trying to solve crime once it has been committed.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited June 2018

    Sandpit said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    I’m sure Mr Khan, who is in charge of policing London, is from the Labour Party.
    And I'm sure that Theresa May who axed 20,000 police officers is from the Conservative Party.
    As I have said before, it matters not how many police officers are in London, if they have a stated policy of not chasing thugs on bikes.

    Dealing with this sort of thing is exactly what elected police commissioners should be for.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    And who cares about the magic money tree theSE days anyway?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,044
    RobC said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Can I be a little provocative?

    I can. Good!

    Sure: good to see the NHS getting some extra funding.

    But ..... deep breath .....

    1. I’m sure I remember a few years ago Brown announcing some fantastic NHS settlement which would settle things for years and then again under the coalition. So how soon will the NHS be back asking for more? There must come a time when we say: “ Enough”.

    2. Is this really the most important priority to be spending our money on? Especially now at the start of an uncertain future outside the structures we have been used to for 4 decades. What about social care? Or education, skills training, apprenticeships, AI, technology, housing etc? Shouldn’t we be aiming for more than an an economy consisting of coffee shops staffed by people living in overcrowded rented flats who are able to get seen in A&E in less than 4 hours? Health is important but it is not - for an economy - the most important thing. And much of good health for an individual depends on their own choices.

    3. So maybe we should be thinking about what individuals should be doing for and spending on their own health. And maybe, just maybe, if they make stupid choices, they have to bear the consequences. You know, like adults.

    I hope this money is spent wisely and on those areas of health which need it - mental health, for instance - but I can’t help feeling that in a few years we’ll be back in the same place with yet more demands, more crises, more plugging of gaps. And so some hard thinking is needed about what an NHS should do and what it shouldn’t and what people may have to do and pay for themselves.

    On your point 2 it is worth noting that school budgets continue to be severely squeezed. Our local primary school is making 7 teaching assistants redundant at the end of this term.
    I seem to recall that anecdotal evidence during GE 2017 was that school funding issues like this were playing very badly with a key set of younger voters.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,961

    Sean_F said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    Detection rates are low for all crimes, except homicides.
    I actually think policing approaches needs a massive overhaul. I know the public like bobbies on the beat, but really we should be using ML, data analytics, etc etc etc, but you get the feeling a lot of investigation methods are stick such in the ancient past.

    https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/08/predictive-policing-using-machine-learning-to-detect-patterns-of-crime/

    We need to be smarter, much smarter.
    Or more brutal. The cops have a bloody idea of who causes 90%+ of crime. They just can't get proof to go to court.

    Want a radical overhaul? Shift the burden of proof for property crime to balance of probabilities....
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2018

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    People seem to be forgetting that the Tory manifesto last year was not about winning votes. They were certain they were going to win a huge majority purely thanks to Corbyn, so the manfiesto was entirely about giving themselves licence to do whatever they want. They certainly didn't want to tie themselves into big spending commitments.
    Fine, but it is clear with the aging population that a spending rise is going to be required. Also, £200 million a year extra isn't that much of a real terms increase.

    Furthermore, once they had the big majority they could also try and ensure that the extra money was used well, firstly by not repeating the mistake of Brown and just opening the taps all at once.
  • Sandpit said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    I’m sure Mr Khan, who is in charge of policing London, is from the Labour Party.
    There is no arguing that the three main Emergency Services have been seriously undermined by the budget cuts and financial restraints that have been imposed on them. Now, you can blame individual councils or mayors, but there isn't enough bums on seats or boots on the ground, whoever has hold of the purse strings.
    I've never argued for a diamond encrusted fire engine with a crew of eight dressed in Gucci firekit on every street, but there isn't enough of us quite a lot of the time now, and the Police and Ambos are in the same boat, although the Ambos for other reasons as well.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,265
    edited June 2018
    Sean_F said:



    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!

    I'd like to think they'd be phased out.
    Gove has been pretty explicit about this - they will indeed be phased out, partially (and to a limited and as yet unstated extent) replaced by rewards for types of farming delivering public goods such as environmental benefits or higher animal welfare. The NFU have naturally expresssed concern but are not yet really up in arms about it - the big operations who get CAP pillar one money (=cash for being big, basically) reckon they can make money anyway and can see there's no prospect of public support for just rewarding bigness forever, the smaller ones hope they can get enough public-good money to make up for it.

    NGOs like mine who want subsidies spent on "better" farming are enthusiastic. However, everyone on all sides will want to see the actual figures involved, and there is a Trasury-Defra argument to be had which is unlikely to prove easy. The possibility of trade deals involving cheaper imports at arguably lower quality is the joker in the pack: Gove has flatly ruled out accepting trade deals involving lower standards, others are rather less emphatic, since a US trade deal that doesn't allow low-welfare food imports may not be possible at all.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883
    The tories can't win a bidding war with JC on the NHS. If they promise 350m/week he'll promise 700m and a soapy tit wank. He gives even less of a fuck about spending money than May (and that's saying something). I'm not entirely convinced he knows what money is. He's spent his entire life being rich and doing horseshit non jobs.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776
    DavidL said:

    Really well-written article with some interesting content, even though it's about Brexit again:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/17/europe-losing-interest-brexit-soap-it-has-bigger-worries

    Bit too much of an agenda for me but I have said previously that the June Summit is going to have an awful lot to deal with beside Brexit and May will struggle to get the likes of Merkel to devote time to it. I think she is more concerned with Italy (above all), Hungary, Poland, relations with France, the problems caused by immigration and the complete failure of the quota system, the stresses on the EZ... etc etc.

    As I have said before it is not clear whether this will prove good or bad. There may be a desire to just get the deal done and move on. Or there may simply not have been enough hard thinking about what sort of relationship they want with us going forward.
    Although the governments in Italy, Austria, Czechia, Hungary, and Poland are all eurosceptic, they are also pro-EU. IMHO, the other EU governments and institutions are just going to have to give them carte blanche to deal with immigration as they see fit, rather than trying to enforce the letter of EU law against them (and I suspect they will be privately relieved if they shut down paths of migration into the EU).
  • Dura_Ace said:

    The tories can't win a bidding war with JC on the NHS. If they promise 350m/week he'll promise 700m and a soapy tit wank. He gives even less of a fuck about spending money than May (and that's saying something). I'm not entirely convinced he knows what money is. He's spent his entire life being rich and doing horseshit non jobs.

    That's got my vote for Corbyn!
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,038

    Sean_F said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    It's an unusually astute bit of politics from the government.

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    I imagine she'd now have a majority.
    https://twitter.com/samcoatestimes/status/1008282417491337216?s=21
    Let's see what those are. That summit is only 10 days away.

    My prediction is it will be just like last year on rights for EU citizens and the divorce bill: the EU will say "some progress, but not enough", and nothing will be finalised until the October summit. However, the final deal won't be the 'surrender' as advertised. The EU don't want to collapse the British Government and risk a crash-out that could affect them too, because it's far too late now to start over again. They don't want something that's politically unsustainable either, they just want to make their point pour encourager les autres.

    If I had to bet on it, I'd say we're about to enter a lengthier transition in a bit of a no-mans land, because Theresa May simply has nothing credible left to deter the EU with, having made no preparation for no deal, and having no parliamentary numbers for it either. So it could all punt past GE2022.

    I could see us entering into a stasis that no-one is particularly happy with, but where re-joiners won't be able to muster anything close to a majority of British public opinion to go back in, whilst Brexiteers also won't be able to get enough support for a cleaner break either.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,544

    Tesla getting bad press again. Obviously we don't know the cause of the fire, but motor vehicles burst into flame for no apparent reason all the time. We usually put it down as "unexplained electrical fault" on the IRS.....
    Does Tesla have a particularly high number of car fires?

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/17/tesla-fire-video-mary-mccormack-california

    I'm unsure we have enough data to tell, or particularly amongst the sector Tesla compete in.

    Tesla cars have only been going for a few years, particularly in the 'mass' market, and therefore statistical information on crashes and the like are difficult to discern. In addition, I'm guessing that Teslas tend to be newer cars than the average on the road, and that the older a car is, the more likely it is to spontaneously combust. I'm also guessing that Teslas cover less mileage than equivalent 'luxury' cars.

    One thing I'd like to know: as a a fireman, have you been trained on the 'correct' way to tackle accidents in electric cars, both to isolate the batteries and how to tackle fires in the battery packs?
  • DecrepitJohnLDecrepitJohnL Posts: 13,300
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    I’m sure Mr Khan, who is in charge of policing London, is from the Labour Party.
    And I'm sure that Theresa May who axed 20,000 police officers is from the Conservative Party.
    As I have said before, it matters not how many police officers are in London, if they have a stated policy of not chasing thugs on bikes.

    Dealing with this sort of thing is exactly what police commissioners should be for.
    If the Met had police cars in position ready to chase bikes, I'd expect the baddies to notice and drive round the block till the cars have gone. It's a red herring. Burglary rates have shot up, for instance, which have nothing to do with bikes.

    The factor driving all these property crimes is probably easier fencing: converting stolen goods into cash. There are online auction sites, pawn shops or their modern equivalents in every high street, and for high-value items, selling them abroad.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,038
    Dura_Ace said:

    The tories can't win a bidding war with JC on the NHS. If they promise 350m/week he'll promise 700m and a soapy tit wank. He gives even less of a fuck about spending money than May (and that's saying something). I'm not entirely convinced he knows what money is. He's spent his entire life being rich and doing horseshit non jobs.

    I thought you thought JC was the Absolute Boy?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2018

    Sean_F said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    Detection rates are low for all crimes, except homicides.
    I actually think policing approaches needs a massive overhaul. I know the public like bobbies on the beat, but really we should be using ML, data analytics, etc etc etc, but you get the feeling a lot of investigation methods are stick such in the ancient past.

    https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/08/predictive-policing-using-machine-learning-to-detect-patterns-of-crime/

    We need to be smarter, much smarter.
    Didn't they make a film about that? The two current examples people use are Glasgow's anti-gangs initiative based on the way doctors treat epidemics, and New York for big data. In both cases, there is a notable emphasis on preventing crime rather than just trying to solve crime once it has been committed.
    Correct. By investigation, I didn't just mean reactive, I meant proactive (as the article talks about).

    The idea of community policing / bobbies on the beat wandering around randomly in the neighbourhood as a brilliant way of preventing crime has been shown to be nonsense, all that happens is the criminals work out where they are and just rob people in other locations.

    There is a place for police on the street gaining intel / community relations, but unless you are going to go to Russian / Chinese levels they aren't going to do much for prevention and even actually very poor at reacting once a crime is underway as they can't get there / pursue them.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    I'd like to think they'd be phased out.
    Lots of Tory rural seats, though!
    I think that farming needs to weaned off subsidies. £2.5 bn a year is going to about 50,000 people. Even in rural constituencies, that means the number of affected voters is in the hundreds, not the thousands.
    I think you have to recognise the social cost of that. If farming subsidies are removed hill farming, for example, will simply cease and very significant parts of our country will become uncultivated. This may sound idyllic in some ways but the gradual collapse of fence lines, pathways, access and roadways together with the loss of many, many villages would affect many of us.

    I think good progress has been made in recent times in paying farmers to be custodians of the countryside rather than simply being focussed on maximum production. Protection of hedgerows is a good example of that. I think that these things should be encouraged. Subsidies paid to the monoculture plains of eastern England with massive fields is much harder to justify.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776
    Dura_Ace said:

    The tories can't win a bidding war with JC on the NHS. If they promise 350m/week he'll promise 700m and a soapy tit wank. He gives even less of a fuck about spending money than May (and that's saying something). I'm not entirely convinced he knows what money is. He's spent his entire life being rich and doing horseshit non jobs.

    They don't need to win a bidding war. The NHS will always be an issue on which Labour leads. The Tories just need to ensure that the NHS is not the voters' main priority.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,044

    Sean_F said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    Detection rates are low for all crimes, except homicides.
    I actually think policing approaches needs a massive overhaul. I know the public like bobbies on the beat, but really we should be using ML, data analytics, etc etc etc, but you get the feeling a lot of investigation methods are stick such in the ancient past.

    https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/08/predictive-policing-using-machine-learning-to-detect-patterns-of-crime/

    We need to be smarter, much smarter.
    Or more brutal. The cops have a bloody idea of who causes 90%+ of crime. They just can't get proof to go to court.

    Want a radical overhaul? Shift the burden of proof for property crime to balance of probabilities....
    It is quite likely they do know to a degree who causes crimes like house breaking. They are the drug addicts who do it to get cash for drugs.

    If we dealt with addiction in better ways there would be less crime frankly.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited June 2018

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    I’m sure Mr Khan, who is in charge of policing London, is from the Labour Party.
    And I'm sure that Theresa May who axed 20,000 police officers is from the Conservative Party.
    As I have said before, it matters not how many police officers are in London, if they have a stated policy of not chasing thugs on bikes.

    Dealing with this sort of thing is exactly what police commissioners should be for.
    If the Met had police cars in position ready to chase bikes, I'd expect the baddies to notice and drive round the block till the cars have gone. It's a red herring. Burglary rates have shot up, for instance, which have nothing to do with bikes.

    The factor driving all these property crimes is probably easier fencing: converting stolen goods into cash. There are online auction sites, pawn shops or their modern equivalents in every high street, and for high-value items, selling them abroad.
    All of which are good points, but are related to policing methods rather than police numbers.

    The moped muggers are working in areas that are already well policed, precisely because they know they’re not going to be chased. The police are losing the streets to the criminals.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,038

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    People seem to be forgetting that the Tory manifesto last year was not about winning votes. They were certain they were going to win a huge majority purely thanks to Corbyn, so the manfiesto was entirely about giving themselves licence to do whatever they want. They certainly didn't want to tie themselves into big spending commitments.
    There's a lesson there.
  • ralphmalphralphmalph Posts: 2,201

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    I would suggest petty personal rivalries. Who is most associated with the 350 million for the NHS? Who was potentially the biggest leadership rival to May? If a challenge was made the claim against that person would always be "He lied over 350mill for the NHS, you can not trust him."
    Also this was at the point when they thought May had a big lead in the polls.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,585
    Dura_Ace said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    An unusually poor thread header from Mr Meeks.

    Anybody who thinks a particular header is "poor" should have a go at writing one. I have and it's not easy to do once never mind repeatedly.
    Agreed.
    Disagreeing with something does not make it ‘poor’.

  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,038
    Sean_F said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    The tories can't win a bidding war with JC on the NHS. If they promise 350m/week he'll promise 700m and a soapy tit wank. He gives even less of a fuck about spending money than May (and that's saying something). I'm not entirely convinced he knows what money is. He's spent his entire life being rich and doing horseshit non jobs.

    They don't need to win a bidding war. The NHS will always be an issue on which Labour leads. The Tories just need to ensure that the NHS is not the voters' main priority.
    The Tories will obviously link their ability to invest in the NHS to prudent stewardship of the economy, and contrast that with Corbyn's recklessness and naivety.

    I think there's some mileage in that.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    Phase them out and replace with making it easier to redesignate agricultural land for industrial and residential development.
    https://twitter.com/PJTheEconomist/status/1008256589051170818
    Except that the public finances have clearly not been weakened - they've been tens of billions better than the official bodies said they would be. Which makes a change from being hundreds of billions worse than the official bodies said they would be up to 2016.

    And isn't that the same Paul Johnson who predicted a stock market collapse if Leave won ?
  • ralphmalphralphmalph Posts: 2,201

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    People seem to be forgetting that the Tory manifesto last year was not about winning votes. They were certain they were going to win a huge majority purely thanks to Corbyn, so the manfiesto was entirely about giving themselves licence to do whatever they want. They certainly didn't want to tie themselves into big spending commitments.

    The manifesto was about burying Cameronism and defining Mayism. Problem was May had buried herself in the Home Office and never made the case over a number of years, that it came as a big shock to the people.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2018
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Scotland Yard said its London sanction detection rates – the way it measures cases that are solved – were 5.5% for burglary and 7% for robbery between April 2017 and April 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/17/figures-less-than-5-of-burglaries-and-robberies-in-uk-solved

    Now they have bunged the NHS a load of extra money, I would say they need to start to really try and get a grip on this. I can't imagine the daily media coverage of moped gangs is doing much good for the imagine of the party of law and order.

    I’m sure Mr Khan, who is in charge of policing London, is from the Labour Party.
    And I'm sure that Theresa May who axed 20,000 police officers is from the Conservative Party.
    As I have said before, it matters not how many police officers are in London, if they have a stated policy of not chasing thugs on bikes.

    Dealing with this sort of thing is exactly what police commissioners should be for.
    If the Met had police cars in position ready to chase bikes, I'd expect the baddies to notice and drive round the block till the cars have gone. It's a red herring. Burglary rates have shot up, for instance, which have nothing to do with bikes.

    The factor driving all these property crimes is probably easier fencing: converting stolen goods into cash. There are online auction sites, pawn shops or their modern equivalents in every high street, and for high-value items, selling them abroad.
    All of which are good points, but are related to policing methods rather than police numbers.

    The moped muggers are working in areas that are already well policed, precisely because they know they’re not going to be chased. The police are losing the streets to the criminals.
    Again, Amazon / Facebook / Google use ML to learn all about sales patterns etc. A lot of stolen stuff is fenced on things like ebay / social media, I bet the plod at best have some random pc manually looking through listings to see if they can spot any dodgy looking stuff.

    Same with the drugs sales via social media.

    One of the best (and least talked about things) Cameron did was the behavioural insights team. They didn't cost much and those guys made the country a boat load of money via extra tax collection and saved via some simple nudge stuff.

    I would like to see the government / plod do a similar thing for crime. Imagine how little it would cost to fund some PhD / post docs to come together as team for the police to crunch the big data for crime, develop useful tools etc.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    DavidL said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    I'd like to think they'd be phased out.
    Lots of Tory rural seats, though!
    I think that farming needs to weaned off subsidies. £2.5 bn a year is going to about 50,000 people. Even in rural constituencies, that means the number of affected voters is in the hundreds, not the thousands.
    I think you have to recognise the social cost of that. If farming subsidies are removed hill farming, for example, will simply cease and very significant parts of our country will become uncultivated. This may sound idyllic in some ways but the gradual collapse of fence lines, pathways, access and roadways together with the loss of many, many villages would affect many of us.

    I think good progress has been made in recent times in paying farmers to be custodians of the countryside rather than simply being focussed on maximum production. Protection of hedgerows is a good example of that. I think that these things should be encouraged. Subsidies paid to the monoculture plains of eastern England with massive fields is much harder to justify.
    Its housing we're short of not marginal agricultural land.

    And those villages which see their shops / schools / bus routes close because of a lack of use would benefit from additional residents.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    People seem to be forgetting that the Tory manifesto last year was not about winning votes. They were certain they were going to win a huge majority purely thanks to Corbyn, so the manfiesto was entirely about giving themselves licence to do whatever they want. They certainly didn't want to tie themselves into big spending commitments.

    The manifesto was about burying Cameronism and defining Mayism. Problem was May had buried herself in the Home Office and never made the case over a number of years, that it came as a big shock to the people.
    Mayism seemed to be a rather joyless concept from a group of like minded people unwilling to check details with outsiders.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2018
    A furious woman has hung up a string of knickers outside the offices of shamed Tory MP Sir Christopher Chope in protest at his moves to block a Bill criminalising upskirting.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5853125/Woman-hangs-knickers-outside-Christopher-Chopes-office-upskirting-vote.html
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,544
    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    An unusually poor thread header from Mr Meeks.

    Anybody who thinks a particular header is "poor" should have a go at writing one. I have and it's not easy to do once never mind repeatedly.
    Agreed.
    Disagreeing with something does not make it ‘poor’.

    The good thing about Mr Meeks' threaders are not just that they are thoughtful and well-written, but that they occasionally take positions that I would not expect from him, given his comments below the line.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776

    DavidL said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    I'd like to think they'd be phased out.
    Lots of Tory rural seats, though!
    I think that farming needs to weaned off subsidies. £2.5 bn a year is going to about 50,000 people. Even in rural constituencies, that means the number of affected voters is in the hundreds, not the thousands.
    I think you have to recognise the social cost of that. If farming subsidies are removed hill farming, for example, will simply cease and very significant parts of our country will become uncultivated. This may sound idyllic in some ways but the gradual collapse of fence lines, pathways, access and roadways together with the loss of many, many villages would affect many of us.

    I think good progress has been made in recent times in paying farmers to be custodians of the countryside rather than simply being focussed on maximum production. Protection of hedgerows is a good example of that. I think that these things should be encouraged. Subsidies paid to the monoculture plains of eastern England with massive fields is much harder to justify.
    Its housing we're short of not marginal agricultural land.

    And those villages which see their shops / schools / bus routes close because of a lack of use would benefit from additional residents.
    Sure, but if you do not protect employment in agriculture what are those people in those villages going to do for employment? If I look across Angus, for example, much of the employment is at least indirectly related to farming, much of it fairly marginal. Its not just the farms, its the vets, the contractors, the machinery suppliers etc etc.
  • twistedfirestopper3twistedfirestopper3 Posts: 2,063
    edited June 2018

    Tesla getting bad press again. Obviously we don't know the cause of the fire, but motor vehicles burst into flame for no apparent reason all the time. We usually put it down as "unexplained electrical fault" on the IRS.....
    Does Tesla have a particularly high number of car fires?

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/17/tesla-fire-video-mary-mccormack-california

    I'm unsure we have enough data to tell, or particularly amongst the sector Tesla compete in.

    Tesla cars have only been going for a few years, particularly in the 'mass' market, and therefore statistical information on crashes and the like are difficult to discern. In addition, I'm guessing that Teslas tend to be newer cars than the average on the road, and that the older a car is, the more likely it is to spontaneously combust. I'm also guessing that Teslas cover less mileage than equivalent 'luxury' cars.

    One thing I'd like to know: as a a fireman, have you been trained on the 'correct' way to tackle accidents in electric cars, both to isolate the batteries and how to tackle fires in the battery packs?
    Yeah, we have. We have a good relationship with a number of dealers who have been happy to walk us through battery isolation and any hazards we should be wary of. There has actually been a lot of joined up thinking about the problems posed by electric vehicles. Mobile Data Terminals on the pumps (when they work....) have full Crashdata on pretty much every vehicle on the road that will give us an exploded diagram of what is where (Modern vehicles often have more than one battery so they can power FaceBook and Spotify).
    Modern high end cars burn very well, and take a bit of putting out. I didn't go to it, but one crew spent 5 hours trying to put a Mclaren supercar out when it caught fire at a testing day at a local airfield. The chief engineer even told them to go and get a cuppa while it burnt out, he said once it takes hold, it's done for and he'd never seen one saved yet!
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    I'd like to think they'd be phased out.
    Lots of Tory rural seats, though!
    I think that farming needs to weaned off subsidies. £2.5 bn a year is going to about 50,000 people. Even in rural constituencies, that means the number of affected voters is in the hundreds, not the thousands.
    I think you have to recognise the social cost of that. If farming subsidies are removed hill farming, for example, will simply cease and very significant parts of our country will become uncultivated. This may sound idyllic in some ways but the gradual collapse of fence lines, pathways, access and roadways together with the loss of many, many villages would affect many of us.

    I think good progress has been made in recent times in paying farmers to be custodians of the countryside rather than simply being focussed on maximum production. Protection of hedgerows is a good example of that. I think that these things should be encouraged. Subsidies paid to the monoculture plains of eastern England with massive fields is much harder to justify.
    Its housing we're short of not marginal agricultural land.

    And those villages which see their shops / schools / bus routes close because of a lack of use would benefit from additional residents.
    Sure, but if you do not protect employment in agriculture what are those people in those villages going to do for employment? If I look across Angus, for example, much of the employment is at least indirectly related to farming, much of it fairly marginal. Its not just the farms, its the vets, the contractors, the machinery suppliers etc etc.
    That will be a problem for Holyrood so I'll let you and Divvie and Malcy discuss that.

    Such extreme rural isolationism is a much smaller problem in congested England.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,961
    edited June 2018

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    I would suggest petty personal rivalries. Who is most associated with the 350 million for the NHS? Who was potentially the biggest leadership rival to May? If a challenge was made the claim against that person would always be "He lied over 350mill for the NHS, you can not trust him."
    Also this was at the point when they thought May had a big lead in the polls.
    I can thoroughly believe that was the reason, given the people that May had advising her. Of course, it was just stupid to be paranoid about Boris - a big May win in June 2017 would have been the very best thing to keep Boris from Number 10.

    Why are so many people in politics shit at it?
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    Phase them out and replace with making it easier to redesignate agricultural land for industrial and residential development.
    https://twitter.com/PJTheEconomist/status/1008256589051170818
    Except that the public finances have clearly not been weakened - they've been tens of billions better than the official bodies said they would be. Which makes a change from being hundreds of billions worse than the official bodies said they would be up to 2016.

    And isn't that the same Paul Johnson who predicted a stock market collapse if Leave won ?
    Saw him on the Sunday Politics. Quoting the OBR as gospel isn't the smartest move.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776

    Nigelb said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    RoyalBlue said:

    An unusually poor thread header from Mr Meeks.

    Anybody who thinks a particular header is "poor" should have a go at writing one. I have and it's not easy to do once never mind repeatedly.
    Agreed.
    Disagreeing with something does not make it ‘poor’.

    The good thing about Mr Meeks' threaders are not just that they are thoughtful and well-written, but that they occasionally take positions that I would not expect from him, given his comments below the line.
    Mostly, they're very interesting and informative.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,544

    Tesla getting bad press again. Obviously we don't know the cause of the fire, but motor vehicles burst into flame for no apparent reason all the time. We usually put it down as "unexplained electrical fault" on the IRS.....
    Does Tesla have a particularly high number of car fires?

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/17/tesla-fire-video-mary-mccormack-california

    I'm unsure we have enough data to tell, or particularly amongst the sector Tesla compete in.

    Tesla cars have only been going for a few years, particularly in the 'mass' market, and therefore statistical information on crashes and the like are difficult to discern. In addition, I'm guessing that Teslas tend to be newer cars than the average on the road, and that the older a car is, the more likely it is to spontaneously combust. I'm also guessing that Teslas cover less mileage than equivalent 'luxury' cars.

    One thing I'd like to know: as a a fireman, have you been trained on the 'correct' way to tackle accidents in electric cars, both to isolate the batteries and how to tackle fires in the battery packs?
    Yeah, we have. We have a good relationship with a number of dealers who have been happy to walk us through battery isolation and any hazards we should be wary of. There has actually been a lot of joined up thinking about the problems posed by electric vehicles. Mobile Data Terminals on the pumps (when they work....) have full Crashdata on pretty much every vehicle on the road that will give us an exploded diagram of what is where (Modern vehicles often have more than one battery so they can power FaceBook and Spotify).
    Modern high end cars burn very well, and take a bit of putting out. I didn't go to it, but one crew spent 5 hours trying to put a Mclaren supercar out when it caught fire at a testing day at a local airfield. The chief engineer even told them to go and get a cuppa while it burnt out, he said once it takes hold, it's done for and he'd never seen one saved yet!
    Thanks, that's interesting.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2018

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    I would suggest petty personal rivalries. Who is most associated with the 350 million for the NHS? Who was potentially the biggest leadership rival to May? If a challenge was made the claim against that person would always be "He lied over 350mill for the NHS, you can not trust him."
    Also this was at the point when they thought May had a big lead in the polls.
    I can thoroughly believe that was the reason, given the people that May had advising her. Of course, it was just stupid to be paranoid about Boris - a big May win in June 2017 would have been the very best thing to keep Boris from Number 10.

    Why are so many people in politics shit at it?
    Because most very smart people don't think getting into politics is the optimal move?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776

    Tesla getting bad press again. Obviously we don't know the cause of the fire, but motor vehicles burst into flame for no apparent reason all the time. We usually put it down as "unexplained electrical fault" on the IRS.....
    Does Tesla have a particularly high number of car fires?

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/17/tesla-fire-video-mary-mccormack-california

    I'm unsure we have enough data to tell, or particularly amongst the sector Tesla compete in.

    Tesla cars have only been going for a few years, particularly in the 'mass' market, and therefore statistical information on crashes and the like are difficult to discern. In addition, I'm guessing that Teslas tend to be newer cars than the average on the road, and that the older a car is, the more likely it is to spontaneously combust. I'm also guessing that Teslas cover less mileage than equivalent 'luxury' cars.

    One thing I'd like to know: as a a fireman, have you been trained on the 'correct' way to tackle accidents in electric cars, both to isolate the batteries and how to tackle fires in the battery packs?
    Yeah, we have. We have a good relationship with a number of dealers who have been happy to walk us through battery isolation and any hazards we should be wary of. There has actually been a lot of joined up thinking about the problems posed by electric vehicles. Mobile Data Terminals on the pumps (when they work....) have full Crashdata on pretty much every vehicle on the road that will give us an exploded diagram of what is where (Modern vehicles often have more than one battery so they can power FaceBook and Spotify).
    Modern high end cars burn very well, and take a bit of putting out. I didn't go to it, but one crew spent 5 trying to put a Mclaren supercar out when it caught fire at a testing day at a local airfield. The chief engineer even told them to go and get a cuppa while it burnt out, he said once it takes hold, it's done for and he'd never seen one saved yet!
    I had a pretty exciting time with my Audi A4 burning out by the side of the road a few months ago. Some of your colleagues spent a fair amount of time putting it out. A lot of the aluminium burnt.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,961

    Sean_F said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    The tories can't win a bidding war with JC on the NHS. If they promise 350m/week he'll promise 700m and a soapy tit wank. He gives even less of a fuck about spending money than May (and that's saying something). I'm not entirely convinced he knows what money is. He's spent his entire life being rich and doing horseshit non jobs.

    They don't need to win a bidding war. The NHS will always be an issue on which Labour leads. The Tories just need to ensure that the NHS is not the voters' main priority.
    The Tories will obviously link their ability to invest in the NHS to prudent stewardship of the economy, and contrast that with Corbyn's recklessness and naivety.

    I think there's some mileage in that.
    Interesting that May has signed up to the Brexit bonus on the NHS. Rather means she has to deliver Brexit to deliver the NHS....
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,776

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    https://twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!
    I'd like to think they'd be phased out.
    Lots of Tory rural seats, though!
    I think that farming needs to weaned off subsidies. £2.5 bn a year is going to about 50,000 people. Even in rural constituencies, that means the number of affected voters is in the hundreds, not the thousands.
    I think you have to recognise the social cost of that. If farming subsidies are removed hill farming, for example, will simply cease and very significant parts of our country will become uncultivated. This may sound idyllic in some ways but the gradual collapse of fence lines, pathways, access and roadways together with the loss of many, many villages would affect many of us.

    I think good progress has been made in recent times in paying farmers to be custodians of the countryside rather than simply being focussed on maximum production. Protection of hedgerows is a good example of that. I think that these things should be encouraged. Subsidies paid to the monoculture plains of eastern England with massive fields is much harder to justify.
    Its housing we're short of not marginal agricultural land.

    And those villages which see their shops / schools / bus routes close because of a lack of use would benefit from additional residents.
    Sure, but if you do not protect employment in agriculture what are those people in those villages going to do for employment? If I look across Angus, for example, much of the employment is at least indirectly related to farming, much of it fairly marginal. Its not just the farms, its the vets, the contractors, the machinery suppliers etc etc.
    That will be a problem for Holyrood so I'll let you and Divvie and Malcy discuss that.

    Such extreme rural isolationism is a much smaller problem in congested England.
    I agree and, almost returning to topic, it is a good example of why agricultural policy should be dealt with in a devolved way once we have a clear rule book in which to operate.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    People seem to be forgetting that the Tory manifesto last year was not about winning votes. They were certain they were going to win a huge majority purely thanks to Corbyn, so the manfiesto was entirely about giving themselves licence to do whatever they want. They certainly didn't want to tie themselves into big spending commitments.
    There's a lesson there.
    Indeed. To a certain degree I'm glad the the lesson was learned then and we still ended up in government. I can imagine a similar campaign in 2020 would go even worse than 2017.
  • MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,921

    Sean_F said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    The tories can't win a bidding war with JC on the NHS. If they promise 350m/week he'll promise 700m and a soapy tit wank. He gives even less of a fuck about spending money than May (and that's saying something). I'm not entirely convinced he knows what money is. He's spent his entire life being rich and doing horseshit non jobs.

    They don't need to win a bidding war. The NHS will always be an issue on which Labour leads. The Tories just need to ensure that the NHS is not the voters' main priority.
    The Tories will obviously link their ability to invest in the NHS to prudent stewardship of the economy, and contrast that with Corbyn's recklessness and naivety.

    I think there's some mileage in that.
    Interesting that May has signed up to the Brexit bonus on the NHS. Rather means she has to deliver Brexit to deliver the NHS....
    It’s the ace that Remainers can’t argue is a 3.....
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,756
    edited June 2018
    Foxy said:


    This WHO report on Glasgow may be what you are looking for:

    http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/10/11-021011/en/

    A report with a slightly different slant suggests that a significant element of the Glasgow Effect (eg higher mortality than comparable cities Liverpool & Manchester) was based on a deliberate policy of moving the young and economically viable out of the city, leaving the hopeless cases to their their own devices. Glasgow was designated a declining city, which in the circumstances would tend to be a self fulfilling prophecy.

    'History, politics and vulnerability: explaining excess mortality'

    https://tinyurl.com/yd9eslyt
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:


    What’s going to happen to farm subsidies if we’ve spent all the ‘saving’ on the NHS. Plus!!!

    I'd like to think they'd be phased out.
    Lots of Tory rural seats, though!
    I think that farming needs to weaned off subsidies. £2.5 bn a year is going to about 50,000 people. Even in rural constituencies, that means the number of affected voters is in the hundreds, not the thousands.
    I think you have to recognise the social cost of that. If farming subsidies are removed hill farming, for example, will simply cease and very significant parts of our country will become uncultivated. This may sound idyllic in some ways but the gradual collapse of fence lines, pathways, access and roadways together with the loss of many, many villages would affect many of us.

    I think good progress has been made in recent times in paying farmers to be custodians of the countryside rather than simply being focussed on maximum production. Protection of hedgerows is a good example of that. I think that these things should be encouraged. Subsidies paid to the monoculture plains of eastern England with massive fields is much harder to justify.
    Its housing we're short of not marginal agricultural land.

    And those villages which see their shops / schools / bus routes close because of a lack of use would benefit from additional residents.
    Sure, but if you do not protect employment in agriculture what are those people in those villages going to do for employment? If I look across Angus, for example, much of the employment is at least indirectly related to farming, much of it fairly marginal. Its not just the farms, its the vets, the contractors, the machinery suppliers etc etc.
    That will be a problem for Holyrood so I'll let you and Divvie and Malcy discuss that.

    Such extreme rural isolationism is a much smaller problem in congested England.
    I agree and, almost returning to topic, it is a good example of why agricultural policy should be dealt with in a devolved way once we have a clear rule book in which to operate.
    All the extra responsibilities in farming, fisheries and the environment should certainly be devolved.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,776

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a ye

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    I would suggest petty personal rivalries. Who is most associated with the 350 million for the NHS? Who was potentially the biggest leadership rival to May? If a challenge was made the claim against that person would always be "He lied over 350mill for the NHS, you can not trust him."
    Also this was at d in the polls.
    I can thoroughly believe that was the reason, given the people that May had advising her. Of course, it was just stupid to be paranoid about Boris - a big May win in June 2017 would have been the very best thing to keep Boris from Number 10.

    Why are so many people in politics shit at it?
    Because politics is very difficult to do well. To be really good at it, you need to have a clear vision, a good grasp of detail (but without getting bogged down in detail), excellent inter-personal skills, knowing when to delegate and when to do the job oneself, the ability to know when to stand firm and when to compromise, and to be a fine judge of character. How many people have that skillset?
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    MaxPB said:

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    People seem to be forgetting that the Tory manifesto last year was not about winning votes. They were certain they were going to win a huge majority purely thanks to Corbyn, so the manfiesto was entirely about giving themselves licence to do whatever they want. They certainly didn't want to tie themselves into big spending commitments.
    There's a lesson there.
    Indeed. To a certain degree I'm glad the the lesson was learned then and we still ended up in government. I can imagine a similar campaign in 2020 would go even worse than 2017.
    The freezing of the student debt repayment level together with the increases in tuition fees would have been an absolute middle class vote killer by 2020.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883


    Modern high end cars burn very well, and take a bit of putting out. I didn't go to it, but one crew spent 5 hours trying to put a Mclaren supercar out when it caught fire at a testing day at a local airfield.

    At every trackday I've been to where one or more McLarens have been present one of more of them have overheated. I saw someone remove the coolant filler cap of a 675LT at Spa and the pressure blew it over the fence. They are fast af though, my track pig 996 can't live with any model of Macca on the track.
  • DavidL said:

    Tesla getting bad press again. Obviously we don't know the cause of the fire, but motor vehicles burst into flame for no apparent reason all the time. We usually put it down as "unexplained electrical fault" on the IRS.....
    Does Tesla have a particularly high number of car fires?

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/17/tesla-fire-video-mary-mccormack-california

    I'm unsure we have enough data to tell, or particularly amongst the sector Tesla compete in.

    Tesla cars have only been going for a few years, particularly in the 'mass' market, and therefore statistical information on crashes and the like are difficult to discern. In addition, I'm guessing that Teslas tend to be newer cars than the average on the road, and that the older a car is, the more likely it is to spontaneously combust. I'm also guessing that Teslas cover less mileage than equivalent 'luxury' cars.

    One thing I'd like to know: as a a fireman, have you been trained on the 'correct' way to tackle accidents in electric cars, both to isolate the batteries and how to tackle fires in the battery packs?
    Yeah, we have. We have a good relationship with a number of dealers who have been happy to walk us through battery isolation and any hazards we should be wary of. There has actually been a lot of joined up thinking about the problems posed by electric vehicles. Mobile Data Terminals on the pumps (when they work....) have full Crashdata on pretty much every vehicle on the road that will give us an exploded diagram of what is where (Modern vehicles often have more than one battery so they can power FaceBook and Spotify).
    Modern high end cars burn very well, and take a bit of putting out. I didn't go to it, but one crew spent 5 trying to put a Mclaren supercar out when it caught fire at a testing day at a local airfield. The chief engineer even told them to go and get a cuppa while it burnt out, he said once it takes hold, it's done for and he'd never seen one saved yet!
    I had a pretty exciting time with my Audi A4 burning out by the side of the road a few months ago. Some of your colleagues spent a fair amount of time putting it out. A lot of the aluminium burnt.
    The various exotic alloys in modern cars make for pretty flames, and it isn't unusual to see the molten metal running down the road. I know a local artist who has used the shapes formed when it solidifies in some sculptures.
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    Sean_F said:



    Because politics is very difficult to do well. To be really good at it, you need to have a clear vision, a good grasp of detail (but without getting bogged down in detail), excellent inter-personal skills, knowing when to delegate and when to do the job oneself, the ability to know when to stand firm and when to compromise, and to be a fine judge of character. How many people have that skillset?

    And to be willing to subject yourself and your family to intense media scrutiny 24/7.
  • StereotomyStereotomy Posts: 4,092

    Theresa May has very clearly and unambiguously adopted the £350 million a week meme, and linked it to Brexit, in this clip:

    twitter.com/MarrShow/status/1008269978116579329

    She seems happier than I've seen here in a long time to be sharing 'good news'. Personally, I don't think it's going to show up much in the polls, but it probably removes at least one major millstone from around the neck of the Tories for GE2022.

    I imagine she would have saved herself a hell of a lot of stress if the Tories had announced his policy as part of the GE campaign last year....
    What's brilliant about it is that her political opponents, and the anti-Brexiteers, are just about to do all the hard work for her, by plastering it all over social media and TV interviews again where they'll claim it has nothing to do with Brexit, and the bus was a fraud etc.

    Thereby, ensuring everyone hears and knows about the Government's policy.

    Most people don't know, don't care, and don't understand, the inner intricacies of Government finance. They just want more investment in the NHS. They will conclude this extra money has *something* to do with Brexit, perhaps not the extent claimed, but, still, something, because our net payments to the EU will go down, and that on the NHS will go up.

    She's been convinced that what worked for Cummings, Gove and Johnson 2 years ago could work for her now. And it probably will.
    Why the hell the Tories didn't realize this a year ago is beyond me. They could have announced say £200m a week more (in the very small print by 2022) and tied it to Brexit bonus and then also have been able to let Boris out of the cupboard to do what he does best which whip up support among particular demographics.

    Instead all the health related news was the Tories will nick the home of your parents if they lose their marbles.
    People seem to be forgetting that the Tory manifesto last year was not about winning votes. They were certain they were going to win a huge majority purely thanks to Corbyn, so the manfiesto was entirely about giving themselves licence to do whatever they want. They certainly didn't want to tie themselves into big spending commitments.

    The manifesto was about burying Cameronism and defining Mayism. Problem was May had buried herself in the Home Office and never made the case over a number of years, that it came as a big shock to the people.
    I'm not sure it was about isms so much as individuals. May didn't want people like Boris or, especially, Cameroons, on board. She wanted the inevitable triumph to be hers alone
This discussion has been closed.