ml1dch

6 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

What swines. 

Well, you reap what you sow. 

48 minutes ago, Chindie said:

The very recently former home secretary. Big on conversation camps. The word removed.

At least the new one knows when he's doing something he shouldn't. Even if he then does it anyway.

7 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

the rest is Starmer.

Bloody Gary Lineker and his podcasts. 

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

You shouldn't have a state broadcaster endorsing products by running adverts for them.

Also, at the point that the precursor to the license fee was introduced via The Wireless Telegraphy Act 1904, TV advertising was, unsurprisingly not something that they'd considered. 

Happy anniversary

4 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

tbh I've only seen her before in After Life  ..  its on the writing though , not the actress 

Possibly a bigger issue, it's on the regulations rather than the writing. There was a change that meant that sort of programme now has to have the consent of the participants before they film. So whereas Ali G and its ilk was done "blind", all the Cunk stuff - everyone is in on the joke. 

Which renders the whole thing pretty pointless. 

7 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

Stafford, Labour are not the best locally. Dropping candidates in at the last minute, and then when they lose buggering off, we also have a refugee centre opening up in the town, that's gone down well. The MP has been vocally against it so thats helped.

The Electoral Calculus website (not an exact science, I know) seem to think that Labour should take it pretty comfortably.

4 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

For me its a cat in hells chance of anyone but the Tory, do I go back to Labour on the off chance they might just do it, or vote how I want and the Greens. Lib Dems here have zero chance, but Greens are gathering pace.

Which constituency are you in?

3 minutes ago, Genie said:

Is that adjusted for inflation? I just wonder how £140b then compares to £210b now.

No, that's in real terms. Percentage of GDP is the best indicator of whether spending on something is going up or down. Health is 18.3% compared to 16% back then. Debt interest is now 8.4% versus 4.5%.

Link if you're interested

Quote

What does the government spend money on?

28 minutes ago, desensitized43 said:

Where's all the money go?

In terms of "what is using up more tax money than it used to", interest payable on Government debt has doubled in the last fifteen years. The amount that it's increased by is more than the entire defence budget. Health is the other big one, hoovering up around £210bn per year now, compared to £140bn or so per year fifteen years ago.

58 minutes ago, bickster said:

My only thought as to why is rather odd, I remain to be convinced by it myself but maybe he's worried about the flow of votes from Tory to Reform and he's attempting to stem that flow by trying to attract the nutters to vote Labour. Makes no sense 

I don't think he's trying to attract any new voters. I think that the only real hope that the Tories now have (and it's really not much of one), is that something happens and they can find a way to make stick the idea of "yes, we've screwed up - but that lot? Brexit-hating, immigrant-loving, gold-selling, bacon sandwich-mangling, prosperity-stifling Labour? You might not like us, but you still need to hold your nose and come out and vote so that they don't ruin things even more"

This isn't trying to get people who would never vote Labour to vote Labour, it's trying to get people who would always vote Tory to not be scared into being desperate to keep Labour out. 

And as said previously, I don't think it'll really make a big difference. It's been all of what, three weeks since we were being told that Starmer had lost the votes of hundreds of thousands of Muslims over his Gaza stance - now that appears to be more or less forgotten and it's not made even a tiny dent on any opinion poll since.

I think I'm right in saying as well that any impact these changes have won't reflect in the official figures until after the next election anyway.

So there's a pretty good chance that Starmer ends up getting the "credit" for numbers going down.

73% of British people don't earn enough money to marry and live with a foreigner. 

5 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Thanks, yes I’m seeing lots of justification around what words mean when you truly analyse them. To me, that feels like the third option, slippery, rather than a fourth option. 

Being clumsy and being slippery are two different things though. I think if you'd said the latter, I'd have no issue with it. But it's not clumsy.

16 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

So a question to @blandy and @cyrusr would your opinion be that he is lying to people like me, to people that think Thatcher was a good thing, or that barrister is clumsy with his words? Or some other 4th option you can see that I can’t?

I think it's the fourth option. He's not explicitly saying that she was good or bad, he's talking in neutral terms. So he's not lying to you (here, anyway), and he's not lying to Sir Bufton-Tufton reading The Telegraph over his morning brandy. 

He's not being clumsy with his words, he's being pretty deliberate with them. He's framing Thatcher in the way that audience sees her, without really offering any opinion. Reassurance that he's Definitely Not Jeremy Corbyn, while not really saying anything at all. 

Whether it's good or bad politics (I've read convincing things from people saying both), I guess we wait and see what happens next year. As Blandy says, I don't think it'll really move the dial much either way. 

56 minutes ago, Jon said:

He's just following the Blair mantra. 

He's following the Cameron mantra. Pick the words that you need to say to make the voters that you need to switch, switch.

For Cameron it was saying a couple of nice things about Blair in The Guardian, for Starmer it's saying a couple of nice things about Thatcher in The Telegraph. 

3 hours ago, bickster said:

4. No one takes Andrea Loathesome seriously

Jenkins. Loathsome is back in the Government as some minor bag carrier in the Department of Health. 

So isn't sending anti-Sunak letters anywhere. 

24 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

This is from the Billy Elliot musical, and I'm surprised the Tory press didn't make more of it and have a go at EJ. 

I can only assume they had no interest in a load of woke, lefty rubbish about a boy wanting to be a dancer and are thus completely unaware of its existence. 

Mostly fun for hearing none-more-establisment Sir Reg describing Michael Heseltine as a Representative for Wellingborough.

On 30/11/2023 at 22:57, foreveryoung said:

Esther McVey on question time?? She's just bonkers, sounds like she don't even know her own job role.

 

She doesn't have a job role. It's a party management thing, not a governance thing. She's literally Minister For Defending Sunak From A Position On The Right Of The Party. Or as Stephen Bush puts it:

It doesn't sound like he's keen on a ceasefire.

4 hours ago, Seat68 said:

Her debut was Tim McGraw, a song that namechecks the country singer of the same name, country hits that followed, Love Story, Teardrops on my Guitar, through to Begin Again and Mean. She has had the odd song during her pop career that have gone to country radio but in recent years her activities have been well away from country music.

I'd say that Our Song is the quintessential, so-country-it's-virtually-pastiche Taylor Swift county song. 

11 minutes ago, Genie said:

It has been confirmed his stance was “it’s nothing to worry about, I’ll have it injected into me to prove how mild it is” so to then fake that it nearly killed him doesn’t quite add up.

If he’d faked getting it then someone close to him like Cummings, Hancock, Vallance, Whitty, NHS staff would have confirmed the lie by now.

It's also a bit flat-earthy, in that there doesn't seem to be any good reason why they'd lie about it. There was nothing in it for him personally for people to think he was ill when he wasn't, and it wouldn't have done anything to help his Government (who, lest we forget, were extremely popular at that point and not really in any need an imaginary boost through a fake illness) 

Also I find it very hard to believe that in his cosplaying Churchill / moment of crisis he'd have willingly handed over control of the country to Dominic Raab for no good reason when he was getting to be on telly every night being In Charge.

Helpful as ever Tone, thanks for the input.