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If there is a by-election in Blackpool South, it should be an easy gain for Labour: It's a borderline marginal-ish seat, with Labour needing a swing of less than 6% to take the seat.
Interesting. Looks like this one came to the fore during the spring but now things are properly percolating. I'd agree that there'd be a likely Labour win here but it's surprising there's been so little media pick up of this since April or May.
That's basically the argument that pumping money into the economy can itself cause output to increase. That's a plausible argument if you're in the situation of - say - the early 1980s when output is being depressed by a lack of liquidity (crudely, not enough money flowing around) and there is mass unemployment - people who want to and could be producing stuff but aren't. And that's the kind of thing I was referring to in my post when I mentioned (other in some special situations). But I don't think it's a plausible argument today when there is essentially full employment and there don't seem to be any liquidity issues. Who would you get to produce more stuff when we already have near-full employment amongst those who wish to work and are able to do so? In today's situation, pumping in more money can only lead to more inflation unless some action is taken to increase our capacity to produce stuff.
Yes, there's a good argument that Brexit is one of the things that has hit the UK's capacity to output. I don't think that changes the point that in order to improve people's standards of living, you have to produce more.
I was thinking more of the austerity years when unemployment was much higher. More recently, injecting money into the economy when the problem was lack of supply was the basic error of Liz Truss, and arguably means that interest rates aren't the best tool for tackling current levels of inflation.
If Brexit impacts "the UK's capacity to output" then it also impacts the ability to "produce more", which is essentially the same thing. Due to difficulties with import/export and labour shortages, many companies are moving work out of the UK to be able to continue to service the EU market, reducing British jobs, income and taxes
There are suggestions that they've been forcing people to bunch together so that the official photos make the rooms look more packed than they really are
Shades of one of the cameron era election campaigns where they parked the bus in a way to avoid showing a mostly empty barn in Cornwall
Enjoying the levels of lunacy being observed at the first full day of the Tory conference. Liz Truss is currently talking at a fringe event so you already know the grand delusions are flowing nicely.
If Truss really wants to benefit the party she'd be well advised to keep very quiet, stay out of the limelight, and hope that by the time of the next election the electorate has forgotten just how incompetent she and her acolytes were.
Unfortunately I think that she's much more interested in herself than the party (or the country). I suspect her whole focus is getting on the same speaking circuit as Johnson, waffling to right wing groups around the world at £250k a time. Why anyone would pay anything to listen to the rubbish that either of them spout, I can't explain.
If Truss really wants to benefit the party she'd be well advised to keep very quiet, stay out of the limelight, and hope that by the time of the next election the electorate has forgotten just how incompetent she and her acolytes were.
Unfortunately I think that she's much more interested in herself than the party (or the country). I suspect her whole focus is getting on the same speaking circuit as Johnson, waffling to right wing groups around the world at £250k a time. Why anyone would pay anything to listen to the rubbish that either of them spout, I can't explain.
Have to admit I watched the speech. Quite short and quite pointless but one thing was pretty evident; there is now a sizeable contingent of Tories who are absolutely intent on following her to whatever happens after the next GE. Regardless of her colleagues and friends' opinions of her performance during those seven minutes as PM she's now the Pied Piper of Tufton St leading her ex colleagues and charges into the sewer. It's as if 2022 never happened.
Have to admit I watched the speech. Quite short and quite pointless but one thing was pretty evident; there is now a sizeable contingent of Tories who are absolutely intent on following her to whatever happens after the next GE. Regardless of her colleagues and friends' opinions of her performance during those seven minutes as PM she's now the Pied Piper of Tufton St leading her ex colleagues and charges into the sewer. It's as if 2022 never happened.
I have to come in here and say that Jeremy Hunt and his sanction the economically inactive who apparently choose to leave the workforce for a life on benefits while companies struggle for staff was quite possibly the most insulting thing I've heard in a long time
Mr Hunt is clearly oblivious of the fact that there are quite a number of us who would love nothing more than to make a worthwhile economic contribution to the country but our hampered by the fact that employers simply aren't interested in staff with additional health needs or disabilities or indeed anyone else who might be more than a tiny bit complicated to put and keep on the payroll. Sanctioning us simply won't help and is as much a form of bullying as the constant rejections from thousands of job seekers looking for work and being basically told to go take a running jump by companies big and small who can't be bothered with the hassle
And the equality and disability legislation that is in theory in place to protect us actually hampers us when it comes to the job market as employers have to tie themselves in a really elaborate selection of knots to reject us for jobs when really what they want to say is sorry we don't want you because of your disability. It would be far easier and far more useful to people who have to provide evidence to work coaches or whatever to simply be told no we don't want you because of your disability and be able to have that in writing and show it to the powers that be who would then have to feed it back and some worthwhile change might take place, but there we go that's where we are
Ho hum
I haven't seen her speech, but I can imagine what it's like.
Political parties drive themselves into oblivion after a while; they get into power by reflecting the "national mood" but they're then isolated from it in a Westminster bubble, and increasingly get detached from reality.
So 1979, 1997, 2010 all came about in an inevitable way, and the party in power contributed to its own downfall.
I've said before that I think that Liz Truss is mentally unwell, I just can't see any rational explanation for her conviction in the face of all evidence that she's totally wrong. Boris doesn't believe a word he says, but she clearly does.
The whole party conference is going to be good for those of us who want rid of the Conservatives. I wanted rid of Labour in 2010, was very happy with the coalition, and wasn't too unhappy with Cameron winning the 2015 election. Since then, chaos. Except that it all happened pretty much as I expected with Boris Johnson.
But Liz Truss is bonkers, maybe actually so, but if not clearly of such an irrelevant opinion that she's going to harm her party. Her backers are clearly the same people who voted for her last year, but you don't win real elections on the back of that electorate.
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I have to come in here and say that Jeremy Hunt and his sanction the economically inactive who apparently choose to leave the workforce for a life on benefits while companies struggle for staff was quite possibly the most insulting thing I've heard in a long time
Mr Hunt is clearly oblivious of the fact that there are quite a number of us who would love nothing more than to make a worthwhile economic contribution to the country but our hampered by the fact that employers simply aren't interested in staff with additional health needs or disabilities or indeed anyone else who might be more than a tiny bit complicated to put and keep on the payroll. Sanctioning us simply won't help and is as much a form of bullying as the constant rejections from thousands of job seekers looking for work and being basically told to go take a running jump by companies big and small who can't be bothered with the hassle
And the equality and disability legislation that is in theory in place to protect us actually hampers us when it comes to the job market as employers have to tie themselves in a really elaborate selection of knots to reject us for jobs when really what they want to say is sorry we don't want you because of your disability. It would be far easier and far more useful to people who have to provide evidence to work coaches or whatever to simply be told no we don't want you because of your disability and be able to have that in writing and show it to the powers that be who would then have to feed it back and some worthwhile change might take place, but there we go that's where we are
Ho hum
I have a lot of sympathy for your views.
I had a stroke 10 years ago, almost exactly, and went back to work but for a couple of years, then I resigned. I was fortunate that I could live off my various savings. But work - public sector in this case - wasn't overly enthusiastic about me - I'd get hints that maybe I wasn't "up to it" because of my "condition".
I can only imagine that your situation is many times worse.
The quality of management in the UK makes me despair, I was only "good" at it because of the relative incompetence of many of my colleagues.
Most of us have to fall back on self-employment which is a hard game to play at the best of times but with the double blow of pandemic and economic turmoil which to be fair could quite easily have been on the watch of any of our political parties and indeed until I moved eight months ago was just that, I was under the thumb of the SNP, it's become even harder and there are many of us myself included who are now really struggling
I've always said to people that if you can't taste or smell you're all right unless of course your applying to be Gordon Ramsay's personal assistant, if you can't feel anything then you're still going to be okay. If you can't hear anything it provides challenges but far far more easily overcome, if you're in a real chair then the world is now pretty much geared up for you certainly in Britain, but if you can't see anything then you really are fighting the biggest of losing battles and the challenge to anyone to walk a mile in your shoes would result in most taking about five steps and giving up
It's worth considering what 'full employment' is in this case, I think it's poor to consider that as "everyone who wants a job has a job", as that suggests people who are over skilled for the role that they are working to their maximum potential, which is obviously untrue. The issue we face currently is that many highly skilled mining and manufacturing jobs have disappeared from the country, and have been replaced by low-skilled roles in industries like distribution; the investment should be focused accordingly to create more skilled (and more well paid, productive) jobs.
And at lower rates of pay whilst being more open to abuse and considerably less secure in general. It is a frustration of mine that the Tory party goes on at great length about how we have record low levels of unemployment when a) you do actually want some level of unemployment in an economy (just crucially, short term unemployment not people out of work for months or years) and more importantly b) a lot of those jobs are poor quality, low paid and low productivity. But then again actually doing something about that would be difficult and might mean that the wrong sort of people benefit from more of the economic pie.
This issue of full employment, disregarding temporarily whether people are fulfilling their complete potential or otherwise, then rather contradicts this stance that they're taking of being extremely hard line on those who are not in employment and in many cases these will be on grounds of health or disability, I have a certain degree of sympathy for the fact that they might try and target older members of the workforce who downed tools during the pandemic and have been unwilling depict them up again but there's obviously two different messages being fed to us here, the one that says we have such low unemployment that all is great and the other that says the those who aren't employed are the absolute scum and should be sanctioned to within an inch of our lives, somebody untangle these and develop a clear messaging strategy please and I suspect that if you ask other political parties the same question they would struggle with it too
This issue of full employment, disregarding temporarily whether people are fulfilling their complete potential or otherwise, then rather contradicts this stance that they're taking of being extremely hard line on those who are not in employment and in many cases these will be on grounds of health or disability, I have a certain degree of sympathy for the fact that they might try and target older members of the workforce who downed tools during the pandemic and have been unwilling depict them up again but there's obviously two different messages being fed to us here, the one that says we have such low unemployment that all is great and the other that says the those who aren't employed are the absolute scum and should be sanctioned to within an inch of our lives, somebody untangle these and develop a clear messaging strategy please and I suspect that if you ask other political parties the same question they would struggle with it too
The trouble is that the mysterious people leaving the workforce during the pandemic were largely people who could take early retirement, or who are able to support themselves through savings or partners income. You can't make up for those people by taking an ever bigger stick to the people who are structurally stuck on benefits.
Unfortunately they have spent 13 years crafting a system where doctors and other experts are considered to be filthy liars. The only people now considered able to give an assessment of fitness to work are random office-based goons from Capita. Thet are incentivised to claim that everybody in front of them could certainly work as a tap dancer if they'd only stop shirking and get out of the wheelchair.
All that happens is that the people caught up in this will waste half their life sending out the applications because they don't want to get sanctioned, employers will wonder why they get and have to bin 8000 applications from manifestly unqualified people for every job, and aside from the wasted time and paper all the same people will get benefits.
You can't spend 13 years deliberately building a system around lies, and then start musing about why you have books full of theoretically capable people not working.
I have to come in here and say that Jeremy Hunt and his sanction the economically inactive who apparently choose to leave the workforce for a life on benefits while companies struggle for staff was quite possibly the most insulting thing I've heard in a long time
Not heard it but is he channeling 1992 Peter Lilley?
Either way, Hunt is a smarmy waste of space. The ex-Remainer who then compared the EU to the Soviet Union, something which I doubt even Farage ever said. A man who will do anything and say anything to advance his career, it seems, and a man completely lacking in principles.
I caught wind of Farage's comments during the Today programme this morning, aligning GB News' burgeoning influence over Conservative members with the next leadership campaign. What a surprise. Can quite easily see him becoming a member of the post-GE Tories in opposition as they try to woo the slightly more right-wing elements of the membership.
I caught wind of Farage's comments during the Today programme this morning, aligning GB News' burgeoning influence over Conservative members with the next leadership campaign. What a surprise. Can quite easily see him becoming a member of the post-GE Tories in opposition as they try to woo the slightly more right-wing elements of the membership.
I thought much the same when I saw his mug on the news yesterday, and that he'll go a step further and run for leader. There's really no other reason he would be at the conference other than to angle for a post-election leadership run. Good news for Labour if he's successful, a Farage led Conservative party has about as much chance of winning a GE as a Corbyn led Labour party.
I caught wind of Farage's comments during the Today programme this morning, aligning GB News' burgeoning influence over Conservative members with the next leadership campaign. What a surprise. Can quite easily see him becoming a member of the post-GE Tories in opposition as they try to woo the slightly more right-wing elements of the membership.
why go through all that hassle and hard work to get elected and become a party big wig? it is SO boring. He has more influence as a gobsh sorry influencer and "commentator"
why go through all that hassle and hard work to get elected and become a party big wig? it is SO boring. He has more influence as a gobsh sorry influencer and "commentator"
BBC quoting Philip Davies (Tory MP for Shipley) as wanting the northern bit of HS2 scrapped and that "the original purpose of the project was to act as a high speed rail link between Heathrow Airport and Leeds and Manchester". Who knew?
And this is utterly bonkers, given Sunak is a money man and was chancellor:
And he says halving inflation - one of his five priorities - is the "best tax cut I can deliver. The numbers are improving and we've just got to see it through and deliver it and it will make a big difference to everyone's wallets," he tells our political editor Chris Mason.
A tax cut gives people more money than they had before.
Halving inflation means you have the same amount of money and the stuff you want to buy is only increasing in price half as quickly as it was before
Does anybody believe the utter garbage these people come out with?
And at that, halving inflation from where it was when he made the pledge would still leave it running at over 5% - more than double the government's normal target.
Some of the daftest scenes from any Tory conference for as long as I can recall. Braverman is a frootloop and anyone who even quietly mutters dissent is frogmarched from the venue?
well she did wheel out all of the classics. to me it genuinely felt spooky when she decided to say "islamic terrorism" and punctuate it with a stare and silence.
I think the heckler getting manhandled out by police (now known to be a Tory elected official no less) will do a lot to overshadow anything she said, though.
