Remember this from exactly a year ago?
June 3rd, 2010Did his dithering blow Labour’s election chances?
The first Thursday in June exactly a year ago was one of the most significant days in the history of the Labour government when one man, David Miliband, had to make probably the toughest call of his political career.
Should he join the Works and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell, who resigned at precisely 10pm as soon as voting in that day’s local and EU elections came to an end or should he stay and support Gordon?
The atmosphere was electric and all eyes were on him? Would he join and would two high profile departures combined with Labour’s terrible election performance on that day cause the PM to step aside.
For looking back there was never a better chance for a rebellion against Mr. Brown to succeed but, not for the first time, Miliband held back and the rest, as they say, is history.
Given Labour’s polling performance since Brown’s departure then there’s a good argument for saying that the general election outcome could have been different if he had stepped aside a year ago.
It didn’t happen. Labour lost and now Mili-D is hot favourite for the leadership. Could, I wonder, his decision to back Brown a year ago become a leadership election issue? It certainly says a lot about the man because you wonder whether he’s got the killer instinct.
Mike Smithson
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A ditherer is hardly the man to rebuild a party
I remember it well because I thought I had the political scoop of the year.
Watched the news in the morning, no news of the Foreign Sec joining Purnell. Go to vote at 9am, and my polling station is near the Foreign Sec’s house - he normally had 2 armed policemen outside at all times.
As I left the polling station I decided to go to London Zoo (how nice to be old enough to vote, yet young enough to enjoy the zoo), passed his house and…. no police officers outside, for the first time in my experience.
I thought he had resigned, thus the guard had been withdrawn, but that the news had yet to break. I walked towards the house, considering whether breaking the story on Twitter would be even better for a TwitPic of the unattended front door or whether that was an unacceptable breach of privacy.
Just as I thought the story was made, I realised that the police officers were across the street in the shade…
My political party has particular cause to regret MiliBlair’s dithering.
Yes - he blew it. If he becomes leader, he will blow it again and again. He probably won’t win the leadership anyway.
‘PUP leader Dawn Purvis quits after Bobby Moffett murder’
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/pup-leader-dawn-purvis-quits-after-bobby-moffett-murder-14829132.html#ixzz0plCrckie
Purvis is the MLA (Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly)
for Belfast East.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_Purvis
Great anecdote, Morus! It just goes to show that one mustn’t jump to conclusions, just for the sake of a scoop.
I have blogged the (very) occasional scoop, but only when I have been as confident as I reasonably could be about its authenticity. In future I shall certainly remember to check nearby shady areas in the summer months, when expecting to find someone apparently absent…
Another non-event in the squalid history of the Mandelson project.
Thank God they are all now in the dustbin of history, remember them?
Fatty Clark, Communist Reid, Two Jags, Irving and Falconer [snobby pair,]the nasty Ann Taylor [up Blair's wotsit,] Trougher Hoon, Trougher Byers, David [from far left to far right] Blunkett, Ron [toilets] Davis, Jack the Lad Cunningham, Gus Macdonald, and the unspeakable Blair and himself Gordon Brown.
To think that such a bunch of right-wing statist bandits were put in charge of a whole country and lauded it about on the international stage attempting to behave as though they made a difference.
The Three-fold Legacy:
Iraq and the blood of hundreds of thousands on their hands.
Orwellian Britain. George got the wrong year but the right outcome.
The sale of UK plc to the highest capitalist bidder who wanted a peerage or a big favour.
But to be positive; Thatcherism finally dead and buried and the corpse of NuLabour hung out for all to see. I trust that we shall never see their like again….and yet………..
Malcolm, you seem to have forgotten by far the most important element of the New Labour legacy - ‘there’s no money left’.
More Lib/Con splits in Europe, as the EU ponders creating a massive new state-owned enterprise. I thought that Conservatives were in favour of private ownership of enterprises? Maggie fans will be absolutely delighted, I’m sure.
‘Europe launches credit ratings offensive’
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article7142915.ece
Note: Danny Alexander is the former Director of Communications of the European Movement and Britain in Europe. I wonder if his boss George Osborne also supports the aims of those organisations?
I’m also fascinated that you associate the following with being ‘right wing’:
1. Conducting an illegal war
2. Statist auhoritarianism
Erm….since when did righties have a monopoly on waging wars? And on authoritarianism - surely you jest? That is leftyism, commieism, socialism to its very core.
OT, most of the main DPJ players endorsing Naoto Kan today.
DPJ party election, Diet vote for new PM and announcement of the new Cabinet all planned for tomorrow.
My word the EU is clueless isn’t it? They don’t like credit rating agencies telling the truth - so they’ll go and create one of their own which will paint a nicer picture. Can’t see any train wrecks being stored up with that approach. Oh no. And I’m sure the markets will completely ignore the difference betwen what S&P says vs what Eurorosy says. FFS! We are governed by children.
Is this to make way for Charlie Kennedy’s bid to move to the Scottish Parliament? Stone is only 55, suspiciously young for retiring.
‘Liberal Democrat MSP Jamie Stone to stand down’
http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Liberal-Democrat-MSP-Jamie-Stone.6336084.jp
Ross, Skye and Inverness West would have been a more natural bet for Kennedy (John Farquhar Munro MSP is retiring), but the Lib Dems have already selected Alan MacRae (37) to contest the seat in the next Scottish Parliament elections.
http://www.highlandlibdems.org.uk/news/000073/macrae_chosen_to_campaign_for_ross_skye__inverness_west.html
‘What more powers for the Scottish Parliament might look like’
http://politics.caledonianmercury.com/2010/06/02/what-more-powers-for-the-scottish-parliament-might-look-like/
Patrick @ 12
The next obvious step is for the EU to set rates and make it mandatory for investors to loan them the money at those rates. That way you don’t need to deal with investors ignoring Eurorosy.
15 I don’t believe a single one of the muppets running the EU or the Eurozone countries has a damned clue how financial markets work. Which is a shame since they need to borrow hundreds of billions a year from those very same markets. This is lifestyle and future destroying naivete on an unacceptable scale.
Surely the way to make money in markets is to bet correctly when the ratings agencies are a) Wrong and b) Are about to change their minds to your way of thinking.
Final Seven Days For MP’s Nominations…….
…..and “plenty of opportunity for all six candidates to be nominated” :
As of 2 June there were still just over 100 MPs who had yet to nominate any of the candidates for the leadership election. There are 72 “spaces to fill” so, in theory, if MPs were to work in concert with each other, there is still plenty of opportunity for all six candidates to be nominated. This is the express wish of activists through several letters to national newspapers, internet campaigns, Facebook groups, etc. But are MPs likely to oblige?
Who Might Nominate Andy Burnham [he needs 15 more MPs]?
Of those yet to nominate, are there 15 who might nominate Andy Burnham? It is difficult to pinpoint precisely what Burnham’s political position within the party is, as he has been bound by collective responsibility for most of his time as an MP. He has won the support of a diverse range of MPs thus far, including controversial figures like Hazel Blears and David Blunkett. As such it would be hard to rule out any of the remaining MPs from backing Burnham. He is perhaps the candidate most likely to receive nominations from David Miliband supporters convinced of the need to broaden the field.
Ones to watch out for: Phil Woolas and Sean Woodward would appear to fit the bill, in so far as a bill can be perceived!
http://news.suite101.com/article.cfm/labour-leadership-election-final-seven-days-for-mps-nominations-a243755
Robert Hill : “it looked unlikely that the candidates of the left – John McDonnell and Dianne Abbott – would get enough signatures.”
The four main candidates have all made a point of saying that the party needs to listen to the electorate and reconnect with voters. Housing, immigration and welfare reform are the areas they cite as examples of where the outgoing government failed to listen sufficiently to ordinary people’s concerns.
….A key battleground area between the candidates will be the future role of government and the state. Labour did much to promote personalisation of public services, but rarely talked about it.
Will the party take the ideas of bottom-up personal entitlements, community empowerment and social entrepreneurship, and use them to tackle inequality and promote social mobility?
Or will it stick with a more statist top-down approach to public services and social justice? Just how pluralist and radical is the party prepared to become?
Other big issues to be debated will include whether the party still sees work as the main route out of poverty, the future of the economy – where Lord Mandelson had latterly adopted a strategy which was far less reliant on the financial sector for generating the country’s wealth – housing, environmental policy and the nuclear deterrent.
Labour will also have the opportunity to champion further constitutional reform – leading the campaign for the alternative vote (AV) in the referendum promised by the coalition, and for a completely reformed second chamber.
There are also those suggesting that, as the party did in Scotland, Labour, south of the border, should argue for voting reform in local government.
http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=89319&layout=2
“Does Ed Miliband have greatest southern appeal?”
http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/26389/20100602/labour-leadership-race-does-ed-miliband-have-greatest-southern-appeal.htm
Patrick @12 et al, the credit ratings agencies didn’t exactly distinguish themselves when the financial institutions were busy taking a bunch of dodgy loan, bundling them up together and saying they weren’t dodgy any more. I don’t think it’s excessively cynical to say that this may be connected with the fact that they were being funded by the companies they were supposed to be rating.
The failure of these agencies cost us all a fortune. They need regulating and shaking up.
If this move by the EU really was a plan to work around the markets not trusting EU governments, it would be an incredibly crap one since, as you say, the markets would see right through it.
The Eurozone financial crisis explained…
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/06/post_55.html
21 I’m fully agreed that the agencies haven’t covered themselves in glory. And indeed the issue is that they were never nearly hard enough on rating assets as they should have done. The direction is always, apparently, to overrate. Eurorosy’s sole raison d’etre appears to be to exacerbate that distortion.
I think Moody’s , Fitch and S&P have learnt their lessons and will get some tougher regulation from Washington. Accuracy and credibility are all. Eurorosy would be a laughing stock from the day it was formed.
What we’re really seeing here is some sort of denial from EU leaders that the true value of a financial asset is precisely no more or less than what someone else is prepared to pay for it. No wonder the whole western world is circling the bowl if this is the sort of brainpower we have running the place.
David Miliband = LO0ooooooooooooooooo0OL!!!!
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA!!!
The Summer is back!
I remember the Car Crash News Conference and Reshuffle.
What surprises me is how so many Labour voters seem to forget that, come to think about it other voters who are not Labour supporters.
I think when we look back to the election result it just reconfirms that the country as a whole were pissed off with the way things had gone and so made a Conservative/Liberal Coalition the only viable solution.
Patrick @23:
…those lessons being “Do what you like, in the end everyone gets bailed out…
Yeah, that’ll work. The financial firms funding both the ratings agencies and numerous members of the US House and Senate just love the idea of more regulation…
21. “the credit ratings agencies didn’t exactly distinguish themselves when the financial institutions were busy taking a bunch of dodgy loan, bundling them up together and saying they weren’t dodgy any more.”
Someone posted a link here that I didn’t bookmark and can’t find, but it explained that the ratings agencies weren’t quite as evil as it appears.
Essentially the ratings were based on a false assumption of just how many people couldn’t pay their loans back.
Imagine the bank lent 100 people mortgages, who were then expected to send payments every month.
The bank bundled those repayments into 3 groups and sold them on. Only 1 group was AAA, and was based on “the first 3rd of payments each month”. As long as a 3rd of the borrowers made their repayments, the AAA products were good.
Sadly, even a 3rd of borrowers repaying their loans proved to be optimistic.
26 I think you’ll find that the asset management industry worldwide will be delighted to have credit ratings that reliably reflect the underlying risks. You seem to think that it is in the rating agencies’ own best interests to get the ratings wrong. I don’t.
10 That is one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever read. EU governments blame the messenger, so try to bring a new messenger into existence to tell them what they want to hear.
Patrick @28:
Partially, yes. Or rather, I think it’s in the rating agencies’ best interests to strike a balance between getting their ratings right and satisfying the people who are paying them to come up with the ratings.
Mandelson seems to think New Labour should live on - I dont think he realises how dispised New Labour has become. The values Mandelson attributes to new Labour to me were never apparant nor achieved does he really think Labour achieved “a strong economy, social justice and high-quality public services”
or “Labour not being a party of class or sectional interest, but about being a broad-based party of conscience and reform” 
or “Open, not tribal. Pluralist, not statist” 
Mandelson is an utter joke if he thinks those three quotes are what Labour achieved in office - I would say they achieved the reverse and ‘New Labour’ values are rooted in party/ trade union interests not National interest. Still Labour insist on distilling and diseminating into the media propoganda that is counter to what their evil regieme has done to this country.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7142863.ece
Is there any requirement, regulatory or otherwise, that requires an investor to use (or to believe) a credit rating agency?
Comment in moderation!!!!
I was certain that Gordon Brown would go as a result of that night..but then Milliband backed the PM giving him another lease of life.
31 YES! Banks are required to keep collateral / capital at ‘investment grade’. If a debt instrument gets downgraded below investment then it no longer counts as part of the bank’s tier 1 capital and so, to maintain capital adequacy at the regulated level, these sub-investment grade assets suddenly become wholly unattractive things to hold - and come under intense selling pressure (witness Greek sovereign debt when they were downgraded).
The rating of particularly sovereign debt (but also to a lesser extent corporate debt) is hugely important.
34 Fine, thanks Patrick. Then why not just “mark to market” with a suitable haircut, like they do in equities markets? Relying on someone else to say “Ths bond is Good, but that bond is Bad” strikes me as an odd way to run an investment strategy.
Doesn’t anyone outside the internet understand the acronym “DYOR”?
35.ezekiel June 3rd, 2010 at 6:59 am
it would have made a good piece or art work: Maybe I should have stopped got a shovel and sold it to the National/Tate modern or Saatchi galleries! 
Miliband is gutless - It has to be said he has a backbone that reminds me of a dead fox I once saw on a motorway. I will never forget its body was flattened to a pulp but its head was still in tact!
More to the point I cannot understand why Brown wanted to stay on as PM when it was so obvious he was not upto the job. I watched PMQs yesterday with my mum and we both thought Cameron was much better than Brown ever had been at PMQs as PM. The press seem to have given Cameron a good write up as well, though I am amused by some of the ‘*F*cked in the head*’ comments in the times commons commentary - talking about Clegg as Camerons wife etc!
Mandelson seems to think New Labour should live on - I dont think he realises how dispised New Labour has become. The valu€s Mandelson attributes to new Labour to me were never apparant nor achieved does he really think Labour achi€ved “a str0ng ec0n0my, soc1al just1ce and h1gh-qual1ty publ1c serv1ces” or “Labour not being a p@rty of cl@ss or sect1onal 1nt€rest, but about being a bro@d-b@sed p@rty of consc1ence and r€form” or “Open, not tr1bal. Plural1st, not stat1st”
Mandelson is an utter joke if he thinks those three quotes are what Labour achieved in off1ce - I would say they ach1€ved the reverse and ‘N€w Labour’ values are rooted in party/ trade union 1nt€rests not N@tional 1nt€r€st. Still Labour insist on distilling and dis€minating into the m€dia propaganda that is counter to what their ev1l r€g1eme has done to this country.
http://tinyurl.com/32kyfkr
22 The Eurozone financial crisis explained…
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/06/post_55.html
Very funny: especially the bit where it explains why the US economy is stronger than the European.
‘Mark to market’ is a way of recording financial assets in the accounts. The ‘market’ being the prevailing market worth of the asset at the time of recording. If the assets held are sovereign debt they are already marked to market when banks etc produce their accounts.
The fundamental issue is that governments don’t produce audited financial statements. Even if they did there would remain the issue of projecting into the future some guesstimate of a government’s ability to repay the principal. The market needs some basis to decide what the likelihood of default is for a debt type asset. Hence the regulatory requirement that only investment grade assets count and that the big CRAs’ ratings are what determines what is and is not investment grade. Sure there is an insurance market in default likelihood (called credit default – it is effectively the market view on how likely eg Greece is to be unable to repay its loans). The CRAs pay a lot of attention to the default markets but are not slave to them.
The current system is basically ok in my view but with the following caveats:
1. CRAs should downgrade more quickly and more aggressively if the fundamentals are pointing that way
2. Edmund has a point about conflicts of interest as the CRA business model is dependent on cash from the issuers rather than the purchasers of debt. I believe in the principle of ‘caveat emptor’ and think it might be better if banks funded the rating of the assets they hold.
39 “The fundamental issue is that governments don’t produce audited financial statements.”
I get it now. Thanks.
Yes, the conflicts of interest in getting Issuers to pay CRAs to value their products are immense. Something like that wouldn’t be allowed in the retail financial services world, that’s for sure!
On topic: The Purnell resignation and how Darling and / or Bananaman chose to react was the only really serious chance to push Brown out in my view. Had either of them gone too and made a Geoffrey Howe type speech – well that would have been game over for Gord I reckon. So why didn’t they?
Option 1: They genuinely thought Brown was doing a good job. No need to act. Storm in a teacup. Things are OK.
Option 2: They saw Brown was a disaster but felt it was a recoverable disaster and that pushing him out would not be good for Britain or the Labour party at the next GE. Plus they were scared of ‘the forces of hell’.
Option 3: They knew Brown was a disaster, knew Labour was on its way out of power and were thinking only in terms of ‘what’s in it for me’. 12 more months of perks and ministerial salaries to enjoy. Risk of being seen as the assassin and hence harming a future leadership bid. Fuc* the country, fuc* Labour – me, me ,me.
These are Labour politicians we are talking about so clearly option 3 is the only viable answer.
We’re at the early stages still. The current critical question is whether the final line-up is going to be Miliband/Miliband/Balls or whether Andy Burnham, Diane Abbott or John McDonnell can muster 33 votes. Right now, it looks like a three horse race.
Once the starting line-up has been identified, we can then properly consider the contenders. David Miliband’s lack of spine has to tell against him.
43. Patrick June 3rd, 2010 at 7:46 am
Option 3 IMO!
I think they probably calculated that in the 12 months before a GE it would be possible for them to mitigate defeat by registering Labour voters up for postal votes etc etc. They could also do things like Increase Immigration:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283521/Immigration-soars-20-Labour-crackdown.html
To increase their long term electoral chances.
42 But was it lack of spine or a smart move? If he’d done it would he have become front runner and then PM? (PM for a very short time until he lost a GE).
From the country’s perspective we were all crying out for someone senior in Labour to bring Sauron down. But expecting someone senior in Labour to do anything good for the country but potentially not in their own personal or party interests is like asking piranhas to go vegan.
On Guido a short and very funny guide to the European Financial crisis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBiZi2WQhZg&feature=player_embedded
22. 38. Hadn’t looked at your links, it is far, far clearer than Robert Peston.
44 - This is what David Miliband himself had to say on the subject:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8098392.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/12/david-miliband-gordon-brown-labour-leadership
49. antifrank June 3rd, 2010 at 8:07 am
You just gave me dejare vou with that!!!
Antifrank @#42
Morning one and all - and a lovely, warm, sunny one it is too!
I’d agree with your analysis, and the likely 3 finalists.
Factors:
Unite support (Balls)
Good LOTO (Balls)
Support from the Brown/Mandy/Campbell axis (DM)
{personally, I’d have thought that their support = the ‘kiss of death’}
Potentially best PM-i-W (EM?)
It all depends on who has the power and who has the brains to realise they’re going to be in opposition for a decade. If Labour want to make the best of the next 4-7 years, they’d choose Balls, but if they are deluded enough to think they stand a good chance at the next election (2015 or earlier), then they’d pick Ed Millipede.
My thought is that the next Labour POTENTIAL PM is someone not associated with the ‘ancient regime’ and that they will only emerge *after* the next election and will be az product of that campaign and their performance in Opposition over the next 5-8 years.
A more serious issue would be ‘how do you fight a Coalition which stretches from >moderate right-wing to >loony Left, with a centre axis somewhere just left-of-Centre and economically ‘dry’ (no choice) but liberal on personal freedom (by choice).
Assuming the Coalition proves competent, or better, it’s going to be a hard target to attack and even harder under AV, where UKIP votes will go to Conservatives and LD and Con will vote for each other in a clear ‘anti-labour’ alliance.
Add the removal of postal votes, proper voter registration and fewer, equal-sized constituencies (quite possibly with a considerable reduction in Welsh and Scottish representation at Westminster) and you have a situation where Labour will need a complete re-brand of the like never seen in UK politics if it is ever to have a sniff of power again.
Potentially a serious right-wing anti-EU party may emerge (UKIP+), together with a similar left-wing anti-EU party (Old Labour+), leaving pro-EU R-W (Tories) and Pro-EU L-W (LDs+ new Labour).
PR might result in that, AV perhaps might, FPTP would not.
Looks as TSE’s posting on Rafa were on the ball.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/liverpool/8719210.stm
FPT Antifrank..St Bees…I was born in Workington..1940..but used to sea canoe from St Bees beach..When I got married I lived on Duke St. Whitehaven, above the camera shop where I worked, not 30 yards from where the first shooting victim was yesterday. A small world..
A suspicious amount of booktalking going on here,i suspect.
The reality is that David Millibrand is the percentage call for a lot of labour party supporters.
If someone else is elected and the labour vote falls to the low 20s in the polls,the same suspects will be the first to put up links
to the newsnight focus groups which backed him to the exclusion of all others.
I don’t think he’s the second coming but he’s a worthy favourite.
52. richard dodd June 3rd, 2010 at 8:20 am
Yes, I had just read a report on that yesterday - Those poor souls who were killed. I think even worse is the people he killed at random, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whilst I cannot understand why someone would do such a thing, you can see a motive for killing maybe his brother or business competitor about money but to go around shooting people for no reason is crazy. Even if you went nuts why kill people just going about their lives
50. Good post. Worth perhaps noting that Blair entered parliament in 1983, four years after Labour had last held office, and Cameron entered parliament in 2001, four years after the Tories had last held office.
43. Not sure I agree there. The line-up might affect the nature of the campaign (more so if Abbott or McDonnell make the ballot than if Burnham does), but as it’s an AV contest, the preferences for the also-rans will get redistributed anyway - and the three struggling for nominations are also-rans.
It’ll hardly matter who’ll become leader of the Labour Party, (although it’ll be MiliBlair) when this idiot nonsense of a so called coalition falls to pieces, he/she will have the easiest job in the world. Poll ratings for the ship of fools will be so low in two years time, that some of this sites blue posters, will be feeling nostalgic for 1997.
Regarding the Millibands, have they ever made any comment about their grandfather’s betrayal of his own country?
For two people wanting to be Prime Minister I think we should know if they think ideology or country should come first.
Like grandfather like grandsons perhaps?
56. coldstone June 3rd, 2010 at 8:32 am
On topic, Miliband’s (in-)actions probably prevented a much greater mauling for Labour, which may in part be why he didn’t resign. If he had prompted serious leadership turmoil by resigning, and had Labour lost outright (perhaps to a sizable Tory majority), he would have been the fall guy whether or not he won the crown. Ousted Brownites would have pointed to the recovering economy and said if only Labour could have pulled together they could have prevented a Tory government (rightly as it turns out but they’d have said it anyway).
What would have happened if Miliband had resigned? Much depends on what Brown would have done but Miliband would have struggled to have forced a leadership election. He’d have needed a huge proportion of the PLP to back him openly and I don’t think that was on, especially with so many in govermnent. He could have lead a king-over-the-water faction but that would have weakened and divided Labour.
On the other hand, if Brown was persuaded into resigning (perhaps by futher threats of, or actual, cabinet resignations), there’d have been a leadership election. Balls would have stood and possibly Harman and Johnson too. Would any of them have done better than Brown did? I’m not convinced.
One mistake that left-wingers constantly make about Thatcher is that the depth of their detestation for her mattered much. It didn’t. The reason is partly that there was an equally fervent support group on the other side but more that in the floating middle, her government was delivering. Only when she lost that middle in 1988-90 did her position become critical. Likewise for Brown. He may have been hated by many Tory supporters but their votes still only counted one a piece. In the end, he was able to persuade, threaten and scare enough Labour-inclined to turn out to prevent a Tory outright win.
Could Miliband or Johnson have had the brazenness to carry off Labour’s campaign? If not, what else would they have offered? Could Harman or Balls have done it any better than Brown did? How would a successor have united the divided cabinet? Would would they have done with Brown (or what would Brown have chosen to do)?
Had Brown been ousted in June, there’d have been two months of drift and division. It might have all worked out in the end but given where Labour was starting (the Euro-result of sub-16%), it’s far easier to see where it could have all gone wrong.
But that being the case, Miliband’s error was not staying in the cabinet but delaying in speaking up for Brown.
I am not sure if anyone else is following the George Orwell Diary blog, but the entry today is a classic. It is an extract from a letter to the Daily Telegraph from Lady Oxford (Margot Asquith), on the subject of wartime economies:
“Since most London houses are deserted there is little entertaining…in any case, most people have to part with their cooks and live in hotels.”
War is hell, isn’t it?
52 - It is possible that you might have known my father. He went to Workington Tech up to the age of 13 or so. If your posting name is your real name, may I try it out on him?
David Herdson June 3rd, 2010 at 8:48 am
The economy has not recovered though has it. Labour manipulated state spending to ensure its core support would still turn out for them and Labour did not care of the concequences longterm derived from their irresponsible action. The Economy is F*cked!
Take it from me - some c0ck end called me yesterday and said I should work for the minimum wage and forget about any higher paid jobs - I nearly said: F*ck You to him and put the phone down. I have indeed applied for the types of job he suggested and told him so. He went very quite.
The New Governments budget will be the first step to reforming the countries path to sustainability.
Labour are only interested in their own elecotoral viability. Thats why it makes me so angry with the media suddenly decide to gun for the coalition when their is much left still to be picked over from the prevous Governments dreadful, incomptent and dire handling of the country.
60 lol , what a trauma!
Coldstone on the money. And nice to see SLABer attitude adjuster around. Do you think it’ll be FM Gray this time next year? Another LibLab coalition?
1.
“A ditherer is hardly the man to rebuild a party”
Muddlebland (D) is the continuity candidate. Down the plugholoooooole!
Thanks for the video - pretty good reason why David Miliband is not worthy of being PM. Personally I don’t care if he leads the Labour Party - because if there is a God, Labour will cease to be a relevant political force again.
Coldstone, Stuart
Given that the political and electoral consequences of a Coalition split in 2011/12/13 would be absolutely catastrophic for the LDs, I can see no possible reason why they should provoke such a split, nor any reason why they would not accept any humiliation in order to preserve it.
Similarly, ‘pain shared is public opprobrium halved’ so I cannot see why the Cons should wish to lose the LD element of the coalition, either UNLESS they believe themselves to be so far ahead in the polls that it would worth calling an early election.
Again, I cannot see how that can happen. ‘Swing together or swing separately’ seems to be the position they are in. Unholy alliance? Maybe, but I cannot see them NOT realigning and morphing into some new party after 2015, quite probably with the ‘monster ego’ Clegg as PM. He’ll not be happy to be Camera-ons no.2 for ever, can never be PM as leader of the LDs and Camera-on has a new baby due soon.
He’s independently wealthy, clearly loves his family to bits and I think he will ‘want to spend more time with his family’ a lot quicker than Bliar ever did (though I suspect it was Cherie who liked the power trappings much more than Tony ever did).
That would leave the way open for Clegg to lead a new pro-EU centre-right party, which could easily form coalition with UKIP2, if needed.
coldstone @56
The coalition’s poll ratings might indeed collapse but that will only reinforce the LD-CON partnership because otherwise there would be an immediate general election.
The one thing that could split the coalition is high Tory poll ratings which could persuade right-wingers that they could manage without the LDs.
58
Really! I remember being told that in ‘92, I couldn’t find those people on May the 2nd 1997. I was equally dismissive of those who thought the Tories wouldn’t be able to win again, although they were nearly right.
64
God knows! When you look at the statements of some people today, despite the fact that most of them couldn’t predict tomorrows date, they still continue to produce the most amazing tosh.
I’m certainly one of those who believes the present party system, (along with the United Kingdom) is past its sellby date, but how its going to pan out, (I’ve got some ideas) is still in the lap of the Gods.
#68 Mike (OGH)
Absolutely! The worse the polls ratings, the tighter the Coalition.
68
What makes you think there wouldn’t be an immediate GE? One of the partners might see an advantage in it, they may even have manouvered for it.
Antifrank..spooky..I also went to Workington Tech..yes try the name out…doubt if he will remember..after school it was the steelworks then the mining industry as a trainee engineer, which involved more Workington Tech, then a few years later a magical leap into the film industry..
67. HD2 June 3rd, 2010 at 9:10 am
Yes, I agree with much of what you say there in paragraph one and Two. It is not in either the Conservatives or Lib Dems interests to walk away from the Coalition as I have said on here before.
The Coalition will be good for the country as it does offer the chance of political system when we are in an economic storm.
Its funny - just as I have always been a natural Cameroon, I am too a Natural supporter of the Coalition. I dont share all the policies of the Cameroons or the Coalition but unless you are unable to think for yourself most people are never 100% agreement with everything.
I think the Coalition very good for Britain and dispair at the media whishing for political instability for entertainments sake - It is time the New Labour 24 hour politics is put to bed.
Seriously - Does the US, France, Germany, Italy or Japan governments seek to dominate the media like Labour did in their term of office 
I actually think they did not/ do not.
11. Edmund - how the DPJ think this will revive their fortunes is quite beyond me. Kan is hardly a name to set the country alight (to be fair, you could say the same about most of the DPJ but at least Maehara would have provoked a bit of excitement). The next election is very difficult to call - a government in a shambles versus an opposition which is disintegrating. Needless to say, I think minor parties will do well!
73
Tosh!!
Onto a happier subject.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/7798197/Scottish-Tories-fight-for-financial-survival.html
Easterross binin?
52 Richard forgive me for moving the Lancashire county boundary somewhat north in my posting yesterday evening. Although the main lines of my paternal family are from the Furness Peninsula, no small number are from slightly further north so I should have known better! Even after 36 years I still cannot see what was wrong with Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire. Each great counties with great traditions.
On thread, it seems more than a year since the older Bland Brother dithered his way into surrender under pressure from Brown’s bruisers and Mandy the Minder. I do hope he becomes Labour leader. He will make William Hague’s leadership of the Tory party look like a rip roaring success.
I see Jamie Stone has been mentioned. The Stones are family friends. What may not be known is that around the time Jamie was first elected his wife Flora had a major stroke from which at first she was not expected to survive. Due to her thrawn Ulster stock, Flora has made a remarkable recovery over the past few years but by anyone’s standards she still has serious mobility problems even though she has recently done a sponsored swim for charity. Add to that his mother Susannah is now nearer 90 than 80 as anyone who is confronted by her driving down Tain High St will tell you, he may in truth have decided he needs to spend more time at home.
I would suggest the favourite will be Jamie Paterson whose father was the local councillor for many years and whose elder siblings grew up in my house, his father owning the estate at the time. Jamie stood for the LibDems in Moray at the General election, was unsuccessful in securing the Ross seat on JF Munro’s announced retirement. Jamie has also been Jamie Stone’s Holyrood gofor for several years so is something of a Holyrood insider and as a local boy is extremely well known and liked.
There are obviously going to be real problems ahead - both semi-predictable and those that are completely ‘out of the blue’.
s time goes no, some Govt decisions will turn out to be right, some wrong, and most somewhere in the middle and you take your pick whether right or wrong based on your political views.
Labour can thus have some ammunition to use against the Coalition - more as time goes on - but, BUT their solution (usually ‘wise after the event’) will HAVE to be based on ‘we would deal with this problem by doing XXXX, where XXXX is clearly the cheaper option.
For the past 13 years (and throughout their history) Labour’s solution to a problem is to throw money at it. But there’s no money left! Any suggestion that an alternative solution would be better (possible) but would cost more money certain) will be laughted out of court.
That’s Labour’s problem now - how to propose solutions to ‘events’ that demonstrably do NOT cost more than the Coalition’s answer. They’ve never done that in their last 90 years of existence, so how and why are they going to do that now?
Now, in time, the economy will have grown enough for their to be perceived ’spare cash’ in the economy and people will start to feel sorry for dying frozen grannies again. At that point, Labour gets back into the election frame, BUT the scale of the deficit is so vast, and so widespread across the EU that it will be 15-20 years before we’re in that position.
Will Labour wait that long? Will the electorate wait that long for an alternative to the Coalition? Will Labour be able to change its spots?
THAT’S Labour’s problem and task for the decade ahead - which failure is in charge of the ship just now matters not one jot.
M in Tokyo @74:
Warum…?
Surely Yes he Kan… will electrify the staid politics of Japan…? :shrugs:
On-topic:
Milibanana would have been the second unelected [sic] PM within a Parliament. This would have been unacceptable not just to PBers but the UK electorate (and The Economist).
Moving forwards, if the LibDems do defect from the coalition how will they overthrow the government? I quick calculation would suggest that the Conservatives have over 45% of the members of The House; ergo a right to govern (and that is before the Orange Bookers defect).
Let’s face it: We are in for a full-term Parliament. Given young George Osborne’s effect upon the FX markets (or should I say the Euro’s weakness) I can foresee the UK overtaking France in nominal* GDP by 2012**.
* I prefer PPP as an accurate measure, but the vagueness of measure promotes too much debate. [Is that a BigMac...?]
** GDP/Capita would be enhanced for we English but for our Celtic cousins…!
75 Coldstone, there are some of us who want to return to our roots and get rid of the cackhanded name we inflicted ourselves with in the advent of the defeat to Labour in 1963-4.
We were at our most successful as the Scottish Unionist Party and some of us believe that adopting the German model which is what we did until 1965 of being a separate centre-right party but at Westminster in permanent coalition with the English Conservative Party would be good for us, good for Scottish centre-right voters and frankly good for the English Conservatives too.
We would be a Scottish party centred on Holyrood with a Scottish leader but like the CSU would have our Westminster MPs sit with the English, Welsh and Ulster colleagues and in happier times some may once again serve in government. The last Scottish Unionist leader to serve in Government served as Prime Minister, albeit only for a very short time, the late Earl of Home.
I hope we Scots Tories will see this little difficulty as an opportunity not to be missed. Break the tag of an English colonial party of occupation which is how the media and many left wing commentators portray us and we will start to recover. I might add that during our most successful time in the 1950s, we were in coalition in Scotland with the Liberal Unionists and National Liberals. Now does that have a present day ring to it?
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/84093
Webber asked for Vettel to back off from him the lap before the collision. Hmm. Unimpressed with that.
By not weilding the knife a year ago DM showed that he had a political quality far more important than any so called killer instinct - patience.
Remember Heseltine.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/2997483/Kelly-Brook-to-receive-50000-to-strip-for-Playboy.html
I cannot Wait!
David H’s analysis at 59 puts the case well. My understanding is that Miliband was tempted but felt that destabilising insurrection would do more harm than good at all levels (country, party and personal) but that he didn’t feel he could honestly claim to be a strong supporter of Brown, hence the lukewarm, delayed statement. Conversely, as a potential supporter for a coup I felt that if nobody was prepared to stand up and say they wanted it, then a leaderless insurrection was the worst of all possible worlds and we were better off sticking with Brown, who for all his faults had immense staying power and fighting spirit. So I understand why David M didn’t revolt, but I’d like to see some vigorous, combative speeches to show he can do them whem the time is right.
David M is probably the best choice if we want to have a calm, decent LOTO who people can readily see as a possible PM. Ed B is probably the best choice if we think the coalition is going to be very unpopular and we want someone who can harness the anger. Ed M is probably the best choice if we want someone who’s shown that they are able to formulate new ideas on the centre-left. I remain genuinely open-minded, but my acquaintances (who tend to be on the Guardian wing of the party) seem to be leaning towards David M.
M in Tokyo @74 I disagree a bit. Although the switch looks a bit ridiculous, and the elections won’t be great for Minshuto, I think they’ll do better than they would have.
Kan’s a much better media performer than Hatoyama; He comes over as competent and sincere, and looks more like the change that we weren’t getting with the Ozawa/Hatoyama combo. And he’ll have more luck in getting the credit for the party’s policies - which should be relatively popular - while getting less of the blame for breaking Ozawa and Hatoyama’s foolish pre-election promises.
83 - I’m very interested to see that you describe yourself now as “a potential supporter of a coup”. The last few years must have been agonising for you and you have my sympathy in how you had to present yourself publicly, including on here.
There is one outcome that Miliband wouldn’t risk:
He Quits, Brown told to go by men in grey suits, Brown goes to the palace!
86. Tony E June 3rd, 2010 at 9:57 am
I doubt the Queen would have granted it. If there was a challange to Browns leadership, would Brown have been in a position to request such a thing. I doubt it, especially as Brown was Unelected.
Fluffy Thoughts @78:
Would have worked this time last year, but the mood’s changed a bit since then. They’d be better off working with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Madd-sZzWY8
59 I think that’s correct.
77 I think that the economy is the issue on which everything will turn. Like Labour in 1997, the Conservatives this year were not greatly trusted with the economy, but, like Labour, have the opportunity to gain political capital if they’re perceived to have managed the economy successfully. Since forming the government, their ratings on the economy have soared. *If* they’re seen to have run the economy well, this will offset the usual process of attrition that all governments have to endure, and *if* their ratings on the economy are similar, in 2015, to where they are now, they’ll win.
79
Dream on!!
TimMontgomerie
Harriet Harman wants half of shadow cabinet to be women http://bit.ly/dtwZnm
91: That’ll be fun…..
91. Plato June 3rd, 2010 at 10:05 am
Harriet Harman is the political personification of the Two ronnies sketch the Worm that turned!
http://charlie180.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/worm.jpg
Even so I hope she does not get Ed Balls or Andy Burnham dressing up like woman! Ed Balls has a history of dressing up at college though doesn’t he - I remember the Nazi uniform and plastic buttocks picture with the caption “Ed Balls starring at his male peers crotch!!!”
83 Nick Palmer admits his cowardice and tries to keep his options open.Thank God this political failure has been thrown into the dustbin of histology.
89. Sean, that’s an interesting point.
I remain convinced that Labour painted the Tories in such dark shades during the campaign, that the Tories (and Lib Dems) have a real chance to win people over in government. For the next year Labour can make hay by accusing the government of risking the recovery by making early cuts; but if there is no double-dip recession, and the economy continues to recover, what then? When 2011’s cuts come through, the government will be able to say that Labour intended to make cuts in 2011 if it was in power. Labour will have to find a new tune.
By the way, is there any polling evidence of what people think about the Lib Dems on the economy? One of my friends - a floater - voted Labour in the end because she felt the Lib Dems couldn’t run the economy. If the party can erase that perception it will be a much more credible contender for power in the future.
91, 92 - I would have thought that Opposition was a very good time to think about taking positive steps to encourage underrepresented groups. 50% is a reasonable aspiration, but may be a bit much in one go. But why not 40%?
If there’s one thing that is damaging for the Labour party, it’s that its leadership election is currently being fought between three middle-class 40-something male political careerists with a fourth middle-class 40-something male political careerist attempting to get enough nominations. At least Diane Abbott adds some variety.
Harman wants a Cabinet of Mediocrities, just like Brown.
Smith, Harman, Morris, Scotland, Jowell, Hewitt, Flint not exactly burdened with talent.
Harman is a fool of the highest class, promoted way beyond her abiities.
95. Jack Peterson June 3rd, 2010 at 10:15 am
Crikey - No offence but I dont think Labour can run the economy in the traditional sense: Labour are only good at running it down!
27,28 re Global Financial Meltdown which started in the private sector (Patrick, Scott P)
Imagine the bank lent 100 people mortgages, who were then expected to send payments every month.
The bank bundled those repayments into 3 groups and sold them on. Only 1 group was AAA, and was based on “the first 3rd of payments each month”. As long as a 3rd of the borrowers made their repayments, the AAA products were good.
That may have been how it started but by the end, even the AAA tranches were filled with ZZZ loans, but neither the credit rating agencies nor the buyers checked what loans they actually contained.
Nor did the people (mainly AIG’s London office) selling cheap insurance against defaults (”credit default swaps”).
You seem to think that it is in the rating agencies’ own best interests to get the ratings wrong. I don’t.
Then you might not have realised it is the issuers who pay the agencies to rate their wares: think about how those market forces operate! Rate my bonds too low and next time I’ll move my multi-million dollar business to one of your rival agencies.
Michael Lewis’s book is a good layman’s account of this aspect of the GFM (and there were many other factors) even if it could have been condensed into a long magazine article.
It is a bit like grade inflation in GCSEs. You might think it is in the exam boards’ interests to accurately rate pupils’ abilities, but the schools are the buyers, so market forces tend to favour the boards with the easiest questions, so now GCSEs are join-the-dots, and A-levels colouring-in.
96. I’d be amazed if none of the (male) leadership contenders ends up asking Abbott to be deputy leader, on a “dream ticket”. Or is Harman staying in place as deputy leader?
dr spyn @97
I really do wonder what happened to Hattie for her to be so fixated with her feminism/equality-but-not-for-men agenda.
BTW - how’s you’re recovery coming along? All fixed now?
100 - I believe that Harriet Harman is staying as deputy leader.
87: The Queen would most certainly have granted a dissolution in the fourth year of a parliament, with the Opposition repeatedly calling for an immediate election.
95 There is no current polling on Lib Dems and the Economy (at the moment, Yougov just portray it as a choice between Conservative and Labour).
If the Coalition is deemed a success, then I would expect the Lib Dems’ ratings on economic issues to improve.
It’s an interesting counterfactual, what would have been the result if Labour were thought to have messed up the economy in 1997- 2001. I think they’d have lost; likewise, had they already been highly trusted on the economy, when they got elected, their majority would probably have been eroded in 2001.
98. Andy - I agree - but I think people on this board underestimate how convincing Brown’s spiel - “no more boom and bust”, “prudence with a purpose”, “don’t risk the recovery” etc. - was to relatively apathetic voters, backed up by the tractor statistics and by the implicit claim that Tories don’t care about unemployment.
102. Thanks, Antifrank.
105. Jack Peterson June 3rd, 2010 at 10:24 am
I dont underestimate it - I could not believe he got away with such barefaced lies.
As I have always said Labour had to be chased and held to account on a daily basiy on the economy as they should be doing now for the mess they have left. F*cking Daily Telegraph were more interested in Laws sexuality and an excuse to out him though.
What had really really wrecked Purnell? Gordon Brown on becoming PM made Purnell Culture Secretary. Purnell was half-openly hostile to the 2012 olympic Bid, and a spin campaign started that the country was fed up with the bid, the Beckhams (who had so strongly backed the bid), shopaholic WAGs etc. There was little to prove or disprove this claim, until… a key Big Brother vote that summer. Chanelle (the Victoria Beckham lookalike and admirer of all things Beckham) faced a straight eviction vote against the much less contraversial Laura.
Chanelle survived that vote, and the spin was largely wrecked. I realise Chanelle is a very beautiful, very personable, very entertaining young lady. I was delighted to vote to save her. If she had been evicted, James Purnell would have received a boost. Saving Chanelle every way a winner.
Labour are not to be trusted with any election, even to their own leadership. They are a party of liars and connivers through and through:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283521/Immigration-soars-20-Labour-crackdown.html
Just reading about those who died in Cumbria - Mr Bird seems to have made a conscious choice to kill older people once he’d bumped off the three he had a grudge against.
Bar the young farmer, all the rest were over 60 and he made a choice to take out an old bloke on a bike vs young mum with kids/ignored a cyclist stood 15′ in front of him.
Let’s hope that the survivors pull through - absolutely tragic nightmare
I’d forgotten how awful the Hungerford incident - at least he didn’t break into people’s houses and shoot them.
O/T - If you see any betting markets on the next Liverpool manager, stick your money on Kenny Dalglish.
He will be manager until Statler and Waldorf sell up.
weathercock June 3rd, 2010 at 10:35 am
Indeed!
When I saw that it really wound me up!
I keep saying it but I am so angry with Brown and the ex - Labour cabinet that they should be put on trial, surcharged or made to suffer as I have due to their policies. There is simply no reason why they should have let Immigration go like that and they have even allowed Hungary to soon start letting their people here. That was not working in the national interest and we still had clowns like Alan Johnson saying that unrestricted immigration was a good thing.
The Screaming Eagles @110:
What’s he been up to recently? He was absolutely crap at NUFC.
I’m always amazed by the number of people (including 99% of PB, as far as I can see) who think replacing Gordon with Milliband would have made the Labour government more rather than less stable.
How could Labour possibly have faced the electorate saying ‘We’re on our third PM in two years, most of our MPs don’t like him any better than Gordon, he has no financial experience and no knowledge of the world, we have no idea what we would do if we won the next election, and we couldn’t give a **** about the stability of the country, even in the midst of an economic crisis, because we’re so divided we clearly couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery’.
Can anyone outline any plausible scenario involving Gordon’s decapitation than would have led to a more effective rather than a less effective Labour government over the last year? If you think Milliband or Johnson could have done it, just watch them over the next six months and shudder.
109. Plato June 3rd, 2010 at 10:36 am
I know it sounds paroniod but I am always watching out for folk with guns etc for years now. Since Pre- 9/11 when I lived in London. Better to be safe than sorry with nutters!
Watching the session in the House.
Does anyone know what these yellow lapel badges worn by many Labour members are?
They’ve been on show since the new Parliament began.
Sara @113
The overwhelming reason was that Brown was, barring his brief honeymoon in 2007, unelectable as almost all the polling from 2005 onwards suggested.
andyjay @114
Funnily enough - never been worried about guns ever, I used to do air rifle/pistol shooting when little [8-13yrs old] along with my brother - I’m sure this would be considered child abuse nowadays.
Picking bits of lead out of the woodwork in his bedroom was one of the strongest memories I have - we used to shoot chunks of cheese which proved to be the perfect target material
I avoid people with rucksacks and large beards even now - I’ve got off the tube/changed train carriages several times when I feel uneasy.
112: Also at Celtic in 2000. But seeing as he hasn’t been a manager for 10 years, either he’s got no chance, or Liverpool really are in the proverbial.
116 Can’t believe you’re still banging on about Brown. Are these threads comfort food after a rather tricky week for Lib Dems?
116 Can’t believe you’re still banging on about Brown. Are these threads comfort food after a rather tricky week for Lib Dems?
Mike Smithson @116
I also think that Johnson would have been pretty tough for Cameron to deal with and under his leadership the party would have got closer to 300 seats.
South of the border people just loathed Brown.
117. Plato June 3rd, 2010 at 10:50 am
Yes I have done the same on trains when people look dodgy.
Avram Grant confirmed as West Ham boss
Will Avram now send in a steel helmeted attack force against the Premier Flotilla?
115. “Does anyone know what these yellow lapel badges worn by many Labour members are?”
I think they are anti-55% badges
117 I avoid people with rucksacks and large beards even now
Lib Dems?
125..And thats just the women..
Mike Smithson @121:
Agreed - if Gordon had Labour’s interests at heart, he would have stood down using failing eyesight or some other perfectly reasonable explanation.
If AJ was 20yrs younger - he’d be streets ahead of the current leadership contenders.
Maybe Miliband wanted Labour to lose? Cleared out a lot of dead wood, let’s the Tories do the cutting then he’s ready to rise the resurgence?
Jonathan @120
This thread is not about Brown but Mili-D who is, I understand, running for the Labour leadership.
When it was clear that my first wife only had a few months to live, we went to Hungerford one Saturday afternoon for a cup of tea and to buy some birthday presents. The shop was out of stock, so we ordered them and the shopkeeper asked us to come back the following Saturday.
The following Wednesday, the massacre occurred. Normally I wouldn’t have gone near the place in circumstances like that, but had to go and collect our purchases on the Saturday afternoon as promised. Although the town was almost deserted, the sense of grief was palpable. Despite the sunshine, and the very pleasant architecture, it was heartbreaking. Maybe it was our own situation that compounded the emotion, I don’t know, but I never go there now if I can help it.
Why is the government side of the House so much more eloquent than the opposition side?
124: Seriously?? How sad.
On a thread yesterday Mr Lilburne said since the change of HMG, he no longer felt squashed/anxious about who was running the country.
I’d like to second that - I hadn’t quite realised how much the tone of the last government had on me at a subconscious level.
112/118 - He’s currently employed by Liverpool as a Scout and working at the Academy.
Augustus Carp @129
I can understand that completely - I feel the same about Kings Cross.
I used to go through there every week on my way back to Newcastle at exactly the same time as the fire. That week, I went the day before instead. I get a creepy feeling whenever I’ve gone there since and avoid it wherever possible.
After reading about how the burns victims hands melted - I also wore thin leather gloves for years afterwards whenever I had to travel underground.
Does anyone know what James Purnell is upto these days?
I bet he regrets standing down as an MP.
So do I, I backed the bugger quite heavily.
The Screaming Eagles @135
Working for a think-tank IIRC.
135. The Screaming Eagles June 3rd, 2010 at 11:08 am
Actually if he had stood I think he would have lost:
Labour Co-op Jonathan Reynolds 16,189 39.6 -10.1
Conservative Rob Adlard 13,445 32.9 +6.8
Liberal Democrat John Potter 6,965 17.0 +1.4
BNP Anthony Jones 2,259 5.5 +1.6
UKIP John Cooke 1,342 3.3 +1.6
Green Ruth Bergan 679 1.7 -1.4
Majority 2,744 6.7
Turnout 40,879 59.2 +5.3
Labour Co-op hold Swing -8.5
He had dodgy Expenses IIRC
136 - Thank you.
Plato..Some years ago I drove past Lockerbie about ten minutes before the plane crashed on it and another time i went past EastMidlands Airport on the M1 just a couple of minutes before that plane crashed…I was paranoid about driving for a while..
137 - Lots of people with interesting expense claims were re-elected.
135 - I updated my reckoning the other night on the next Labour leader, now that the contours look clearer. I found to my relief that I was net only £80 down on non-standing candidates, which I regard as quite good in the circumstances. If Alistair Darling or Jon Cruddas had stood, I would have been much more favourably placed.
Of those that remain in the hunt, Ed Miliband or Ed Balls would be spectacularly good for me, the trailing three would be marginal losers for me and David Miliband would be terrible for me. I am considering what steps to take to balance this.
richard dodd @139
Nothing like a near miss to make one jumpy!
How did you make the jump into films BTW? I’m intrigued…
I’ll be disappointed to see Rafa go, if only because it will stop the Daily Mash’s constant articles on him being absolutely insane.
141 - The three candidates I heavily backed were James Purnell, Alastair Darling and Harriet Harman. I also recently backed Yvette Cooper.
Rumours of me backing Diane Abbot and John McDonnell aren’t true.
Another David @143
I must say that as a lapsed NUFC supporter, I’ve always been impressed by Liverpool’s tolerance/loyalty to their managers.
The Magpies want to lynch theirs if they lose 3 in a row/aren’t called Kevin Keegan.
42..Plato..One day a newscameraman walked into that shop on Duke st,Whithaven and asked to borrow a movie camera, his had broken, the manager let him have one as long as I went with him..At the end of the day he offered me a job.On my third day working with him I filmed Donald Cambell crashing on Lake Coniston..It was a terrible day for him but my career was launched..
The Screaming Eagles @144
I’m glad it’s not just me with a talent for picking the wrong ones.
I backed Purnell, Cruddas, Hattie and Johnson…
147, I backed Harman as well. Her 50% female quota for the Shadow Cavinet is bonkers. Silly bitch.
The near miss stories remind of Benny Hill’s bomb theory, which went along the lines of…
The chances of having a bomb on board a plane are a million to one, whereas the chances of two bombs being on board are a hundred million to one. On that basis he suggested that whenever you fly, you should always carry a bomb.
147 - It gets worse, I’ve also backed John Reid, Tony Blair, Mandelson, Hazel Blears and Peter Hain (thanks St John) to name a few others to be next Labour Leader
richard dodd @146
WOW - that’s epic. Being in the right place at the right time is clearly a talent of yours!
That footage is iconic.
148. 50% of the shadow cabinet should be women, or Jack Dromey
The Screaming Eagles @150:
HAZEL BLEARS?!!
*wipes tears of laughter from eyes*
142 - shuddery. A friend of mine had come back from the US the day of the 7th July bombings. He was on the train behind the one that blew up just after leaving King’s Cross, and missed the No.30 bus that was blown up in Tavistock Square by about 3-4 minutes, due to him waiting around for a friend after they finally evacuated his train.
150: You really do have more money than sense
151..my footage was taken head on…not the one taken from the side..still quite impressive material tho..quite scary stuff when it was unexpected..the worst part was hearing his voice shouting which was played on a tannoy just above my head..
153 - It seemed like a good bet at the time.
150 - I also backed Hazel Blears. I see you and raise with Tessa Jowell.
richard dodd @156
Is it on YouTube?
One to miss I think…
r4today
Stand up, Lembit Opik. BBC arts editor Will Gompertz & Stephen Pound MP review the former MP’s debut gig http://tinyurl.com/262z98b
158 - I see your Tessa Jowell and raise with Cherie Blair (at 500/1)
andyjay @73
Italy?
Berlusconi is the media.
161 - Oh sweet Jesus. What possessed you with that one?
MODERATOR,
can u release my comment from the limbo? Ta.
163 - You did. Sort of
http://politicalbetting.blogspot.com/2010/01/next-labour-leader-assessing-field.html
Have we ever had a thread dedicated to the worst/most laughable bets?
It would be a must read for anyone in need of a laugh/cheering up losing big time.
163/165 - It was the night I backed Nick Palmer as next Labour leader and saw Cherie was the same odds.
159..Plato..Dont know..never checked..It was used in the movie “Over the Lake”..starring Anthony Hopkins..AFAIAA..
166 Peter the Punter’s greyhound from a few years ago, and the equine “Mr Smithson” would feature heavily, I think.
betfair pokah = a pool of big fat easy-to-catch fishes
the level of players is the worst ive ever seen on-line
reminescent of friday nights in AC when drunken rich businessboys hit the 10-20$ tables late in the night…
165 - If I ever meet shadsy, I shall ask him for a drink on the back of that then!
That article stands up fairly well, all things considered. I got the Ed Miliband judgement completely wrong but otherwise I don’t feel too embarrassed about it.
I’ve just ordered a couple of Coalition Mugs - one for Tim and one for Coldstone!
http://www.coalitionmug.com/
166 - Worst political bet, Backing Mark O*ten to win the Lib Dem leadership 36 hours before the sh1t hit the fan, so to speak.
Non political bet, backing England to beat South Africa in the pool match of the 2007 Rugby World Cup.
Final result, South Africa 36, England 0
agingjb @103
Such confidence. You obviously have access to the Royal Bedchamber.
171 - Yes it does. This bit stands out, and I wish I had followed it.
Each of us will form our own assessment of who has the appetite for the job. For myself, I doubt whether Alan Johnson, Harriet Harman, Jack Straw or Alistair Darling are that interested. They will probably feel that they have done their bit.
The reason I backed Cherie was OGH was mentioning he had won two 50/1 bets. And I wanted to one up him.
Cherie Blair at 500/1 seemed very attractive at the time.
175 - If I’d followed my own advice in relation to Alistair Darling I’d be a couple of hundred pounds better off. But it probably was a value bet, even so.
richard dodd @168
I found the film but not your footage on YouTube under Across the Lake.
176..TSE..The only people who dont gamble are the bookies..
I can certainly understand the Blears bets - I think had she not shot herself in the Gains, she would be standing now and would be a fairly good bet to beat the insect brothers.
Then again, I still think the Abbott will be ruling the roost come the conference.
Johnson, Mandelson and Darling (post Xmas 09) were all non-starters as Labour leader on the basis of cowardice, enoblement and lack of ambition/clear indication he couldn;t be fagged after the election. So it was always an insect, Balls or the left on the march.
Plato..I have not seen the movie but I was told it was in there…a very short clip…The most spectacular shots were taken from the side..
Augustus Carp @169:
Indeed - the worst £500 I can recall spending
I didn’t know Mr P Punter did dud greyhounds as well - I’ve a couple, one was excellent - the other would put Sylvester Stallone to shame on the physique front but ran like… erm Mr Smithson.
Gordon Brown =
richard dodd @179
Mr Red Jester bets I believe and he’s a Sporting Index chap.
182. Plato June 3rd, 2010 at 11:52 am
The best money I ever spent was on 25 pints one Wednesday afternoon.
Though I still wonder how I manged to fall on a concreate bollard!!! 
Lucky I did not crack my head open!
What a ridiculous situation,
http://dizzythinks.net/2010/06/impotent-government.html
It is a bit like Gove being able to scrap some Quangos immediately, but for others having to wait 6 months because a change in the law is required.
176. Cherie Blair at 500/1 seemed very attractive at the time.
by The Screaming Eagles June 3rd, 2010 at 11:46 am
Good job you added “at 500/1.” I had feared for your sanity.
182 I cannot remember the creature’s name, but by all accounts it was spectacularly fast, but had a design flaw in that it could not turn corners without falling over. Apparently, going around corners is very important in greyhound racing, hence the general despair of various PBers back in the good old days (pre 2005 General Election, I think.)
184..I deliberately used the word Gamble…
187 - I do have some standards you know. It’s just they are lower than everyone elses
betting, pokah, diving, riding, sex with young goddesses and playing with one’s own babyboy are the best things in life
am i missing something?
191 - Yes
186. A bit like this…
http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/2010/06/turkeys-seek-postponement-of-christmas.html
Augustus Carp @188
*wipes more tears of laughter from eyes*
That is brilliant!
*sides now aching*
174: It’s hardly a question of special knowledge. The Queen doesn’t enter into party politics. It would be inconceivable that she, or those advising her, would consider for a moment declining a dissolution in the fourth year of a parliament - especially given that the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition would agree on the dissolution.
In fact, if there is a contrary view here - as there seems to be - I’d be interested to know why the posters here take that view.
191 Cricket, single malts, the open country, seafood
Plato @182
I think that Red Jester is the political market maker for Sporting Index. He probably had a good general election with all those spreads over stating the Lib Dems and understating Labour.
I’ve just had to pay up on my losses though this was ameliorated to some extent by the fantastic Thirsk & Malton handicap market. I always thought that was a sure thing though the spread got much less attractive after my post.
oh yes : drinkin n smokin with funny people and dear friends
i dont do that enough anymore… Is it something males do less as they age?
glassfet @193
WTF?
198 - Is it wrong to have a midlife crisis at 31?
201 Depends on how long you plan to live.
re. Lake Coniston
“Is it on Youtube?”
No it’s in Lancashire. I thought we’d established that.
201 Depends if 62 is a target or a roadblock
193 — what?
202/204 - I plan to live forever. Or die trying.
205 - A performance car. Which is explaining my mid life crisis.
206 In that case 31 may be too late.
Morning all,
I’ve been away at a couple of weddings. What a strange week it has been, culminating in spending last night at work following the awful events in Cumbria.
My thoughts in a nutshell: you can’t legislate for maniacs through gun control and banning Olympic sports and David Laws had to go.
http://coalisking.blogspot.com/2010/06/series-of-sad-events.html
Harman’s proposal sounds like a pusillanimous compromise.
If she were true to her convictions (”Lehman Sisters”) she would demand 100% women in the shadow cabinet.
207 Oh good God man, get a grip.
Performance cars are for those of the tiny weener.
Unless you let it get covered in crap and use it with a trailer for moving stuff about in which case, props to you.
210 - Let’s not to be harsh, a Stepford Shadow Cabinet populated by the likes of Margaret Hodge, Yvette Copper et al would ensure the coalition would be re-elected by a landslide in 2015.
201 — i really cant say TSE ! Im in no position to offer advice on life management. My own life technique is quite rudimentary
212 Magaret, Diane Abbott and Blears if you please
Hodge Podge and Tax Dodge
207 — lol
211 - Too late, to my immense surprise RBS have agreed to finance my purchase of a Gallardo
207 - Your wife is more easygoing than my boyfriend. I am not allowed to get an Aston Martin until he has been provided with a bed & breakfast (or an eco-hotel).
216 Ryan Sidebottom drives a Gallardo
What is a Gallardo..
217 - No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
216 Nice of RBS to give you tax payers money.
219 yes, he does, he loves it and recommends it to everyone.
I believe they are sold with a Ryan Sidebottom wig as a free gift
218 Hairdressers supercar.
218 - this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/lamborghini/7541185/Lamborghini-Gallardo-LP570-4-Superleggera-review.html
agingjb June 3rd, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Well I thought a PM was only a PM if they could command a majority in the house of commons. If they are being formally challanged for the leadership surely in the interests of stability the Queen would sit on her hands until after the leadership challange had taken place? Labour had a working majority, if it happened under the circumstances we have now then things might be different but I just dont see how Brown going to the palace would have worked in those circumstances as a rival labour leader could just as easily say that they could get a majority in the house. I am assuming that a majority of the cabinet would be against the dissolution by the way.
Obviously their is no real guideline but for brown just to call an election is laughable; it is when you think about it a hollow threat at anytime really. Elections take a great deal of planning, Brown has always put party before country and he was never going to just give in anyway.
222 - No, that’s the Porsche Boxter
221 - And if you sit in one for long enough you get Sidey’s arse.
225 - Boxster even
221/226 - Would you two stop it!
226 this is also true!
Buying a Lambo is one way of advertising to God that you’ve more money than sense
Noisy bastards.
And no, I’m not jealous, no sir, not me.
**Pats 7-year-old Focus**
223..May I repectfully suggest you seek urgent medical assistance, of the mind kind….this is a serious poseurs car and you should really not be considering it under any circumstances.. Do you have any problems in the trouser area..
230 - My betting portfolio shows that I have more money than sense.
The Screaming Eagles @223
That is a serious penis car.
*…no need for a boyfriend with wheels like that…*
225 scream, in late 60’s I recall looking through the Alitalia duty free catalogue flying back from Zambia - they offered the Lamborghini Miura (about £5,000 duty free IIRC). Did wonder what the stewardess would have done if anyone ordered one as part of their duty free…
Poor Mr. Eagles.
It could be worse. You could’ve bought an Audi TT.
114 & 117
Wow, I really feel sorry for you guys. It must be awful to be terrified to live in the UK. Perhaps because I’m old I don’t share any fears of terrorists. The first thing I did after 9/11 was buy tickets to fly to the US; always thought that by doing that I was upholding the British spirit.
223. The Screaming Eagles June 3rd, 2010 at 12:24 pm
May I suggest a cheaper alternative
http://tinyurl.com/yja375a
I dont think much to some of these New MPs speaking in the chamber! I could do a much better job.
Why people get nervous about speaking when its a room of only a few dozen like now…. 
The Screaming Eagles @232
Price/availability £178,000. On sale now, first deliveries in June
!!!!!!!
231/233 - It’s for practical purposes.
Having had a very serious chat with the wife, and then my current and future employers, I have decided not to take the job in America.
So getting from Styal to Leeds every days (round trip of 112miles) in my current mode of transport, just wasn’t quick enough.
It means I get to spend more time with my kids.
238 you pin him down, I’ll nick the keys and we’ll use it to impress the hoons on Yarmouth seafront
235 - I bought a TT in 2004. Put me of Audis for life.
232..TSE..You are actually borrowing money to buy that?? And a bank is letting you have it…HMMM RBS..no surprise there tyhen, they havve a lot of bonusses and pensions to keep up with..What is the old saying “One born every minute”…and the other one “A fool and his money are soon parted”
242 - RBS/Natwest and I have an excellent relationship, ever since I opened a student account with them back in 1997.
Although my bank manager once did send me a letter reminding me overdraft was a limit not a target.
TSE.. Buy a big motorbike…
The Screaming Eagles @241
Oh dear - they are the ultimate girly sales manager/hairdresser car.
I bought a Merc SLK instead as it seemed a bit classier - it handles like a roller skate, aquaplanes in a puddle and loses grip when going over 40mph on a windy day.
Otherwise - great value
222 I thought that was a Reliant Robin. TSE why would you wish to waste an inordinate amount of money on a few hundred weight of scrap metal and shiny paint? You could buy half of Greece with the cash.
As we’re in confessional mode, my worst bets:
The ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’ bet:
Newt Gingrich at about 500/1 to be the GOP nomination in the 2008 presidential election, some time in February. I had visions of a deadlocked convention, irreconcilable factions and a compromise candidate. Or an over-the-top storyline to The West Wing.
The ‘nearly cost me a lot’ bet:
Laying a 2007 GE at 7/1 shortly after Brown became PM. I was always convinced that the odds were longer than the market assessed them at so never backed it off and nearly got stung heavily. It was a winner in the end but I could have laid at 1/3 so appalling value.
The ‘didn’t learn my lesson’ bet:
Laying Jenson Button to win his first *two* races for Brawn.
The ’should have thought about other factors bet’:
Backing India at 1/20 to beat Bangladesh in the last One-day World Cup.
234 she would probably have done you there and then in the toilets….
239, hurrah for staying in Britain!
241, apparently Audis are now the car of choice for the er, frequent twitterers who used to like BMWs.
Still, if you want a fast car you could buy a Caterham
239 TSE and lose your driving license. The speed limit remains 70mph even for penis substitutes/boys toys. Why not buy a helicopter or something useful instead.
248..Penddu..Those toilets were very small…very difficult ..
248..Penddu..Those toilets were very small…very difficult ..
247, on Button/Brawn/pre-season betting: I think I’ve learnt a bit from this season. Last time it was obvious the Brawn was fast (it was miles quicker than everyone else). This time, all the cars were jumbled up and getting a read was harder.
So, lesson learnt, next time round I’ll not bet pre-season unless it’s highly likely someone has a stonking advantage.
Speaking of lessons learnt, I wish I’d backed Button at 70/1. Great tip, but not much use to me
Easterross @250:
http://www.fasthelicopters.com/helicopter_sales.htm
Nice one going for £470k + VAT
245 - I ended up giving it to my ex girlfriend after 3 months.
224. If there was a formal leadership challenge underway, or even more, if Brown had just lost one then yes, HM might refuse a dissolution by a PM (though not necessarily - party matters are not her concern and a mandate from the public would trump and lead the party’s leadership election).
But that wasn’t the scenario. If Miliband had resigned, he couldn’t challenge Brown openly without the open support of 70+ MPs which he almost certainly wouldn’t have got - certainly not quickly. HMQ would almost certainly have granted Brown the opportunity to reestablish his authority with a fresh mandate had he asked for a dissolution in the aftermath of the June 09 elections. Given the results of those elections and the other political concerns of the time, it’s quite an implausible scenario.
251 - I once had a very nasty experience in a helicopter. Never again.
248 - Was I the only person to back Ron Paul as the Republican Nominee?
It felt like it at the time.
256. The Screaming Eagles June 3rd, 2010 at 12:53 pm
3 months!
Going on what you say sometimes I would have thought you gave it to her within hours of your first meeting!
251 - To my eternal chagrin, I once drove at 150mph past Ferrybridge services. and got away with it.
agingjb @196
I guess you must be young; when you get to my age you realise that there are no more certainties.
The Screaming Eagles @258
It is a very sexy car - what’s the insurance like?!
260 - No, this was after I dumped her.
Still no decision on tyre suppliers in F1:
http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/michelin-pirelli-fish-or-cut-bait/
This is particularly important given that we might see multiple providers. Last time we had that it was Bridgestone (outgoing supplier now) and Michelin. The biggest difference was at the US GP one year, when the Michelins literally wouldn’t work, shredding after a few laps. The Bridgestone teams, led by Ferrari, had a nice little procession and got all the points. It was a horrific comedy spectacle.
263 - I’m putting it through the fleetplan insurance at work. So very little change.
The Screaming Eagles @261:
What you didn’t pause to take in the view?
I once managed 140mph on an empty toll motorway in France many yrs ago whilst racing a Merc - how racing drivers manage to keep control/react as fast as they do always stuns me.
267 - I used to go past it nearly every day.
It was during this phase in my life where I was trying to invent time travel.
The Screaming Eagles @268
What colour paint/interior have you ordered?
The Screaming Eagles @261:
That’s the minimum safe speed to pass Ferrybridge
268 I used to try and reach the other end of the Orwell Bridge before I had started by breaking the light speed barrier
269 - The colour is Nero Serapis (black to me and thee)
OT and back to David Laws…
What Laws did is only outside the rules if Lundie was a “connected party” which would mean being his “cohabiting partner”
The only government literature I can find that goes anywhere towards defining a “cohabiting partner” is the guidance on LTAHAW (living together as husband and wife). This guidance specifically excludes same-sex couples, but presumably the same principles apply.
“Living together as husband and wife has its normal meaning in everyday language but the courts and administrative practice have developed a number of criteria to help apply that meaning to situations that may occur. When all of these criteria have been examined, the question as a whole still needs to be answered; do this man and woman live together as husband and wife.
These criteria are: -
Live in the same household.
Stability of relationship
Financial support
Sexual relationship
Dependent children
Public acknowledgement.
In both post and pre-award cases no single point can decide the question of living together as husband and wife. It is essential to have as much information as possible on all of the points to consider them as a whole. Remember that in pre-award cases the onus is on the applicant to prove that the conditions of entitlement have been satisfied.”
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/acgmanual/acg09010.htm
120. “116 Can’t believe you’re still banging on about Brown. Are these threads comfort food after a rather tricky week for Lib Dems?”
Do you really not get it yet? Brown is your Thatcher. People will be banging on about Brown in 20 years time. Enjoy it.
Sadly for Lembit Opik I think his comedy career is going the same way as his political career with jokes like this: “Why don’t Marxists drink Earl Grey? Because proper tea is theft.
Whats funny about that
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7142991.ece
A big tip for Lembit (No pun intended) but he should stick to the “FFS rule” for gag lines in pubs: F*cking, Farting and Shit!
Plus amusing stories that people can relate to like sweaty b0ll0ck marks on plastic chairs! 
Jonny Jimmy @273:
*** Shudders to think what’s involved in satisfying HMRC that you’re involved in a sexual relationship with someone ***
2. Morus.
I am a little by the sequence of events you refer to - simply because Purnell did not resign until 10pm on polling day!Why ,therefore, would you have expected any response from D Milliband - when you went to vote - to a resignation that had not yet taken place?
258 TSE serves you right for thinking you could start a 500 foot club as a rival to the mile-high club
The Screaming Eagles @272
Hope you’ve got someone to polish it for you - black shows all the dust/smudges.
Best ‘black’ finish I ever saw was on a Kawasaki Ninja - it had flecks of metallic midnight blue in the finish and looked more black than black. Gorgeous.
Many moons ago, I’d a friend who owned a DeLorean - the stainless steel body was smothered with fingerprint stains like a cheap sink.
277 - Should say ‘ I am a little puzzled by the sequence ‘
274 - that’s not fair; Thatcher has achivements, Brown just spent money.
re performance cars
lol
i suspect there’s an element of truth in that.
But had I the money, i think i’d prefer a year of ferocious lions hunting in Africa à la Hemingway
http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/rp2010/RP10-036.pdf
306 Con seats…
167 of them have LD in second place, 137 have Lab
258 Labour seats…..
147 of them have Con in second place, 76 have LD
57 LD seats…
38 of them have Con in second place, 17 have Lab
…
MPs average age is 50 year old. Just 137 are from “pre 1997″: 69 Lab, 57 Con, 8 LD, 3 Others
Unexpected compliment of the day
MirrorJames: V impressed by new Home Sec Theresa May. Good on ID cards last week and got the tone spot on today.
I feel quite callous and sh1tty for even thinking about the betting in relation to this story
Mrs Burnham’s brave decision
Anyone who knows Andy Burnham knows that he looked troubled during last night’s Queen’s Speech debate in the Commons. But there is a very understandable reason for him being detached from politics in recent days, I’m told.
Mr Burnham’s wife Marie-France has just had a double-mastectomy in a bid to prevent her from developing breast cancer.
The operation was taken as a preventive move after a genetic test showed that she had the breast cancer gene fault BCRA1.
Just as importantly, her sister Claire died of the disease at just 39, leaving behind four children under the age of eight. Her mother and elder sister Louise are also being treated for the disease.
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2010/06/mrs-burnhams-brave-decision.html
262: I suppose I would have to concede that it is technically possible that the Queen would, relatively late in a parliament, ignore the declared wishes of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition (and, uncharacteristically, precipitate a constitutional crisis). It is, here, being asserted as probable that she would do so.
This being a betting site, although it is no longer possible to gamble on the outcome, perhaps I should merely say that that I, unlike other posters, would have required long odds to gamble on the dissolution being denied.
272 TSE I think spending more than £10,000 on a car is obscene. Why dont you start building a property portfolio for the twins + one on the way or even put them down for Eton? alternatively buy some decent (i.e. antique) furniture or paintings. Once your new toy has been bumped or scratched it will lose its appeal.
One piece of advice, dont bring it to the North of Scotland. Our Sheriffs automatically disqualify anyone driving over 100mph and if you have some previous, you will be done for reckless not careless driving and possibly even face imprisonment.
284 - May really wasn’t a daft appointment, despite what some suggested. She has always been a safe, if unremarkable, pair of hands. She’s like the headmistress of a nice girls’ school; seems strict but fair, with a hint that she’s more fun than she lets on.
The Screaming Eagles @285
Sounds like she’s being very sensible - bloody awful circumstances.
279. “looked more black than black.”
“How much more black could it be?
None.
None more black.”
287 - I do have quite the property portfolio building up.
I managed to pay off my mortgage last month which is such a relief.
I just wanted to treat myself. The fact I will only have had sex 3 times in 13months between October 2009 and December 2010 has nothing to do with it.
World Cup squad numbers:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup-2010/teams/england/7800530/England-World-Cup-Squad-Numbers-Peter-Crouch-handed-No-9-shirt.html
292 - I’m backing Crouchigol to be the leading scorer in the world cup.
282 If I had the money I would splash out and have each of my roofs made wind and watertight! Yesterday my handyman and I were on the main roof attaching a winch he made to a slipping section of skew and I had to shimmy up a shoogly ladder to anchor the other end round a chimney before he could winch it back up. Hopefully next week we can reattach it.
TSE Too much detail..
288 Like Annabel Goldie without the excess padding!!
Betting post
Boylesports have Kenny Dalglish at 9/2 as next Liverpool manager.
Fill yer boots.
how is the betting on the world cup? Any tip?
Milibland the Elder in the HoC just called Hague the Shadow Foreign Secretary.
298 - I’ve backed Spain a lot, and England less so.
Antifrank has laid Spain and England
Spain are the favourites, justifiably so.
The Screaming Eagles @291:
Absolutely - spoil yourself Mr Eagles.
When I had money - I spent £8k on a four poster bed frame - plus another £4k on the actual thing to sleep on.
I wondered why peeps made such a fuss about Tony Blair’s £2k mattress
299 - ooooo, bitter
Oh dear
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/BP-Credit-Rating-Cut-Over-Oil-Spill-Slick-About-To-Hit-Floridas-Beaches/Article/201006115642515?f=rss
easterross,
sell the cold manoir and migrate to a tropical country !
Mr Moderator - can you release the link to the Sky BP story please?
If I had money to burn I’d buy some more bookshelves, and then some more books
I’d also increase my gambling stakes.
Is there a reason why David Miliband has not nominated himself? All the other candidates have.
Also Darling is not yet listed as nominating him.
What about Hoey and Field? Surely they must really be supporting DM?
So DM’s lead is a bit bigger than it appears.
Great piece as ever from Iain Martin
http://blogs.wsj.com/iainmartin/2010/06/03/mandelson-misses-the-point-why-did-the-money-run-out
306 Mike L
“Is there a reason why David Miliband has not nominated himself? All the other candidates have.”
From Paul Waugh
UPDATE: I asked Mili-D about Tom Harris’s point on nominations. (Believe it or not, he has not nominated himself). He offered to lend his own nomination to one of the other candidates - but only if they were a squeak away from getting on the ballot:
“If one of the candidates comes to me and shows bona fide that they have got 32 and they need a 33rd nomination, I’ve still got my nomination to make and so that’s the nomination I control and when I say I want more the merrier, that’s what I mean. Let’s see how they all get on.”
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/
ok, ill lay the fav
307 - Hoey and Field are supporting McDonnell.
306 - Good choice, Mr Dancer. When I had my house in Hungary renovated, I insisted on a big study and designed the bookshelving myself. I’m not very creative and I’m very proud of my efforts.
Change of programming on terestrial telly in Oz tonight, apparently the girl from the Gold Coast is up at Roland Garros.
She was worth a bet a week ago, now she looks the real deal.
Talking about “deal”, if you ever get a chance to compare the Oz version with Noel Eedmonds and actually prefer the Edmonds version, let me take you first class to the island for the deranged.
No silly phone calls, just fast paced gambling ands cheeky anecdotes, a bit like Norton, over 26 briefcases in 20 minutes and lots of cute chicks in matching skort skirts and wigs. Perfect!
I know TSE would approve…….
Mike L @307:
They picked McDonnell
312, aye, I’d love to design my own home. It’d be small, but crammed with bookshelves.
Of course, I’d actually need some money to do that.
I’m just a poor boy, nobody loves me
313 - Only wearing matching short skirts and wigs?
Blimey.
310 - What did you say the other day about you and sporting bets?
If you want a spring tonic, pop over to Tom Harris’s blog to enjoy his fabulous rant against the loons camped out in Parliament Square. Boris Johnson is having a go at ejecting Brian Haw and his chums in the High Court – don’t hold your breath – and apparently one of them has got on to Big Ben. Tom is one of Labour’s greatest voices of reason.
http://www.tomharris.org.uk/2010/06/02/democracy-village-my-ae/
Mr Moderator - thanks for releasing the Sky story - can you do the same for the link to Tom Harris’ blog!
Labour contriving hard not to just ordain a leader almost unelected due to no opposition. Hard to chanage recent habits though…..Milibanana trying to make out it is close so that he is seen as fair and reasonable when he gets in.
A bit more anti israeli government sentiment might help though, those northern marginal constituencies may not think a jew is going to help their moslem brothers much.. After all the non jews have done SFA the last 13 years!
O/T - One of my friends think this story will appeal to me
The co-founder of a 3D film technology company has suggested that p0rnography will be a key driver in takeup of new TV sets.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/odd/news/a222864/viewers-reach-out-to-touch-3d-boobs.html
TSE, the host was caught drunk in a gutter and of course being Oz his ratings shot up as it confirmed he was one of the lads.
They are like Robert Palmer videos in HD.
317 — im the ‘roger’ of sportbetting: what tim would call the wisdom of the herd: bet against my position and ull win.
Ill do that myself soon
Off to see a Grand Slam potential winner in action now.
Go Sam.
The Screaming Eagles @320
Well it certainly led the way on e-commerce/video streaming etc - I remember a BT colleague pointing this out during a presentation way back and the audience looking at their shoes/inspecting fingernails
3D pron sounds like the perfect application for the technology.
311, 314. I know Hoey and Field have nominated McDonell(!)
My point is are they really supporting him or have they just nominated him to get him on the ballot?
320 — im a big fan of japanese p0rn
philippe magnan @328
I’ve never seen any - what makes it better than the rest?
328 - **Cough* Home Made p0rn recorded on your High Def camcorder, then viewed on a 52inch tv **cough**
329 Debbie does Stagflation
Pearl Necklace Harbour
Who can argue with that?
Miliband the elder continues to be one of the smuggest MPs in the HoC.
329:It has tentacles
331 - How can you forget the classic.
Sex Toy Story.
334 lol
Godzilla versus Dildo
they are basically erotic, and cartoonish; more about fantasy than anatomy.
Damn, I’m going to have to do some work, just as well, I can see Mr Smithson putting me on the naughty step if I continue
The Screaming Eagles @330
Been years since I made home-pron - very amusing. I think I erased it all just in case it ended up on the internet!
The idea of seeing myself now in HD and 52″ across fills me with horror
re 287 Easterross as much as £10k? You can get them (new) far cheaper and they will still get you to your detination just as quickly and conveniently.
335 - The Gang Bangs of New York and Shaving Ryans Privates were two other classics.
The wonders of Pb - train stations one day - japanese p0rn the next. Anyone got any comments about politics? Or betting? You know, just for kicks…
338 - In my experience, the female stars find it distasteful when viewing it. The blokes love it.
philippe magnan @336
Ah, thanks!
frasernels
Aristo takeover of UKIP continues. Lord Pearson of Rannoch, new leader, has just named Viscount Monckton of Brenchley as deputy leader.
DM now 3.7
Market hates Ed
344: Amazing….as if UKIP was trying to eat itself to death really.
PM is going to Cumbria tomorrow along with HSec - is this his Diana moment?
World Cup betting:
Holland are overpriced at above 10s to me. I do fancy Spain to win but their price is not overly attractive. 22s for a Holland/Spain final with Shadsy is something I’ve taken a few quid of though.
I fancy an each-way flutter on Gilardino as top goalscorer as I fancy New Zealand getting a couple of proper tonkings. Same with Lucas Barrios who will probably be Paraguay’s main man since replacing the very injured Salvador Cabanas.
Plato @338:
- in black and white on a flickering small screen it would be OK though, right?
Turned on to watch the news this morning and up popped an info screen to tell me that DirecTV have updated my software for 3D - several World Cup games are being shown by ESPN live and in 3D.
Plato @338:
- and of course this assumes they don’t require a wide angle lens!
slackbladder @346
Monckton has all the right IQ/shoot-from-the-hip gumption but looks strange [I assume he had a thyroid disorder]/sounds super posh.
Pearson comes across as a bit dim/ivory towerish but looks fine in a patrician way/sounds marginally less posh.
Still it could have been worse - Nikki StClaire looked like Lurch in drag.
Tim B @349
Nah, I’d be happy just rolling back about 15yrs!!
284: Is it just me or is that Parliamentary Briefing paper full of errors: Example “The Conservatives polled almost 10 million votes across England, a 39.5% share. They won 296, 56% of seats.
The number of Conservative seats in England is lower than at any election since October 1974.”. No it isn’t. If that were true the Tories would ahve been in power continously since 1979.
http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/rp2010/RP10-036.pdf
DM @ 3.7 Ghost ??
*hopes that’s true but doubts*
349 - Get the glasses. 3D footy is bloody awesome.
352 wouldn’t we all! 15 years ago…. even the sound of it is delicious
9 “The big three credit ratings agencies were threatened yesterday with fines and the creation of a new state-backed competitor, only weeks after European leaders attacked them for exacerbating Greece’s problems with downgrades.”
MoustacheBloke: Gen Steiner send the 12th Division to counter-attack west of Berlin!
Gen Steiner: Erm, 12th Division has been destroyed sir.
MoustacheBloke: Bang!
Gen Steiner: Urgh! Gurgle. Thud.
MoustacheBloke: Colonel Mandelfondler send the 12th Division to counter-attack west of Berlin!
Colonel Mandelfondler: Erm yes sir, right away… shall i send the erm 26th and erm 64th to counter-attack to the east as well?
MoustacheBloke: That’s more like it!
347. Plato June 3rd, 2010 at 2:14 pm
No, because the people killed were unknown until they became victims yesterday. I think the thing about Diana was she had been a public figure for 17 years or so and all the bagage emotional interviews and pictures over the years.
if its true its worth a new thread, fast
May I point out that the biggest political bet going at the moment is the BP share price? It’s currently 443.9 – 444.05, and yields a stonking 9.02%. The only problem is that President Obama is in desperate need of a quick fix to get out of various domestic difficulties, and blaming BP (or “British Petroleum” as he insists on calling it) is the way to go. Which will win? Cheap populism or rational common sense? Who wants to bet on US political machinations?
People forget that although BP own the oil, and have a contractual obligation to clean up the spillage, they do not own the rig which is causing the problems in the Gulf of Mexico. Halliburton made and installed the bit that broke, and Transoceanic own and operate the rig. Lots of other companies contributed to the installation, and it is going to take a lot of liigation to find out who owes what to whom. On the plus side, Exxon have still not had to pay out after the Exxon Valdez affair (litigation still pending!) and BP is still the same company it was three months ago, albeit now 25% cheaper. On the downside, 40% of their reserves are in the US, and if the USA decide to do a Russia and start arresting Oil Oligarchs and sequestering assets then it is going to get very messy…but when all is said and done, America still needs the oil transferred to the petrol pumps somehow. There is also pressure on BP to waive the divi for the next few quarters to show that they are serious about the clean-up.
There’s a big Oil Analysts’ Conference Call with the company tomorrow, at which BP will have to spell out the current state of play and their proposals for going forward. Watch the price move on Monday – but whether up or down, I have no idea.
Remember, this is not investment advice, and the value of your investment can go down as well as belly up.
347 - Ooooo, please don’t use that phrase. The thought of Tony calculatedly wringing his hands, putting that little tremor in his voice, and looking at his shoes while trying to crack a sad smile is one of the most pathetic bits of political acting in history.
One would hope Cameron’s visit to Cumbria would be done with more dignity than that.
it was a typo : Ghost meant DM @ 1.7
Lucian Fletcher @355:
not if after all that time the scoreline still ends up 1 - 0 even with the glasses.
Lucian Fletcher @355
Mark Kermode reckoned the best experience is to get two sets of specs and then put the green/red [is that right?] lenses on the opposite ones - that apparently gets rid of any fuzziness.
356 - Speak for yourself… 15 years ago I was a nerdy, geeky teenager who spent too much time with a computer and no time with girls. Whereas as today… I’m a 29 year old who spends time blogging on a political/betting website… Oh well, plus ca change.
364 - it was to swap the left and right lenses - and I think make them back to front - in the new form of polarised glasses you get at the cinema.
This doesn’t stop the fuzziness; it stops it being in 3D.
Kermode really is a gigantic arse.
Lord Mandelson is apparently working on a book, to be called “The Third Man”.
In the movie wasn’t Harry Lime eventually killed by his friend after being wounded by Major Callaway?
- not that I’m hoping for history to repeat itself, life imitate art, or anything. heavens no.
31 year olds buying Lamborghinis is enough to drive me to vote Labour! FFS!
I come over all socialist when I encounter such excess. The last time it happened was when I accompanied my wife to a reunion at her old private school (sorry “public” school) the facilities were so astonishingly good, and the leg-up the children of rich people get by going there it struck me as appallingly unfair to people like me, bright but without rich parents. Surprised myself to be honest
Lennon @365
15yrs ago - I was 28, had a magnetic effect on men - particularly procurement managers over 50 who wanted to spend lots of money and a soon to become millionaire hubby
Colleagues and even my other half said I had ‘F*ck Me’ written in hormone ink on my forehead - never understood it myself and it was a complete pain as I spent more time rebuffing unwanted attention than anything else. Apparently I blink rather a lot and it was coquettish. Now I suspect it looks like I’ve something in my eye
Oh those were the days!
363 - Give me 1-0 over 3-0 any day in a big game. Tension right to the final whistle.
366 - LOL. Toolish tip of the year!
Lucian Fletcher @370:
Not for me Lucian - I am not a soccer fan. Hated playing it, dislike watching it.
289. Re May, I said at the time that her unexpected appointment wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. She has been one of the longest serving frontbenchers for the Tories and, in opposition, was often put up to face difficult questions, giving her a good amount of experience of how to ‘pitch’ things. Her variety of roles have also clued her up to various aspects of the work of government.
Now, I still don’t know how well she’ll do as Home Secretary, that infamously jinxed post, but early signs have been quite positive.
Campbell lying on R5 now.
He’s a total twat.
373 - Does a day go by without Campbell on the BBC? Thurs, Friday, Sat, Sunday, Monday…did he take Tues and Wed off?
Oracle @374
I think I heard him the radio yesterday as well.
Once he’s flogged his diaries [again], hopefully he’ll go away forever. I notice Mandy is penning his as well - I can’t imagine who’d be interested in either bar lobby hacks who’ll get a free copy anyway.
I just want them to bugger off into obscurity - the lies, spin, manipulation are URGH.
368 — great post
lefty-ism in a nutshell : it is rooted in envy and resentment against the rich, the beautiful, the lucky people
Unfortunately the only way MandyCampbell would have been purged is if the New Labour project had had a really crushing defeat.
They’re too useful to get rid of under anything except emotional over-reaction circumstances.
[344] - Aristo takeover of UKIP continues. Lord Pearson of Rannoch, new leader, has just named Viscount Monckton of Brenchley as deputy leader.
The same Viscount Monckton who has been caught chronically misrepresenting science in order to fit his preconceived opinion that global warming isn’t happening?
Oh dear.
Perhaps POTUS needs to be reminded by HMG about not doing anything populist to BP, even if it means hinting about the immediate recall of forces from Afghanistan. Does he really want to hamgstring an Anglo-American Company?
The Labour Party need to distance themselves from Campbell and his ilk if they want to revive their fortunes. It’s not a difficult thing to do - let him publicise his memoirs and then ignore him, save for inviting him to the odd ‘memories of when we were in power’ parties.
Certainly they need to stop putting him up as ‘their man’ on the BBC.
78 Unlike thos other chaps who did the same thing to prove it was..
Patients in Cumbria seem to be making positive progress - all now stable/comfortable.
jameskirkup
Vince Cable: David Cameron ‘distancing’ himself from BP: I’m loving this New Politics lark. All these new ministe… http://bit.ly/dfbGb8
368:Puiblic school facilities….I would look at it the other way around….these facilities are damn good, how can we bring state schools up to or closer to this standard?
Listened to that odious lying bully Alastair Campbell on the way home from work - what is it about the BBC and this love in they have with this gruesome creature. I think anyone who hopes these people like Campbell, Mandelson will just fade away are being naive, they are like moths to a flame.
Before that Alan Johnson was on the same show (Richard Labour Luvvie Bacon) and whilst he was trying to be Mr Reasonable, he was in fact being opportunistic. It’s about time these people realised they lost the election and just SHUT UP.
376. “lefty-ism in a nutshell : it is rooted in envy and resentment against the rich, the beautiful, the lucky people”
You might want to have a think about the state of the industrial heartlands of Britain in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, and then you’ll get a bit closer to the real moral underpinning of socialism and social democracy. We may no longer have quite such extremes, but the wealth gap is still horrendous, and the impulse for social justice is exactly the same.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/politics/10224696.stm
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100042110/in-refusing-to-review-our-gun-laws-theresa-may-signals-an-end-to-declamatory-legislation/
I do hope so.
The West Wing clip made me want to watch the whole lot all over again.
sure, james
the genealogy of lefty-thinking runs deep
genuine question : why should the wealth gap be virtually nil?
Who would work as restaurant waiter, clerk in 5-stars hotel and shoes-polishers? Do u really want a world withoud diamond-mistresses, private jets and Las Vegases?
389. I think the answer to your question from any lefty is
“wah wah wah fairness !”
Rafa on way out, at last.
BBC ticker.
388. Alternatively, it just signals an end to a government that is instinctively in favour of really tough gun control legislation. I’m sure if there was a tragedy that somehow suggested a need to urgently repatriate powers from Brussels, ‘declamatory legislation’ would be right back in fashion (well, if not for the Lib Dems).
291. Cameron’s immigration and foriegn worker policy in action ?
James Kelly @386:
what’s ‘moral’ about some people having less money than others? Greed and envy is not moral at all, last time I looked.
Tim B @394:
- should of course be ‘are not’
no private jets, no performance cars, no million-dollar-supermodel whores = no effective technical innovation
389. “genuine question : why should the wealth gap be virtually nil?”
Genuine answer (in form of question) - if that’s what lefties believe in, why does even Tony Benn think that the richest in society should only be prevented from earning more than times as much as the poorest? Hardly a wealth gap of ‘virtually nil’, and that’s about as extreme a position as you’ll find from any serious politician these days.
You seem to be confusing modern day left-of-centre politics with Marxism-Leninism.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/liverpool/8719210.stm
The tinkerman goes.
388 - this government is so much better than the last one it’s astonishing. Can you ever imagine a Labour minister saying?:
“In this country we have some of the toughest X legislation anywhere in the world and we shouldn’t make any kneejerk reaction to think that there is some instant legislative or regulatory answer.”
397. Missed out the crucial word - ‘more than times as much’ should read ‘more than ten times as much’.
392: We already have some of the toughest gun laws in the world. Not sure how much tougher they can get.
no super-rich sponsors = less independent artists, less free-minded philosophers
117: Mike- my point is that no matter how bad Brown’s position was in June 2009, leaving him in office was still the least worst option for Labour. The result this year was pretty respectable for Labour, despite everything- are you seriously saying Milliband resigning last year would have brought Labour to victory (at least as the largest party) now? I just can’t see any scenario in which that could have happened.
Scotland would have massively turned against any perceived assassin of Brown, for example- it could have lost Labour 10-20 seats or more. That would have pretty much eaten up any extra seats in the south they might have won without Brown, even on a best case scenario, IMO.
394. “what’s ‘moral’ about some people having less money than others?”
Well, quite. When the gap is extreme, it’s deeply immoral.
philippe magnan @396:
- and I bet Mr eagles would be utterly miserable
398 - Will Gerrard and Torres follow?
On another tack, I noticed today reports that Mrs Gerrard isn’t going to the world cup….
401. “We already have some of the toughest gun laws in the world. Not sure how much tougher they can get.”
The obvious answer to that (after yesterday) is by making it tougher to obtain shotguns.
400 - It is of course a nonsense to talk about the richest in society earning no more than a multiple of the poorest. If I invent a newer, better version of Tetrapak, establish a business to do so, sell this wonderful product to meet the world’s fluid-containing needs and in the process my business makes a huge fortune, why should I then have my profits arbitrarily curtailed because an assortment of workshy soap-dodgers have not been similarly socially useful?
396/402. Philippe - dear me, this does indeed all sound pretty ghastly. Just as well it’s all based on a false premise.
408 Antifrank..Could’nt agree more…
OT
I watched Parliament again today.
Labour MPs are absolutely hilarious in their brazen attempts to ride the cuts narrative, and actually demolish their own point by demonstrating the load of silly things we’ve been spending money on over the past 13 years.
“But what about my constituencies’ plan to help one-legged BME lesbian painters gain sufficient advice and training opportunities at the job centre? don’t you realise how much my constituents *need* this support?”
Only now has it made me realise (Sir George Young picked up on this too) that pretty much *every* question asked by a Labour member in opposition, (and also when they were in *government*) is centred around spending.more.money.
Their backbenches are unreconstructed socialist dinosaurs.
408. “We already have some of the toughest gun laws in the world. Not sure how much tougher they can get.”
Antifrank, have a think about the meaning of the word ‘earn’. Next!
James Kelly @392:
Oh what a load of cobblers. The gun controls were so effective that 12 peeps died yesterday and another dozen are injured.
Mr Bird held a licence for 20yrs and then flipped his lid. There have only been 3 incidents like this in three decades. Terrible things sometimes happen. This was one of them.
Banning Olympic pistol shooting has to be the most stupid over-reaction of any government to a very rare occurrence.
The only thing Labour were instinctive about was controlling other peoples lives and giving them 20 page risk assessment forms to fill in for a geography field trip.
397 - James, i was refering to ur comment, about ‘the wealth gap’ being ’still horrendeous’, which implies a desire to diminish it. I infered u –as a lefty– thought the ideal would be to eliminate it, effectively or virtually.
407: It’s already rather difficult. You have to apply, have home visits, be checked by the police etc. Shotguns have a legitimate use in the countryside.
407 James Kelly…the victims in these shootings never had the opportunity of defending themselves.that is what is truly sad about the whole situation!
411. Copied and pasted the wrong sentence - should read…
408. “why should I then have my profits arbitrarily curtailed because an assortment of workshy soap-dodgers have not been similarly socially useful?”
Antifrank, have a think about the meaning of the word ‘earn’. Next!
399. Was I mistaken that when listening to May’s speech in the Commons earlier a Labour member asked if now was the time to ban *all* gun ownership?!
My eyes haven’t stopped rolling. They can’t help themselves.
406. I think she said she would go if there was a chance of a semi.
I’ll get my coat.
The 10x earnings figure is simply populist guff from Wedgewood Benn. Inequality of incomes is needed to encourage innovation, but most political parties have signed up to a mildly redistributive income tax system.
James Kelly @404:
The best way to help poorer people is for the economy to grow both to give them more opportunity to earn a living, and to increase tax revenue to the government - but every time Labour has been in power they manage to stop the economy growing and increase unemployment, which of course hurts the poor most.
So having an economic policy that hurts those who you claim to support does seem seem immoral if viewed from the odd aspect of equating wealth with morality or lack thereof.
415. “James Kelly…the victims in these shootings never had the opportunity of defending themselves.that is what is truly sad about the whole situation!”
That’s the nature of being faced with a madman carrying a gun, tragically. I don’t know if you’re implying it would have helped if there had been millions of legally-owned firearms sloshing around for people to ‘defend’ themselves with - but if so, no it wouldn’t.
417. What about taxi drivers ? And taxis ? And rural villages ? And lawyers and twins.
Ban them all and this tragedy would never happen again.
413. “James, i was refering to ur comment, about ‘the wealth gap’ being ’still horrendeous’, which implies a desire to diminish it. I infered u –as a lefty– thought the ideal would be to eliminate it, effectively or virtually.”
I’m happy to have been able to clear up that confusion for you.
407. Perhaps we should loosen the gun laws because the evidence seems to be that countries with fewer restrictions have fewer shootings of this type.
416 - Yes, and having thought about it, the person who develops a superior product to Tetrapak deserves every last penny that they get. Or do you belong to the Neanderthal school of thought that only physical labour is worthy labour and that all efforts are equally valuable?
Right on cue, Postie Johnson bangs the ‘ban everything’ drum!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7800694/Cumbria-shootings-Alan-Johnson-calls-for-review-of-gun-laws.html
412. “Oh what a load of cobblers. The gun controls were so effective that 12 peeps died yesterday and another dozen are injured.”
Plato, the one pattern with these massacres seems to be that they tend to be carried out by ‘ordinary’ people, ie. not the sort who would have easy access to illegal stockpiles of guns. The notion that gun control legislation has no impact at all on the likelihood of such incidents happening is thus very difficult to sustain.
james, btw : i dont generally like what u stand for; but i do like the way u stand for it. Elegant style.
graham p malpas @415:
Living in a state in which there has recently been a legislative fight as to the ‘freedom’ and ’self-defense’ aspects of allowing handguns to be carried in bars and restaurants, (and non-federal areas of airports) one of the ‘pro’ arguments is that if someone comes into a bar and goes postal, a patron packing heat can take him out before he kills too many people, thus more guns equals more safety and fewer shootings.
I make no comment as to the veracity or otherwise of the argument. All I would say is that legislating in the heat of the moment is always unwise.
425. “Or do you belong to the Neanderthal school of thought that only physical labour is worthy labour and that all efforts are equally valuable?”
I certainly don’t belong to the Neanderthal school of thought that holds that backbreaking menial work is worthy of only 0.25% of the remuneration of an executive with a cushy lifestyle.
Too “populist” against BP? Evidence of their globally criminal conduct - in cahoots with Haliburton & other subcontractors, hordes of Bushies and some of the dumber Obamamama Ivy Leagers - keeps mounting daily. HANG ‘EM HIGH!!!
From that Hannan blog this was interesting,
“Tony Blair’s most nauseating speech as Labour leader was the one he gave to his 1997 party conference, in which he brandished the shrouds of the murdered infants:
“Some Tories accuse us of being emotional. Well, if they had been in that gym, if they had met those parents, sitting in those tiny chairs where once their children sat, they’d have been emotional, too.”
In fact, of course, the Tories had been in that gym. In an act of bipartisan decency, John Major had invited Blair, as Leader of the Opposition to accompany him. This is how he was repaid.”
426: Mr Johnson said their might be a case for incorporating mental health checks into the system following claims that it is too easy for rural residents to gain access to firearms.
Oh god….typical johnson kneejerk populism. This guy had a shotgun licence for 15years. So the postie wants ‘mental health’ checks for all licence holders?
How’s that going to work in practice? Seriously? How often? Once a year at least surely? Would it stop anyone snapping? I doubt it.
426. Wish we could ban Postie Johnson.
This is what I’m talking about though. It’s pathetic. You can’t protect everyone. One of the sad but unavoidable facts of life is sometimes people go psycho and hurt others. By clamping down too stringently on the means with which they hurt others you spoil the overwhelming majority of people’s perfectly reasonable use of these things.
Labour are so illiberal it hurts.
425. “Perhaps we should loosen the gun laws because the evidence seems to be that countries with fewer restrictions have fewer shootings of this type.”
You must be joking. The USA? Finland?
421 James Kelly…i have always believed in the right to carry arms.
Taffy @424
Indeed - Switzerland has more guns per head than almost anywhere else and they don’t have a problem.
Frankly penalising legal gun owners is a completely soft target - it’s the equivalent of speed cameras.
Illegal guns kill oodles of people a year and there is no correlation between gun deaths and gun certificates [which have gone down by third in recent yrs].
From my plod knowledge - getting a firearms/shotgun cert is very hard - anyone with a spec of depression is out, ditto anyone who’s served a prison sentence over 3 yrs even if its for insider dealing, no one who is fond of a beer or several etc.
The questions are amazingly intrusive and it takes months to get the green light.
435..I believe that is law in Switzerland that there must be a gun in every household…those crazy Swiss eh..gunfights every Saturday night..
431 - You could replace a mechanical digger with 100 men with shovels and give them work. Or 1 million men with teaspoons. Personally, I’d rather use a mechanical digger. Honest labour is all well and good, but intelligence is worth far more.
The executive with a cushy lifestyle who improves his company’s profitability (and I accept that measuring that is easier said than done) is intrinsically far more valuable to the company than the person on the shopfloor. Why should their pay packets not reflect that? The factor could be far more than 10 times or 20 times the amount. In the hypothetical example I gave (which you have ducked twice), all the benefit to society came from one person. Why should that one person not benefit in proportion to that contribution?
427. ‘These massacres tend to be carried out by ‘ordinary’ people’ you say? …..so by yur reasoning its only the previously law abiding who turn out to be suicidal mass murderers! Why not ban ‘ordinary’ people then? Oh I forgot labour have tried that!
432. Blair was incredibly naughty in some of his first term speeches. If he hadn’t been so unassailable and popular the media would have ripped him to shreds for being incredibly negative. As others said a few weeks back, the “Forces of Conservatism” speech, where he pretty much smeared everyone in the Tory Party as a racist, homophobic, backward lowlife was a very nasty speech.
Taffy @424:
- would you care to share this evidence with us?
You stand a bigger chance of being mugged in the UK than the US, but you are much much less likely to suffer a gsw in the UK.
‘to ban’ is the favorite verb of the abusive user of sovereign power.
Speaking of how arming the populace is a “protection” there was an item in the Seattle paper last week, about a moron who was shopping at Walmart or suchlike, with a loaded handgun stuffed under his belt. Which went off. Startling other customrs, creating a nasty mess for staff to mop up, and blasting (litterally) his family prospects.
BUT at least the human gene pool may be a wee bit safer!
444 - Reminds me of Plaxico Burress, the NFL player, who accidentally shot himself in a club.
Sea Shanty Irish @444:
I guess there is now no chance of him ever being arrested for carrying a concealed weapon
- and it brings new meaning to the post-snip phrase about shooting blanks
Personally, I think the gun laws are pitched about right (save for the sport anomaly, which is wrong and I’m sure could be permitted under regulated circumstances).
You could argue I’m a bit of an anti-gun fuddy-duddy on this one, but really I think it’s quite right having to justify owning one and being scrutinised prior to being granted a license. Any further restriction on this position, which is one of the strictest in the world, is incredibly foolish though IMHO and would come down far too hard on law abiding citizens.
Taffy @440:
Labour’s CRB checks for 11m people summed them up completely.
No one who’d ever done something stupid/immature could EVER work for central government now that deskbound pen-pushers have to declare their background whenever they apply for a job.
I know several very talented men who were fortunate enough to get good jobs before such policies were introduced. In their early 20s - one got a caution for having a spec of cannabis, the other for threatening someone with a pen-knife whilst drunk outside a nightclub.
They’d never get a civil service offer now - what hope is there for peeps like these by outing their mistakes everytime they want to change jobs?
442. Tim B. See above evidence from regarding Switzerland from Plato and Richard Dodd. My thanks to both.
449. Switzerland is a special case due to the extraordinary scope and length of military service, which the ownership of guns is directly tied to. Are you going to address the point about the USA, where the rate of death by gun is vastly higher than here, or Finland, which has seen those school massacres?
Seems old Lembit is giving Red Ken a good run for his money in the sad, pathetic and desperate to still be noticed stakes…
Former MP Lembit Opik begins comedy career in London
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/10222918.stm
I won’t repost my blog today but I really hope we don’t go overboard on the banning everything based on one very tragic incident again.
I’m sure there were just as many sick people around 20 years ago before schools were locked down, CRB checks were done for everyone passing by a school or working for a council and people had to travel abroad to practise Olympic pistol shooting.
The nanny state has made things seem just much more unpleasant.
Nutters kill people very occasionally. Making the millions of normal people feel like suspects in their own communities constantly has very very little impact on safety and actually makes us feel unsafe.
406 ‘The obvious answer to that (after yesterday) is by making it tougher to obtain shotguns.’
It’s tough enough already. Besides, why should other law abiding shotgun owners be penalised due to the actions of a lunatic?
Derrick Bird would no doubt have found other means to carry out his killing spree. Driving a taxi into a crowd of people, or indiscriminate hammer attacks would cause just as much carnage. Should we ban cars (responsible for thousands of deaths), and hand tools to thwart the actions of determined killers?
Miliband is a sneering buffoon who would lead Labour into a whole load of trouble. He did well to avoid the poisoned chalice last time, and would have done his party a favour if he had stood aside this time.
ssi @ 444
This new Deputy Leader of UKIP, Viscount Monckton, looks like an interesting cove.
453. “indiscriminate hammer attacks would cause just as much carnage”
No, it wouldn’t. It’s much, much harder to kill a large number of people in a short space of time with a hammer than it is with a gun. That’s a variant of Prince Philip’s ‘cricket bat’ idea that the Dunblane relatives demolished.
450 - Out of curiosity - why do Switzerland have military service? I mean it’s not as if they are ever going to go to war against anyone…
Justin - you’re quite right, Purnell didn’t go until the close of polls at 10pm. There had, however, been a speight of Cabinet resignations before polls opened though, hadn’t there? Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears, Tom Watson, Hillary Armstrong.
The talk of Miliband resigning altogether and challenging Brown was based on that instability and the news reports that Brown would give his job to Mandelson. I think that’s why I thought it was significant on polling day.
458 Have you had a look at their neighbours…
James Kelly @450
So Switzerland doesn’t count because it doesn’t suit your POV?
Well using that logic - the Finns have a long history of depression/alcoholism/hunting and therefore are equally unrepresentative.
The logic that stricter controls remove risk/random carnage by a taxi driver of otherwise zero concern/nice bloke/good neighbour/father of two etc…
Every person I’ve heard who knew him has described him as placid, friendly, quiet, caring son to elderly mother, public regular, hard working, can’t believe it’s the same person.
This is a complete contrast with the likes of Michael Ryan who was a strange, gun obsessed loner with a weird mummys-boy relationship with his mother.
448 - Plato. The CRB check being allowed to be extended so far into public life has effectively ruined the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
In US, most gunshotwounds are accidential. For example, kids playing with parents unsecured firearms.
As for regulation, the NRA has been working overtime for half a century to undermine all sensible regulation. For example, the loophole for gunshow sales.
Also note that the incredible violence now gripping much of Mexico is directly fueled by guns purchased with ease in US and exchanged for drugggs. This is no new thing, but has been worsened greatly in recent years by growing laxity of US gun laws & regulations.
This from the same crowd that sanctions torrture in the name of national security - conveniently (or rather profitably) overlooking the fact that the situation on the Mexican border & its direct impacts are as great (if not greater) threat to vital US interests and individual Americans.
Finally, in the US (and reckon same is true in UK and Europe, though to lower degree) there is a HUGE gap in gun responsiblity & safety between rural versus urban people.
In most rural areas on the US (and Canada) firearms are a tradition handed down from generation to generation, used for farm & ranch management and recreation; often the one merges into the other.
Whereas for most urbanites the story is VERY different. Most middle-class types (in US context meaning say 80% of the populace) have little or no history with firearms; they tend to buy them either as toys, for very occassional hunting or just blasting away at target ranges or in remote (so they think) locations; or as perceived defense against crime. The underclass is more familiar (for bad reasons) but no more responsible (though not much less).
457 ‘It’s much, much harder to kill a large number of people in a short space of time with a hammer than it is with a gun.’
Bird was on the rampage for three hours.
Lets put trains, planes, golf clubs and cricket bats on the banned list too, along with rocks, kitchen knives and rope.
Just listening to some new Labour MPs on the Parliament channel - what a dull bunch they are - can’t see any ministerial material here but not that that will stop them.
442: The US is a big place and its gun laws and crime rates can differ considerably from state to state.
You might find it interesting to consider Vermont, which (despite being in New England) has gun laws which wouldn’t be out of place in the wild west http://www.nraila.org/statelawpdfs/VTSL.pdf and yet one of the lowest violent crime rates in the country http://www.infoplease.com/us/statistics/crime-rate-state.html
every ‘massacres’, ‘attack’, are fuelling the expansion of the police and the State in the name of prevention and security
the MSM are working hard at *justifying* more control over the civil society
461. “So Switzerland doesn’t count because it doesn’t suit your POV?”
No, because of the obvious point that prolonged military training produces a radically different outcome to the circumstances of mass gun ownership in the USA. As for the prevalence of depression and alcoholism in Finland, I dare say that might be a marginally less lethal phenomenon if there weren’t quite so many guns sloshing around.
453 Many things are potentially lethal, and have been used to carry out killings. We could ban them all I suppose, but I doubt if that would have any effect on the murder rate. There are very reasonable grounds why someone would wish to own a shotgun, and I don’t think that the activities of one nut should affect that.
444. “BUT at least the human gene pool may be a wee bit safer!”
Fortunately, the Tree of Life prunes itself.
439 People should be entitled to earn whatever they like, as long as they do so lawfully, and they should feel good about doing so. The poor are very lucky to have the rich to support them.
463. “Lets put trains, planes, golf clubs and cricket bats on the banned list too, along with rocks, kitchen knives and rope.”
Event planners? Fountain pens? I wonder when we’ll see the next church newsletter massacre.
469. “The poor are very lucky to have the rich to support them.”
Reverse that sentence and you’ll be closer to the truth.
456 He’s interesting, JackW, but I’ve heard said that he is a bit of a nutter. Brilliant public speaker, though, so he could go far.
471 Not in this country. The richest 1% contribute 25% of income tax.
Without them, the poor would just be poorer.
Phil D @466:
From your figures, DC - which until a year or so ago banned handgun possession - has the highest crime rate in the country.
Lucian Fletcher @462
I feel so sorry for these peeps, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is worthless now.
A long time ago back in the 80s, I worked with a lady who been at NACRO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacro and had done some great stuff.
There’s bugger all for them now.
The chance to start over in life is vanishingly small - Google outs your past if you’ve ever been stupid/unlucky enough to be mentioned by the press or just on a blog and the proliferation of CRB checks make it impossible to move on.
I’m so glad that I’m off the hamster wheel and have never had a Facebook/MySpace account.
What a sorry prospect that everyone who does puts themselves at risk of being sacked/unemployable if AN Other doesn’t like what they’ve said about their job or posts a photo of themselves in dubious fancy dress.
The whole puritanical/snooping culture of judging people like this is poisonous.
I had no idea it was like this until I started working as a contractor and discovered that colleagues had already Googled your name before you arrived/ditto new starters and then laughed about them behind their backs if they’d posted doggerel on their Facebook account.
472 - alas poor Campbell-Bannerman. He strayed far from the Liberal path.
355. “3D footy is bloody awesome”.
In the old days, it was called ‘going to the game’.
On Switzerland, the position is not quite as implied by Plato and Richard Dodd above. It’s true that males of military service age are reservists and expected to keep a rifle at home. However, it is illegal for them to store ammunition for it - this would be issued to them in emergency. Despite that, the proportion of murders that are committed with guns is significantly higher in Switzerland than in most other countries in Europe, presumably because it’s easier to get ammo in Switzerland than an illegal gun elsewhere. Becuase crime rates in Switzerland are in general very low anyway, the rate of gun murders doesn’t stand out, but it’s clearly proportionately higher.
Coming closer to home, the death rate in Nottingham from crime has dropped heavily since the 5-year sentence for carrying handguns was introduced. While gang members have taken to carriyng knives instead, the rate of collateral killing in gang clashes has fallen (because you can’t kill a lot of people at once with a knife).
I don’t think there’s much doubt that widespread availability of guns produces more gun crime. Whether you conclude that tighter restictions of gun ownership should follow is a separate argument, but it evades that argument to suggest that there is no effect.
school massacres are obviously trendy in the West.
Any theory as to why?
We are having quite a lot in the US and in Canada — from High School to Uni.
474. “From your figures, DC - which until a year or so ago banned handgun possession - has the highest crime rate in the country.”
Hmmm. It also just happens to border states with far fewer restrictions, thus rendering their own laws more or less useless.
EdP @464:
Apparently he started about 6am, had a rest and then continued at 1035 until he shot himself at 1340.
James Kelly @480:
Precisely - the gun restrictions in each state do not reflect the level of gun crime.
461. Indeed. Plato as far as the NRA are concerned this is probably just about the best thing that could have happened anywhere ever. You can just imagine their Lobbyists on Capitol Hill saying ‘the Limeys have the strictest gun laws possible, yet look what happened in Cumbria, England just the other day”
David Herdson @477:
The 3d TV is probably cheaper though
Lennon @458
I imagine they say to themselves: qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
It seems to have worked in their case.
Ann at 385: You feel that parties that fail to win a majority in elections should fall silent? A deathly hush will descend on Westminster in that case, since nobody won. If your reasoning only applies to opposition parties, how long do you feel they should be silenced?
Tim B @474Correct. http://www.statemaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-death-rate-per-100-000
478 - I see your photo is in the NEP today, Nick!
Nick Palmer @486:
On a slighty different topic, has Gordon Brown been seen in the HOC since the election?
476 Tabbers, did you hear Viscount Thurso on Wireless 4 last night? He was speaking about his grand-dad, and the portraits of him in the NLC.
the essence of the punk resistance was to become ‘unemployable’
the way to resist to scrutiny is to develop a legion of identities, to become a singularity that cant be transcoded in a model, a regular database; and to modify our body to trick the recognition soft/hard-wares
490 - I did not*, sadly, I am distraught at having missed his melifluous tones. Its been a while since I’ve been to the NLC, too!
* - slight problem with a flat battery and a lack of petrol
new thread
479 Sadly, Phillipe, they have become very “fashionable” in rural China as well. At least three so far this year; as in the West, they don’t know why.
I too, like Plato, learned to shoot at a very early age (7?) and I’ve kept an air-gun for squirrels and pigeons and magpies ever since.
My 82 yo mum has an airgun - and occasionally uses it
My 72 yo aunt has a ‘garden gun’ - a 9mm shotgun with a bolt-action and 18″ barrel - making in a Class 1 firearm! She uses it for similar pest-control purposes.
Both my grandfather and my father were in the army during WW1 and WW2 and both had snipers’ qualifications; my Grandpa taught me to shoot and I later went on to be Uk .22 champion @ 20 yo - before quitting.
{I had shot a ‘10 spot possible’ twice in a row - and it’s impossible to better that, hence my quitting}
I’ve held firearms and shotgun certificates ever since I was 17.
All of which is a preliminary to saying:
The quantity of absolute garbage written and spoken on the subject of legally-held guns in the UK in the last 24 hours *absolutely* beggars belief. It’s not only clear that no interviewer has ever held one, but that they have never shot one either, nor lived in the country, nor appreciate that for my nephews, taking the dog out for a walk of an evening, whilst taking their shotguns to keep the rabbit population is as normal as breathing.
A .22 rifle is *not* a ’semi-automatic assault rifle’; NO it’s *not* a ‘high-powered gun’ - guns are not powerful, cartridges can be.
‘Lamping’ rabbits/foxes from a 4×4 is a superb way of keeping their numbers down and is great sport and highly skilled - sociable, too. The dead twin in this case was a farmer, so shooting on his land was probably why the weapons were held and used (for 20 years FFS!) without any problems.
Also suggestions guns should be kept in gun clubs (many are) is a) daft and b) creates a ‘honey pot’ target for those who wish to steal large numbers of weapons in one go.
I’ve read about ‘pistols’ being used - as Plato wrote, banning .22 target pistols was just about the most asinine decision even Bliar managed to make as a populist measure.
No ‘hand guns’ (aka pistols, revolvers, automatics, side-arms) can legally be held by any private citizen in the UK, yet the numbers of such weapons used in crimes in the UK rise year by year.
The hoops you have to jump through not just when a licence is granted, but also every 5 years ever afterwards, are considerable, and include a GP letter, interviews with colleagues and partners, a home visit and the gun(s) themselves have to be kept, dissembled, in a gun safe.
Also, there’s a previous post suggesting the young farmer was the exception amongst the ‘random’ shootings, the rest being older. I’d suggest that he might have been a specific target, if there had been some confrontation between the two families in the past.
There was also an interview on R% with a woman out walking her dog at 05:30 yesterday (I can relate to that - I do that too, when the weather is hot); she seems to have met the killer just after he shot the solicitor at his farm home, and he turned and drove back past her (window down). She spoke to him, but he just glared back (she knew him quite well as they’d been at school together).
Much the same story about his brother - this began sometime around 05:00 and there’s then a 5 hour gap before he drove into town and shot another taxi-driver. What he did in those 5 hours is anyone’s guess.
Countries with guns in every home have few ‘gun spree’ killings as everyone knows about them and their dangers.
‘Never point a gun at something you don’t want to kill’ was just about my first lesson, together with ‘more people get shot with an ‘empty’ gun than get shot by one known to be loaded’.
I get very cross with the idiot scenes in movies - no recoil; no clouds of black powder smoke in cowboy ’shoot-outs’; no safety-catches; unbroken shotguns carried on ‘posh shooting-party’ scenes etc etc etc
I’ve spent 50 years in a home with firearms and it is so much ’second-nature’ that it’s only when an incident like this happens that I realise just how pig-ignorant abut firearms 99.999% of the UK are - and 100% of those in the media.
The Home Secs response in the Commons and that of Johnson too were measured and sensible - there IS hope!
Incidentally, as the law now stands, every Olympic pistol shooter who arrives here is committing an offence.
Around £30 million is being spent on creating a shooting complex in East London, which will then be bulldozed immediately afterwards for housing; meanwhile Bisley (shooting’s Lords or Wimbledon) is just 20 miles outside London.
Final point - how many of those injured yesterday were accidental injuries of those some distance from the ‘target’ - after all, he was using a shotgun.
The BBC is pushing the ‘tighter gun laws are the answer’ agenda at every opportunity. Someone who’s done some research is now speaking on BBC - we have 5 (FIVE!!) guns per 100; France and Germany over 30; Finland 55 and USA 95.
With ~12% of the legal guns in the Uk cf other EU states, it’s difficult to see what further legislation could achieve, given that farmers etc NEED shotguns for pest control, and many thousands of others use shotguns for hobby and sport purposes.
I’d suggest those figures suggest that a RELAXATION of UK gun laws are in order, so that country folk can keep a gun without too much hassle, as long as it is kept in a safe (my first shotguns were, quite legally, kept in my wardrobe as that was therefore ‘under lock and key’
Arming Police routinely is also a non-starter; .22 rifles are accurate to >200 yds whilst a pistol has a maximum effective range of 10-20 yds or so and a shotgun around 50 yds (300+ with (illegal) rifled slugs).
.177 HMR rifles (often used these days) have an accurate range of 300 yds, whilst full-bore deer rifles (.233 and .762 (eq)) have effective ranges of 800yds +.
Re Switzerland, Nick provides some good info. The reason why Swiss arm (in very regulated manner) their citizenry, is becausae this was (and remains) a significant deterent to invasion, and also to the overthrow of local and federal democracy.
In the 20th century Switerland has backed up this policy by turning the country into a veritable fortress, in a very understated manner. Undeed, the understatement adds to the persuasion!
The 2nd amendment of the US constitution reflects the same thinking; thus the phrase “well-regulated militia”. Would be interesting to go back in the Wayback Machine and quiz Madison, Franklin, etc, etc on their views. Reckon the over-fermented Oolongers would consider our Founding Fathers a pack of Commies.
EdP @464:
There’s a measure of ignorance of this area when this sort of comment emerges.
It implies that somehow he should have been stopped much more quickly. This is an area with poor roads, high mountains and lakes and few alternative routes from one place to another. Cumbrian Police is Headquartered in Carlisle, the best time anyone could do from Carlisle to Whitehaven is about an hour, by which time, Bird had moved on.
HD2…….fully support your two posts.
milibland hasn’t the guts or the stomach to takeo n cameron. he is a coward and he is a lightweight.
498 ‘There’s a measure of ignorance of this area when this sort of comment emerges.’
GeoffH, I wasn’t criticising the police for the time taken to react to the situation. I fully understand that barring the security personnel at Sellafield, the nearest armed response unit would have been at least half an hour or more away. I was merely pointing out to James Kelly that Bird could have committed many murderous acts with any variety of implements in the time that he took to shoot his unfortunate victims.