I broke my habit of recent years last year and didn’t make any predictions for the coming year (I had no time at the end of last year). That was fortunate because I would have got almost everything wrong. However, it is a good discipline to make these predictions if only so that I can identify what I thought was going on and think about why I was wrong (or right) later on. That way I might actually get better….
The “Did Somebody Really Budget for This?” Award It is perhaps inevitable in a country with a government which thinks that the colour of its passport matters that the British Army should have spent money on trying to change its “Be the Best” motto. To what, one wonders? “Be Mediocre”, perhaps or “Best at Being Third-Rate”, maybe. Still, a workforce can only be regarded as sufficiently diverse if a significant proportion is unsuitable for the job. So, despite the Defence…
This Times story looks like an attempt to rubbish ex-Chief Whip now Defence Sec Gavin ("Private Pike") Williamsonhttps://t.co/ETaqLipzW8 pic.twitter.com/FGzJbzS7TM — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) December 26, 2017 The Times is reporting this morning that during the intense negotiations to bolster the minority government after the general election the then chief whip Gavin Williams offered the DUP a cabinet post. We all remember how long it seemed to take for the negotiations with the DUP to provide supply and confidence went on….
ACROSS 1 Isn’t a rotten borough firstly one that favours a politician? (10) 6 War intelligence protects soldiers (4) 9 Former Tory MP Gilmour opposed such squalid conditions (10) 10 Bute for example had his lead cut (4) 12 OK to spoil then invent urban regeneration? (6,3,5) 14 Black out resulting from left wing legislation (6) 15 Poll contest before each point of government (8) 17 Built on a Latin state (8) 19 In May she was here (2,4) 22…
The UK seems divided on the major issues. Reviewing the polling of 2017 I thought I’d focus on the polling that shocked me the most in 2017. Forget Mrs May’s collapsing ratings during the election campaign, a dash for the cliff that would have left lemmings panting for breath, it was the polling by YouGov in February that showed 53% of the public like pineapple on pizza. The polling was commissioned after ‘Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, the president of Iceland (the…
Beware starting from a conclusion and working backwards “This time next year, we’ll be running the country”, as Jeremy Corbyn didn’t quite say a few days ago in his interview with Grazia. It’s a near-repetition of his prediction at Glastonbury this June – except that there he was talking about Christmas 2017 rather than 2018 – and for those not favourably inclined towards him, might bear a passing resemblance to the unsubstantiated optimism of another Christmas staple. Admittedly, Del Boy…